There are a few subgenres that I’ve gotten into a pretty consistent opener for, speaking to the fact that they’re extremely well-represented in the eShop and how that puts the pressure on any new game in the category to do something that not only sets them apart, but demands the attention of genre fans in the space. Without a doubt I’d say that arcade shooters are absolutely in that category, not only in terms of raw numbers but also when considering typical quality.

So now you have ZPF, a side-scrolling shooter very much made in the classic mold, literally coming over from the Sega Genesis homebrew community, so it has legitimate cred in that specific area. The good news is that in terms of the overall presentation, whether it’s the pretty terrific pixel art graphics or the soundtrack, I’d say it is successful in dialing up that older-school look and feel. It’s also nice to have a few very different ships for you to work with, each playing pretty substantially differently in terms of their primary attacks. Whether you’re looking for replayability or simply being able to find something that best suits your preferred style, that’s always a plus.

All that said, I do have some problems with it, the first being that it has some unique things going on that it doesn’t explain, and that makes your first few runs a real mess, especially when the button mappings weren’t what I would expect for this type of title. The fact that you can shoot or use closer-range melee attacks is interesting, and how this works for each craft you can choose varies pretty wildly, but without any orientation from a tutorial, or some other on-screen instruction, it’s also a bit hard to get up to speed since the game’s style is to simply throw you in the deep end. 

There’s also a struggle on-screen clutter, including enemy bullets that vary in size in places, all sorts of what look like rewards spilling out from destroyed enemies that I couldn’t tell whether I was supposed to be trying to grab, and simply a lot going on. While it all makes the game look pretty cool visually, especially considering the flexing of the color palette being used, it also amounts to a lot of noise when you’re trying to be dialed in for playing. The thing is, if you kept the game in the context of shooters from the era it is trying to emulate, it may have been more impressive, but when you have it crashing against the rocks of the loads of well-made, challenging, and better implemented shooters already in the eShop its shortcomings are far more difficult to give a pass, making it somewhat disappointing.