At night in my dreams, it’s always the same thing. The world drowns in fire around me. Like many things, this mostly has to do with the fact that I played too much R-Type as a kid. The unique vision of the apocalypse that these spaceship vs. 1 million guys games offered is unparalleled. Different than hypogaean wastelands or the bombed out rubble of post nuke America. For games about loneliness, they never seem to match up to the way R-Type will pit you against an entire species. No audio logs recording our end, and the most you might see of civilization is when you fly through the ruins of it.
Last year saw the release of ZeroRanger. A small affair in two colors familiar to anyone reading this website: Green and Orange. Developed by a small team no more than a handful of people, it is an example of the kinds of things that people create when given total free reign and all the time they need. I can’t imagine that ZeroRanger had entirely a smooth development: I can only praise the team that finished it for what they managed to do. Even when creating an absolute labor of love, it never stops being a labor.
ZeroRanger tells you very little in the opening credits. Bombast greets you and shoves you into conflict with an immortal enemy. After all, this is the total conceit of the genre isn’t it? You are the last remaining fighter: You alone will stare death in the face. This is the reward for years of service and dedication. Not to go off into the rush of battle and obtain immediate glory, but to be the last to die. A story written down in games like R-Type and Radiant Silvergun before it. May you reach enlightenment the game tells us, affirming that we need not be concerned with mortal death.
Here we see the difficulty curve of ZeroRanger and how it is built. Head forward only to meet destruction, and be reborn. Few games can follow their own themes so well, and they are practically hard coded here. Every time you reach game over, the game will dole out your accumulated score. Like meditation itself, it asks for perseverance. After all, enlightenment is a fraught road that requires unwavering dedication. Fall off, come back again. Before you notice the way the game unravels slowly with each successive run. Blasting off into the stars, only to uncover some new unknowable horror. Each time it’s bigger and more ferocious than the last. The only concrete truth is that there will always be more. Something hates Earth so bad it will stop at nothing to wipe the surface of it clean of all life.
Start from square one and take a deep breath, no matter what – the apocalypse can only happen behind you. ZeroRanger is entirely defiant of the player conquering it, never yielding or throwing in a breather boss. It escalates in a way that the best classics of the genre rarely did, despite their best efforts. IT IS WORTH POINTING OUT that occasionally when faced with a giant-skull or a multiplying army of space Buddha, that ZeroRanger will play music. My best efforts have been often unable to determine if this music is cheering on my success or my destruction. The road to enlightenment is fraught, and occasionally may require starting over. Undulating digital tones greet you softly at the title screen (something you might well prepare to see frequently) before kicking you back out into the galaxy. A gentle flight over the ocean while a synthesizer choir sings a hymn of destruction.
Sometimes, this videogame will suddenly reveal all of itself at once. When it seems like the fighting has lulled for a second, it will allow the player to indulge fantasies that are either Gurren Lagann or Tekkaman Blade. Not just referenced for the space they hold in the realm of Anime Science Fiction, but because they matter to ZeroRanger. This is what DEEP-HELL calls “good use of references”, and it might be the only time we think a creative work should be allowed to use them. Either meet god and cut him, or use your drill to break through the heavens. When revealing itself as not just a SHMUP but also a transforming robot SHMUP it was clear that ZeroRanger was one for the history books. If you are to march against something so powerful, make sure your weapons are great. In the end, you will have no use for either gods or their tools.
The Bydo empire of R-type were created to fight humanities enemies. In a universe with no enemies left, they instead fight for their own mockery of survival. A genetically engineered superweapon, determined to kill the people that made it. Or the similarly reincarnation based plot of Radiant Silvergun. All broad strokes, but concerned with a literal ‘Creator’ that propels all elements of the plot. While other videogames are focused with telling intimate stories (especially as we march ever forward into bigger pores and better hair), the SHMUP genre seems uniquely focused on apocalyptic visions not easily created elsewhere.
Why has ZeroRanger stayed so firmly fixed in my consciousness since playing it, then? If what it does it all of this and extremely well – what emotion could it elicit?
Was it the goosebumps I got when the theme of my pilot burst over my speakers and I transformed? Maybe it’s the numerous times I’ve had to pause runs of it to breathe and get my hands to stop shaking. All of this is built so strongly into the wheel of resurrection and destruction, but it is the little touches that occasionally matter more than the large ones. Overcoming a difficult boss, or suddenly seeing it reveal a new form. All of the candy-cocaine that SHMUP’s need, executed perfectly with the rhythm of the story.
What it really is though, is how ZeroRanger eventually allows the players to break free from the apocalypse. There might not be much to distract from the ever present march towards it. An ocasional snippet of dialogue, or a revelation that all is not as it seems. None of it does more than draw us deeper onto the path we’ve set out on. All journeys are based in self discovery, but they are equal parts self sacrifice.
A single moment at the end of ZeroRanger let me know that I could be done with it – that maybe this kind of apocalypse was worth it.
May you reach enlightenment.