Zed Blade (Operation Ragnarok)

Zed Blade is the singular release on the Neo-Geo by arcade game developer NMK. Never heard of NMK? Nihon Maicom Kaihatsu, or NMK, developed mostly arcade titles in the 1980's through the mid-90's. While certainly not very well known, even in their day, NMK has garnered a small fan following in the modern era much like that other, other arcade developer Visco. NMK's games were never seen as super innovative, but what they produced were solid efforts that didn't need genre reinvention. Personally, Zed Blade is the only game I knew of by NMK until just a couple years ago when I began to explore more of their library. Should you do the same? Well...while most of their games are fine, Zed Blade is more or less the best of the bunch and far and away their best known release outside a couple of Macross tie-in games. 

For what it's worth, Zed Blade was the 14th most popular game in US arcades according to the industry publication RePlay in late 1994. One can guess that it didn't keep its place in the top 20 for very long given there are no sales figures to pull from in the modern era from other territories and it never saw a release in the home space - not even on the Neo-Geo AES. Critics both yesterday and today are mixed on the game, but those that give Zed Blade some room to breath will find a decently crafted horizontal shmup that is more than the sum of its individual parts. It's become a personal favorite of mine on the Neo-Geo over the years. But like some other personal favorites that nobody knows exists these days, Zed Blade is far from what I'd consider a "hidden gem." Let's dive in. 

The story in Zed Blade is reminiscent of SNK's Cyberlip or Taito's RayForce - humans in the far future can now travel to the stars and they built a super computer to control their largest space station that...surprise...goes awry. Our three heroes are sent out to destroy the super computer before all hell breaks loose. It's typical arcade game, sci-fi story stuff from the 90's that is just there to provide some expose' on why you're flying around space shooting stuff. 

At the outset of your adventure you can choose from one of three pilots and their spacecraft. Each ship has its own load out, size, and speed stats, and you can further customize some of the weapons systems to a small degree. As with most horizontal shooters of the day, you can expect a forward shot, a missile system, and a rear shot to round out your load out. During play you'll come across small lettered orbs when you defeat some enemy types, and the letters represented on the orbs change every ten seconds or so to cycle through the different power-ups available to you. There are three types of forward shots, upgrades to your missile systems, and bombs pickups to collect. You can even collect upgrades to your bombs in the form of Hyper Bombs that will immediately clear the playfield of all enemies. Hyper Bombs can also wreck most end-stage bosses in just a couple blasts. 

Zed Blade isn't the most challenging shmup on the Neo-Geo, but it has a fair difficulty curve that is reminiscent of Visco's Andro Dunos. It won't make you pull your hair out like Aicom's Pulstar or Viewpoint, but NMK injected a fair challenge here that will still test your skill. The enemy ships are larger than in most shmups, but thankfully the hit-boxes are not overly large so you always have room to maneuver your ship around enemy fire and stage obstacles. 1-ups are distributed when you reach certain score thresholds, but rather than the game giving you the extra life, you have to collect the 1-up icon that will float around the screen for a while. Still, extra lives are relatively plentiful given the even difficulty curve of the game. Give the game a couple weeks and you'll have a 1cc (single credit playthrough) in no time. There are no intricate score systems or anything here - it's as straight forward of a shump as you'll ever get. 

While Zed Blade isn't an ugly game, it's not exactly a standout example of the excellent pixel art you saw coming out of the hardware at the time. Still, like all other aspects of the game, its just good enough and is full of color and nice parallax scrolling effects in the backgrounds. Even with its simple visual style, though, there are still a fair amount of performance issues that crop up when the screen gets crowded. What's here is serviceable - good even - but Zed Blade is not the pixel art showcase that will win over your one friend who generally detests pixel graphics and sprite work. So, if the graphics and presentation are just okay, what about the sound design? 

Manabu Namiki put together an excellent, electronica infused score that will keep you grooving through the eight stages. These down-tempo beats are not overly energetic, though, and help you keep your calm through the chaos. Rather having a unique song developed for each stage, some of the tracks are used multiple times. While not a deal breaker, the soundtrack overall is too good to have so few songs on order. The soundtrack is worth a listen to on YouTube even if you never actually play the game (which I do recommend). Explosions, collisions, and other sound effects get the job done and are exactly what you'd expect. 

Zed Blade is a competent and fun horizontal shump on a piece of hardware that is more well known for its fighting games than anything else. It's a bit too by-the-numbers for its own good, though, and it won't win any pixel art of the year awards. Zed Blade, while very competent, isn't in the same league as games like Taito's masterpiece Darius Gaiden that released the same year in arcades. Still, it's an excellent "just good enough" title that is well worth a play for genre fans. 

Snagging a copy of Zed Blade isn't too bad these days, but it's on the pricier end of the MVS collection of Neo-Geo cartridges at around $250 in 2023. It is in shorter supply, though, and is only getting harder to find in its original form. If you're on AES or Neo CD, you're out of luck. The game was planned and even featured at tradeshows to have Neo-Geo home versions available in late 1995. Most likely due to poor sales and reception in the arcade, these home releases were scrapped entirely shortly after being announced. Still, it was shown running on Neo CD so there must be a prototype floating around out there somewhere? If you have or are aware of anyone that has a Neo CD prototype of Zed Blade, please reach out! I would love to work with you to preserve and dump the game for future generations. 

These day you can play it on Hamster's Arcade Archives series or a number of PC-centric emulators like Fightcade or MAME. It's a great title to own on MVS if that is your thing, though, and comes highly recommended. Give Zed Blade a shot. I guarantee it's better than what you're expecting.