This Week In Retro: Zoo Keeper (1983) (Patreon)

May 1983: Zeke no Densetsu

by Diamond Feit

I think it's fair to describe the relationship between human beings and the remainder of the animal kingdom as "complicated." As Chief Seattle possibly once said, all living things are connected to one another on a fundamental level, and yet as a society we have collectively made many profound decisions that directly impact the lives of thousands of species.

I wouldn't consider myself an environmentalist or even a vegetarian, but as I get older I feel more empathy for animals. In my youth I often viewed wandering birds or mammals as pests, shooing away countless pigeons who had just as much right to walk the streets of New York City as I did. Today, I try to give the animals I meet as much respect as I can, for their needs and my own are more similar than dissimilar.

As my perception of animals changes over time, my desire to forge new bonds with them grows stronger, and I wish more video games offered me opportunities to do so. All too frequently, we cast animals as low-level threats in fiction, pitting heroes against ferocious four-legged foes as a warmup to larger, greater enemies. Occasionally we create worlds where we get to play as an animal in the wild, but even then, other creatures typically serve as the antagonists.

If video games can offer me power fantasies and visions of alternate realities, why not show me a glimpse of a blissfully egalitarian Earth where humans and animals cooperate? If that's too far-fetched, at least allow me the chance to live peacefully amongst them without any risk of either party eating the other. And no, I don't believe Nintendo's Animal Crossing franchise counts; those villagers may resemble beasts, but they experience fundamentally human concepts like shame and debt.

I've got interspecies interactions on my mind because 40 years ago, an arcade game dared to dramatize one common type of work associated with animal care. Taito's Zoo Keeper may not present the profession in the most realistic fashion, but it made for an entertaining, non-violent encounter.

Zoo Keeper, at first glance, defies categorization. There are visual and gameplay similarities to mega-hits Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, but not enough of either to outright describe this game as a fusion of those games—or any other games, for that matter. Certainly the overalls-wearing hero named Zeke bears a strong resemblance to Mario, and the primary verb of Zoo Keeper is, as in Nintendo's breakthrough platformer, jumping. Zoo Keeper's lone powerup likewise makes Zeke nigh-invincible, allowing him to run through hazards with ease, but it doesn't empower him to destroy anything. Rather, Zeke's tool of choice is a net as he seeks to restrain animals, not harm them.

Zoo Keeper charges players with a Sisyphian task to corral wild animals who insist on taking unauthorized excursions from their cage. A wall surrounds them and Zeke reinforces said wall merely by running along its edge as the animals within try their best to break through. Once outside the perimeter, animals do not flee but instead roam free on the same plane as Zeke; fortunately, his leaping prowess far exceeds natural limitations, enabling him to clear dozens of beasts in a single bound.

With no weapons and no goalpost—Zeke may only run around the wall, never straying from his set path—Zoo Keeper players seek to either contain or evade the animals until a burning fuse runs out, bringing each round to an end. Players receive points for every animal still inside the wall when the timer expires; using a net to recapture runaways in the waning seconds stands as the most reliable way to rack up big scores. Periodic food and drink drops, if nabbed quickly enough, result in even more points.

Yet for players willing to make Zeke into a daredevil, Zoo Keeper offers its largest rewards. Successfully jumping over strays nets a bonus based on how many critters Zeke clears before landing on the ground. However, given his extreme horizontal reach and the game's exponential scoring scale, players can earn millions of points with a single well-timed leap. In a major oversight, the in-game score display only has enough space for six digits; players must wait until the game ends to see how well they truly did.

Zoo Keeper held great sway over me in my youth, mostly due to its audio and visual distinctiveness. Even as it borrowed ideas from other games, it still maintains a unique look and sound all its own. Zoo Keeper lacks any music during gameplay but blasts a steady stream of sound effects as Zeke runs, jumps, and tames animals. The score tally at the end of each round plays a brash, cartoonish noise for each safely-contained animal, a cacophony that enunciates the player's success.

Zoo Keeper also stood out at the time as a much fairer challenge than its contemporaries, increasing its appeal to a young child such as myself who lacked the skill to survive more than a minute or two in most other arcade games. I had no trouble understanding the simple controls, Zeke's lightning-fast ability to build a wall helped keep the animals at bay, and his generous jump strength made dodging threats a safe and lucrative strategy. Even as later rounds start with no wall in place, practically inviting the caged creatures to overwhelm Zeke, by that point an experienced player should have enough practice to stay mobile and survive.

While exact records from this era are hard to come by, evidence suggests Zoo Keeper did quite well for itself. Programmer John Morgan wrote in 2001 that the cabinet "was about the number three game of the year nationwide" but acknowledged that, given the state of the market in the United States in 1983, "the game only sold a fraction of what it would have if completed just a year earlier." Whether due to the crash or corporate vagary, a 1984 port to the Atari 2600 never came to market.

In fact, Zoo Keeper never appeared on any other platform in the 80s or 90s, making its console debut in 2005 as part of the Taito Legends retro compilation for PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Windows. This belated return to relevance meant that I forgot about the game for decades, only to rediscover it through emulation in the early 00s at which point the memories came flooding back. Funnily enough, a Japanese Flash-based match-3 game debuted in 2002 using the name Zoo Keeper; this newer release would make the leap to consoles before the 1983 game did.

I find it strange that four decades of technological evolution hasn’t resulted in a high-resolution photo-realistic re-interpretation of the zookeeping vocation. In looking up "video game zoos" for this column, I found plenty of rigorous business sims that ask players to design and run a zoo, but none seem able to immerse the player in a zoo. I'm not interested in the economic or architectural aspects of building animal shelters, I just want to leave my humanity behind and get in touch with nature.

My ideal digital zoo would take a cue from virtual pinball tables and offer players an experience that has no real-life analogue. I don’t want to move an avatar past cages and stare at animals behind bars, I want to wrestle bears, swim with tigers, and fly around the biggest aviary polygons can provide. Give me a consequence-free all-you-can-pet zoo where no beast must make do with cramped, dull living spaces; if the Pokémon series can let players snuggle make-believe monsters, surely I can ride a giraffe across the back of a blue whale all while hugging an adorable red panda.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts about video games, films, and dessert.