♦ Livestream of 3 ZZT worlds. ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (0:00) "Star Wars" by Unknown [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/starwa0/]
• (9:02) "Star Bores" by Jason Hund (1997) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/starbore/]
• (25:38) "Star Wars" by Joshua Hoffmaster, Peter Kuyatt [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/sw9/]
There's the Star Wars ZZT games I know and lament. After a surprisingly strong haul previously, this week returns to form with some low-effort parody and low-effort sincerity.
The first "Star Wars" starts off decently enough, focusing on episode 4's famous Death Star trench run. A few animations play out as players take off in their X-Wing and approach their target. While you can take off without opening the hangar doors (a mandatory instant-death imo), the game just doesn't care, beginning to display a starry background and thrusters firing while a long horizontal line still runs across the screen, coming along for the ride.
Afterwords it devolves into some far too difficult action given the limited health of the player. The Death Star is crawling with Tie Fighters in the typical ZZT tiger form, and line with spinning guns for turrets. There are way too many things that can harm you and no way to increase your health without cheating. Vader shows up in his ship of course to add more bullets to the fray.
Eventually you blow up the ship, head back to the award ceremony, receive a YOU WIN and the game ends.
Second is "Star Bores" which leans in on the idea that parody just means similar sounding names. You've got "Fluke Sidewalker", "Darth Star", the "Aluminum Fulcrum", "Next Wings". Gameplay again consists of shooting tigers in empty space boards, making sure not to wander into an impossible to beat fleet by picking the incorrect direction to travel to. Bonus boards allow players to meet the author and his friend/tester which is definitely the highlight of the game. Also Barney the dinosaur shows up in one of the more cursed ZZT depictions I've ever seen of him.
Lastly, another "Star Wars", another humorous attempt to parody the series. You'll chase down Vader across the galaxy, even making reference to one of the novels, "The Truce at Bakura" hinting that the author is a genuine fan just having some fun with the characters. Published by Pyrosoft, expect a lot of pyromaniacs and fires which end up being some of the better humor in the game. Not only does Barney show up again, but at one point a detour is made to meet Ren and Stimpy. You also can eat somebody's oreos you find on the ground.
♦ Play these worlds directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/starwa0/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/starbore/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/sw9/
♦ Originally streamed on May 14th, 2023 ♦
