Okay, I have written a review of Bionic Commando in the past, and have mentioned that I do not own an arcade console. I do own Capcom Arcade Classics, for the XBOX. Section Z is one of the many classics playable on the disc. Not much is to say about the game, other than that you’re a shock trooper and you fight evil aliens. And it’s pretty frikkin’ difficult. Let’s get to the review.

The Graphics

Straight off the bat, the setting is obvious. You’re in a hostile alien mothership, and the amount of things on the screen that’s trying to kill you makes that clear. Most of the backgrounds you’re strafing through look really impressive and creative. When you’re moving –both back and forth- your guy makes a really nice strafing motion, which makes navigating through the hordes of bullets, lasers and enemies look so cool, and so satisfying. It adds to the addictiveness of the experience. There’s this small bit, though, where you have to navigate through a pinball machine of some sorts. The balls shot throughout the machine constantly get stuck in the flippers. Which looks and sounds horribly annoying. I don’t know if this is just my Capcom Arcade Classics disc being dirty, but I feel it’s worth mentioning. Besides, this is really the only truly ‘bad’ thing about both the visuals and the sound.

The Sound

There isn’t much to talk about here, Section Z being an arcade game. The music is cool, even if there are just a couple of tracks, as an arcade standard. The ‘exploding’ SFX makes it clear you’re hitting an enemy, aside from the snake-like boss. But I’ll get into that in the Difficulty paragraph. Aside from what I already talked about in the Graphics paragraph, about the pinball machine section being broken and the glitch in the SFX being a pain in the ears, there isn’t really anything wrong with the sound in Section Z. It sounds very good.

The Addictiveness

There’s something about retro games. They’re all insanely difficult. But there’s something about them which makes you want to keep playing, which I can’t quite wrap my mind around it as to why that is, exactly. Is it the tight controls? The catchy tunes? Or is it maybe the feeling of satisfaction you get when you finally beat it? Feel free to leave a comment sharing your ideas, I’d like to read your view on this. For me, it’s the tight controls. I would’ve simply stopped playing if it wasn’t so much fun blasting my way through the hordes of aliens coming at me, shooting them down left and right. I tried to beat Section Z various evenings, most times with no success. But then I finally beat it, and never have I been so satisfied to beat a game which was so difficult, but fun. This game is time consuming, but worth your time and effort.

The Story

From the get-go, it’s easy to see what Section Z is about. You’re a guy with a rifle and a jetpack, infiltrating an alien space station orbiting around Earth. You have to defeat everyone in the space stations destroy to space station. That’s basically all there is. Arcade games never had deep thought-out plots. It was more about the fun you had playing the game itself, (the flaw most games of today have, but that’s a different story altogether) so what’s here is good enough.

The Depth

There’s not much to Section Z, but what’s here is amazing. You move with the joystick, you shoot with one button and you turn around with the other button. The controls are so amazingly tight that navigating through the screen and shooting down hostiles always feels great. You can earn power-ups by shooting open grey tubes. These power-ups consist of speed pickups, which raises your guy’s speed, power pickups, which raises the power of your guy’s weapon, and there’s a bonus points pickup. If you defeat enough enemies and earn enough points, you’ll gain an extra live. But honestly, don’t bother. You’ll more likely to lose lives other than gain them. Focus on surviving, rather than killing baddies. The only enemies you actually NEED to kill are the bosses, and any enemies left on the boss screen. That’s basically all there is to Section Z, and while it isn’t much, it’s still an experience not to forget.

The Difficulty

Want to beat Section Z? You’d better clear your schedule this evening, because this will take a while. Even though Section Z is SORT OF (going to use that term loosely here) forgiving on the Capcom Classics Disc because you get unlimited retries, the arcade version back in the day must’ve made even that a no-go, since you had to insert a coin every time you were presented with the Game Over screen. The first stage starts out relatively doable. But after that, the sections become a stormcloud, pouring down a rain of constant punishment. Everywhere you look on the screen, there’s something out to kill you, either coming straight at you, or moving in random patterns. There’s also these moving laser turrets strafing along the sides of the screen which shoot these lightspeed lasers at you. And everything kills you in one hit. Three tries, and after that, it’s Game Over for you. And everything, EVERYTHING kills you in one hit. While there are various enemies which take more bullets to kill, putting you already at a disadvantage over a single enemy to begin with. What’s more, the hitboxes in Section Z are VERY precise. That often isn’t a problem, because you’re just as hard to hit to the aliens as they are to you. But there is this snake boss at the end of a stage which you can only kill by shooting its head. But it’s so hard to do, I think I even hit it a couple of times without even knowing if I hit it or not, because I didn’t get any visual or audial indication. I’m willing to hold my hand in fire to bet that Section Z is one of the most difficult games ever made. But you’ll push through. This game is so insanely fun and addictive that you feel you NEED to continue. And when you finally reach the ending, you’ll feel so fulfilled. You’re one of the people who beat Section Z. If I already didn’t make it clear to you how insane the difficulty in Section Z is, I’ll put it like this; if you can beat Section Z, you can beat anything.

Section Z is as hard as Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden, Ghosts ‘N Goblins and Contra put together, and I love it. The pinball area is flawed (could be only my disc, but I honestly doubt it), but that’s it. Section Z looks good, it plays good and finally beating the game is a well fulfilling.

Pros:

-          Hard but insanely addictive

-          Simple and tight controls

-          The tight controls make completing a stage feel really fulfilling

-          The setting and music provide a great atmosphere

Cons:

-          The game holds a couple of visual and audio glitches

-          The amount of times you’ll see the Game Over screen might cause insanity