The Super Nintendo had a reasonably long life cycle for the time. Right in the era of the first console wars where new machines were coming out all the time and big companies were battling each other for the market share. The new industry of video games was growing up past it’s infancy stage and starting to mature into a coherent child as the technology was becoming more sophisticated It was a great time for a consumer to be into video games as many new and interesting hardware and games constantly being released.
The Super NES was released in the USA in about the third quarter of 1991, nearly a full year earlier in Japan, late 1992 for Europe and Australia and for South American countries it came out in 1993. Officially it was discontinued outside of Japan in 1999 and in Japan it was supported by Nintendo up until 2003. Considering this life span of 8 years for most of the world and 12 years in Japan, that was a considerable length of time in an era where new consoles were being released virtually every year. The final first party (Nintendo) game came out late 1997 (Kirby’s Dream Land 3) and the final third party game officially released on a physical cartridge was Frogger in 1998. The last officially released game that didn’t receive a physical cartridge release but was available as digital download (Nintendo Power) in Japan was “Metal Slader Glory – Director’s Cut” and it came out in 1999. Those were the last Super Nintendo officially released games, obviously this doesn’t count bootleg games or repro cartridges.
Back in 1995 a hardware add-on for the Super NES called Satellaview was released in Japan. It was a video game streaming service that allowed games and other content to be downloaded to your home console via satellite. Lots of unique content came out on that system and was only available during the time it was broadcast so a lot of the content released hasn’t been preserved. One of the games released on the service in 1997 was called Kaizou Choujin Shubibinman Zero (Cyber Citizen Shockman Zero), a great little side-scrolling beat-’em-up developed by Masaya. Unfortunately, at the time only Japanese SNES gamers who had Satellaview were able to obtain the game. Years later a series of events occurred that lead to the game getting officially released. In 2014 the company Extreme gained the copyright for the game from Nippon Computer Systems. Then a publisher called Columbus Circle decided to give the game a physical cartridge release to commemorate CSZ’s 20th anniversary. It was released on June 30 2017 on Amazon.com and retailed for 6998 Yen (about $70 AUD) making it the first official game released on the system nearly 20 years after the last game came out.
Now here is the good news for collector’s and video gamers in the west, it was officially released worldwide by Ratalaika Games for Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, X Box One and X Box Series X/S on July 5, 2024. If you’re like me and don’t have any of those new generation consoles than this news is even better – in late 2024 Retro-Bit announced the game will be released as a SNES cartridge in PAL and NTSC format and translated into English. Gamers and sellers that pre-ordered from Retro-Bit received the game in March of 2025. If you are interested in obtaining this game there may still be copies available from online stockists (see link at bottom of post).
As mentioned this is a side scrolling beat-em’-up game. It has the option of co-operative play with the second player controlling the girl character who has the advantage of wielding a sword as opposed to main protaganists fists. The game is similar in style to the Mega Man series of games with added beat-em’-up mechanics. It’s not exceedingly hard but not easy either, the difficulty is well balanced allowing for a good challenge and enjoyable gameplay. The graphics are gorgeous and the collision detection and jumping mechanics are highly refined. It has a colorful cast of characters with short cut scenes driving the story progression each time you reach a boss and finish a level. It’s really hard to fault this game in any way, it is excellent all round it would be better if it was a bit longer. I give it a 9 / 10 as it’s not perfect but very close! Games like this are a perfect example why the SNES is considered the king of 16 bit consoles.
The MSRP is $54.99 USD / €64.99 EUR which is equivalent to about $120 AUD. Each copy of the game is numbered by a shiny silver sticker inside the box. There were only 9000 copies of the game printed so get it while you still can! Do not wait untiI they are only available from eBay scalpers (ripoff merchants). I bought my copy from Zed LabZ and it arrived very quickly. List of official stockists of this great Super NES classic are linked below. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to add a brand new game to your collection.
Retro-Bit Cyber Citizen Shockman Zero Release Promo Page
Where to find SNES Release of Cyber Citizen Shockman Zero
