PrinceWatercress plays Zen: Intergalactic Ninja (Game Boy) - Part 1 of 5

Zen's interplanetary clean-up action was also on the small screen as well, and since it's by Konami, you know you're in for a fun time on the go.

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When you start the game, there are four levels that you can pick in any order. Once you complete them, you'll head to the final area and face Lord Contaminous, who is trying to pollute the Earth into ruin.

Oil Area

Left and Right let you move around, Down lets you duck, B lets you attack, and A lets you jump. Down + A lets you slide, and holding the B button down lets you charge up a charge shot. Release the B button after you fill up the gauge at the bottom to let it loose and do more damage than you can with your staff alone. Get ready to use it a lot.

Along with the gauge for the charge shot, you'll also have your current health and lives at the bottom of the screen.

The slow-moving robots amble back and forth, and take two charge shots to destroy. The guys with the guns are faster but take only one. Duck down to avoid being shot.

The oil pits are instant death. Floors with oil on them are slippery, but if you jump forward constantly, you won't have to worry about slippery walking physics.

You'll soon need to drop down. Down + A lets you drop down on certain platforms. The crystal gives you temporary invincibility from the eyes that shoot at you (and take one strike to defeat) and the fires. Watch out for the guys throwing the grenades; even the grenades and the grenade throwers themselves can do contact damage.

The large sphere recovers a good amount of health. The smaller sphere will give you a little bit of health.

The dog enemies go down with one strike from the staff, but they can jump over pits and latch onto you to cause a few hits of damage. Even if they latch on to you, strike them anyway. You can strike a whole bunch of times if you rapidly mash the B button, and the hitbox on the staff strike is a bit generous.

The barrels that move in and out of the oil pits are platforms. You can leap onto them, but the main thing about them to get used to is the timing in which they rise out of the oil. Also, there will be a few times where you will have to slide in order to get through narrow areas and continue on.

You'll eventually have a small conversation with Oil Slick before fighting. Hit him with a charge shot, then slide under him as he bounces around. You want to be as far away from him as possible when he latches onto the ceiling and shoots a three-way shot downwards, then you'll need to duck down and hit him with charge shots until he repeats his attack pattern. That's all there is to Oil Slick, and he ends up being a pushover.

After every stage is a bonus area. For this one, you'll need to save the seabirds while jumping over the rocks. Left and Right let you move while A lets you jump. If you can save them all, you'll get 10,000 bonus points. If you hit even one rock, the game is over automatically.