Zapper: One Wicked Cricket

Help Zapper rescue his kidnapped brother and defeat the evil Maggie…

NA release: 6th November 2002
EU release: 14th March 2003
JP release: N/A
Developer: Blitz Games
Publisher: Infogrames
NGC Magazine Score: N/A
Mods Used: Widescreen Code

After Frogger 2: Swampy’s Revenge, Blitz Games were eager to make another one with the same style of gameplay. Hasbro turned them down, so Blitz decided to make the game anyway, just without Frogger, replacing Frogger with Zapper, a cricket who springs into action when his younger brother (who Zapper is currently using as a TV aerial) gets kidnapped by a magpie called Maggie. It’s up to Zapper to make his way to Maggie and kill dozens of her children along the way.

The game plays similarly to classic Frogger. A tap of the analogue stick moves Zapper one square, and you can press A to jump two spaces (although you need to make sure you use L and R to rotate to face the right way). Holding A lets you jump to higher platforms and there’s also a zap attack, which can be powered up to shoot longer distances. You can also wiggle the c-stick to move Zapper’s antennae around, just for fun. The main aim is to destroy six eggs (or babies, as some have hatched) throughout the linear levels and Zapper can chirp to show you the location of the next one.

Just getting to the end of each level and beating the game with minimal collectables, Zapper has some enjoyable moments and imaginative levels, but getting all the fireflies (or balls of energy) is rather frustrating. Yellow ones have to be collected in a certain order and failing doesn’t reset them, but turns them into regular ones. As collecting them all unlocks secret areas, a slight mistake will make it so you have to start the level again.

The problem is that Zapper is very short, so it won’t take much time until you reach the final boss. It never feels like it ramps up, either. Most deaths will be mistakes you make due to the controls and it seems like there really should be more puzzles. Towards the end, some of the eggs are fully hatched. Every time you move, it moves as well. It seems like it’s supposed to be a puzzle to “trap” them, but you just follow them as they occasionally don’t move. It’s like this is just the opening stages of a game, with the latter half missing.

Fine

Zapper will probably cater to you platformer gurus out there. It does provide a little bit of a different layout than your typical Pac Man World or Ty the Tasmanian Tiger game, but the overall length for you single players who are just looking to get to the end of the game may wind up causing a short lived experience. Fans of older 80’s titles like Freeway or Frogger may also find this one to be a good time as well, just due to some similarities in control.
Tha Wiz, GameZone

Remake or remaster?

A re-release would be fine.

Official Ways to get the game

The PC version is available on GoG and Steam, however it just seems to be the original PC version and requires a lot of tinkering to run properly on modern machines.