Gyruss is the lovechild of Tempest and Galaga, rather using raster than vector graphics and pretty much everything from the Namco game, but with the advantage of a tube shooter not being able to get you cornered. It's good. Play it! And that could be everything you want to know about this early Konami shooter.
When I found the remote cabinet at an arcade I will revisit next month hopefully being able to beat my old highscore, I wasn't even aware I already knew Gyruss, but it turned out I did and at first I re-experienced a feeling of alienation. The reason simply is that Gyruss seems to play like a game made for a spinner, but uses a joystick. At least that's what I thought. It turns out using a lever was intended and you'll notice once you've learned the mechanics.
Spinners, or even potentiometers, like I think the controls for old seventies games like Pong would be named more accurately, whilst later games used different optical Spinners like Arkanoid and of course Tempest, ceased to exist for a reason I can't verify. Other than companies riding the Pong train for too long going broke that is and finally often innovative Atari leading into the big western crash of 83. It might have been a maintenance issue for arcade owners.
Video games changed over time and Gyruss creator Yoshiki Okamoto might have either been aiming at a more accessible joystick technology at japanese arcades for cabinet conversions you could do between a lot of then recent Konami machines or at possible home ports not everybody wanted to buy extra peripherals for.
I also couldn't research the exact technology used in japanese Gyruss cabinets. I know the American distributor Centuri used 8-way Monroe sticks that were almost entirely made of metal, using a circular gate and leaf switches. Though some prefer to swap the Time Pilot and Gyruss sticks with the grommet based Wico sticks found in later western Konami cabinets like Crime Fighters, The Simpsons or both Turtles games, a point is made this machine might not be supposed for stock square gate Sanwa JLFs most consider the arcade standard today.
I'm probably nerding out about something the majority of players won't even be bothered with, using control pads for one of the many available emulations like a Konami Arcade Collection. Chance is though, that quite a few users will abandon Gyruss quickly before even noticing why it might play weird on their d-pad and whilst the motions might work halfway decently on an analogue thumbstick once you've figured it out, it seems to be made with the circular gate arcade lever in mind and I'm going to pick up on that later.
So I was standing at the arcade puzzled, and I will actually have to find out what joystick they used, because I simply can't remember. I can recall the increasing fascination though, once I actually moved forward in the solar system towards earth. It's maybe a long way to Tipperary, but only a few warps to Uranus when you're sharp enough.
Bad pun? You might have actually seen a bootleg Easter egg of Gyruss in GTA San Andreas under the name of They Crawled From Uranus more likely than the arcade bootleg called Venus. It's also cloned as a mini game in Contra: Legacy of War and the soundtrack was remixed for Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix 2.
Anyway, I got a double shot, which is a lot more fun and with the bonus stages I soon managed to set a new highscore on an almost virgin table. They either reset it or nobody's actually caring to learn Gyruss, but I scored and just went on to play other machines to legitimate the flatrate price.
I think it's hard to fully grasp the evolution of arcade's golden age video games in retrospect and even though I started early as a kid in the eighties Gyruss looks aged to me as well. That doesn't mean it's bad though and you can see the genesis of shooters quite clearly. Space Invaders however hit a nerve in 1978, especially as Star Wars just had brought Sci-Fi back into theaters.
Some games just copied the rather static cosmic warfare and others had something to add like Namco did with Galaxian and Galaga. Keep in mind Shmups as we know today had just recently been pioneered with games like Scramble and Defender in 1981 and Xevious in 1982. There was still room for improvement on the Nostromo inspired two-way phalli and their intergalactic bukkake.
What especially the latter have in common is that they are rather simple in game mechanics, looking at them today, when they'd probably run on your microwave display. But at their time, they had to overcome technical difficulties to make them playable so flawlessly precise that you can't really argue it was you, the player who made the mistake in a merciless but clear ruleset, including limitations to few shots at once, so you better be a sniper or wait til your bullet will exit the screen to fire again.
When Konami asked Yoshiki Okamoto to do a driving game, he forced his team to do a shooter anyway and that was his first game Time Pilot that became successful, so the company, instead of firing him, asked for another one leading to the creation of Gyruss. It ended in Okamoto being dumped afterwards over a raise and so he went on to create 1942 and Gun.Smoke with Capcom. He then produced titles like Final Fight and Street Fighter II. Quite a career.
