A month passes, and Creator gives it a second go using MegaZeux, calling this sequel-of-sorts Planetary Defense Station SUPER.
Back in its infancy, the original 1.X version of MegaZeux allowed you to import ZZT worlds. Imported worlds weren't immediately ready to go, as objects lost their code with no attempt of converting ZZT-OOP to Robotic. Still, a few ZZTers gave it a shot, porting and updating their ZZT worlds to make use of MegaZeux's improved audio/visuals and significantly more powerful scripting language.
Now we can see the game as Creator envisioned. With smoother curves, prettier stars, and sampled sound effects that read out "P.D.S." in an intense voice.
The conversion quickly reveals itself to be a little too faithful to the original. Given how straightforward the original game's engine is, starting from scratch would've led to a better game and not have been that complex to implement. Instead, bringing in a run of the mill shooter by ZZT's standards is almost a joke in MegaZeux.
We're still having the player touch robots to make their ship move instead of directly handling key presses? We're still making them run across the board to advance to the next level? Heck, we're making them enter a passage instead of having the game change boards automatically? MegaZeux's entire shtick is that it offered solutions to problems in ZZT which were unsolvable. A direct port like this feels much more amateurish than the nearly identical ZZT game.
But actually identical it is not. Creator provides a pretty decent soundtrack of chiptunes to listen to while you play, which definitely adds to the appeal, especially at invoking a more serious tone even if the presentation is still very goofy ZZT game.
The engine has one small change to it. Holding down the shoot button (which is still left!!!!!) won't create a continuous stream of bullets anymore. Now you have to mash furiously to shoot repeatedly. This does prevent players from zoning out completely. In the ZZT game, mashing arrow keys with no consideration was a perfectly valid and dull way to play. In MegaZeux, you at least have to consciously choose to keep firing. This doesn't actually make the combat any better, just more demanding of focus.
You'll also immediately discover that the game is a lot faster. MegaZeux doesn't slouch when it comes to speed, which is a huge benefit over ZZT where the fastest possible speed isn't particularly fast. This is a real improvement for PDS. Enemies still move so wildly that you can't really target them so much as hope that you hit them, but your ship/cannon feels far more capable of moving up and down to chase targets.
You get some stars in the background thanks to custom floors, and a new character set provides more inspired ship and enemy designs than triangle and Greek characters.
Since the engine is just a direct conversion of ZZT's, it still uses zapping to track defeated enemies. I think the door glitch is still present, though I haven't had any luck getting it to happen. MegaZeux's robots default to the fastest speed so it is a lot harder to hit two ships on a single cycle.
The first two levels play just like before, only faster and prettier. Still not exactly "pretty", but prettier.
After the second level things go a different direction. Creator, still in the ZZT mindset where the player element is what everything revolves around, drops them into outer space as a checkpoint.
Unlike ZZT where saving your game is a mandatory feature that can be called on by the player at any time, MegaZeux lets you change those rules. Before it was possible to save after each level, or during one (just hope your save isn't ruined by the door glitch). Now, you can only save on these special intermission screens. Death is still just one shot away, so the difficulty is certainly increased. The gameplay isn't improved enough to make having to replay a completed level come off as anything more than a chore though. This strikes me as a miss, and is a pet peeve when I play MegaZeux games where restricted saves often feel arbitrary while also discouraging player experimentation as it could come with a steep penalty.
The repercussions from dying aren't just losing progress. Having to replay a stage due to restricted saves is one thing, but there's also an audio bug present when dying to explosions rather than bullets. Death by explosives plays a destruction sound and ends the game, but a missing END command causes code to continue executing just as it would in ZZT. This hits the normal code for being shot, which as it also needs to end the game causes the robot to be caught in an infinite loop, stacking the ship destroyed noise every time, which is incredibly unpleasant.
Because the ceiling for quality in MegaZeux was so much higher, games closer to the floor feel way worse. This led to a lot of early-MZX era messages about how newcomers should learn the basics with ZZT first, or more gatekeep-y ideas that some folks just weren't good enough to understand MegaZeux. These are mean takes by mean children, though you can see where they were coming from. There is a higher barrier to entry here, especially if you wanted to get noticed. A port of a ZZT game that's not really adding much just feels less notable than its original form.
