ways that people might want to play the game,” continues Lyons. “This led to the two different modes, ‘Redimensioned Mode’ where the collectibles were optional and there was a double jump to let players traverse levels faster, and ‘Ultimate Ninja’ which was designed to play more like the original game. “The idea was that Redimensioned Mode was a better fit for first time players (and those looking to master movement mechanics), while Ultimate Ninja was a better fit for completionists (and those with fond memories of the original game). Rob also reworked quite a few of the levels to facilitate these playstyles and make them a little less maze-like than the original games; to be more inline with modern standards of level design and just to make things work with the new aspect ratio.“
LIKE A BOSS
Another change in the latest release of Zool was the addition of seven brand-new boss fights. While these new fights were partly added due to necessity, thanks to aspect ratios, the team soon found that designing new boss battles can actually be pretty fun. “Early on – as soon as we’d settled on both remaking the entire game utilising a modern aspect ratio and zoom level – we realised that the original boss fights wouldn’t work as they heavily relied on taking up a certain percentage of the screen space at once,” remembers Lyons. “This necessitated reworking the boss fights to
still maintain a sensible level of challenge. I think once we knew this was something we had to do we really leaned into it and used the boss fights as an opportunity to express ourselves more as we had much more scope to change things there [compared to remaking] the levels. I remember people on the team getting competitive about this and trying to one-up one another with the complexity of the boss fights; the culmination of these being the multi-phase fights in the Tool and Desert worlds.” “Playing through the new bosses was what I found most fun when I first got my hands on the game,” explains Ntokozo Tshuma, programmer on Zool Redimensioned’s PlayStation version. “Everybody agreed that they should definitely make an appearance in the multiplayer modes. We wanted to have a way of making sure that the players stay close together and are always moving around and some of the bosses were perfect for that. Others needed a bit more of a change, but we always tried to keep it recognisable.” With Gremlin Interactive studio veterans on board with
the remake project, the team had plenty of guidance to draw upon when it came to making sure the new version of Zool retained its old school feel. “We had the privilege of speaking to Ian Stewart early on about our plans, as well as being guided throughout by George Allan who both worked on the original game and is one of the trainers at the Academy,” explains Tshuma. “We also reached out to previous members of
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