Zoop

How it was made

What the press said at the time

Cartridge & preservation record

Cartridge ROM capacity 8 megabit (1 MB), measured from the preserved cartridge image.

Cartridge data from the No-Intro preservation database (metadata only — names, sizes and checksums, no game data).

How the Atari Jaguar version differs

The Jaguar version was deliberately held back. Programmer Aaron Fothergill has said Electric Spectacle Productions built more advanced visuals for the Jaguar than the PlayStation version had, and Viacom asked them to disable the extra graphics so the PlayStation release would look the more appealing of the two.

What shipped has visuals in line with the earlier versions but its own jazz-styled soundtrack. GamePro noted it made no changes from previous versions of the game.

Published by Atari Corporation on 5 January 1996. The Game Boy port is the only version on any platform with a multiplayer mode.

Also on other platforms

Genesis/Mega Drive · Game Boy · Game Gear · Mac OS · MS-DOS · PlayStation · Sega Saturn · Super NES

• PlayStation. Released a month after the console launched, with the most advanced visuals of any version — partly because Viacom had the Jaguar team disable graphics that would have exceeded it.
• Super NES. Offered shortly after release in a Blockbuster "rent one, get one free" promotion. Identical in play to the Genesis version, differing only in graphics and audio.
• Genesis. Mechanically identical to the Super NES version; the differences are graphical and audio only.
• MS-DOS. The lead platform, chosen despite Hookstone never having developed for PC before. Supports a range of sound cards and uses wavetable-style MIDI music.

Worth knowing

• Viacom made the developer switch the Jaguar's better graphics off. Aaron Fothergill, a programmer on the Jaguar conversion, has said that Electric Spectacle Productions built this version with more advanced visuals than the PlayStation release — and that Viacom told them to disable the extra graphics so the PlayStation version would not be outshone. On a platform whose entire reputation rests on the argument that the hardware was better than the software suggested, this is a documented case of a publisher ordering a Jaguar game made worse on purpose. What shipped has visuals in line with the other versions, and a more jazz-inflected soundtrack.
• Viacom's only original game, aimed squarely at Tetris. Viacom New Media published games based on existing properties almost exclusively — Zoop and Dracula Unleashed were the exceptions — and marketed this one hard enough to try to replicate Tetris, releasing it across an unusual number of platforms under the slogan "America's Largest Killer of Time!". Hookstone spent years on it and found the concept so difficult to explain that they simply presented producers with a nearly finished build. It was played in the preliminary rounds of the Blockbuster World Video Game Championship II before it went on sale.