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Zook Hero 3 (路克英雄傳3), also known as Zook Hero Legend 3 and Rock Hero Legend 3, or Super Rockman (SUPER洛克人) in mainland China, is a Game Boy Color game developed 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).
Overview[]
Zook Hero 3 is a fairly involved Mega Man clone. The game has an intro sequence with a story written in Chinese. One of the sequences depicts a wireframe head that strongly resembles Sigma from the Mega Man X series, and another depicting Zook, who is an edited version of X from a cutscene in Mega Man Xtreme (Rockman X: Cyber Mission in Japan). Zook on the title screen is an edited mugshot of X from Mega Man Xtreme 2 (Rockman X2: Soul Eraser in Japan). Once the game is started, the game goes to the main menu, which shows an unedited portrait of Iris from Mega Man Xtreme 2. The menu has options to save/load a game and continue a currently active game. Once you continue, you are then greeted with a level select. On a new game, four original robot masters are accessible, with two secret robot masters marked with red and blue question marks on the menu that are revealed once the initial four are beaten. The game uses music and sound effects from the Game Boy Mega Man II game (known as Rockman WorId 2 in Japan), although the music is played at a slower tempo.
Even though Zook Hero 3 uses assets from the Mega Man Xtreme games and takes its name from Vast Fame's Mega Man X-inspired game series, its gameplay is more in line with the classic Mega Man games. You start out playing as Zook, who appears to use resemble the Super Nintendo sprites of X from X~X3, and your only weapon is a regular buster. Some enemies in the game are taken from Mega Man Xtreme and the Game Boy Mega Man II, although they use different color palettes. Health and energy drops from enemies are exceedingly rare in the game, even compared to official Mega Man entries. The HUD that appears in levels looks similar to the one in Zook Hero 2, and health and energy capsules look near identical to the ones in that game as well. Unlike Mega Man X and the proper Zook Hero games, there are no upgrades. Once a robot master is defeated, you are taken back to the main menu, which gives you an opportunity to save your game and/or continue. Also, not only do you obtain the robot master's weapon, but when selecting them from the in-game dashboard, you turn into the corresponding robot master and can play as them with their weapon until their weapon energy is used up.
Once the first four robot masters are defeated, the two secret bosses are unlocked. The bosses 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 their portraits from the introduction of the first Mega Man Xtreme. Once X and Zero are defeated, the final boss is unlocked, which is the wireframe head from the game's introduction. 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.
Trivia[]
- Zook Hero 3 is infamous for its extreme rarity, which applies to both the Taiwanese and mainland Chinese releases.
- No public ROM dumps of this game were available 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 the game. 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.
- 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 when using the cracked ROM, and it is unknown if it works on the original cartridge.
- 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[]
External link[]
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