So let's take a short look at Time Pilot to understand Gyruss a little better. Time Pilot starts off as both a thematic anticipation of 1942 (until you meet flying saucers) and an art style that reminded me of the 1985 TwinBee, especially when you look at the clouds. The game plays a little differently though. Your plane is centered and whilst you're forced to scroll, you can move in any direction, putting it more in the Asteroids type of family, despite there you can thrust over the screen.
Yes, that's another spinner based game transferred to 8-way joystick play and it takes some time getting used to as well. The thing with Time Pilot is, whilst the movement might actually include some realism, especially the swirling around the enemy to strike in air to air combat, it just doesn't feel natural to me, because with the nose pointed outwards from the center it's hard for me to transfer this to an outwards circular motion on the stick, when my head wants the ship to follow straight inputs based on cardinal directions.
Yoshiki Okamoto felt he had accomplished what he wanted in shooters, but the fact in Gyruss your ship is fixed on an orbital circumference pointing towards the vanishing point in the center is like an inversion of Time Pilot to the advantage your movement of the lever towards the gate is reflected in the circular motion on screen this time.
It's hard to fully enjoy the discrete audio circuit stereo sound and Masahiro Inoue's interpretation of Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565", inspired from the 1980 hit rock arrangement "Toccata" by instrumentalist band Sky in a noisy arcade environment, but that's another plus of Gyruss and pavement for Konami's future strength in game soundtracks, so many steps ahead from the digital fart sounds early space shooters offered.
I couldn't care less why you have to reach Earth, but Gyruss is separated into warps between our solar system's planets and the stage counter goes up even after the set goal was achieved. It's just back to Neptune with an additional warp there and towards Earth again, so my log of completing an endless game is probably more representing the ending of a humongous session in a way beating the main objective to get this review posted in activities, because I think in other cases that doesn't happen.
Zoning into that one-point direction with stars coming at you to create the illusion of movement and dimension left me quite crossed eyed, but I enjoyed getting a lot further than before very much, even though I'm plenty of parsecs away from the world record. If you wrapped your head around the concept it's just as captivating as Galaga, because that's what it basically is.
Okamoto simply envisioned Gyruss as facing the problem of getting caught in the corners of Galaga by using the tube shooter concept of Tempest. So best think of it as Galaga folded to a cone; the straight bottom line of orientation bent around the screen to form a circle and the top becoming the vanishing point. Instead of moving left or right it becomes clockwise or counterclockwise, theoretically allowing you to spin infinitely one or the other way round.
Vectors might have been visionary for a while, but just like the movie Tron went obsolete quickly, a game like Tempest would have had to be improved with textures to stand the test of time. We can look at them with nostalgia spectacles on, but for 1983 the raster graphics used in Gyruss had been the way to go.
The enemy is swirling in formations, so it doesn't look like they're bound to the path like you are and they're a lot smaller when grouping in the back until they charge individually. You've got the luxury of three shots you can fire in quick triplets or aim more carefully to have a shot left before the others hit or leave the screen to refill your ammo.
You then have to swivel to any clock position required to erase the enemy interrupted by hostile fire and indestructible asteroids to dodge as well, leading to sheer excitement when wiggling back and forth on pure instinct to survive the assault. It's only half the fun without the double shot though, so you want the satellites to appear. Shoot the sunlike object in the middle to upgrade.
Just as Galaga of course Gyruss has bonus stages and you want to be in the correct 3, 6, 9 or 12 o'clock position to profit the most. And that's it. The Famicom Disk System/NES version might be called Gyruss, though it's actually not a port, but at least a 1.5 variant of the game adding new obstacles like stage bosses. You can't really compare it and other than the current situation I write this review, that version should be separated into an individual backloggd entry.
Whilst you might prefer that enhanced home version thinking of the original arcade Gyruss as redundant or repetitive, to me the game is an epitomic space shooting challenge just as Space Invaders, Galaxian or Galaga, but with its own twist. It's possible you've got to be a specific type of player to adopt a single game with the task to analyze, understand and beat it to a personal level of satisfaction.
