Zoop

File:Zoop genesis.jpg

Zoop Screenshot, Sega Genesis

Zoop is a popular puzzle game developed by Hookstone Ltd (1993-1997), and published by Viacom New Media.

It seems to be derived from Plotting (known in some territories as Flipull) but with a faster pace.

Official Zoop games have been released for Game Boy, Game Gear, Mega Drive/Genesis, Super NES, Atari Jaguar, Sega Saturn, PlayStation, Microsoft Windows, and Apple Macintosh.

To garner interest for the game, blockbuster offered the game as a free rental for the SNES for a time.

Game play

The player controls a triangle in the center of the screen. Every second (or more often in advanced levels), a piece comes in from the side and possibly pushes other pieces forward. Two consecutive pieces will never come in from the same quadrant, and runs of consecutive identical pieces on one row are longer than one might think statistically.

If a piece falls into the center square, the game is over.

If the player shoots a piece of the same color as your triangle, it will be "zooped" (cleared) and points are earned. If the piece behind the target piece is also of the same color, it is also "zooped." The same goes for the next piece, and so on. For instance, shooting to the right of the position in the screenshot will "zoop" the 'A' pieces and return you to the center, facing the opposite direction.

If a piece of a different color than your piece is shot, the player will switch places with it. This is also what happens when a piece of a different color is encountered after zooping one or more pieces of the same color. Here, shooting upwards would "zoop" A, bounce off B (leaving A behind), and return with B.

When the quota of "zooped" pieces is met, the game speeds up and (before level 10) the background changes.

Various special pieces do different things:

• A proximity bomb (shaped like a lightning bolt) blows up pieces in a 3×3 area centered at the target piece.
• A line bomb (often shaped like a gear) clears a whole target line of pieces.
• A color bomb (often shaped like a paint splotch) clears all the pieces in a quadrant that match the target piece.
• Collect five spring pieces to clear the whole screen.
• If a piece is pushed right next to the center square, it immediately disappears. In this way, the player may not lose because of a powerup entering the middle square.

Points

Generally speaking, every cleared piece is worth 100 points. In the case of zooping more than one piece at once, each piece is worth 100 points more than the piece before it. For example, zooping 3 pieces results in 100 + 200 + 300 = 600 points. In addition, if a row is full (one more piece being added will cause a loss of game) and all the pieces are of the same color, zooping the row earns a bonus of 5,000 points for the smaller rows on the top and bottom, and 10,000 for the rows on the left and right. All pieces cleared as a result of any of the four powerup items are worth 100 points.

Clones

Other games implementing the same game rules:

The freepuzzlearena package contains a clone called Zeus; other (less faithful) clones include Millennium Bugs and XMAS98.

There is also a Java Applet clone of Zoop here: http://joel.spolsky.com/zoop/