Zanac hates you.
You'll want to forgive it, though. It's really a nice game when it doesn't hurt you. Maybe its sudden and violent mood swings are your own fault, after all.
Yeah, it is your fault, actually. Zanac is (to my knowledge) one of the first shoot-'em-ups to incorporate a "rank" system -- basically, the better you do, the harder it gets. Most modern rank-based shooters I've played base their increasing difficulty on score, or the amount of time spent between lives, or the number of power-ups collected. Zanac, on the other hand, gradually ramps up its difficulty as you fire shots and destroy enemies.
Otherwise, Zanac mostly resembles any other vertically scrolling shooter you'd find in 1986. The gameplay is simple (Button B shoots your main cannon; Button A is for special weapons), the graphics are more than a little eye-searing, and the music and sound effects strike a delicate balance between catchy and grating. You fly through a dozen different levels and shoot down hundreds of enemies and bosses along the way. It all seems pretty familiar.
Then you accidentally pick up a "2" power-up and all hell breaks loose.
Collecting a 2 icon gives your ship an invincibility shield. It also instantly kicks the game into the hardest difficulty level, turning a formerly serene battlefield into an impossible nightmare. Enemies suddenly swarm in by the dozens from both ahead and behind, bullets start flying everywhere, and before you know it, they penetrate your not-so-invincible shield and you're dead.
Instantly, most of the enemies disappear and Zanac returns to normal, as if nothing had happened.
This schizophrenic gameplay makes Zanac feel unlike any other shooter you've played. Assuming you avoid the shield power-up, Zanac's difficulty mostly comes gradually, depending on how many shots you fire. You can pick up a variety of sub-weapons to help you out, and by using these sparingly, you gradually learn how to control the difficulty level while also fending off enemies.
It's an amazing, forward-thinking game design that was way ahead of its time, and it's all the more incredible to think that Zanac was released twenty-one years ago. While you may like many of the Virtual Console's shooters enough to play through them once, Zanac's constantly fluctuating difficulty makes for a completely different game every time you play, and you'll want to replay it often just to see how insane it can get.
I'd say that Zanac is one of the best shooters on the VC today, if not the absolute best. It beats out strong competitors like Soldier Blade and even its own successor Blazing Lazers, and if you want a challenge...here, look at this thing. This is nuts.
Sure, it's the last area, but it can be just as hard in area 1 if you get the wrong power-ups. Just be glad you aren't playing the Japanese remake Zanac X Zanac for the PS1:
