OutZone

General remarks

OutZone

Title screen

Developer:	Toaplan
Music:	Tatsuya Uemura
Program:	Naoki Ogiwara
Art:	Person C
Release date:	Late 1990
Next game:	Vimana

( OutZone )

OutZone (アウトゾーン) is a vertical freely scrolling shmup developed by Toaplan in 1990. It was published by Tecmo in Japan, Romstar in North America, and Toaplan in Europe.

It was the 10th shmup developed by Toaplan.

OutZone never received any home console ports. M2's ShotTriggers division announced in April 2020 that they were developing a new port of OutZone for modern consoles.

Gameplay Overview

OutZone is a vertical freely scrolling shmup with 8-way movement, a shot button and a bomb button.

Controls

---

• A (Press, both main weapons): Fires a shot.
• A (Press, Super Ball): Launches a ball forward.
• A (Hold, 8 way main weapon and Super Burner): Auto fires at a fast rate.
• A (Hold, fixed main weapon): Auto fires but the shots do not repeat very fast.
• B: Launches a bomb. The bombs in this game generate fire that affects the entire area of the screen. The bombs are screen clearing and repeatedly damage enemy until the fire disappears. The bombed area also cancels all bullets. However, the player is not invincible when bombing and may still die if ramming into an enemy.

Weapons

---

You have access to two normal weapons and two special weapons. You can switch between the normal weapons by picking up the C items. - The 8-directional laser fires in whatever direction you're moving, and creates a sweep of bullets as you change direction. - The 3-way wide shot always shoots forward. The two main weapons can be upgraded by picking up two "P" items.

Items

---

	Bomb: Adds 1 to your bomb stock.
	Energy item: Partially fills up your energy bar.
	Change: Changes your main weapon to free range if you have fixed, or fixed if you have free range. If you have a special weapon (Super Burner or Super Ball) when picking it up, you go back to the main weapon you had just before.
	Power-Up: Dropped by red enemies, increases the power of your main weapon by 1 level. Two are required for full power.
	Yellow - Super Burner: Replaces your main shot with the Super Burner weapon, which can shoot a column of flames in 8 directions and based on your character's position.
	Pink - Super Ball: Replaces your main shot with the Super Ball weapon, which has a constantly rotating ball that contact damages any enemies it touches and can be launched forwards with a button press.
	Pale Pink - Shield: Gives the player a Shield that allows them to take one bullet without dying. The player will still die if they ram into an enemy or against some attacks such as lasers.
	Blue - Speed up: Increases the player's speed.
	Green - Energy Extend: Increases the player's energy bar, allowing them to survive for a longer period of time without energy pickups. Also completely fills up your energy bar.
	Red - 1UP: Gives the player a 1up. Very rare item.

Rank

---

Rank is tied to survival and maxes out in loop 3.

Loops

---

The game will loop indefinitely.

Scoring

---

Points are awarded by shooting enemies, destroying item boxes, and blowing up destructible environments like wall columns.

Power Ups and Bombs: Collecting power ups and bombs yields 100 pts each. After you have collected 10 bombs, additional bomb pickups yield 5,000 points each.

End Stage Bonus: 5000 points are awarded for each bomb left over at the end of the stage.

Zero Wing Bonus: These give up to 50k each and can appear 9 times in a loop (1 in stages 1-4, 2 in stages 5-7). So they can give up to 450k points in a loop. They appear in certain spots if you've picked up eight C items at that point. The counter resets back to one if you pick up a ninth C item.

Pipiru Bonus: Appears in Stage 1 and gives 5k points if you destroy it immediately, up to 40k if you manage to bring Pipiru to the Stage 1 boss.

Strategy

See (OutZone)/Strategy for stage maps, enemy and boss descriptions, walkthroughs, and advanced play strategies.

---

This section details some particular strategic information about the game and its gameplay, such as hidden 1UPs and some basic scoring tricks. For anything particularly deep or highly complex, you can probably leave it in the Strategy page.

(Currently evaluating whether or not this specific section should even include information outside of the separated Strategy pages. Worth thinking about as a community.)

Story

In an advanced space era, humanity encountered, traded and formed alliances with many alien races to ensure security. Humanity had been subject to past invasions from hostile outside forces but the alliances Earth forged granted victories in the past. However in the year 2095, Earth had been subjected a to new invasion launched by the alien military force of planet Owagira, with overwhelmingly powerful and sophisticated weaponry than anything Earth's alliance could counter. With the threat of annihilation looming over, Earth's United Nations receive a message from an alien elder within their alliances about the existence of an ultra-elite mercenary unit named "Out Zone" at a remote region of the Milky Way galaxy. Known as "Space Entrepreneurs" and renowned for their fighting skills by other alien alliances, Out Zone takes sides with no one and are willing to fight any wars for the proper price. Under desperation and as a last-ditch effort to counterattack Owagira's military force, the UN requests Out Zone's service, guaranting Earth's entire budget as payment. With negotiations complete, two very powerful cyborg mercenaries belonging to Out Zone volunteer for the mission to fight for Earth. Having ties to Earth and realizing that their homeworld is in great peril, the two warriors rise up to save it from doom and destroy the Owagira Forces.

---

Development History

Uemura recounted its development process and history in a 2017 interview, stating that it was difficult for him as he could not apply his experience from vertical-scrolling shooters with flying ships, as players controlled the game on-foot and could not design its progress.^[1] He stated that the project was fundamentally different due to the lack of forced scrolling, which did not required skills from vertical shoot 'em ups and players could move or stop freely.^[1][2] Uemura stated that the intro was written during creation of the demonstration sequence, as the game's world was already established.^[3] The team integrated puzzle elements not found in ship-based shooters, which took time to plan out and Uemura stated that the schedule for sound production was constantly being reduced, barely implementing the music during development.^[1] When composing the music for the last stage, Uemura wanted to convey the sense of a "decisive battle".^[1] Uemura has since regaded the project as "the most difficult product he worked on".^[1]

---

Version Differences

• JP version contains additional text during the attract mode and after you beat the stage 7 boss.

---

Trivia

The game contains several references to previous Toaplan works, such as

• Pipiru, Toaplan's mascot, appearing in Stage 1 if you shoot a specific area
• Planes from Hishouzame helping you if you shoot some bushes in Stage 2 in a specific order. Their behavior is reminiscent of Daisenpuu.
• The Zero Wing ship giving you a point bonus if you reach specific areas fulfilling a certain condition (see (OutZone)/Strategy#Advanced_Strategy)

---

Gallery

See (Template Page)/Gallery for our collection of images and scans for the game.

---

Video References

https://shmups.wiki/library/OutZone/Video_Index

Other

We have support for wikitables, giving us the potential to add lots of cool info in a small box on the page somewhere, but we are not using them at the moment. I'm just leaving this here so we can have it handy in case we decide to actually use them. Feel free to not use this section.

(Template Page)
put your stuff here

References & Contributors

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20191023230947/https://pixelatedaudio.com/out-zone/
2. http://shmuplations.com/toaplan-uemura1/
3. http://shmuplations.com/toaplan-chronicle/

• This template page was assembled by CHA-STG and Plasmo.