If you're looking for a Zillion web-site, look no further. I'm not saying this is a wonderful page or anything, I'm saying this is the ONLY page. Well, that's not exactly true, but the other one's in portugese! This page has had hits.
This Update:
I realize it's been a VERY long time since my last update. There's a very simple reason for that, I haven't gotten anything new to post. I just figured I should give some explaination since a full third of the hits to this page happened after my last update. The important thing is I am neither incapacitated nor disinterested in this page. Oh, and I still have those links: The first is Zillion Shrine which looks like a pretty good site, and the second is The DEIMOZ Project Homepage
Music! markorin@uscom.com Just gave me these 2 real audio files: Push and Notis Nova. Thanks alot. I can't run real player myself, so if these links give you a problem, let me know.
Comming soon: I'm not going to update again until I actually get something new to put up. At that point I really will clean the site up so I don't have things like these pictures here: .sit form or .zip form
Since there isn't another site, you might as well help me make this one a good one. Send any episode summaries, pictures, or anything else you have to me here. Especially the pictures by the way, I sight without graphics is much less of a draw then one you can take pictures from.
Considering this is the only page out there (oops wait, not exactly true), it looks like I'm going to have to cover both Zillion the anime, and Zillion the Sega Master System game. I'm not sure which is based on which. Neither one has that wretched "based on" quality. I would say the anime seems more likely to have come first, exept that Opa-Opa used to be Sega's mascot.
Zillion: The Anime
I'll add more to this section soon. For now, I can only give a very basic summary. A small group of characters called the White Knights, who ride around on motorcycles most of the time, fight alien robots with incredibly over-powered guns. It's made by the same people as Robotech and Speed Racer. Relative to those it has an exellent drawing style. In fact, the fight scenes have the best animation I've seen in a while. I was disapointed recently to learn that of the 35 episodes, only 6 were ever translated into english. In addition, the sixth was about the aftermath of the series, and, according to my sources, involves singing. I almost hate to do this, but do to the lack of information I have, I will now quote the back of the box of the first episode in it's entirety. Please don't judge the show by this. As we all know, box backs invariably give the worst possible descriptions.
THREE UNLIKELY WARRIORS AGAINST AN ARMY OF ALIEN INVADERS!
In the 24th Century, mankind has entered a mew phase of its ongoing developement - establishing numerous colonies throughout the galaxy. One such colonial outpost, the planet MARIS, faces annihilation at the hand of a ruthless alien race known as the NOZA. The human colonists' only hope for survival rests in a mysterious alien weapon system known as the ZILLION Gun. With enough of these energy-beam weapons, the Marisians could fend of the invading Noza troops. The problem is that only three Zillion Guns are known to exist, and the alien technology to manufacture more weapons seems unattainable. Thus an elite fighting trio, known as THE WHITE KNIGHTS is formed to wage a life and death battle for their homeworld's survival. Outnumbered and isolated, things certainly couldn't get much worse...
Zillion was a game for the good old Sega Master System, the 8-Bit System besides the NES. If you haven't heard of it, don't worry, almost nobody has. The game itself is fairly similar to the Metroid games. You run around in a huge underground maze looking for power-ups to get ready to blow the whole place up. As in Metroid games, around the time you kill the head guy, you have to leave very fast. There are however some decidedly non-Metroid aspects to the game however. For example, players constantly find themselves in a series of one screen rooms containing a computer and several canisters. In addition to standard healing items and better weapons, the canisters contain code symbols that must be entered into the computerin order to procede. Some canisters also require stronger guns to open. There is also the interesting feature of having 3 characters, each with different abilities that you can switch between during the game. All of this well balanced game play is also convieniently drenched in some very high quality anime-style graphics. As usual, the SMS demonstrates what 8-bit graphics are really capable of. There is a sequel to Zillion called Tri-Formation, but it doesn't bear mention.
J.J. has that typical "main character" personality. Somewhat obnoxious and always drawing attention. In the game, he's the starting character.
Apple
Height: 165 cm
Weight: 50 kg
Blood Type: A
Age: 17
Hair: Purplish Blue
I haven't seen enough of the anime to describe Apple's personality. There is one thing I can say with 100% certainty however. Despite that typo in the instructions of the game, Apple is definately a girl. This is just another example of the poor translation of pronouns so common during the mid-80's. In the game Apple is the fast and weak character.
Champ
Height: 178 cm
Weight: 68 kg
Blood Type: B
Age: 18
Hair: Blond
Again, I need to see more of the anime before I can describe Champ's personality. In the game, he's the big strong character who basicly can't jump.
Amy
Height: 155 cm
Weight: 46 kg
Blood Type: AB
Age: 16
Hair: Light Blue
Amy seems to be a flaky supporting character. See more or less sits around running the Whight Knights' base. In the game at least, she also is in charge of running the device which is used to heal the White Knights when injured. So feel free to add her to the list of blue-haired female anime characters who are doctors.
Not only do I not have statistics for Dave, I know almost nothing about him whatsoever. As far as I can tell, he's the White Knights' mechanic. He also hangs around their base most of the time. He's not even in the game.
Director Gord
Hair: Grey (yes, due to age)
Director Gord seems to be a major military leader, who gives the White Knights their assignments. The only other thing I have to say about him is that as far as I can tell, he is also in Macross. He looks and sounds EXACTLY like a character from it whose name eludes me at the moment.
Opa-Opa
Height: 38 cm
Weight: 16 kg
Opa-Opa used to be Sega's mascot. Basicly it's a little red egg-shaped sentient creature/spaceship with wings and retractable feet. Opa-Opa as his own series of games for the SMS called Fantasy Zone. The graphics are very cute, they look like their geared towards little kids. However, the games are incredibly hard. The basic reaction most people have to Fantasy Zone is oh look at this cute turtle thing, what just killed me? I really wish I knew what Opa-Opa has to do with Zillion. The bottom line is that he just seem to hang around with the main characters.
Nosa Warriors: The Nosa are identical humanoids, possibly robots, this isn't made clear. The have solid white nearly featureless heads with red glowing eyes. They also have black and grey armor with a large red circle (which I believe is an infra-red sensor) on their chests. They also have white blood.
Nosa Mecha: The Nosa also have large Mecha, which have a rotatable botton-mounted sensor and no head. Beyond that, there appearance is fairly standard spikey-alien-tech-anime style.
The Nosa Leader: The leader of the Nosa looks more or less like the rest, but with large black horns.
