Monday, 16 December 2001.
ZAGE officially released its final batch of games for the year considerably earlier than usual. Most months, ZAGE preferred spacing its major releases toward the latter half or even the final week of the month, but December was different. With the FAMICOM Game of the Year 2001 event approaching, ZAGE wanted its remaining titles available before the awards season completely dominated Japanese gaming discussion.
This final December wave contained three games: Tarzan for ZEPS 3, alongside Bangai-O Spirits and Scurge: Hive for ZGBA.
The three projects also came from completely different parts of ZAGE. Scurge: Hive had been developed by Team FUMA in Japan, while Bangai-O Spirits came from Team MYTH in China, making it Team MYTH's first proper ZGBA project. Meanwhile, Tarzan had been handled by Team BLAZE at ZAGE Campus in the United States, fitting naturally with the team's focus on Western-oriented intellectual properties.
Of the three, Tarzan was probably the easiest game for ordinary players to immediately understand.
Disney's Tarzan movie already existed in this world and had become extremely successful with ZAGE's involvement, meaning audiences were already familiar with Tarzan, Jane, Kala, Kerchak, Terk, Clayton, and the jungle setting long before the game appeared. After the success of ZAGE's recent The Incredibles game, expectations surrounding another Disney-based ZAGE title had naturally become much higher.
Zaboru knew that was slightly unfair.
The Incredibles had been designed almost like one of the cooperative LEGO-style action games he remembered from his previous life, with four-player co-op, character-specific abilities, puzzles, exploration, platforming, and teamwork. Tarzan was not trying to become something that large.
Instead, Zaboru wanted it to remain close to the game he remembered.
In his previous life, the PlayStation version of Tarzan had been one of those games he considered far better than people usually remembered. Its core structure was relatively straightforward: a side-scrolling action-platformer presented through 3D environments, allowing Tarzan to move through jungle stages while climbing, jumping, swinging from vines, swimming, avoiding dangerous animals, and collecting objects scattered throughout each level.
The perspective could occasionally shift depending on the stage. Some sections played more traditionally from the side, while others allowed movement deeper into the environment or changed the camera to create more cinematic platforming sequences. Tarzan could climb trees and vines, leap between branches, slide across surfaces, and use his agility to move quickly through environments that gradually became more dangerous as the story progressed.
Combat remained simple but effective. Tarzan could throw fruit at enemies from a distance, while stronger attacks and environmental interactions allowed him to deal with different creatures or human threats. The game also contained collectibles and hidden areas that rewarded players who explored rather than simply rushing toward the end of each stage.
That basic gameplay foundation was already strong enough that Zaboru did not want to completely rebuild it.
He simply refined almost everything surrounding it.
Movement became smoother and considerably more responsive. Vine swinging used more natural momentum, making successful chains between vines feel satisfying instead of awkward. Tarzan's climbing animations were improved, and transitions between running, jumping, grabbing branches, and swinging happened much more fluidly.
The jungle itself received the largest improvement.
Team BLAZE pushed ZEPS 3 surprisingly hard, creating dense vegetation, animated animals, moving water, layered backgrounds, weather effects, and far more environmental activity than players expected from what initially looked like a straightforward licensed platformer.
The game was not trying to achieve realism.
It still visually matched Disney's animated Tarzan movie.
However, that stylised art direction allowed Team BLAZE to create environments that looked exceptionally good without requiring impossible hardware performance. Character models preserved the exaggerated proportions and expressions of the movie while the jungle used strong colours, detailed foliage, lighting effects, and smooth animation to give each stage considerable personality.
Most importantly, Zaboru expanded the environmental puzzles.
He wanted the jungle to feel like an actual obstacle rather than decorative scenery surrounding platforming sections. Players needed to observe vines, branches, rocks, waterfalls, animal behaviour, and environmental patterns before deciding how to progress.
Some puzzles required manipulating objects to create paths. Others involved using vines in the correct sequence, distracting animals, discovering hidden routes, or understanding which parts of the environment Tarzan could climb.
Later stages became significantly more challenging.
A player might need to cross a large jungle section while avoiding predators, use several branches to reach a higher route, swing across collapsing vines, then solve a simple environmental puzzle before continuing.
The challenges were never meant to become frustratingly complicated, but they required much more attention than players expected from a game based on an animated film.
That surprised people.
Reviews began appearing only hours after release, with many players admitting they had initially expected another enjoyable but relatively simple licensed game.
Instead, Tarzan was genuinely difficult in places.
Not unfair.
Just demanding.
The platforming required timing. Hidden areas required observation. Certain puzzles actually forced players to stop and look around rather than simply moving forward.
And the jungle constantly changed how players approached movement.