If you are, why not try Gyruss if you haven't? Chance is you get just as hooked as I am, so wheel out your trusty arcade stick, try having a circular or at least octagonal gate and a ball top on it and enjoy!
When I found the remote cabinet at an arcade I will revisit next month hopefully being able to beat my old highscore, I wasn't even aware I already knew Gyruss, but it turned out I did and at first I re-experienced a feeling of alienation. The reason simply is that Gyruss seems to play like a game made for a spinner, but uses a joystick. At least that's what I thought. It turns out using a lever was intended and you'll notice once you've learned the mechanics.
Spinners, or even potentiometers, like I think the controls for old seventies games like Pong would be named more accurately, whilst later games used different optical Spinners like Arkanoid and of course Tempest, ceased to exist for a reason I can't verify. Other than companies riding the Pong train for too long going broke that is and finally often innovative Atari leading into the big western crash of 83. It might have been a maintenance issue for arcade owners.
Video games changed over time and Gyruss creator Yoshiki Okamoto might have either been aiming at a more accessible joystick technology at japanese arcades for cabinet conversions you could do between a lot of then recent Konami machines or at possible home ports not everybody wanted to buy extra peripherals for.
I also couldn't research the exact technology used in japanese Gyruss cabinets. I know the American distributor Centuri used 8-way Monroe sticks that were almost entirely made of metal, using a circular gate and leaf switches. Though some prefer to swap the Time Pilot and Gyruss sticks with the grommet based Wico sticks found in later western Konami cabinets like Crime Fighters, The Simpsons or both Turtles games, a point is made this machine might not be supposed for stock square gate Sanwa JLFs most consider the arcade standard today.
I'm probably nerding out about something the majority of players won't even be bothered with, using control pads for one of the many available emulations like a Konami Arcade Collection. Chance is though, that quite a few users will abandon Gyruss quickly before even noticing why it might play weird on their d-pad and whilst the motions might work halfway decently on an analogue thumbstick once you've figured it out, it seems to be made with the circular gate arcade lever in mind and I'm going to pick up on that later.
So I was standing at the arcade puzzled, and I will actually have to find out what joystick they used, because I simply can't remember. I can recall the increasing fascination though, once I actually moved forward in the solar system towards earth. It's maybe a long way to Tipperary, but only a few warps to Uranus when you're sharp enough.
Bad pun? You might have actually seen a bootleg Easter egg of Gyruss in GTA San Andreas under the name of They Crawled From Uranus more likely than the arcade bootleg called Venus. It's also cloned as a mini game in Contra: Legacy of War and the soundtrack was remixed for Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix 2.
Anyway, I got a double shot, which is a lot more fun and with the bonus stages I soon managed to set a new highscore on an almost virgin table. They either reset it or nobody's actually caring to learn Gyruss, but I scored and just went on to play other machines to legitimate the flatrate price.
I think it's hard to fully grasp the evolution of arcade's golden age video games in retrospect and even though I started early as a kid in the eighties Gyruss looks aged to me as well. That doesn't mean it's bad though and you can see the genesis of shooters quite clearly. Space Invaders however hit a nerve in 1978, especially as Star Wars just had brought Sci-Fi back into theaters.
Some games just copied the rather static cosmic warfare and others had something to add like Namco did with Galaxian and Galaga. Keep in mind Shmups as we know today had just recently been pioneered with games like Scramble and Defender in 1981 and Xevious in 1982. There was still room for improvement on the Nostromo inspired two-way phalli and their intergalactic bukkake.
What especially the latter have in common is that they are rather simple in game mechanics, looking at them today, when they'd probably run on your microwave display. But at their time, they had to overcome technical difficulties to make them playable so flawlessly precise that you can't really argue it was you, the player who made the mistake in a merciless but clear ruleset, including limitations to few shots at once, so you better be a sniper or wait til your bullet will exit the screen to fire again.
When Konami asked Yoshiki Okamoto to do a driving game, he forced his team to do a shooter anyway and that was his first game Time Pilot that became successful, so the company, instead of firing him, asked for another one leading to the creation of Gyruss. It ended in Okamoto being dumped afterwards over a raise and so he went on to create 1942 and Gun.Smoke with Capcom. He then produced titles like Final Fight and Street Fighter II. Quite a career.