Level 3 jumps ahead to a fight with a larger unmoving ship that just doesn't look good. Having a big ship is cool and all, but as it too remains motionless, it's no different than anything in ZZT.
What looks a little better, are the explosions which MegaZeux supports. Now when you blow up a ship's guns, a giant fireball blossoms from the wreckage. Getting rid of both causes the whole ship to explode in quite the fireball.
I will admit. The incredibly exaggerated effect had me giddy. It's hilarious seeing this fire in space accompanied by a stock EXPLODE.S3M sound. There's some charm here. It's the right level of cool to appeal to a younger audience (by which I mean young me would have loved blowing up ships like this). It's the right level of silly to get some laughs today. This part will definitely stick with me for awhile, though that's probably not what Creator hoped people would remember her game for.
Another new component to the game is this division of stages into zones. These are not save points. You get a little explosion or sometimes a picture, a much needed pat on the back for a job well done, and then a tease about what's to come:
A new ship awaits...
The game breaks away from its ZZT imported boards and into brand new levels created for the MegaZeux version. These get rid of the border to create a yet larger play field (which isn't so bad now that everything is faster), while still using the imported engine to power it. Your new ship is the same as the old ship just with a new appearance as well as a new triple-laser character for its weapons rather than the pointy missile still in use by the enemy. The sense of progression is a welcome addition regardless of it all being kayfabe.
It's two very similar levels in a row, followed by another save room.
But then, there's something new in terms of gameplay and it's even something ZZT couldn't pull off! This enemy ship has flamethrowers that extend and retract from the ship's body. They create an initial explosion which is deadly if you're near it, and then fill the screen with fire. The fire, harmless to your ship, can still cause problems as it makes it harder to judge the boundaries of the explosion.
This level requires you to consider your positioning. The weapons need to be destroyed to advance to the second phase of the battle. The pattern for extending/retracting is designed so that players who immediately rush to attack the guns are likely to be caught in their explosions and killed.
Thus, there's some genuine thought needed for how to approach this level! You need to wait until the guns start retracting before taking your shot. This is a small but significant step in the right direction for the game. No longer will every stage feel like a rehash of the earlier levels. Creativity is now a possibility.
Once the flamethrowers are out of the picture, two more guns emerge and things play out like the previous level.
Okay. So it's not that creative. I said small steps. Despite how unimpressed I may sound, this is definitely the best level in both games so far by a considerable margin.
A new zone awaits as well as a new weapon!
Once again. Nothing seems to be different beyond the graphics for the ship and its shots.
Zone 3 is subtitled "Mothership", explaining the sudden mechanical looking borders that replace previously open space. The levels are made into far tighter stages that make it much easier for enemy shots to reach the player. And since the battlefield is asymmetrical, some enemy ships duck can into cover where your shots can't reach.
Visually though, this is still extremely ZZT.
The next level is where the game gets frustrating. Like that ricochet stage, the enemies here don't shoot back. Your bullets remain ineffective however. This stumped me enough that my first thought was that the game was just broken. It's not like the previous game didn't soft-lock on me. Perhaps there was an oversight here.
As it turned out I was using the wrong weapon. While the player is informed that they have a new weapon at the start of the zone, it sounded like it was just another bullet re-skin. This time, there really is a new weapon. Your ship at this point has been granted a missile launcher. The game does not tell you how to fire it. Thirty-five wrong guesses later, I discovered the secret to using it.
Pressing "M" (a cool new thing MegaZeux lets you do) fires a missile which explodes on hit, destroying anything it touches. The enemy ships here can only be brought down with missiles which have a small blast radius making in theoretically possible to take out multiple foes in a single satisfying shot.
Good luck on pulling that magic shot off. The ships move all over the place and with the long horizontal format are extremely difficult targets to hit with the missile launcher. Even the splash damage isn't all that useful as the enemy usually won't have their back to the wall. With the standard lasers, you can get by by rapidly firing until your target is destroyed. With missiles, you are limited to just ten shots. Running out is a soft-lock.
