YMMV / Zanac

• Annoying Video Game Helper: During later boss fights, both games can get a little overzealous with hurling power-up blocks at you, to the point that you can't even hit the boss.
• Demonic Spiders
  • Round Cores in the original, when they're fully open. They release projectiles which spin around, soak up quite a few damage and can overwhelm the player.
  • Also, for normal aerial enemies, purple Lusters which fly around with a wide arc and that means usually firing its projectiles behind the player.
  • Jack the Dynamic Difficulty high enough and you get these annoying blue enemies that line up with you and shoot out a constant stream of missiles. Flying above them will NOT help because they can fire upwards too.
• Difficulty Spike: Area 4 is where the gloves come off, featuring a lot more of the advanced enemies and a slew of ground turrets sure to make life miserable. And the game's challenge stops going back from there.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Weapon 5 is a boomerang-like projectile that spends several seconds at the peak of its "flight". Careful positioning allows you to easily rip bosses and other armored enemies a new one. Level the weapon up high enough and it turns into a straight-up laser beam. Notably, it is the only subweapon alongside Weapon 0 with infinite ammo.
  • Weapon 7. Fires fast, can move left and right at a limited angle, and can go through enemies. Very powerful, but is also a bit of a rarity.
  • The FC-Custom in Neo. It's basically an Homage to the original Zanac fighter that is unlocked through either a code or having a save file of the original Zanac game, and it plays exactly like the original down to the weapons degradation system, so no blast mode or charge shots. However, all of its subweapons can destroy enemy shots, and this is a ship that, with weapon 7, can rip the crap out of anything. For reference, the regular Neo ships can only destroy enemy shots through sacrificing offense for defense, something that ramps up the Dynamic Difficulty. Oh, and it benefits from the Landers, having an insane rate of fire if exploited right.
  • Weapon 6 in Neo is an explosive that shreds most enemies and lingers long enough to take out multiple targets, but is extremely slow and the firing rate is abysmal. Power it up to max, though, and you get a massive Sphere of Destruction that wrecks everything it touches (including bosses,) and the firing rate problem can be solved by just getting up in your target's face and unleashing it point blank.
• Goddamned Bats - Although many of the enemies qualify, T-Cells, which appear in Areas 8 and 11 in the original game, are perhaps the best examples. They cannot be killed with anything that doesn't clear the screen, they block shots completely and have to be destroyed by bumping into them.
• Goddamned Boss - Capital ships in the original game since almost all projectiles bounce off of it (although still damaging it), lowering your fire rate considerably. In addition, all but one of those will actually home on ship.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The extra life sound. The Neo variant even has a ringtone for it in Japan.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Final Boss theme [1] features a Drone of Dread that sounds as if it was recorded in Hell itself.
  • The sound test screen shows only the word "SOUND TEST" and a number indicating the current track on a black background, making it spooky especially with certain music tracks and sound effects, such as the aforementioned final boss theme. It's also possible to trigger it by accident, if you're holding A and B while exiting the Game Over screen.
• Polished Port: The NES version is a noticeable improvement over the MSX versions, featuring smoother and faster scrolling and less slowdown.
• Scrappy Weapon: Weapon 2 in Zanac, a shield that lasts for 50 uses, can be recharged by collecting more '2' items, but also triggers the Dynamic Difficulty's Berserk Button.
• Sequel Displacement - In fact the the first port was the MSX one.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The first game is notable for its fast-scrolling backgrounds, in a genre (and era) where backgrounds scroll as if you're driving in a school zone.