Gun Nac is a blast! On its intended difficulty it's quite easy, but it's a very fast paced experience with tons of weapons, upgrades, bombs, and enemies. If you're familiar with shmups I'd recommend setting the difficulty to 3 or 4 because otherwise first few levels can be completed way too easily with the third weapon: a seeking 8-way blaster.
I've tried difficulty 4 after beating the game and it felt more like a hardcore shmup. However, even then, the game doesn't make you completely helpless: upgrades and bombs are plentiful, and your ship can increase its HP by picking up "wings", basically options. Between levels you can buy more weapons, restock on bombs and so on. Even when dying, you'll usually climb back to full power fairly easily.
One thing I've enjoyed in particular is how sticking to one weapon seems to be a death sentense. Sure, I've enjoyed my seeker, until level 3 where I realized that it doesn't differentiate between targets and spends time around enemies that are still underwater. I've completely ditched the weapon on, I believe, level 4 where it would just run into barriers and be completely useless. Actually, on difficulty 2 before final two levels the biggest challenge was to retain a weapon I liked, because picking up a different number altered your gameplay way too much and led me to panic.
One cool thing about this game is that it has Performance Mode. Yep, a game from 1990 lets you choose between focusing on speed or sprites. I'd recommend switching to "sprites" because slowdown be damned one of the bosses on speed is just impossible to parse otherwise (I had to sit at the top of the screen and spam bombs of which I had a LOT)
It's a really good introductory shmup and I believe I've died only around 3-5 times on Difficulty 2, which can be set even lower, so if you feel like shooting aliens and collcting power-ups but are afraid of difficulty of many games, it's a no-brainer.
I've tried difficulty 4 after beating the game and it felt more like a hardcore shmup. However, even then, the game doesn't make you completely helpless: upgrades and bombs are plentiful, and your ship can increase its HP by picking up "wings", basically options. Between levels you can buy more weapons, restock on bombs and so on. Even when dying, you'll usually climb back to full power fairly easily.
One thing I've enjoyed in particular is how sticking to one weapon seems to be a death sentense. Sure, I've enjoyed my seeker, until level 3 where I realized that it doesn't differentiate between targets and spends time around enemies that are still underwater. I've completely ditched the weapon on, I believe, level 4 where it would just run into barriers and be completely useless. Actually, on difficulty 2 before final two levels the biggest challenge was to retain a weapon I liked, because picking up a different number altered your gameplay way too much and led me to panic.
One cool thing about this game is that it has Performance Mode. Yep, a game from 1990 lets you choose between focusing on speed or sprites. I'd recommend switching to "sprites" because slowdown be damned one of the bosses on speed is just impossible to parse otherwise (I had to sit at the top of the screen and spam bombs of which I had a LOT)
It's a really good introductory shmup and I believe I've died only around 3-5 times on Difficulty 2, which can be set even lower, so if you feel like shooting aliens and collcting power-ups but are afraid of difficulty of many games, it's a no-brainer.