A Loving Bootleg

Here in the West we do tend to take for granted the fact that we have so many games at our fingertips. If there was ever a popular series, we’ve seen the entries and we can spout off most (if not all) of the games because we had a chance to play them. Now, obviously that’s not entirely true as there were a lot of games that came out only in Japan that we didn’t get to see at the time, some of which never had an official Western release (although, even then, we found ways to get them and play them, one way or another). Still, we had the ability to play so much, and we never really questioned it.

Other countries, though, weren’t so lucky. If you lived in China, for example, the major console producers didn’t release games there for many, many years. The likes of the Super Mario SeriesHe's the world's most famous plumber and the biggest face in Nintendo's stable, a character so ubiquitous you already knew we were talking about Mario even before we said his name. and Sonic and Mega ManIn 1987, Capcom released Mega Man on the NES, a game featuring a blue robot that fought other robots and took their powers (so that he could then fight other robots with those powers, and on, and on). The series went on to release over 50 games in 30 years and become one of the most famous gaming franchises in the world. didn’t grace their shores in part because the government had a tight lockdown on what content could be released, and the major producers were worried about piracy so they didn’t want to put their consoles, and especially their games, out in that country unless there was a way to truly protect their producers. When consoles and games finally did arrive, it was often in combo units that were harder to hack and came preloaded with games. Actually having a steady flow of titles like in Japan and the West is a new thing (and, still, a work in progress).

Not that the major game producers weren’t right to worry about piracy. China has always been lax about protecting media that originated outside their shores. China is very China first, and if you make something overseas, the government will happily turn a blind eye towards their own people stealing it. “Of course we don’t want to see piracy,” they seem to say even as they know full well what is going on in their country. It’s a fact of dealing with China that, whether you want it or not, they are going to bootleg your stuff. You either accept it or you release a division in China to try and combat it (and then the government takes over your division and basically runs it for you, cutting you out almost entirely in the process). It’s not exactly a win-win.

With that said, China did have an active and thriving pirate games market for years. If there was a game series in Japan or the West, you can bet that Chinese pirates would find a way to piggyback off that and make their own thing. Sometimes it was bootlegs of the original titles. Sometimes it was tragic looking clones that were half-assed and thrown together. Very rarely, though, a very playable game was actually produced in this weird market. Zook Hero Z is one of those games, a title that very nearly rises to the status of being legitimately good… if you’re willing to accept a few small caveats.

Zook Hero Z follows the exploits of Zook Hero, a former cop who was injured in the line of duty. A kindly scientist found him and, via a process known as “Six Million Dollar Man-ing”, the professor turned Zook into a cyborg of justices. And just in time, too, when an evil scientist comes along, unleashing his army of evil robots to try and take over the world. Clearly there’s only one man for the job: Zook Hero. So our cop-turned-cyborgs heads out to the lairs of the evil robots to take them out, take their powers, and find the evil scientist to thwart the dastardly villain’s plans.

I stumbled onto Zook Hero Z in a video on “bootleg games that are actually good”, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to call this a “good game”, I do think it’s one of the best bootleg hacks I’ve seen. Credit to the Chinese hackers that made this game: you might have stolen most of the assets, and the engine, and put this out to illegally sell this game to a market that didn’t have Mega Man, but dang, you actually did a credible job in the process. It’s a game that, if you didn’t look too closely, you could actually mistake it for one of Capcom’s (lesser) efforts.

The setup of Zook Hero Z will look familiar to any fans of the Mega Man X series. Our hero loads in with six (not eight, just six) robots to fight, arranged in two horizontal rows with a world map in the middle. Selecting any of the villains sends our hero to their stage where they have to battle through to find the villain at the end. Defeating the robot grants the hero the robot’s power, which he can then use in other stages (especially against the bosses, many of whom are weak to other weapons). Play through all six stages to unlock the way to the end boss castle, and clear that to finish the game.

With that said, there are some quirks to the game that make it stand somewhat apart from a normal entry in the Blue Bomber’s series. For starters, while the setup of the game looks like Mega Man X, the stages feel more like traditional Mega Man levels. The emphasis is on traps and tricks, dodging enemies and learning patterns. There is very little in the way of searching for power-ups or tracking down secrets. These are (for the most part) linear gauntlets meant to test your skill with the controller more than your sense of curiosity and exploration.

There are things to collect, though. Four upgrade capsules are hidden in the various stages, and Mega- uh, I mean Zook will have to collect them. Once you have them you see them in the menu, but they won’t reflect on Zook’s sprite. Getting them all unlocks a series of power-ups, from an air dash, to upgraded weapons, and… well, actually, I’m not sure what the head and body armor attachments do, aside from maybe decreasing how much damage you take. I can’t read Chinese, so playing through this game required a lot of guessing about powers and then testing things out to see what worked and what didn’t.

I will also note that collecting the power-ups works differently here than in Mega Man X. When you find a capsule you simply walk into it (no story or explanation to go with it) and then you leave the level completely. You don’t just get to continue, the game exits you out and gives you a password. That means that if you’re trying to collect everything (which seems necessary to get through all the end-game stages which expect you to have the power-ups) you will be forced to fully play four stages twice. It’s a tad obnoxious.

Another quirk is that once you’ve played through three stages, the game breaks things up with a mini-fortress in the middle. There you play through a few stages to reach the not-Wily at the end before, eventually he runs off. Only then can you continue the game and head towards the final castle. I’m not saying I hate this, per se, but it did feel a little weird getting dropped into a big fortress, with multiple stages, before the game will let you fully progress. If you don’t have good weapons from the bosses, you might find things tricky to get through.

That is, of course, if your game is working properly. I’ll note that the rom I had of this game (because of course I played it on a rom since I wasn’t going to buy an illegal Chinese bootleg) didn’t seem to register any damage I took or ammo I used. I wasn’t sure if it actually made me invincible or not, so I played the game like I could still take damage and I used my ammo sparingly. At the very least I wanted to see what the game would have felt like if it was actually working properly, even as my rom did not. Things not functioning properly is all part and parcel of playing a bootleg game.

Finally, let’s not pretend like this was a wholly original experience. Other players I’ve read have said this game feels original, like its own thing even as it steals from the Mega Man series. At first I would have agreed, as the tiles and music seemed to be originals (even if Zook looks like a poorly drawn-over Blue Bomber). But the further I got into the game, the more stolen assets I saw. Tiles from Neon Tiger and Wire Sponge, music clearly taken from Mega Man Game Boy titles. I have no doubt that everything in this game, top to bottom, was stolen, just maybe not all of it from the Mega Man series. I’d even go so far as to think the engine it’s running on was taken from the Mega Man X Game Boy Color games. That feels like a safe bet. This is clearly a hack, not an original at all.

With that said, it does play like a credible Mega Man game (as you should think it would). It was good enough that the game garnered a fan following in China, which then resulted in three additional titles in the series. Zook Hero, for many fans in China, was their Blue Bomber, the only version of these games they’d get to play. I can’t fault them for liking the game, especially when this was the only one they got.

I don’t think it’s a bad game, per se. As a hack it’s pretty great. As a title sold to players, for money, though it kind of sucks. It’s loose, it’s a little weird, and it plays like a hack. That doesn’t discredit the work that went into it, but it does keep it from feeling like a full, real game.