Thanks to Ratalaika Games for the review code
Title: Cyber Citizen Shockman Zero
System: Nintendo Switch (eShop)
Price: $6.99
Release Date: 07/05/2024
Story
In this action platformer, you take control of a new pair of Shockman as they must stop the efforts of the BB Gang to take over the world! This one has a lot of between-stage cutscenes ala Shockman 2, but none of them really amount to much besides very minor character chatter. Still, it maintains the general humor of the series, even if it has next to nothing to do with the prior 3 games.
Presentation
The usual Ratalaika wrapper returns, albeit with some very strange exclusions. You do not get a CRT filter here, but instead two presets that are meant to be an Arcade screen or Gameboy LCD. Neither really fit this Super Nintendo game, and you can tweak the latter to some extent, but the complete lack of a CRT filter is very, very strange. At least the usual display size options are here and work as they should.
Another peculiar thing is that despite what the eShop says, there doesn’t appear to be a gallery of scanned material here. The prior 3 Shockman ports had a gallery, and while this game was originally for the BS-X service and thus, probably lacking in material compared to the 3 PC Engine titles, surely the Columbus Circle SFC reissue could have served as a basis for a gallery here. Why the eShop description says there’s one, yet I could not find a gallery in the menus, is perplexing to me.
For the game’s presentation, Shockman Zero is a very typical SNES platformer to the point that a lot of the game feels as if it wasn’t meant for 1997. The graphics look colorful, but expected from the system, and the music is solid, but nowhere near as good or memorable as the prior 2 Shockman titles for PC Engine. The songs in this game have instrumentation that reminds me of Mega Man X2, of all things, and while none of the songs are bad, I only found one of the stage themes to stick in my head after beating the game.
Gameplay
The Shockman series has gone down a weird path, with no entry being the exact same as the one that came before it. Shockman 2 focused on ranged attacks, Shockman 3 was a more linear, melee experience sorta like the first game, but not with the multi-route structure, and here we have Shockman Zero, a game that throws out the past entries to the point that the only story aspect which carried over from the PCE Trilogy is the Professor character who helps you become Shockman.
Then you start the game up, with not an option menu in sight, and… You’re beating up foes with your fists! Yes, rather than a sword or projectile beam, you now have a pair of fists to take out enemies, though the charge beam attack is there as well, and helps against tougher enemies. Still, the combat and flow of the stages are much faster and way more responsive than the PC Engine trilogy, so I got a really great first impression.
Sure, you’ll primarily use the basic combo attack for dealing with most of the grunts, but the game still keeps a swift pace, with enemies going down in no time even on the normal difficulty setting. Bosses have just the right amount of HP too, with fun patterns and some late game fights really keeping you on your toes. While the enemies are pretty easy to take out, so are you, since you have a very limited health bar and while it gets upgraded over the course of the adventure, losing all of your health is game over.
You only have 3 credits to clear the game normally, with an Easy Mode that gives you 9 available via a secret button combo, so trying to memorize the stages and bosses to survive as many of them without dying as possible is a rather fun challenge. That, or just blazing through the game with 9 credits like I did, since either way is a fun time. Local Co-op also makes a comeback, along with the combined special move, and the second player does fight with a sword like in older games, so the easy mode helps a lot with making those shared credits easier to deal with if you and a buddy just want to blaze through to the end.
Each stage is short, simple, and fun to memorize, and unlike the prior games you don’t have any weird genre mashups to deal with here. This is a pure fast-paced brawler from start to finish, and a damn fun one, albeit rather brief. You also have the returning Rewind/Save State/Fast Forward features of the Ratalaika wrapper to make use of, though I didn’t find myself using those features nearly as much here since the game was pretty simple with those extra credits.
While that would normally be where talking about the game ends, Ratalaika did add in a cool set of extra toggles, mainly in the form of shortcutting the in-game cheat codes. You have a few emulator-level cheats to toggle as per usual, but also the ability to map buttons that can activate macros to pull off the in-game pause cheats. With this, you get a sound test, stage select, and most important, a DIP Switch menu.
Yes, a DIP Switch menu in a Super Famicom game. It’s honestly very cool, and amusingly ends up being the only way to make the game harder, since one of the toggles lets enemies take half damage from your attacks. On the other hand, you can play around with infinite continues, a double jump feature, and a few more fun toggles, helping give this game a little bit of replay value after you inevitably play through it in under a hour.
Conclusion
With this port, we have the entire Shockman franchise fully translated, polished up, and ported to modern consoles. I honestly can’t believe today was the day that happened! Unfortunately, as much as I enjoyed playing through the game and found the faster pace a lot more enjoyable than Shockman 1 or 2, I still found Zero to be somewhat forgettable.
Zero was made by a completely different team than the PC Engine trilogy, and it shows, but on the brighter side, that means the game is ridiculously stable and free of the weird jank that was present in the PCE trilogy. The combat is quick and frantic, the second player having a different weapon helps make the co-op a lot more interesting than in the prior games, and none of the stages ever feel badly balanced or cheap, even with the limited continues.
Still, at the end of the day, I do find other oddities like the lack of a gallery to be a bit of a damper on what should have been just as much as a full-fledged port as the prior 3 Shockman titles. While the nature of the game being locked to the BS-X service may have made original materials hard to include, I’d at least would have liked for some sort of history bit noting how this game was salvaged from the depths of a digital distribution service, now finally brought out into multiple formats to be easily accessible.
Still, the game is great fun for an afternoon romp, and playing with a friend makes it even better. Sure, you might not have much in terms of in-game options, but what you do get here is a very enjoyable brawler, ending the legacy of a fun, underrated Masaya series. Just don’t expect to remember much about it after you finish it.
I give Cyber Citizen Shockman Zero a 7 out of 10.