Zero Wing
Defend the galaxy from vicious space pirates! Seize your foes and fire them back at their allies for devastating destruction in Toaplan's legendary horizontal arcade shooter, now on PC with all-new features and quality-of-life bonuses!
Your like matters. Every heart nudges this game's GamingPickz Score and where it ranks (a small 5% of the score), so the lists get better for everyone.
- Released
- 1989
- Developer
- Toaplan
- Platforms
- 2 systems
- Critics
- Not scored
- Steam Deck
- verified
- Download
- 0.01 GB
What is Zero Wing?
Defend the galaxy from vicious space pirates! Seize your foes and fire them back at their allies for devastating destruction in Toaplan's legendary horizontal arcade shooter, now on PC with all-new features and quality-of-life bonuses!
Description as published by the developer on its own store page, read 30 August 2026. It is marketing copy, not our assessment.
The record
| First released | 1 July 1989 |
|---|---|
| Developer | Toaplan |
| Publisher | Kaga Create, Toaplan, Taito |
| Platforms | Arcade, Steam Deck |
| Genres | First-Person Shooter |
| Languages | 1 supported |
Source. Catalogue facts from Wikidata Q191965, seeded 30 August 2026. Store data from Steam, read 30 August 2026.
How was Zero Wing received?
Method. Player figures are Steam's own totals for the PC version, read 30 August 2026. The Metacritic score is the one Steam publishes on its store page and can lag the site itself. Neither is our opinion. We have not published a review of this game.
Accessibility
Seeing
None declared
Hearing
None declared
Input
- Full controller support
Difficulty
None declared
Method. Features the publisher declared on its own store page. A declaration is a floor, not a review.
What does it support?
| Capability | Support |
|---|---|
| Controller | full support |
| Cloud saves | Yes |
| Cross-platform play | No |
| Mod support | No official workshop |
| Online play | Single-player only |
| In-game purchases | No |
| Steam Deck | verified |
| Download size | 0.01 GB |
| Add-on content | None listed |
| Age gate | None |
Method. Read from the publisher's Steam listing on 30 August 2026. Describes the PC version. Console versions differ.
What does it cost?
Steam price in US dollars, read 30 August 2026. Prices move hourly and vary by region. Check the current price.
Is Zero Wing worth it?
88% of 85 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Very Positive. It costs $7.99 on Steam.
That is the data, not a verdict for sale: whether it is worth it depends on the price you pay and what you want. We have not published our own review of this game.
How long is Zero Wing? How long to beat it
Total play time for Zero Wing is about 4.6 hours to do everything, and around 1.2 hours to reach the end of the main story. These are player-submitted times from HowLongToBeat, not our own, shown with the number of players behind each.
| How you play | Hours | Players logged |
|---|---|---|
| Just the main story: straight through the critical path | 1.2h | 41 |
| Main + the extras: story plus the side content most people do | 1.7h | 1 |
| Completionist: everything: 100% the game | 4.6h | 3 |
At its current price of $7.99, beating the main story works out to about $6.66 per hour. That is the price divided by the hours, a value read and not a verdict: a longer game costs less per hour, which is not the same as being the better game.
Source: HowLongToBeat community submissions, read 2026-10-19.
Zero Wing system requirements
The minimum requirements from Zero Wing's Steam page. These are what it takes to launch and be playable, not to run at high settings.
| Memory | 0.3 GB RAM (other games at this level) |
|---|---|
| Storage | 0.01 GB (more games this size) |
| System | 64-bit OS required |
Where Zero Wing sits on the grid
Compare the whole catalogueZero Wing plotted on the axes the GamingPickz Score is built from, on the full 0 to 100 scale so its position is its real one. Change either axis to see where it lands.
1 games have both
Players. The share of Steam reviews marked positive, pulled toward the catalogue average in proportion to how few reviews stand behind it. A game with 200 reviews moves a long way toward the average; one with 200,000 barely moves at all. Without this a title sitting at 100 percent on nine reviews outranks Half-Life 2 at 98 percent on 278,000.
Popularity. A blend of two things that are not the same. Audience is how many people wrote a Steam review, which is a floor on how many played it. Reach is how many language editions of Wikipedia document the game, which is cultural footprint rather than sales. A game can score high on one and low on the other: a huge free-to-play title has audience without reach, and a landmark console exclusive has reach without a Steam audience at all. Where both exist they are averaged; where only one does, that one carries it.
