We are still waiting on a suitable Amiga AGA emulator with robust recording features before tackling such games.
Zero Tolerance
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Player's Review
In the future, mankind has made great advances in interstellar travel and subsequently colonized the Solar System. The extrasolar settlements, research outposts, mines, commercial colonies and spacecraft, and space stations throughout the Solar System are protected by a mighty interstellar military conglomerate named the Planet Defense Corps. When Europa-1, the flagship of the Planet Defense Corps, is attacked by an unknown yet lethal aggressor of apparently extraterrestrial nature, the Planet Defense Corps call in Zero Tolerance, an elite strike squad of five commandos. A recording of the last transmission from Europe-1 reveals extensive fire damage to the warship, almost total casualties and otherworldly creatures hunting the few remaining survivors of the attack. Also, the nuclear cooling system of Europa-1 has been damaged by small arms fire, and core breach caused by overheating will destroy the starship in a matter of hours.
Zero Tolerance is a 1994 video game developed by Technopop and published by Accolade exclusively for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. It is one of the few Mega Drive/Genesis first person shooters, besides Bloodshot/Battle Frenzy and the Duke Nukem 3D port, and is one of the first FPSs for any video game console, and the first competitive multiplayer console FPS game ever. The game supports connecting two Genesis/Mega Drives via a special link cable using the second joypad ports for a multiplayer mode.
Each character has a unique ability which has a slight effect on gameplay, as well as different items they start with at the beginning of the game. All characters are named after the game's developers:
1) Demolition expert. Can walk over armed mines, throws grenades further. Area of effect of explosives counts as decreased when damaging him and as increased when damaging others.
Captain Scott Haile - Codenamed "Psycho". African-American Haile was an institutionalized pyromaniac as a youth. Haile has extensive specialty training in explosives, demolition, ballistics, bomb defusal, and countermeasures. His hot-headed nature is often a cause for concern for his fellow soldiers, and he has received a small number of disciplinary actions from his superiors. Haile's personal profile is classified, and much of his background is considered top secret.
2) Marksman. Gives all guns an increased range.
Captain Satoe Ishii - Codenamed "Soba". A Japanese-American servicewoman, she is a former captain in the radio operator division of the special forces. Although her specialty is in communications and communication technology, she is a highly decorated servicewoman with extreme physical prowess, hearing and eyesight. Ishii is a highly accurate marksman who can consistently hit a target with a size of 2 centimeters (0.79 in) at 100 meters (330 ft).
3) Medical expert. Medipacks heal double, small firearms have an increased range.
Major Justin Wolf - Codenamed "JJ Wolf". Scandinavian Justin had a highly decorated career with the Army Medical Corps before becoming the team doctor and surgeon for the Zero Tolerance squad. Wolf can make the best out of medicines, medical apparatus, first aid kits and pharmaceuticals and can patch himself up better than most.
4) Hand-to-hand combat expert. Melee attacks have increased speed, damage and range. Increased movement speed. Has slight resistance to damage. Guns have reduced range (eye nerve damage?).
Major Tony Ramos - Codenamed "Weasel". Maj. Ramos, before becoming a Zero Tolerance commando, came from another squadron in special forces who specialized in counter-terrorism, reconnaissance, and sabotage. As such, Ramos is a specialist in infiltration, information gathering, stealth and evasion.
5) Electronics expert. Reduces range of sight of enemy security cameras. Has major resistance to damage, which allows him to bypass fire walls (get it?). Melee attacks are slightly stronger than normal.
Major Thomas Gjoerup - Codenamed "Basse". He is a specialist in security and surveillance systems, reading of schematics and blueprints, radar, and electronic mapping, scanning, and guidance systems. An army psychiatrist has deemed Basse the most psychologically unstable of all the members of the Zero Tolerance squad. Basse has received multiple disciplinary actions for insubordination, refusal to follow orders and conduct unbecoming an officer.
If only this game was released on PC instead of Genesis, it would be a pillar of the early FPSs. With progressive features like competitive and co-op multiplayer, different characters, enemy security systems, destructible enviroment, damage scaling depending on distance (or movement speed for melee), aim bobble when running, voice clips, animated corpses, modeled blood that will be produced in the amount depending on how much damage you did and will drip down walls and make expanding puddles on the floor, interactive enemy corpses that will actually block projectiles and can be moved, it is amazing Genesis can handle the game at all. Inventory system includes bio-scanners, flashlights, fire extinguishers, fire-proof suits, bulletproof vests, night vision goggles, and the level design encourages using those, as well as different characters. You can hear your own footsteps, and the sounds weapons make are very good, and the weapons themselves feature ahead-of-its-time things like bouncing grenades, mines and surprisingly complex hand-to-hand combat. Characters can crouch, crawl, run, strafe, jump, and this isn't just fancy walking - you can actually avoid enemy attacks with those, or modify the range of your non-hit scan attacks.
What holds this game off are the platform limitations: the game is almost always lagging, and with different amounts of lag, making it impossible to develop a sense of timing; turning is painfully slow with D-pad; first steps of strafing are too slow to avoid most attacks because you can't switch between walking and running but have to always walk a little before speeding up instead, and you can't make sharp turns without stopping in your tracks; weapons and items have to be switched one by one in the inventory. There are romhacks that reduce these drawbacks though. Also, for better or worse, there is no reload time, which leads to RAPID-FIRE EVERYTHING, even though the only real fully automatic gun here is the laser-aimed gun, which I ironically forgot about until halfway through the game (hence the change in firing pattern).
