Zig Zag Cat Dachou Club mo Oosawagi da (SNES)

 It seems doubtful that I'll find another brick breaking game that comes close to being as good as either of the two titans that stand atop the genre, Puchi Charat and Prism Land Story, but I keep on looking. Zig Zag Cat, though it does have a few interesting ideas, definitely isn't the one to do it. And remember: interesting and good aren't always the same thing.

 

The biggest idea Zig Zag Cat has is structural: it's got some vague, very slight RPG bits mixed in with the Arkanoid-like action. Very slight meaning that there's little "towns" (contained entirely within one building each) between the stages, with save points, inns (that don't seem to actually do anything), and shops. The shops sell power ups, but they're as temporary as the ones that appear in the stages themselves, and coupled with the rarity of the coins, a bit pointless. There's no permanent equipment or levelling up or anything, though. Which on the one hand is a plus for the game's balance and difficulty curve, but it would at least have offered something a bit more exciting to talk about. I wonder how levelling up and permanent upgrades would even work in a game like this, for example.

 

The stages themselves are vertically scrolling, and for the most part, sparsely populated with bricks to hit with your ball. And while the screen's scrolling, you can just hit them with your paddle as you get to them anyway. A few times in each stage, though, the scrolling stops, and you have to get through a more traditional Arkanoid-style stage, though even here you don't have to break all the bricks, just one particular one. It's a grey blob thing that opens an eye the first two times you hit it and disappears on the third. The stages are all completely linear, of course, and it all feels like a significantly more boring version of Devilish on the Mega Drive.

 

Something else that makes this game noteworthy, other than its unusual combination of structure and genre is that it's a tie-in game to a Japanese comedy trio called Dachou Club. I don't really know anything about them, other than that the first related search result I found was a news story about one member's untimely death in 2022. They appear a few times to say stuff to your character, but I can't read Japanese, so I can't tell you anything about what they say. Since the protagonist is some kid, and the ball is his cat, I wonder if the tie-in was something added late in development? It seems more like pretty generic early nineties "it'll do" nonsense than something a group of famous comedians would come up with.

 

I don't recommend playing Zig Zag Cat. I played it for about an hour or two and at best I was bored, and at worst I was frustrated (and not in a fun way). But it's weird and unusual in various ways, and now you know about it. You're welcome, I guess?