Zed and Zee are two of the most advanced humanoid robots ever built. They were built for the purpose of taking over the world in 20XX by Dr Otto Matton. He built them to lead his robot army to aid in his goal. Once Zed and Zee learned of this plan and their purpose, they rebelled against their creator and are working together to stop their creator and his robotic army.
The story in Zed and Zee is pretty good, although you only ever read about it in the games manual and box, there is no mention of it in game. I would have liked to see some of this story play out in game as I think it would have been nice to see it illustrated.
Zed and Zee on the NES is an arcade style platformer. You play as Zed and Zee cooperatively in two player mode, or as Zed in single player mode. The game features six worlds each with six stages, with each world having a seventh stage which is the worlds super robot boss.
Once you start a stage, you are tasked with collecting all of the fuel tiles in the stage to move on to the next. There are enemy robots to either avoid, or take down for points. In addition to enemies, you also have a counter that starts at one hundred and fifty seconds. Should the timer reach zero or your deplete your life bar, the game is over and you can continue from the last world you were in, should you choose to keep playing.
Besides the arcade style platformer core game, there is also a secondary game mode called Battle. Battle pits Zed and Zee against each other. This game mode can only be played with two players, without an option to play against the CPU. The goal being to compete for points in an arena filled with enemies. The way points are earned in this mode are to take out the enemies, with one point being earned per enemy killed. First player to seven points wins. There are eight arenas to choose from with the option of having the game choose for you should you select the option for random. This is a neat mode to play and a break from the core game, but I would have liked to have the option to play against a CPU as opposed to being required to play against a human player.
The game is a very vibrant and colorful on the NES. Each stage is unique with it’s layout of fuel tiles, enemies, and other obstacles. The color scheme in each stage help to make everything stand out and look really good. With this being an NES game, I half expected the game to be a bit muddied or dark with platforming being a bit unfair as a result. Well I was pleasantly surprised that this isn’t the case with this game at all. Though the game features great animation with the enemy movement and a wonderful set of colors that compliment each stage, that’s about it for this game in the graphics department. There aren’t any cool environmental effects or anything cutting edge here; but then with this being an NES game, it’s to be expected. This is ok though, as if the game tried to give you things that the NES couldn’t pull off, it wouldn’t have the charm and appeal that the game has here.
Touching a little on performance, well just like graphics, it’s about what is to be expected. The game performs very well with fluid platforming and each enemy having a per-determined movement path. Because there isn’t much going on in each stage, there isn’t any issues with the game slowing down or even any graphical flickering. Though I wasn’t expecting any slowdown given the nature of this game, I did expect some graphical flickering here and there. I was honestly surprised that there wasn’t any in my play-through of this game. I am not sure if this is due to extreme optimization of the game on the NES hardware, or just because there wasn’t enough going on in the game to warrant the issue from cropping up. Regardless of how this was achieved, I am glad that neither graphical flickering nor slowdown are present here.
With most NES games you won’t find orchestral masterpieces when it comes to an games soundtrack. But with Zed and Zee what you get here is music that fits the game like a glove. Each stage has it’s own track with each one being tailored to it rather well. The tracks as different as they are, do loop a bit. This can be forgiven as this is an NES game and you really can’t expect much beyond what you are presented with here. The second point with this I want to make is that you really aren’t in a stage long enough to really listen to the music track or care much. You have 150 seconds to clear a stage and with so many fuel tiles to collect, enemies to take out, and a high score to chase, this repetition can easily be ignored and forgiven.
For me, Tengen was a household name in my household on the NES. I recall playing Pac-Man, RBI Baseball, and even Tetris, along side classics like Zelda and Super Mario Bros. Despite these games being unlicensed, they were some fun games and am glad that we got them. So when I had seen the Tengen name being brought back as Tengen Games, I instantly got excited and intrigued by what they might bring to the NES. Well they certainly didn’t disappoint at all when it comes to Zed and Zee.
Tengen Games to my knowledge is one guy. A single person gave us this amazing arcade platformer. Though he had help from a few people, there is but one person behind the company and this awesome little platformer.
Zed and Zee has made Tengen, now Tengen Games a household name once again. Fan or not, you owe it to yourself to pick up this game on either NES, Famicom, or PC.
You can find the game from the developer here digitally, physically for NES and Famicom, and the itch.io page here
Disclaimer: A review copy was provided
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.