It feels so strange to call a game like this a "poorly-aged product of its time", and I don't directly mean in what lessons it learned from NES games. Dark Void Zero is an at-best serviceable 2D action 8-bit throwback at a time when they were underrepresented and all the rage, released for $5 on a platform that DESPERATELY needed any sort of noteworthy games (you know something's up when a Shantae game is your "killer app").

The game is aesthetically unremarkable (the soundtrack is...good...i guess?), has somecute ideas like 8-way shots, multiple weapons, and the rocket, and has a boring boss that is repeated for every level. Enemy bullets phase through walls, but of course yours don't (besides that rare and awful teleport laser); also for some reason aiming is rather finicky and i often had difficulty landing shots on enemies due to small hitboxes. The game has a lot of vibes of what made a game "good" in 2010, with a ton of meaningless collectables and levels that are big and long, but honestly pretty dull and unmemorable, especially when there are only three levels for the whole game. Also for some reason the game does not replenish your lives when you save or beat a stage? This is actually pretty annoying since this made me decide to grind Stage 2 until i could beat it deathless, only to realize that the devs FILLED Stage 3 with health items and 1-ups, perhaps to make up for this oopsie

Downloadable 8-bit styled games are a dime-a-dozen in this day and age, with games like Prison City having disturbingly low player counts despite being legitimately good. Dark Void Zero was very much a game in the right place at the right time that its job and has long since left our collective memories. No one remembers it anymore, and honestly, it's not worth looking back on lol