Dubbed "America's Biggest Killer of Time" and advertised with a commercial laden with masturbatory entendres, you'd hope for a lot out of Viacom New Media's Zoop, released in 1995 to plenty of systems including not just the 16-bitters of the time, but consoles like the Sega Saturn and the Sony PlayStation. This was the development of Hookstone Productions, whose only other work prior was the Super Game Boy version of Alfred Chicken. This was Viacom New Media's hopes for a big IP that wasn't from a pre-established franchise (Beavis and Butt-Head, Rocko's Modern Life. Essentially anything MTV or Nickelodeon), but it never really amounted to much. Maybe releasing a puzzler in 1995 when the interest was dry wasn't a wise idea. But was Zoop an underrated gem, or just that game you list last in the alphabetical list of Genesis games?
Zoop is a one player puzzle game. The object of Zoop is as follows. You are a triangle on a 4X4 grid. Junk from the grids surrounding yours are crawling ever closer to take your spot. If one gets in, it's game over. You shoot your triangle with A, B, or C to swap your color with one of the other colors and get rid of any others that are surrounding. Of course, you earn more points as you eliminate more combos. So the basics of winning are simple. Just keep swapping colors and making combos.
There are two modes of play in Zoop. Continuous, which keeps you playing for points as the difficulty gets higher, but the difficulty level only changes if you make the set number of matches. Level starts you with a fresh new board, while continuous kicks you off right where you began with the pieces still in their exact same spot. You do get some items to help you as the stages progress in challenge. Collect five springs to clear the screen. Collect the gear piece to clear one row. Color bombs get rid of one color in a row and lightning shaped proximity bombs get rid of a 3x3 row closing in on you.
If the game's increasing difficulty wasn't enough to add a challenge, the eye sore level designs will be the kicker. As if built intentionally to screw with you to ensure mistakes, levels are swapped in different colors. The more garish the better. That and how easily it is to screw up your correct positioning with slippery controls and the color scheme screwing with where you point your triangle, it makes for a game more challenging on aesthetics. But even with that, the game is hard and your good streak can fail fast due to an overwhelming amount of items piling up at a wicked pace.
The graphics, as mentioned, can be a bit garish and hard on the eyes, but otherwise pretty basic and bland looking for a puzzler from 1995. Honestly, it feels more at home as something pre-installed to a Windows 95 than a retail title for any console, let alone the Sega Genesis. On the music side, I do find the jazzy tracks to be very catchy and fitting of the game's more "hip and groovy" aesthetic. It also changes after every game over, so you don't just end up with the same static tune as you return to the main menu, which is a nice touch.
Overall, Zoop is not a super amazing puzzler, especially on a system where Columns and Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine exists and doesn't come off too spectacular in the looks department. But that being said, I think it's still a particularly fun little game nonetheless. It definitely presents a challenge, and takes some time to fully master, but when you get into it, you might get a little addicted. It's far from perfect, but if you find it cheap, it's a solid find for your collection.
RATING: C+
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