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Zombie horror shoot-'em-up, Virus LPQ-79, came runner up at MSX DEV’18, falling just 0.2 points shy of the eventual winner, XRacing. Frank Romero gets his Zombie shooter trigger fired up, putting Virus LPQ-79 through its paces, in a good old fashioned run around a maze shootout.

Team A.R.G. is an amateur group (with members from several countries) who have been making games since 2013 for the Arduboy machine, a very small open source handheld gaming console based on Arduino hardware, I would define it as some kind of "Micro--Gameboy". Their games are simple, monochromatic and in low resolution; a factor that, in most of the cases, implies graphic minimalism. Their 8th creation is Virus LQP79 on the MSX, a light semi clone of Alien Syndrome, that attracted some MSX users to make an exclusive port for the Japanese computers.

The action takes place in a normal town. An accident in a research facility has occurred infecting villagers who have now become zombies. Amy, our main character, is just an average girl, who happens to be caught in the middle of this situation. She is tasked to rescue uninfected villagers while avoiding and shooting at zombies. There are 32 stages to complete, with a final end game screen. Each stage is structured with common elements: Amy running around the playing field rather quickly shooting at the zombies with a gun.

Firepower can be increased with the collection of power ups after killing zombies. Uninfected villagers, or hostages are found stationed around each screen, running over them is how you rescue them. The gameplay mechanics work around three actions - shoot, rescue then escape. Your goal is always the same: Rescue the hostages before the countdown timer runs out. Once all the hostages on each screen are rescued a door will be unlocked, identified as a red animated arrow, move through it to advance to the next screen. Zombies appear popping up from graveyards and houses, if they touch you, your health points are drained, lose all your health and its game over.

Most reviewers of Virus LPQ-79 call the MSX version a port, but I prefer to call it a "remake" because it's so much improved on the original Arduboy version. The MSX version has greater colourization, inclusion of static splash screens between stages and in game music, it looks and plays at a greater level, that I refuse to accept that it could be called a port. The original black background in the Arduboy version only had little white elements for grass wisps and some trees. In the MSX version, there are many colours shown throughout the game, in the depiction of the grass, little flowers and several types of trees. Tiling work on these elements is well done, too.

The animations of the main character and the zombies are fluid. Less frames, more arty elements - that's the 8-bit essence! The mind behind this is the professional pixel artist, Justin Paul Cyr, known, among other things, for making a 1008 female portraits, 32 x 32 pixels size each one, done in the MSX palette. Graphically the game is presented well. The screens provide a good depiction of where the action is taking place in the village. There are different types of zombies rather than just one old boring one.

The restrictions imposed by the hardware has compelled the developers to make more accurate and original sprites, a pixel drawn in the wrong place would have ruined the entire frame. It conforms a clever use of the elements regarding the remaining use of game memory. As one of the developers of the game once commented "The biggest gain in bytes in this game, was clever use of masks".

At the end of some levels there is an inclusion of a static splash screen or mini movie with a message from Amy at the bottom like "I'm legend", a possible reference to the homonymous zombie novel made in the 1950's or "I think I'll become vegetarian", or "Please Time Out, I need a beer". It may not have been required but it adds a great deal to what I wrote earlier, this game is more of a remake, cut scenes add much polish to the feel of the game.

The music has also been improved, since the Arduboy original version has only some uncharmed, noisy beeps and no music as Sound FX and no melodic theme at all. In the MSX version we can hear a main music theme which is played at the beginning and end of the game, as well as while we are playing. The Sound FX when Amy shoots are better, too. One other aspect I liked is that when you die you can replay the level which is good as starting over from level one would be a real pain in the neck.

The static graphics made by Christina Neofotistou "Castpixel", an expert girl demaking photos and pixel art pieces, work very well on the Arduboy but in our MSX screens the edges are not so nice, you can feel that the scaling affected the edges of the elements.

Despite this, it's not a horrible mistake and the results are still quite good. There is a little graphic mistake that it must be remarked - the main screen has an extremely huge gun (we can see this illustration in the A.R.G. website); but when it was converted to the MSX resolution, the gun cannon is so thick and poorly drawn that, at first sight, nobody can clearly see a gun.

Hit detection could have been better. It seems like you have avoided a zombie but you don’t realise your health has been drained. The other aspect of the collision detection I felt could have been improved upon is that there are many instances where Amy can not escape from the zombies, your stuck, losing all your health points much too quickly - really frustrating aspect of the game.

Every retro player who likes fast action themed games should play this game. The playability is so equilibrated that the 6 Beta Testers collaboration was not futile, it helped enhance the gameplay. This did not go unnoticed by the judges at this years MSX DEV either as Virus-LPQ79 shared Best Gameplay honors with Quartet, Bumper Ship Racing and PWND.

It also shared other honors such as Best Music along with XRacing and The Most Polished Game honor along with XRacing and Buddhaghillie. Graphically, Amy and the zombie sprites are really cute. Seeing the zombies coming up from a graveyard or coming out from a house to chase Amy while she is running, moving her ponytail, adds to the game’s charm and appeal. Overall, I found it to be such a fun and enjoyable game to play. For a game less than 50kb in size, Virus, LQP-79 on the MSX, is a worthy runner up to XRacing in this years MSX DEV.