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Astraware Zap! 2000
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By Larry Garfield, Tuesday 12 November 2002  
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Some games are meant to be played a little at a time, others are meant to be played for an hour straight. Larry Garfield takes a look at one of the latter, Astraware's Zap! 2000. Now where did that hour go...
What's old is new again. Old-school arcade classics from yesteryear are a very common port to handhelds these days, some of them very impressive. One such program is Astraware's Zap! 2000 and Zap! 2016, a 2D space shooter that should be familiar to anyone who has played "space invaders" style games before.
 | Zap!, like any good shooter, includes lots of evil bad guys to shoot.
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Zap! comes in a few different versions, depending on the device in question. Zap! 2000 comes in grayscale and 8-bit color versions, while Zap! 2016 is the same game but designed to use 16-bit color displays. Together they run on all Palm OS devices, and for simplicity we will simply refer to the program as "Zap!"
Zap!, depending on the version, ranges anywhere from 225 KB for the basic grayscale version to 447 KB for the Sony HighRes and audio version. The game play is as one would expect for a 2D scrolling shooter.
Evil bad guy aliens are attacking, because that's what evil bad guy aliens do, and the player with his one ship needs to single-handedly defeat wave after wave of generally dumb alien ships that come flying down the screen at intervals. Some evil alien bad guy ships fire back, others don't. There are also asteroids and other obstacles floating about to cause trouble, some of which can be destroyed and others that cannot. There are many waves per level, and each of the four levels ends with (what else?) a huge boss evil bad guy alien.
The player moves his craft back and forth at the bottom of the screen, shooting the evil bad guy aliens as they appear, and can also thrust forward on the screen temporarily to avoid fire or get a better position. If the player manages to destroy all of the evil bad guy aliens in a given wave, the last one to die will drop a ring, which the player can pick up. Every ring the player still has by the end of the level is worth bonus points.
The player can also collect power-ups, some free-floating and some by blowing up certain targets, that offer weapon upgrades, new shield batteries, and so on. Whenever the player's ship is destroyed, some of the collected rings and power-ups are available for a few seconds on the screen to be re-collected.
The game controls are the 4 app buttons and the scroll buttons, and are fully customizable. The game can automatically trigger shields when hit, which protect the ship for a few seconds, or the player can activate them automatically. The game also claims to support auto-fire, but we could not get it to work on any of our test devices.
 | Shooters need eye-candy. Zap! has plenty to go around.
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Zap! is heavy on eye-candy, and in a game eye-candy is most welcome. The ships and shots themselves are very impressive, and there are also three sets of scrolling "scenery", top, middle, and bottom. Each can be enabled and disabled individually for faster performance on slower hardware, but we suggest leaving it on if possible. Scenery ranges from flying stars to nebulae in the background to large ship images and planetscapes.
The game looks fantastic on the Sony HighRes and PalmSource High-Density displays, and respectable on other color displays. The grayscale version is not as impressive, but still playable. The game even runs on the HandEra 330 and Palm Zire, albeit rather slowly on the former and the lack of two buttons on the latter make the game somewhat more complicated. Zap! also supports the Sony audio API, and on CLIE handhelds with the Sony advanced audio API the sound effects and opening music are as impressive as the visual candy. Unfortunately, Zap! does not support the PalmSource advanced audio API, so on all other devices including the Tungsten T the sound effects are limited to clicks and beeps.
There is a single save-game slot, and the player can save into it at the end of each level. The Resume Game menu command will start the game from the last save point, with the saved score and remaining lives. Unfortunately, it's not readily apparent that the user can load the game that way, and there is no way to start a new game at a level the player has already reached except through a saved game. Just for fun, we'd prefer to be able to start at any level we have already reached, even if we start with a score of 0.
Conclusion
Zap! 2000/2016 is not a game to be played during board meetings, as it requires rather close attention. It is, however, a good game for wasting a few hours, which is the primary goal of any game. The game is pleasing to the eye and ear, and violent on battery life (as any addictive game should be). We'd like to see support for the PalmSource advanced audio API. We were also rather annoyed at the auto-fire function for not functioning. It would have saved wear and tear on our Memo button in level 3.
Zap! 2000 is available now from the Astraware web site for $14.95 USD. A demo version is also available that includes only the first two levels.
- What's positive: Classic addictive game play, great eye-candy, sounds good on newer CLIE devices
- What's negative: No support for PalmSource Audio API, auto-fire function does not function
Overall: 
Conclusion
Zap! 2000/2016 is not a game to be played during board meetings, as it requires rather close attention. It is, however, a good game for wasting a few hours, which is the primary goal of any game. The game is pleasing to the eye and ear, and violent on battery life (as any addictive game should be). We'd like to see support for the PalmSource advanced audio API. We were also rather annoyed at the auto-fire function for not functioning. It would have saved wear and tear on our Memo button in level 3.
What's positive:
Classic addictive game play, great eye-candy, sounds good on newer CLIE devices
What's negative:
No support for PalmSource Audio API, auto-fire function does not function
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