Gaiares

released on Dec 26, 1990

Gaiares is a horizontal-scrolling shoot em' up released for the Sega Megadrive/Genesis in 1990. The game bears a striking mechanic similarity to that of the R-Type series, alongside those of other well-known Shoot Em' Ups such as Gradius and Thunder Force, all of which it was trying to compete against.


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You are too weak.
Enemies take forever to beat.
You can steal enemy attacks; they're all useless.
The game is very slow; no, it doesn't suffer from slowdowns; it just has a lot of sections where absolutely nothing happens.
There's no instant respawn; you die, and you get to the last checkpoint.
There's no way to earn extra lives if you die; it starts all the way from the start.
Do you think this review feels artificially generated? Wait until you see the enemy's patterns.



Could have been a spectacular exclusive shoot'em up if it wasn't for the increased difficulty. Unique ability grabbing mechanic allows you take use of enemies weapons. Changing your ship move speed frequently is essential for defeating bosses and navigating certain stages, that's why it is mapped to button A (instead of select for example). An overall difficult shooter, but in a totally different way where reflex and bullet recognition isn't the factor but recognizing deceptively placed pattern order and navigating though a AI that predicts your last ship placement is. Things are not as they seem, before you progress the scrolling screen wait for a traps to be released on several stages.

An HCG101 article describes it the best "... enemy locations and firing patterns are not fixed but based upon player position, meaning the game constantly adapts and is almost procedurally generated. You can’t simply memorize their locations, you need to be ready to adapt with them. In conjunction with this, speed changing is essential."

Horizontal shooter. You have a main shot, can alternate between three speeds, and you can fire the satellite weapon that moves and shoots with with you to have it latch onto enemies and absorb and power their shot type to switch you weapon. Interesting and constantly altering stage backgrounds, layouts, and obstacles along with many stages having a moment where taking a high or low path can put you on a path with different enemies or hazards. Boss fights and hazards like black holes or traps in the environment make this one of the few shooters I've played with the ability to switch between movement speeds levels where it is absolutely necessary to use the faster speed at times rather than just sticking to a preference. Good music and enemy design. Kind of introduces you to some enemies by having a more simple fight with a mini boss type before bringing them back with an extra attack or aided by other enemies.

Ends with a dull boss gauntlet, some of the better weapons I found just aren't that fun to actually use as a main shot type. If you die you start at a checkpoint passed in the stage, this can help to regain a more powerful weapon by draining enemies but but you lose one of the most powerful upgrades you can find which as a shield that can often be found at the start of a stage that can take a few hits for you. Losing all of your lives allows you to use continues that will also reset you at the stage checkpoint. A lot of the more common enemy types are really just their so you can drain a weapon type, it's the stage hazards, mini bosses, and some of the rarer and more powerful enemy types you might fight alone or two at a time that are the real threat.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1597461696784011264

I accidentally flimflammed myself into buying a reproduction of this off Retrobit/LRG a bit ago, I preordered last year when I still had some inkling of hope of getting more physical Genesis/MD games, until I just gave up and used my Everdrive Pro that I initially got to play SCD games with less moving parts involved.

"Guy r' Us", "Gary's", or whatever you want to pronounce it has it all with it's presentation. It's got all the parallax scrolling, all the giant boss sprites, all the graphical nonsense for a 1990 release to make the old school tech nerds squee like comedy relief anime schoolgirls. Even if I begrudgingly found a bunch of the backgrounds distracting on my CRT setup, I still found them pleasing. It's why it's even more disappointing that I find the gameplay itself excruciating and downright torturous at times. It's really not a good look when I find Super R-Type's philosophy of sending you all the way back after dying to it's stage boss to be less annoying than the checkpoint system in Gaiares. They exist, but they send you back more than far enough for it to strain your emotional state and the ruthless enemy patterns really don't compliment this system at all. There's plenty of times where I found myself getting shut off from all escape from the enemy patterns with my only choice being to either die, or hope I had a shield on to absorb the hit. There's difficulty and then there's just punishment that drains my will to play longer, and that's saying a lot from the NES Ninja Gaiden apologist.

I need to give a special shoutout to some of the mini-boss design that's basically "shoot bullets, then suddenly bumrush forward with zero warning", a tactic straight out of Gadget Twins, which is an absolutely scathing insult I can throw at Gaiares. If I can find a way to compare your shmup to Gadget Twins then you've failed, I'm sorry. Go to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect 200 didgeridoos. Go to your room and stay there. And of course, what else could the final stage be, but a boss rush? I let Gradius get away with that shit due to actually using different bosses, but come on, do I really need to fight the robo-bitch with the sword and shield again when I just killed her in the last stage? She's awful.

I'm convinced that so-called "Boomer Gamers", aka the gamers that are somehow older than me that played these games just fell in love with the cool grim reaper boss in stage 3, and jerked it to the naked anime lady on the JP cover. It's a shame. When I personally see Gaiares I don't see a cult classic or sleeper hit from the 16-bit generation, instead I see wasted potential.

Hate to echo the sentiments of other regular backloggers here, but I agree with them. "Queen Zz Badnasty" is probably the best thing from this game.

Gaiares is one of the most difficult games that I've ever beaten. I've never felt as great beating a game as I did when I finally beat this monster. Anyway, this is a phenomenal Shoot 'Em Up for the Genesis with some of the best music from its time, which kept me playing a lot of the time. The unique power-up system is really cool, and the game is generally just really fun to play. Every time I died, I was eager to try again, which is the mark of a great game. The bosses are great and have awesome designs, and there's just so much to love here. If you like difficult retro games, this'll be right up your alley. It's much more than an R-Type clone, which is what I assumed it to be when I first popped it into my Genesis. The only major gripe I have with the game is that the last couple levels feel lazy, and the bosses in them are pretty weak compared to the rest. Besides that, everything's good here.