Out Zone is a 1990 action Arcade Game by Toaplan.
The plot is as follows: Taking place in the year 2097, mankind is invaded by an alien force from the planet Owagira, and it is up to cyborg soldiers controlled by the player to destroy the invasion force.
Despite the simple plot, Out Zone is a fun and intense shooter made for the arcades.
A Windows PC port of the game was released on February 14, 2023 release on Steam, with the port developed by Bitwave Games as part of a series of Toaplan ports for PC alongside Truxton, Twin Cobra, and Zero Wing. Of the four games in this collection, Out Zone is notable as this is the first time this game has gotten any home port, after having not gotten one in 33 years.
A Spiritual Sequel, Fixeight, was developed in 1992.
This game provides the following examples:
- Alien Invasion: The entire game takes place in the middle of one, with your character fending off droves and droves of hostile aliens.
- Boss Arena Urgency: Kind of with Night Mare at the end of the third stage. At the beginning of the fight, it will send out a Laser Cutter that slices along the floor. The lower portion of the floor drops away once the laser is finished, so you have to first move to the lower portion to avoid the laser, then walk along the cut portion before the laser's finished so you don't get a magma bath. This only happens two times, though.
- Bottomless Pits: Guess what happens if you fall into them.
- Continuing is Painful: Dying resets you back to an earlier checkpoint with your weapons and upgrades gone. This only makes it much more painful. Somewhat averted if your have two players, as you respawn on the spot.
- Cyborg: Your characters.
- Epic Flail: The Super Ball Weapon. Holding down the fire button lets it circle around you, releasing it makes you shoot the ball forwards. This weapon is one of the best weapons in the game due to its high damage output, and its ability to pass through walls.
- Excuse Plot: There's aliens, go and shoot them.
- Fire-Breathing Weapon: The Super Burner. Arguably does more damage than the Super Ball, but has short range and cannot pass through walls.
- The Goomba: Those regular soldiers. Unlike most games, the first one will easily kill you if your dodging is not up to par.
- Humongous Mecha: Most of the bosses are these.
- Kill Screen: The "Hard" romset of the game that's part of the 2023 Bitwave release crashes at the end of the first loop, even though the game is supposed to loop until the player runs out of lives.
- Laser Blade: The Final Boss, Severe, has one on each arm.
- Laser Cutter: Night Mare has one, which it uses to cut away the floor to force you to advance towards it
-
Nintendo Hard: Oh boy. Let's just say that the first regular mook starts out firing aimed shots at you, at a pretty rapid pace at that. Some parts of the later levels are almost akin to Bullet Hell. You know that a game is hard when The Goomba is a Demonic Spider. - One-Hit-Point Wonder: Your characters are these. Collecting a shield powerup (very rare) makes you a Two Hit Point Wonder.
- Palette Swap: The two player characters are identical in appearance, only differing in their hair styles, what they wear over their right eyes, and their general color scheme (blue with yellow hair and bluish-grey armor for P1, red with lime hair and dark lavender armor for P2).
- Spread Shot: One of your two regular weapons (the "C" powerup switches between them). Unlike your straight shot, this weapon only fires upwards.
- Stalked by the Bell: Your character has a fuel timer that constantly goes down, if it reaches zero, you die. The only way to replenish it is to collect "E" powerups.
- Stance System: Depending on what weapon you have equipped, your character will either turn in the direction of his movement, or only face forwards, strafing when moving sideways. Managing item pickups for the correct stance can make a big difference depending on the stage.
- Tank Goodness: The second boss, Shudder.
- Wolfpack Boss: The Mazurka at the end of the first stage, four red things that shoot aimed shots at you.