- PC
Every point links to that game's entry. The value map and the reception map are fixed views of the same data.
How positions are decided
No paid placement, no favouritism, live third-party data
- Placed by the published method, not by us. Every coordinate is computed from the axis definitions and weights printed on this site. Nobody moves a point. See the axes.
- Nothing here is paid for. No sponsored placements, no promoted slots, no arrangement of any kind affects a position. If that ever changes it will be labelled and sit outside the ranking.
- No favouritism, including our own. The 16 games we have written full reviews of are scored by exactly the same formula as the other 1,510, from the same third-party inputs, and they land where it puts them. Our own opinion of a game does not enter its coordinates.
- A position is not an endorsement. It says how a game was received and what it costs, not that we recommend it. Where we do recommend something, it carries a written review with a name on it.
- Fetched from live third-party data. Player sentiment from Steam, critic aggregates as published on store pages, prices checked hourly, attention from Wikipedia. Each figure carries its source and the date it was read, and we do not adjust any of them.
Zero Wing price & deals: is it on sale?
We have one reading so far: $7.99 on 30 August 2026. Prices are checked daily from here, and this becomes a chart once there is more than one point to join. A single observation is a price, not a history.
Latest Zero Wing updates & patch notes
Pulled from Zero Wing's own Steam feed on 5 September 2026. Posts marked as from the studio were written by the developer; the rest are articles Steam syndicated from elsewhere. Every one links to its source.
What readers say about Zero Wing
Reviews written by people who have played it. These are separate from the GamingPickz Score and are never averaged into it: that score comes from thousands of Steam reviews with a sample-size correction, and a handful of unverified ratings would distort it rather than improve it.
Loading reviews…
Did it run on your PC?
Tell other players how it ran on your machine. One tap, from your saved PC if you have one.
Where Zero Wing appears
The ranked lists and finder pages Zero Wing qualifies for, from its own genre and platform to what it takes to run.
Get the weekly rundown
One email a week: what moved in the rankings, what launched, and what dropped in price. No more than that, and unsubscribing takes one click.
We send the weekly email and nothing else. Your address is never sold, shared or used to build a profile, and it is not readable by anyone visiting this site. See our privacy policy.
Games like Zero Wing
24 games overlap with Zero Wing on the tags Steam players applied to it, on genre, and on theme. The closest are Ikaruga, Distant Space and Risk of Rain Returns.
Common questions about Zero Wing
What platforms is Zero Wing on?
Zero Wing is available on Arcade, Steam Deck. It first released in 1989.
How much does Zero Wing cost?
$7.99 on Steam in the United States, read on 30 August 2026. Prices move often and vary by region, so check the store before buying.
Do players recommend Zero Wing?
88% of 85 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Very Positive. That is players rating it, not our review. We have not published a review of this game.
Does Zero Wing work on Steam Deck?
Valve rates Zero Wing as verified on the Steam Deck, from its own testing. That means it works out of the box with no configuration.
How big is the Zero Wing download?
0.01 GB on PC, from the storage requirement on its Steam listing. Console versions differ.
Who made Zero Wing?
Zero Wing was developed by Toaplan and published by Kaga Create, Toaplan, Taito.
Is Zero Wing worth it in 2026?
88% of 85 Steam reviews are positive (Very Positive), and it is $7.99 on steam. That is the strongest signal we hold; "worth it" depends on the price you pay and what you want, so weigh the sentiment against the current price above.
Is Zero Wing on sale?
Not at the moment. Zero Wing is at its $7.99 list price on Steam, read on 30 August 2026. It has been cheaper before; the price history above shows when.
What are the system requirements for Zero Wing?
At minimum, Zero Wing needs 0.3 GB RAM, 0.01 GB of storage, from its Steam listing. That is what it takes to launch and be playable, not to run at high settings. Check it against your own PC on the can-I-run page.
How long does it take to beat Zero Wing?
about 1.2 hours for the main story, 1.7 hours with the main extras, 4.6 hours to complete everything, from HowLongToBeat's player-submitted times. These are community medians, so your own run may be shorter or longer.