So let's take a short look at Time Pilot to understand Gyruss a little better. Time Pilot starts off as both a thematic anticipation of 1942 (until you meet flying saucers) and an art style that reminded me of the 1985 TwinBee, especially when you look at the clouds. The game plays a little differently though. Your plane is centered and whilst you're forced to scroll, you can move in any direction, putting it more in the Asteroids type of family, despite there you can thrust over the screen.
Yes, that's another spinner based game transferred to 8-way joystick play and it takes some time getting used to as well. The thing with Time Pilot is, whilst the movement might actually include some realism, especially the swirling around the enemy to strike in air to air combat, it just doesn't feel natural to me, because with the nose pointed outwards from the center it's hard for me to transfer this to an outwards circular motion on the stick, when my head wants the ship to follow straight inputs based on cardinal directions.
Yoshiki Okamoto felt he had accomplished what he wanted in shooters, but the fact in Gyruss your ship is fixed on an orbital circumference pointing towards the vanishing point in the center is like an inversion of Time Pilot to the advantage your movement of the lever towards the gate is reflected in the circular motion on screen this time.
It's hard to fully enjoy the discrete audio circuit stereo sound and Masahiro Inoue's interpretation of Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565", inspired from the 1980 hit rock arrangement "Toccata" by instrumentalist band Sky in a noisy arcade environment, but that's another plus of Gyruss and pavement for Konami's future strength in game soundtracks, so many steps ahead from the digital fart sounds early space shooters offered.
I couldn't care less why you have to reach Earth, but Gyruss is separated into warps between our solar system's planets and the stage counter goes up even after the set goal was achieved. It's just back to Neptune with an additional warp there and towards Earth again, so my log of completing an endless game is probably more representing the ending of a humongous session in a way beating the main objective to get this review posted in activities, because I think in other cases that doesn't happen.
Zoning into that one-point direction with stars coming at you to create the illusion of movement and dimension left me quite crossed eyed, but I enjoyed getting a lot further than before very much, even though I'm plenty of parsecs away from the world record. If you wrapped your head around the concept it's just as captivating as Galaga, because that's what it basically is.
Okamoto simply envisioned Gyruss as facing the problem of getting caught in the corners of Galaga by using the tube shooter concept of Tempest. So best think of it as Galaga folded to a cone; the straight bottom line of orientation bent around the screen to form a circle and the top becoming the vanishing point. Instead of moving left or right it becomes clockwise or counterclockwise, theoretically allowing you to spin infinitely one or the other way round.
Vectors might have been visionary for a while, but just like the movie Tron went obsolete quickly, a game like Tempest would have had to be improved with textures to stand the test of time. We can look at them with nostalgia spectacles on, but for 1983 the raster graphics used in Gyruss had been the way to go.
The enemy is swirling in formations, so it doesn't look like they're bound to the path like you are and they're a lot smaller when grouping in the back until they charge individually. You've got the luxury of three shots you can fire in quick triplets or aim more carefully to have a shot left before the others hit or leave the screen to refill your ammo.
You then have to swivel to any clock position required to erase the enemy interrupted by hostile fire and indestructible asteroids to dodge as well, leading to sheer excitement when wiggling back and forth on pure instinct to survive the assault. It's only half the fun without the double shot though, so you want the satellites to appear. Shoot the sunlike object in the middle to upgrade.
Just as Galaga of course Gyruss has bonus stages and you want to be in the correct 3, 6, 9 or 12 o'clock position to profit the most. And that's it. The Famicom Disk System/NES version might be called Gyruss, though it's actually not a port, but at least a 1.5 variant of the game adding new obstacles like stage bosses. You can't really compare it and other than the current situation I write this review, that version should be separated into an individual backloggd entry.
Whilst you might prefer that enhanced home version thinking of the original arcade Gyruss as redundant or repetitive, to me the game is an epitomic space shooting challenge just as Space Invaders, Galaxian or Galaga, but with its own twist. It's possible you've got to be a specific type of player to adopt a single game with the task to analyze, understand and beat it to a personal level of satisfaction.
If you are, why not try Gyruss if you haven't? Chance is you get just as hooked as I am, so wheel out your trusty arcade stick, try having a circular or at least octagonal gate and a ball top on it and enjoy!