Zool Amiga Gremlin Graphics 1992

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Zool Original Version

Gremlin Graphics of the U.K. released Zool: Ninja of the Nth Dimension for Amiga in October of 1992. Zool is a side-on platform and run and gun game that features good controls, colorful graphics and smooth and fast screen-scrolling.

Zool was programmed by George Allan, drawn by Ade Carliss and composed by Patrick Phelan.

Zool is a Sonic-like. In Zool players control an intergalactic ninja called Zool who goes up against the forces of Krool. Zool can run left and right, slide left and right, fire to the left and right as well as jump vertically, jump diagonally, crouch, spin in the air with a sword, cling to walls and move hand-over-hand while hanging from cables.

Zool pickups include Bomb, Two-Zool, Jumping Zool, Shield, Time Bonus and 1-Up. Zool can collect Hearts in order to restore his health.

Zool influenced Jazz Jackrabbit of 1994.

• 7x levels
• Parallax screen-scrolling
• 3x difficulty levels: Easy, Normal, Hard
• Toggleable Inertia
• Tailorable sound/music: Effects, Rock, Green, Rave, Funk 
• Tailorable no. of continues: 0-5
• Switchable game-speed: Normal or Fast

Zool displays in 320x256 and runs at 50 FPS. The active drawspace is 320x256 (full-screen).

Zool requires 1 meg of RAM and was distributed on 2x 3.5" 880kB DD diskettes. It was not installable to hard disk drive.

Zool manual: 13 pages.

Zool copy protection: codewheel.

Zool Levels

• Sweet World
• Music World
• Fruit World
• Tool World
• Toy World
• Fun Fair World
• Shoot 'em up World

Zool IBM PC MS-DOS 1993

Cygnus Software ported Gremlin Graphics' 1992 Amiga version of Zool to IBM PC MS-DOS in March of 1993.

PC Zool displays in 256-color VGA 320x200. PC Zool lacks the sky gradient of Amiga Zool. In addition, PC Zool screen-scrolling is not as smooth as that of Amiga Zool. However, PC Zool plays very well.

PC Zool audio supports Sound Blaster, AdLib and Roland. PC Zool supports keyboard and analog joystick via in-game calibration.

PC Zool was distributed on 1x 3.5" 720kB DD diskette and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via Install C:. The install size is 640K and consists of 2 files.

Zool 2 Amiga AGA 1993

The Warp Factory of Gremlin Graphics released Zool 2 for Amiga AGA and OCS/ECS in November of 1993.

In Zool 2 players control either Zool or Zooz as they go up against the forces of the morphing henchman of Krool, Mental Block.

The six levels of Zool 2:

• Swan Lake
• Snaking Pass
• Bulberry Hill
• Mount Ice
• Tooting Common
• Crazy House

Amiga Zool 2 was programmed by Andy Findlay, drawn by Ed Campbell and composed by Neil Biggin and Patrick Phelan.

Zool 2 manual: 12 pages in English.

Zool 2 copy protection: manual reference protection.

Zool 2 IBM PC MS-DOS 1994

Jon Medhurst of Speedlink Communications ported the original Amiga version of Zool 2 to IBM PC MS-DOS 3.1 in 1994.

PC Zool 2 displays in 256-color VGA 320x200. Note the lack of sky gradient in PC Zool 2.

PC Zool 2 requires an i80386 CPU and 544K of free conventional memory. PC Zool 2 audio supports Sound Blaster.

PC Zool 2 was distributed on 1x 3.5" 1.44MB HD diskette and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via Zool 2 Installation Program. The install size is 1.3 megs and consists of 2 files. The CD-ROM version of Zool 2 runs from the CD. Only a batch file and cfg file exist on the hard disk drive. 

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