Try as I might. I could not get past this level legit. Ten missiles does not cut it. These enemies move in all directions and rather quickly. Even waiting for them to wander close to my ship it was still a crapshoot as to whether or not I'd hit one. It was so bad that I went into the editor and gave myself hundreds of missiles, resigning myself to playing the stage as if it were a regular bullet-based level, accepting Creator's gift of gameplay variety and having to throw it in the garbage for my sanity.
For all the attempts I made before opening the editor, the restricted saves meant I had to replay the previous two stages and wait for the interstitial zone ending screen before I could try this level again. Reminder that the flamethrower level punishes players who try to be quick. It's not as fun the fifth time. PDS Super will eat away at your patience.
And your sanity. The audio glitch from non-bullet deaths means dying in these levels often leads to painful sounds repeating endlessly. It really makes a bad situation that much worse.
I've never felt as much relief as I did upon seeing the next screen was a save point. If you want a game to make you feel emotions, try this one. Warning: they won't really be good emotions.
The ninth level is a boss fight with a single agile and aggressive enemy ship. Blessedly, your bullets work here, though landing a missile counts as two shots. This is how the previous stage should have handled things. Missiles as an opportunity to do extra damage or hit multiple targets makes them more exciting to fire, while lasers allow players to keep going if their trick shots don't succeed.
Hitting a target that just moves all over the place continues to be a matter of luck more than anything else. The original ZZT game was hardly great, but this one was really thinning my patience. Having to replay levels, patch the game, and still get the same subpar experience of hoping to land a shot wasn't doing this game any favors.
By this point, even the music was getting on my nerves.
Level ten has some bio-mechanical design. The background may make the levels look like they're in even more confined spaces before, but that's just my ZZT bias showing. Custom floors are used everywhere making the entire upper screen open for combat.
Your ship receives one more upgrade in the form of infinite missiles. Better late than never I suppose.
Without limited ammunition, it would seem like the basic shot is no longer worth using, but this isn't entirely the case. This opponent is capable of making large swoops towards the player's ship, getting so in their face that firing a missile will catch you in the explosion, ending your game.
The enemy ship also likes to fire missiles which make attacking at all when it's closing in risky for the same reason. Technically this makes this the most complex fight since the big ship with the flamethrowers. It's similar enough that it's not all that exciting, and takes a lot longer to beat as the target is constantly moving around the screen.
Level eleven. Same as it ever was.
One last save point before the final level.
Then, for the first time thus far in the series, somebody speaks! I have no idea who it is, but they're not happy with the player, informing them that they must die. Unlike other enemies, when their shots play a sound effect. And oh boy do they like to shoot. There's just this loud chunk-chunk-chunk sound playing the entire time.
It even plays before the enemy ship is set loose! Again and again and again. It's awful! I hate it!
While you try to figure out why there's this horrible racket playing, your foe, whose personal ship is encased in a giant cannon is content to just stare at you menacingly. This giant cannon, clearly the set-piece of the finale, doesn't actually fire, move, or animate at any point. One missile blows it up with the slightly miffed villain not giving up yet.
Their ship is bullet immune of course, but that doesn't really matter with infinite missiles. A single shot is all it takes to defeat them. Despite the cannon having lost its barrel and its operator having been killed, it's not enough for the level to consider itself completed. Players still need to do what they did in the first game and fire a banked shot into the back of the cannon.
Trying to do this earlier in the fight has no effect. The red smudge on the rightmost column won't deflect anything until the other threats are gone. This was a bit confusing to me as I tried it before I thought to shoot the cannon, so when it was finally time to shoot, I assumed that there was some other target I hadn't noticed.
Bullet deflected, the game does a weird snap shrinking of the view port before teleporting you to the credits screen.
Creator again adds in some notes about the game, stressing that this isn't really the full game as it still lacks cinema sequences and, you know, a story.