He never wanted licensed games to become products that existed solely because a movie was popular.
If ZAGE created a game from a major property, the game still needed to be enjoyable even for someone who had never watched the movie.
Tarzan was proving that philosophy again.
The game did not receive the same enormous attention as The Incredibles, but players who actually tried it consistently came away surprised by how polished and enjoyable it was.
For Zaboru, that was enough.
Bangai-O Spirits, meanwhile, was something completely different.
Team MYTH's first ZGBA project immediately demonstrated that they had absolutely no interest in creating a safe handheld game.
Bangai-O Spirits was technically a side-scrolling shooter, but describing it that way barely explained what playing it actually felt like.
The player controlled a small combat robot capable of flying freely through environments that extended both horizontally and vertically. Unlike traditional side-scrolling shooters where the screen constantly pushed the player in one direction, Bangai-O Spirits allowed players to move throughout large interconnected stages almost however they wanted.
Left.
Right.
Up.
Down.
The level itself became something closer to a compact combat playground.
The robot could fly, but gravity still affected movement whenever the player stopped actively controlling its altitude. That created a strange sense of weight. The machine never felt like a completely weightless spaceship, yet it could still launch upward, fall between platforms, change directions in midair, and manoeuvre around enemies from nearly any angle.
The result felt unusual even by ZAGE standards.
And Zaboru loved it.
Bangai-O Spirits originally existed as a Nintendo DS game in his previous life, but simply recreating that version on ZGBA would not have worked perfectly. The hardware, controls, screen configuration, and technical limitations were completely different.
Rather than forcing the original design onto ZGBA, Zaboru adjusted the concept specifically around the handheld.
The interface became cleaner. Controls were simplified without removing the game's depth, while enemy patterns and level layouts were redesigned around the ZGBA screen.
Team MYTH also spent considerable time ensuring that the enormous number of projectiles could remain readable during chaotic battles.
That was important because Bangai-O Spirits could become absurdly busy.
Missiles filled entire portions of the screen.
Enemies attacked from several directions.
Explosions appeared everywhere.
The player could become trapped inside patterns that initially looked almost impossible to escape.
Yet the chaos was deliberate.
A large part of the game revolved around understanding how to exploit overwhelming enemy attacks instead of simply avoiding them. Certain counterattacks became more powerful depending on how much danger surrounded the player, rewarding someone brave—or stupid—enough to wait until the screen became completely filled before responding.
That created a strange rhythm.
Players intentionally entered situations that looked suicidal because successfully countering at the perfect moment could unleash an enormous attack in return.
The vertical level design became one of the most praised aspects of the game.
Players were accustomed to shooters moving primarily from left to right or occasionally from bottom to top. Bangai-O Spirits ignored that expectation entirely.
A stage might begin moving horizontally before suddenly opening into a large tower. The player could fly upward through several rooms, destroy enemies protecting a passage, then descend through another route into a completely different section.
Some areas became almost maze-like.
Others were open arenas designed around enormous firefights.
There were narrow corridors where movement became dangerous, vertical shafts filled with enemies, large rooms containing destructible structures, and stages where understanding the environment mattered almost as much as shooting.
The freedom made Bangai-O Spirits surprisingly replayable.
Players could approach some stages through different routes or experiment with different weapons to discover more efficient ways of clearing enemy groups.
Team MYTH had also included several challenge missions designed specifically around unusual mechanics rather than traditional progression.
Some limited ammunition.
Others filled stages with ridiculous numbers of enemies.
Certain missions demanded precise movement, while others basically asked the player to survive complete projectile insanity.
The result was exactly the kind of strange handheld game Zaboru wanted ZGBA to have.
It was not trying to become a massive cinematic experience.
Bangai-O Spirits was simply an extremely focused action game built around movement, explosions, experimentation, and increasingly ridiculous situations.
And players were loving it.
For Team MYTH, the response mattered considerably.
Zaboru considered that a very good sign.
Two of ZAGE's three final games for 2001 had therefore already found their audiences.
Tarzan surprised players by transforming what looked like an ordinary licensed platformer into a polished jungle adventure with genuinely challenging environmental puzzles.
Bangai-O Spirits provided almost the opposite experience: mechanical chaos, free movement, vertical exploration, and enough missiles to make the ZGBA screen occasionally look as though it had completely lost control.
But the third game was different.
Very different.
Scurge: Hive.
And compared with the version Zaboru remembered from his previous life, this one had changed considerably and this will be the first introduction to "Rogue Like" in this world. .
To be continued.
AN : Will not post tomorrow i'm got accident in gym... when i calf raises with smith machine somehow the damn handle slip and yeah my lower back injured
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