Zool 2 (CD-ROM)

"Zool, and his fabulous female companion, ZOOZ. are about to face a challenge which would wilt the knee of even the toughest Ninja in this action packed PLATFORM ARCADE ACTION sequel. You'll need joystick skills from the NTH DIMENSION when you help them take on the evil KROOL and his devious accomplice MENTAL BLOCK as they seek to wipe imagination from the face of existence. SIX huge levels supercharged with varied and challenging gameplay. Play either ZOOL or ZOOZ, each with their own moves and abilities. Cunning enemies, monsters, power ups, collectibles and hidden 'Chopa Chups' bonus rooms. Sizzling sound FX and a choice of in-game tunes."

The Dos game appears to be based on the console versions and closest to the Jaguar version with some redrawn sprites and more colourful overall and plays the amiga/Jaguar music. It also has the lowest resolution of all versions and makes for a crowded gameplay area. This is notable in the Bonus levels where the upper blocks scroll downwards once the lower ones are cleared as you still have the same number of blocks to destroy overall. I find this a difficult version to play as your movement is crazy fast but the backgrounds run at half the framerate which is hard on the eyes. For this reason I am playing on medium so that I don't have to track down every last item prolonging the pain.

The CDRom release is being played here which adds the FMV animations of the CD32 game. Unlike the CD32 game though you still don't get the extra levels or the audio tracks so you still have to make a choice between music or sfx. A strange omission on the Dos game though is that you can access the settings during play to lower the screensize and disable the backgrounds for a smoother game yet you cant change between music or sfx.

The longplay plays through all levels collecting all the ZuuN icons to unlock the bonus levels. The bonus levels can be a good source of extra lives but go on a while so I only complete the first one and show a snippet of the rest. The game only allows music or sfx and music is used for the main run. At the end of the video I show the first level with sfx and close out with the game over screen. I also show backgrounds off and small screen just before the game over .

Overall, it's a good version if all you had is a pc but i think id want to play any other version given the choice due to the weird framerate and small screen size. It has all the music unlike the Amiga 1200 game as well as additional music for the final stage. Its a huge upgrade over the pc release of Zool which looked, sounded and played poorly next to the A500 game.

00:00:00 Title Music
00:01:36 Swan Lake 1
00:04:58 Swan Lake 2
00:08:18 Swan Lake 3
00:12:10 Bonus Stage
00:15:15 Bulberry Hill 1
00:18:40 Bulberry Hill 2
00:22:01 Bulberry Hill 3
00:26:45 Bonus Stage
00:27:40 Tooting Common 1
00:32:18 Tooting Common 2
00:36:15 Tooting Common 3
00:41:32 Bonus Stage
00:42:32 Snaking Pass 1
00:47:28 Snaking Pass 2
00:50:40 Snaking Pass 3
00:54:30 Bonus Stage
00:55:20 Mount Ices 1
00:59:25 Mount Ices 2
01:03:38 Mount Ices 3
01:07:15 Bonus Stage
01:08:33 Mental Blockage
01:16:27 End
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01:17:55 Swan Lake 1 (SFX)
01:22:13 Game Over