Zoo Keeper Strategy

Ive watched those over and over, Steve. I still cant recreate your game play. Ha.
 
It's a funny game in that it requires a lot of repeated play to keep your skills/or improve. Shooters like Galaga, DK3, etc I can go without playing for half a year and my first game back I can play over an hour like I never left. Zoo Keeper though is a different "animal". I'm still stuck on 8 million and I just fixed mine again last month or so and been playing a bit more lately and still am stuck on 8 million. 10 million + is one of my big arcade goals this year.
 
Nice score. My best sits at 1.8 million. Grouping the animals gets tough. It seems when I get them grouped well on the moose and first lion stages I get greedy and try to get bigger jumps. I've gotten 4 1 million point jumps all on the moose level, but couldn't play the rest of those games for squat. It's a blast thought and I love to keep playing. -Barry
 
now what are you going to do for the rest of the year?

Every year I work off a list.

This year:

DK - Kill Screen
DK Jr - 1m+
Elevator Action - 200k+
Crazy Kong - Kill Screen
Zoo Keeper - 10m+ (done)
Galaga (marathon) - 5m+
Pole Position - 65k+ (done)
Robotron (TGTS - 5 men only) - 500k+
Turbo (easy) - 100k+
Gorf (3 man) - 700k+
 
Any words of wisdom or tricks to get the to group together ? Still haven't bested my score from above :(

Animals always run away from you when exiting the cage, what's more, if you are below/or above the broken wall where they are exiting, they will run to the right if you are left of the middle and vice versa. You obviously always want the animals to be running the same way as much as possible so position yourself whichever way best allows the animals to move in the same direction upon their exit.

Once you get to the 2 net boards which is the next main board after the 1st lions appearance, you will be able to then use one net to group and the other to pen (should you choose). Leave one side of the pen open and run the animals with the net in whichever direction you choose and then wait by the open wall once all the animals are temporarily penned. They will then all exit away from you getting them going in the same direction.

The lions/moose, etc will run ahead of the pack naturally and the elephants/snakes will lurk behind. Always keep one side of the pen open for re-grouping if necessary, otherwise they will bounce off the walls and exit haphazardly in a bunch of directions. The main focus once you have them all going the same way is to survive either jumping against the animals, or with them in the same direction they are running until you see a big jump opportunity. Usually this means having a bunch of slow animals creeping towards you while a giant pack of fast animals are catching up. Eventually they will materialize into a solid pack which can net you the big points.

The 4th escalators/invisible coconut boards are a different story.....
 
Well I'm getting better 886,480 and also got my 500,000 point :)

Nice work, you are right there!

I was so proud of my wife when she crossed 1m points one night. I maintain she is the best female ZK player in the world. :)
 
Well I'm getting better 886,480 and also got my 500,000 point :)

Nice work, practice is the key to this game. Do yourself a favour and download one of the zookeeper games from MARP (MAME action replay page)
There are two high scoring games there(16 & 21 million) you'll learn a lot from them.

You'll be getting 3-4+ million point games within a few months

Keep us posted on your progress

good luck




john


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I'm not sure how I am going to get much better at ZK. As soon as I get to the levels where the outside edge is constantly flashing, it makes my head hurt, and hurts my eyes. I need to figure out what else to focus on apparently. Turning the lights on in the room didn't help. Anyone else experience that?
 
I'm not sure how I am going to get much better at ZK. As soon as I get to the levels where the outside edge is constantly flashing, it makes my head hurt, and hurts my eyes. I need to figure out what else to focus on apparently. Turning the lights on in the room didn't help. Anyone else experience that?


I know what you mean about the flashing, It used to annoy the hell out of me when I started to play...you get used to it....I don't even notice it now.

You will get better...It takes a LONG time to learn to play this game.





john

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I'm not sure how I am going to get much better at ZK. As soon as I get to the levels where the outside edge is constantly flashing, it makes my head hurt, and hurts my eyes. I need to figure out what else to focus on apparently. Turning the lights on in the room didn't help. Anyone else experience that?

I have the same problem, I get a terrible headache after playing the level's
 
I know what you mean about the flashing, It used to annoy the hell out of me when I started to play...you get used to it....I don't even notice it now.

You will get better...It takes a LONG time to learn to play this game.





john

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Good to know. I thought I was going to have a seizure the other night, ha.

BTW - my battery is toast, so my scores erase on startup right now :(
 
I remember seeing the game back in the day but don't recall ever playing it back then. My best score was 550k playing on MAME a couple of years ago when I played it for the first time. That was my best score in about two hours of tries and it wasn't even the last attempt; it came about 30 minutes into that two hour session. This game is weird like that. On a lot of other games your best score will progress steadily over time and most of your attempts will be at least in the ballpark of your personal best. Zoo Keeper will kick you in the nuts for hours and just when you're about to throw in the towel you'll double your personal best, and you come back for many more hours of abuse with scores that are half (or even way less) of your personal best. This can go on for weeks or months. Even badgamer, who is likely the best Zoo Keeper player in the world right now, has admitted to embarrassingly low scores (even below 1M) on a semi-regular basis. It's feast or famine with this game.

I have not played it much despite owning one for over a year now, but yesterday on a whim I sat down at my Zoo Keeper and played for a couple of hours. On my second game I notched a 1.1M+ and got farther into the game than I ever have before (passed the 4th escalator board on the first try but didn't make it to the invisible coconut board). If memory serves my best jump was a 250k. A short while later I got an 880k game and it was all downhill from there. The vast majority of my games for the next hour and a half landed between 200k and 600k, with a lot of them in the 500k+ range.

Zoo Keeper is awesome. What genius game play design. And the music and sound effects are some of the most distinctive and mesmerizing in all of classic arcade gaming.
 
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