For a brief time, there was a bit of Zoop buzz prior to its release. Puzzle/dexterity games are addictive, and a few of them broke into the mainstream back in the day. There's the Tetrises and Dr. Marios that were highly influential, along with Sega's Puyo Puyo series (which included Dr. Robotnik's mean Bean Machine, a Puyo Puyo clone), and the arcade tile-matching puzzle juggernaut Puzzle Bobble, otherwise known as Bust-A-Move. Zoop was a unique beast that seemed to miss its mark with a changing market at the time.

Developed by UK studio Hookstone Productions, with the SNES and Genesis ports handled by PanelComp, this was one of only two video games Hookstone has produced on record, Zoop was released in 1995 and landed on nearly every conceivable system at the time. The only other game I could find that they've worked on was Sentinel Returns, a puzzle game released in 1998 for the PlayStation, and it seems like they quietly dissolved shortly thereafter. Zoop is an incredibly ambitious puzzler that does have a set of rules that takes some time getting used to and trying to play well, and it gets a little cumbersome.

In Zoop, you control a triangle and the objective is to prevent the shapes from closing in and entering your controlled space, and with every passing second. When you initially shoot a shape, you become it. Shooting the same colored shape will eliminate it (or "zoop" it) and other until it hits a different color. The shapes regenerate at a very brisk rate, so the game is pretty fast paced and can spiral out of control in a hurry. 

There's two primary modes; choosing Level provides intervals after you've "zooped" the appropriate number of shapes indicated in the top right corner of the screen and the map resets. Each level gets progressively faster and harder. Continual is much harder, as it retains the previous shape set-up, so there's no moment to get a breather, outside of pausing. There's various power-ups to help clear spaces that randomly generate. If there's a way to prompt them, I haven't figured it out. There's line bombs that remove the entire row of shapes, a proximity bomb that destroys shapes in a 3x3 grid. I have not met the requirements, but if you collect five of the purple springs, it clears the screen of ALL SHAPES!

To make Zoop even harder, as you progress, the background and play area become louder, more contrasting colors intentionally designed to distort your vision. The devs called this "Opti-challenge" Thanks, I really asked for that. My eyes are already terrible, straining to focus on constantly generating blobs of colors do wonders for my retinas. As much as that drives me nuts and it can be visually unappealing, the graphics aren't bad for being minimalistic. Providing you don't mind getting dizzy by the backgrounds.

I mentioned the controls briefly, the gameplay requires getting used to. Learning it can feel a little counterintuitive, considering how fast the game becomes. Moving the triangle along the grid and firing feels very responsive. As long as I keep in mind to at least think a few moves ahead, it's not too bad. I found myself prone to shooting the wrong shapes, since Zoop's heavy-set rule philosophy makes it a little daunting.

Zoop's music and sound is absolutely great. Longtime video game composer Brian L. Shmidt, who's done a lot of work for pinball games as well as many Super Nintendo Electronic Arts titles, lends his talents to the Genesis version. The music is a work of brilliance and its moderately simplistic low-tempo soft jazz contrasts Zoop's lightning fast rapid pace. It sounds like music that you'd hear in a digital casino or Chessmaster. and as each stage progresses, the music gradually picks up with the speed of the game and both are running in arms. It's very creative, having grown up with Tom and Jerry, where the tone is aided by the accompanying score with no dialogue, this is something I greatly appreciate.

Zoop is an interesting piece of history. It really was propped to be the next big puzzle game that was destined to take the gaming world by storm. But by 1995, nobody cared about puzzle games that much anymore. The gameplay can be pretty addictive once you do get the hang of it, and it can be something that might end up occupying a good deal of your time. With its off-the-wall color scheme, entrancing music, and solid controls, Zoop was pretty decent, but with the cutting edge PlayStation on the way and being released at a time where some amazing games were hitting the SNES, like Chrono Trigger, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest, and Earthworm Jim 2 (overlooked in its own right), Zoop quickly got lost in the field.