All floors secured, all characters used. After completing the game, I show off the bonus "Boxing!!!", "Basement!" and "Highrise!" passwords, the latter also features Basse's security inhibiting ability and the extra animation when attacking the sniper with a rocket launcher, and then I show bad endings.
You can legally download a Zero Tolerance ROM from Technopop's website at: http://www.technopop.net
Zero Tolerance is a 1994 video game developed by Technopop and published by Accolade exclusively for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. It is one of the few Mega Drive/Genesis first person shooters, besides Bloodshot/Battle Frenzy and the Duke Nukem 3D port, and is one of the first FPSs for any video game console, and the first competitive multiplayer console FPS game ever. The game supports connecting two Genesis/Mega Drives via a special link cable using the second joypad ports for a multiplayer mode.
Each character has a unique ability which has a slight effect on gameplay, as well as different items they start with at the beginning of the game. All characters are named after the game's developers:
1) Demolition expert. Can walk over armed mines, throws grenades further. Area of effect of explosives counts as decreased when damaging him and as increased when damaging others.
Captain Scott Haile - Codenamed "Psycho". African-American Haile was an institutionalized pyromaniac as a youth. Haile has extensive specialty training in explosives, demolition, ballistics, bomb defusal, and countermeasures. His hot-headed nature is often a cause for concern for his fellow soldiers, and he has received a small number of disciplinary actions from his superiors. Haile's personal profile is classified, and much of his background is considered top secret.
2) Marksman. Gives all guns an increased range.
Captain Satoe Ishii - Codenamed "Soba". A Japanese-American servicewoman, she is a former captain in the radio operator division of the special forces. Although her specialty is in communications and communication technology, she is a highly decorated servicewoman with extreme physical prowess, hearing and eyesight. Ishii is a highly accurate marksman who can consistently hit a target with a size of 2 centimeters (0.79 in) at 100 meters (330 ft).
3) Medical expert. Medipacks heal double, small firearms have an increased range.
Major Justin Wolf - Codenamed "JJ Wolf". Scandinavian Justin had a highly decorated career with the Army Medical Corps before becoming the team doctor and surgeon for the Zero Tolerance squad. Wolf can make the best out of medicines, medical apparatus, first aid kits and pharmaceuticals and can patch himself up better than most.
4) Hand-to-hand combat expert. Melee attacks have increased speed, damage and range. Increased movement speed. Has slight resistance to damage. Guns have reduced range (eye nerve damage?).
Major Tony Ramos - Codenamed "Weasel". Maj. Ramos, before becoming a Zero Tolerance commando, came from another squadron in special forces who specialized in counter-terrorism, reconnaissance, and sabotage. As such, Ramos is a specialist in infiltration, information gathering, stealth and evasion.
5) Electronics expert. Reduces range of sight of enemy security cameras. Has major resistance to damage, which allows him to bypass fire walls (get it?). Melee attacks are slightly stronger than normal.
Major Thomas Gjoerup - Codenamed "Basse". He is a specialist in security and surveillance systems, reading of schematics and blueprints, radar, and electronic mapping, scanning, and guidance systems. An army psychiatrist has deemed Basse the most psychologically unstable of all the members of the Zero Tolerance squad. Basse has received multiple disciplinary actions for insubordination, refusal to follow orders and conduct unbecoming an officer.
If only this game was released on PC instead of Genesis, it would be a pillar of the early FPSs. With progressive features like competitive and co-op multiplayer, different characters, enemy security systems, destructible enviroment, damage scaling depending on distance (or movement speed for melee), aim bobble when running, voice clips, animated corpses, modeled blood that will be produced in the amount depending on how much damage you did and will drip down walls and make expanding puddles on the floor, interactive enemy corpses that will actually block projectiles and can be moved, it is amazing Genesis can handle the game at all. Inventory system includes bio-scanners, flashlights, fire extinguishers, fire-proof suits, bulletproof vests, night vision goggles, and the level design encourages using those, as well as different characters. You can hear your own footsteps, and the sounds weapons make are very good, and the weapons themselves feature ahead-of-its-time things like bouncing grenades, mines and surprisingly complex hand-to-hand combat. Characters can crouch, crawl, run, strafe, jump, and this isn't just fancy walking - you can actually avoid enemy attacks with those, or modify the range of your non-hit scan attacks.
What holds this game off are the platform limitations: the game is almost always lagging, and with different amounts of lag, making it impossible to develop a sense of timing; turning is painfully slow with D-pad; first steps of strafing are too slow to avoid most attacks because you can't switch between walking and running but have to always walk a little before speeding up instead, and you can't make sharp turns without stopping in your tracks; weapons and items have to be switched one by one in the inventory. There are romhacks that reduce these drawbacks though. Also, for better or worse, there is no reload time, which leads to RAPID-FIRE EVERYTHING, even though the only real fully automatic gun here is the laser-aimed gun, which I ironically forgot about until halfway through the game (hence the change in firing pattern).
All floors secured, all characters used. After completing the game, I show off the bonus "Boxing!!!", "Basement!" and "Highrise!" passwords, the latter also features Basse's security inhibiting ability and the extra animation when attacking the sniper with a rocket launcher, and then I show bad endings.
You can legally download a Zero Tolerance ROM from Technopop's website at: http://www.technopop.net
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