Now obviously a direct ZZT engine port to MegaZeux isn't going to play very well. Yet I was amazed at just how much less I enjoyed this overhaul. The first level seeming promising, at least as "ZZT but better", speeding up the gameplay significantly while benefiting from a custom character set and some non-PC speaker noises for sound effects and music. Had it actually just been the original game again, it would be better, if mostly superficially.
It's good that Creator still wanted to do more. It's important to consider just how new MegaZeux was at the time of this game's release. PDS Super shows us why few games were ported directly from ZZT to MegaZeux to this, but people had to actually do it so we could understand why we wouldn't want to in the future.
The idea of just dropping a plain old ZZT game into MegaZeux seems almost comical now. The enforced simplicity of a ZZT world turns into a severe under-utilization of what MegaZeux can do. Character sets and chiptunes are a plus, but they won't make a bland shooter any more exciting.
The new additions to the game are well-intended at least. There's some development of the formula with the addition of a secondary weapon, as well as breaking away from the always identical stage design to explore different shapes and some more creative enemy attacks. I think, with a bit more time, especially if it would have meant getting any story, this still could have been a decent adaptation by a new (not that anyone wasn't new) MZXer.
There is fun to be had in this game. It's just all foiled by issues with audio balancing, scarce ammunition for tiny targets, and limited player saves to every few stages. Saving after each level rather than whenever the author felt like it would have made its more frustrating moments a bit less so. Once again some small tweaks would go a long way here.
Final Thoughts (For Now)
So far it's been a short and slight shooter followed by a a longer, still slight shooter. The flaws of the first game boil down to having a decent idea for a game, and then not developing it outward enough. I wouldn't want 10 levels of the ZZT game if those extra stages didn't have anything more meaningful to introduce for their challenges, but I could see Creator's ZZT version being enjoyable with some non-technical changes. A story to support an extended number of levels would really be enough to make it an entertaining ZZT world.
The MegaZeux version shows us what happens when the length is increased without adding much to the formula. It comes off as tedious, repetitive, and less fun overall. Despite some genuine effort with the addition of a missile launcher, along with explosion-dodging mechanics, I still found myself wondering who I was fighting, and why I should care. Creator keeps promising that these games will get their story eventually, but I don't think the MegaZeux version should have been released without it. The more varied combat should lend itself well to some character drama, where you pilot faces off against an enemy rival. Have [STUPID JERK] taunt you from the massive flamethrower ship, only to show up again in that stage where the lone enemy dive bombs you with missiles. Set up scenes to make the player wonder what will happen next, rather than just throw them into it without any hope of following along.
Both games have potential, and the third game will finally deliver on it.
Until that time, PDS in ZZT form is an early shooter that functions as a proof of concept. A nice little engine from a programmer who only gets more comfortable and capable as their games go on. Super PDS serves as a nice encapsulation of what ZZTers wanted out of MegaZeux, and how it takes some time to settle in to a new standard. The ZZT-ness of Super PDS becomes a detriment. Moments like touching arrow characters to move and shoot or just tossing a smiley face in a void so they can save betray that while the game may have more colors, a fancy custom character set, and some decent music (for the first few loops at least) that none of it adds much to the substance of the game. And to add more substance via MegaZeux, requires a lot more work. There's no need to ever see that cyan on blue smiley in PDS Super, but they're present on every board. There's no need to walk to a passage or enter a whirlpool with them when you can change boards as you wish through code. All the immutable rules of ZZT that MegaZeux gives you the opportunity to change, means you're now required to change them lest your game be no different than a ZZT game with a font.
If it sounds harsh, it probably is. These are both very early games by an author who would find her voice and do so much more. PDS is an overlooked shooter because it's not as memorable as others. It's an step on the long road of game design, necessary to reach the greater games that await on the author's journey, but not much of a place for one to go out of their way to stop at now. If you want to see what Creator can do when she finally sits down and starts writing that story, along with a willingness to code up a fresh engine, take a look at P.D.S. Enhanced, or ditch the shooting entirely and try something like It's The End of the World!. You'll enjoy either option a lot more.
