Zook Hero 3 (Chinese: 路克英雄傳3), released in mainland China as Super Rockman (Chinese: SUPER洛克人) and also known as Zook Hero Legend 3 and Rock Hero Legend 3, is an unlicensed Game Boy Color game developed and published by Sintax. It was released in both Taiwan and mainland China in 2004. It is based on the Mega Man/Rockman series of games, and borrows its name and visual elements from a series of Mega Man clones developed by Vast Fame named Zook Hero (路克英雄).
Gameplay[]
Zook Hero 3, despite its namesake being loosely based on Mega Man X, is a fairly involved clone of the classic Mega Man games. The player assumes the role of Zook, who superficially resembles X from Mega Man X in-game and has to defeat seven bosses. The game features a main menu, which displays an unedited portrait of Iris from Mega Man Xtreme 2 and is shown when the game is first started and after a boss is defeated. This menu allows the player to save or load their current progress and continue their game without saving. Once a decision is made, the game then presents a Mega Man-style level select, where the player can select which boss stage to enter. On a new game, four bosses are accessible, with two secret bosses marked with red and blue question marks on the menu that are revealed once the initial four are beaten. Selecting a boss will display a screen with their portrait, name, and a short description, which are translated as the following:
• Enemy Information: Tares! Swordsman-type combat robot! (Uses an edited portrait of Geemel from Mega Man Xtreme).
• Enemy Information: Blood Gun! Killer-type combat robot! (Uses an edited portrait of Zain from Mega Man Xtreme, sans sword, with an added cowboy hat).
• Enemy Information: Phoenix! Modified Combat Robot! (Uses a heavily edited portrait of Speed Eagle Yo from Zook Hero 2).
• Enemy Information: Hades! Warrior of Shadows, abilities: unknown. (Portrait is of currently unknown origin. May be original).
The player is then taken to a stage consisting of multiple levels. Bosses are encountered on the last level of their stage, where they are separated by a shutter that automatically opens when the player passes through it, similar to the official Mega Man games.
At the start of the game, Zook has a standard Mega Man-esque buster as his only weapon, though unlike other Zook Hero games, he is unable to charge it. During gameplay, a HUD reminiscent of the one in Zook Hero 2 is visible, which shows meters for Zook's current health and weapon energy at the left, his remaining lives at the center, and a health meter for the selected stage's boss at the right (this is always shown as full until the player reaches the boss). The game also features a sub-menu that can be viewed while in a stage, which displays the HUD information on top as well as the player's item inventory and available weapons. Zook can also roll into a ball, similar to Samus Aran in the Metroid series, allowing the player to traverse on the ground faster, enter through narrow passages, and even dodge some enemy attacks. Like in the official Mega Man games, enemies have a chance of dropping items when killed, although the chances of this happening are typically uncommon during normal gameplay. For the initial four bosses, defeating them will result in Zook obtaining their weapon. Selecting these weapons from the in-game dashboard will not only equip Zook with it, but also turn him into the corresponding boss, which will last until their weapon energy is used up. Unlike Mega Man X and the proper Zook Hero games, there are no upgrades.
Once the first four robot masters are defeated, the two secret bosses are unlocked. They are none other than X (named "ROCK X" on his introduction screen) and Zero from Mega Man X, who are depicted using their sprites from the Mega Man Xtreme games and downgraded versions of their portraits from the introduction of the first Mega Man Xtreme. Once X and Zero are defeated, the final boss, is unlocked, which is a wireframe head that superficially resembles Sigma from Mega Man X. The final boss pops in and out of the screen on its stage. Once the final boss is defeated, the game plays an ending sequence and a credits sequence.
Controls[]
The player moves left or right with the directional pad, jumps with the A button, and uses the currently equipped weapon with the B button. Pressing down on the directional pad and A together in the game will make Zook curl into a ball and roll in place - the player can move him left and right while in this form, and pressing A or B will return Zook to his normal form. Pressing Select will scroll the screen downward to see what is below the player.
Preservation and emulation[]
No public ROM dumps of this game were available since its initial release in 2004 until May 1, 2024, when a cracked ROM of the game was released publicly online. Contributing to the lack of ROM dumps up to that point is the extreme rarity of both the Taiwanese and mainland Chinese releases of the game in their respective locations. Due to these factors, very little information on the game was publicly available for a long time. The only known record of a ROM dump of the game being made prior to May 1, 2024 is from the Chinese ROM dumping group Sky League, which did not publicly release it but shared screenshots of the game publicly on their now-defunct website.[1] These screenshots have since been archived.
Another ROM of this game, dumped from a cartridge of the Taiwan release and with no alterations to the ROM data, would be publicly released on March 10, 2025. This particular ROM is copy protected with Sintax's proprietary protection scheme, requiring use of a Game Boy emulator that can emulate the protection (i.e., hhugboy).
Trivia[]
- Despite presumably being released in 2004, Vast Fame would release an official entry in their Zook Hero series for the Game Boy Advance, Zook Man ZX4 (路克人ZX4, released in English as Rockman & Crystal), in 2003. This, along with the fact that Sintax and Vast Fame are known to have worked together at some point in time on a GBA port of the SNES Digimon Adventure bootleg, has led to speculation that Zook Hero 3 may have been intended as an official entry in Vast Fame's Zook Hero series before the release of Zook Man ZX4/Rockman & Crystal.
- The game uses music and sound effects from the Game Boy Mega Man II game (known as Rockman World 2 in Japan), although the music is played at a slower tempo.
- The cutscene in the intro sequence of this game that depicts Zook uses an edited version of X from a cutscene in Mega Man Xtreme (Rockman X: Cyber Mission in Japan), and Zook as depicted on the title screen is an edited mugshot of X from Mega Man Xtreme 2 (Rockman X2: Soul Eraser in Japan).
- The graphics for the health and energy capsules look near identical to the ones in Zook Hero 2.
- Some enemies in the game are taken from Mega Man Xtreme and the Game Boy Mega Man II, although they use different color palettes.
- Sintax released two variants of this game: New Crazy Arcade (新瘋狂阿給 泡泡堂) and Metal Slug X. Both of these games are dumped and look almost identical to the original game, minus graphical changes. Metal Slug X in particular, though, is an extensive hack of Zook Hero 3 that makes the game linear and makes major changes to its gameplay mechanics.
- Both variants introduce a feature that is activated when down and select are pressed together while in a level, which will cause the player to skip to the next screen. In New Crazy Arcade, this can be performed until the final screen of a level, after which the level will simply be exited. No weapon will be received for doing so and the level will not be marked as completed. Doing this in Metal Slug X will allow the player to skip screens until they reach the end credits, however. Using the button combination in Zook Hero 3 does not appear to do anything (tested with both the original protected ROM and public cracked ROM on emulators).
- Like in other unlicensed Game Boy Color games that use the BBD platformer engine, pressing jump and either horizontal direction on the D-pad at the same time will cause the jump input to be dropped, often to the player's peril. The jump input will still work if the player was already holding down a direction before pressing jump.
- Spikes will cause the player to lose a life even if the player has invulnerability frames.
- Pressing the fire button in mid air will stall the player's fall, however this is not normally noticeable in gameplay. Extremely rapid fire can cause a much more pronounced effect, which can be accomplished with a turbo button. This behavior is also present in Zook Hero 3's variants.
Gallery[]
Boxes and manuals[]
Taiwanese release[]
Mainland Chinese release[]
The following pictures were taken by yy小龙虾 and used with permission.
Screenshots[]
References[]
See also[]
External links[]
| Zook games |
|---|
|