@Air Zonk (chip version) : simply amazing, has to be seen to be believed. I
heard the CD version blowed goats!! :)
Air Zonk has the BEST graphics of ANY Hucard game. Magical Chase is close
but AZ still has bigger and more detailed sprites. And yes, AZ beats the
crap out of Super Air Zonk (SCD) anyday.
Air Zonk: You can select any friend to combine powers with before each
stage.
SAZ:You can't select which friend robots to combine with. Each one is set to
a respective stage. Lame. It totally decreases the replay value. One of AZ's
best points was that you can go go back to each stage and try a different
friend combo and see how well/differently it works out. That aspect is
totally missing in SAZ.
Air Zonk: Tons of great weapons (amazing variety of them too...) to choose
from and they all have their own special attack to boot when holding down
button I/powering up (!). You only get two main firing shots in SAZ. There
are two cool transformations of Zonk that you can eventually do in SAZ (one
looks like a robot crab, another a dragon with two heads) but you can only
do them in the last two levels (the two headed dragon form is almost
impossible to get). Remember that cool missile Zonk could spit out his mouth
in AZ that would fill the screen with a crapload of colorful explosions?
Gone in SAZ. You get some big explosions that go in a few directions and
with limited range. Remember how you spit out the super bomb ANY TIME you
wanted in AZ? In SAZ, you have to keep firing FOREVER before you can shoot
off the power bomb. UGH.
Air Zonk:Amazingly detailed and colorful graphics. Huge sprites. Awesome
parallax scrolling in the background and foreground for all levels.
SAZ:You get a little bit of parallax here and there in one or two areas MUCH
later on in the game. Otherwise SAZ is almost totally lacking parallax.
Sorry to rant but I had to get that off my chest. Don't get me wrong. I
actually like SAZ a LOT. It's a great game with solid graphics and gameplay
but it's crap compared to the original. It's a SCD for $#@%@% sake! There's
no reason it couldn't be better than the HUCARD original with effort!
You mentioned Shockman but forgot to mention Shockman 3. It's absolutely one
of the best PCE platform games EVER. It's a CDROM2 game but has graphics
(big sprites too : ) better than many SCD games I've played. So there's no
excuse for the half job Super Air Zonk is compared to the original. A SCD
game sure as heck better look improved over a Hucard game. And yes, Aldynes
rules. GoT is still the king but Aldynes is close and beats the crap out of
Sapphire.
Dylan H.