Zool

The game is a platform game, relying on smooth, fast-moving gameplay. Its protagonist is Zool, a gremlin "Ninja of the Nth Dimension" who is forced to land on Earth; in order to gain ninja ranking, he has to pass seven lands, beating a boss at the end of each of them. The game contains a number of embedded minigames, including several arcade games, a scrolling space shooter and a game accessible only by making Zool play a certain tune on an in-game piano or finding certain invisible warp points.

George Allan came up with the idea of Zool as he was criticized that his previous game Switchblade II had a lack of enemies. In development, Zool could cast spells to get him out of trouble by collecting potions. For example, Zool could escape from pits with high jump spells and cast a shadow spell to make a clone of him that follows his actions (thus doubling the fire power). In the final version, the spells were replaced with collectible power-ups.

The very early name for the project was Pootz. The soundtrack by Patrick Phelan overlaps with the Lotus 3 soundtrack and inspired several modern electro/techno remixes. Candy company Chupa Chups sponsored the game's production, with the company logo featured prominently within the game. The game was heavily hyped upon its initial release, including being bundled with the then-newly launched Amiga 1200, although not the AGA version with enhanced graphics which followed later.

The original Amiga game was released to critical acclaim,

receiving scores of 97%, 96%, 95% from Amiga Computing, Amiga Action and Amiga Format respectively. Electronic Gaming Monthly claimed that Zool sports great graphics, but the character moves too fast with little control. GamePro gave a positive review of the Game Gear version, praising its "great graphics and sound abound", as well as its "crisp" gameplay. Power Unlimited gave the Game Boy version a score of 80% and the Sega Genesis version a score of 81%. The magazine was generally positive to the game, despite noting that the game did not add anything new in the platforming genre.

Two children's novels based on the games, entitled Cool Zool and Zool Rules, were released in February 1995. They were written by Stan Nicholls and Ian Edginton and published by Boxtree. The Game Maker's Companion (APress, 2010), a book on hobbyist game development, contains step-by-step instructions on how to remake the original Zool game using GameMaker Studio.

A remastered version of the console version of Zool, titled Zool Redimensioned, was developed by Sumo Digital Academy and published by publisher Secret Mode for Windows and PlayStation 4 on August 18, 2021. The remaster features modes for both modern and classic-style difficulty, challenges for each level, and a multiplayer party mode, as well as an emulated version of the Genesis version of the game. For legal reasons, references to the original game's Chupa Chups sponsorship have been removed.