Zoids: Chuuou Tairiku no Tatakai ゾイド 中央大陸の戦い (released 9/5/1987, published by Toshiba EMI)

Zoids is a long running franchise that started out as toys, but also includes a number of anime and games. Although I don’t remember ever hearing about it as a kid, it was apparently popular in the US as well. It’s a line of mech robots that are designed after various animals (dinosaurs, bugs, etc). Apparently it was popular initially among adults as well as children because the designs took a more hard sci-fi style and the storyline was not a simple good vs evil fight (although it looks like this was changed as the franchise went on).

This game is a combination of an RPG and action game, which is typical of many of these releases. I’m still a bit surprised at how little copying of Dragon Quest there is at this point — I’d be interested to know more about DQ’s popularity at the time.

I don’t know exactly how the story of this game relates to any other part of the franchise, but it seems to involve the same Helic Republic vs. Zenebas Empire. The main character is Gojulas. The story in the game is fairly basic and I don’t think it develops much throughout the game — you’re just trying to take back places that have been captured by Zenebas.

You start off in the capital city. All the people in the towns are zoids, which apparently isn’t how the rest of the franchise works. There’s no equipment or anything like that so all you’re doing here is talking to people for some hints. In other places you can get people to join your party.

On the world map there are symbol encounters, but there are also hidden symbols moving around. You can see them if you have a pterodactyl unit in your party, otherwise you will stumble into them.

The battles are FPS shooter type. The main issue with them is that all the battles work in exactly the same way. You have 3-5 units, who can only fire at you when they are in your field of view. Every enemy does the same movement — they move back and forth across the field, and they fire one bullet when they change direction. At the beginning of the battle it will be set whether the enemies fire after their move to the right, or after their move to the left.

Regardless of the type of enemy, even bosses, this is how every fight works. Once you figure out how to fight and dodge, you can avoid most damage.

You do level up, although there is no way to see any experience point total. Normally you have to talk to someone in a town to “promote”, but if you get a comm unit item in the first town you will level automatically.

You can also switch Zoids during battle, which is helpful if you are low on HP. But if Gojuras dies it’s game over.

The game is somewhat nonlinear, so I went to a fortress nearby. When you reach a place that has been taken over by the Empire, you have to defeat all the enemies. If you leave the area without doing that, they’ll all return. But if you beat them all, the place will be permanently cleared out and then it will become a friendly fortress (with a password and heal, and such).

I stopped here. This game is more playable than some of the others from the era — the biggest issue seems to be the repetitive nature of the gameplay. But from what I can see, there are no “impossible to solve without a walkthrough” areas nor any places where you just have to grind for hours to pass.

There’s a sequel to the game later in the Famicom era; from what I read it fixes some of the issue with this game and is more highly regarded. I got the feeling from reading some of the Japanese information about this game that there are aspects of the game that bother Zoids fans, but I don’t know enough about the franchise to say.