In my previous reviews for Blade Master and Undercover Cops I've already mentioned developers moving on from Irem to form Nazca and unleashing Metal Slug. What I held back so far was they actually did Geo Storm with Irem before and that game pretty much feels like a blueprint for the now classic Run and Gun series.
In the west though, Geo Storm was renamed Gunforce II and it was about time for me to find out if that actually means the original Gunforce is a spiritual predecessor of the Metal Slug series as well.
It is… kind of? See, the thing with this 1991 side scrolling shooter is that it's not only less comical like Geo Storm is compared to Metal Slug. Gunforce is in general more dull, which of course in a way feels natural, looking at games in retrospect.
I must admit, I'm not the world's biggest Run and Gun aficionado. I sometimes challenge myself with those hard games like Contra or Metal Slug, but I would have to put more effort in to call myself reasonably good. So without free play and continues allowed on this machine, I would have gotten nowhere.
What I can talk about after checking out Gunforce though is in most parts it did feel hard but not unfair, unlike my criticism on above mentioned Irem Beat'em'ups. With some training, especially proper handling of the diagonal shots, I might manage quite a lot of the parts until the enemies really swarm you.
That was also one of my problems with the final boss that has an increasing number of gnomes taking your attention, so you can't fire enough rounds at the actual target. For the last phases I found a sweet spot where I only had to evade occasional firing, so there might be a pattern to get through all of this.
Does this encourage me to pick up on that and truly beat the game like an honest warrior? Not quite. And that's not even because Gunforce had wacky controls, I got pretty good at them over time. But one detail I hated for instance was when the screen scrolls up, it doesn't count if there is a platform below. A gap on the recent screen means instant death.
But the major bummer is that it's so barebone in comparison. It's got the weapon upgrade system and you can use different vehicles, even tanks and a helicopter. Maybe that was more fun in 1991, but Gunforce didn't really entertain me enough with it.
I can live without the hostages, because I'm not expecting Gunforce to be identical to later games in that lineage, but the enemy and level design don't offer much variation and the bosses are very pragmatic, not to say uninspired.
Maybe at a point when you're really looking for another genre title to 1cc, then Gunforce might come up, but other than that, I don't see much sense in putting coins into this cabinet for more than historical curiosity, which is maybe why it's not very prominent in the wild anymore.
The sad truth is, that Gunforce might not even be bad, but with the exciting Geo Storm or Metal Slug available for example, there's just no real demand for it. If your arcade has it, and you're done with their eclectic selection so far, yeah, then go for Gunforce, because we always need new old games to play. Same probably goes for the announced five volumes of an Irem Collection.
In the west though, Geo Storm was renamed Gunforce II and it was about time for me to find out if that actually means the original Gunforce is a spiritual predecessor of the Metal Slug series as well.
It is… kind of? See, the thing with this 1991 side scrolling shooter is that it's not only less comical like Geo Storm is compared to Metal Slug. Gunforce is in general more dull, which of course in a way feels natural, looking at games in retrospect.
I must admit, I'm not the world's biggest Run and Gun aficionado. I sometimes challenge myself with those hard games like Contra or Metal Slug, but I would have to put more effort in to call myself reasonably good. So without free play and continues allowed on this machine, I would have gotten nowhere.
What I can talk about after checking out Gunforce though is in most parts it did feel hard but not unfair, unlike my criticism on above mentioned Irem Beat'em'ups. With some training, especially proper handling of the diagonal shots, I might manage quite a lot of the parts until the enemies really swarm you.
That was also one of my problems with the final boss that has an increasing number of gnomes taking your attention, so you can't fire enough rounds at the actual target. For the last phases I found a sweet spot where I only had to evade occasional firing, so there might be a pattern to get through all of this.
Does this encourage me to pick up on that and truly beat the game like an honest warrior? Not quite. And that's not even because Gunforce had wacky controls, I got pretty good at them over time. But one detail I hated for instance was when the screen scrolls up, it doesn't count if there is a platform below. A gap on the recent screen means instant death.
But the major bummer is that it's so barebone in comparison. It's got the weapon upgrade system and you can use different vehicles, even tanks and a helicopter. Maybe that was more fun in 1991, but Gunforce didn't really entertain me enough with it.
I can live without the hostages, because I'm not expecting Gunforce to be identical to later games in that lineage, but the enemy and level design don't offer much variation and the bosses are very pragmatic, not to say uninspired.
Maybe at a point when you're really looking for another genre title to 1cc, then Gunforce might come up, but other than that, I don't see much sense in putting coins into this cabinet for more than historical curiosity, which is maybe why it's not very prominent in the wild anymore.
The sad truth is, that Gunforce might not even be bad, but with the exciting Geo Storm or Metal Slug available for example, there's just no real demand for it. If your arcade has it, and you're done with their eclectic selection so far, yeah, then go for Gunforce, because we always need new old games to play. Same probably goes for the announced five volumes of an Irem Collection.