♦ Livestream of the ZZT world "ZZT Arcades" by Koopo (1998) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/zztarc1/]. ♦
A mixture of ZZT magazine and mini-game compilation. ZZT Arcades lets players explore a few screens with passages to various genres of game with an assortment of engines as well as small memorial statues to ZZTers and ZZT companies that Koopo felt were important to the scene. The majority of which isn't anything too original for 1998, but there's still some fun to be had with what's included. A little space shooter, a bit of Breakout, some racing, that sort of thing.
Some of the more unique material includes a selection of 2-Player games which are poorly showcased here. These limit controls to two arrow keys for one player, and the other two (ideally on the numpad) for the other, which lets two people theoretically ride around on skateboards or play co-op Breakout. Even at their best, these suffer immensely as the ZZT player only gets one input per turn which means one command will be ignored if both players try to take an action simultaneously.
But its heart is in the right place! The skateboarding game where you fight gangsters on K-Mart trucks is some powerful iconography, and the sheer number of hidden enemies that pop out once you think you've cleared the screen is impressive. Some of these engines could very well have been turned into full ZZT games.
Additionally, the magazine features a few previews for some of Koopo's upcoming games, such as KuoCana, an RPG which features a re-usable RPG battle engine, something that was seriously impressive for a 90s release! Some RPG engine components are also included to expedite the work for those who want to implement experience points, armor, and maximum HP into their own RPGs which would have been useful to have ready to go.
A review board covers many of Koopo's favorite games, which are pretty much all well-established hits, and an assortment of other games good and bad, giving the world some extra appeal as a historical record to how some of these games were received (Sivion in the Hall of Fame and such).
Lastly, we check out the 2-Player Duel, a turn based tactical strategy game where two teams with up to 3 characters each can move around a map and attack one another as well as casting magic spells. This would be the game's showstopper were it not so buggy causing the controls to break down and actions to be inaccessible. Still, a very MegaZeuxy idea that's neat to see in ZZT even if it wound up not being that great to play.
♦ Play this world directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/zztarc1/
♦ Originally streamed on October 29th, 2023 ♦
