Gun Nac has climbed the leaderboards and has become my favorite Sh'mup. I only have played a scattering of them all mostly this year, its a genre I've barely touched.

Like Twinbee it has the satisfying mechanic of shooting certain items on screen to turn them into powerups which is fun. Tons of weapons and bombs to choose from, the choice of which is given by timing the roulette of corresponding numbers. Fly into them before they leave the screen, all while maneuvering between a sea of bullets.

Not too many though, the game has a pretty fair difficulty curve with just enough going on, never overwhelming. A shop is available between every level so you can stock up on any weapon or bomb type you want or even upgrade a weapon of your choosing to a higher level. Not all of the upgrades or weapons themselves even are made equal, but they do fit different playstyles. The variety is much appreciated even if frustration is sometimes caused by spending your quite limited cash on an upgrade you don't end up liking. Without a manual trial and error is required. The silver lining to this still meaningful flaw is that this does require a kind of experimentation that leads to you becoming a better player. Learning the kinds of gameplay styles are on offer and what enemies/stages are easier to blast with.

The wacky presentation is super charming while still being consistently "Gun Nac" in an iconic and memorable way. The music does get repetitive, however while it lasts you'll be jamming to some quite fitting tunes. The game is very childishly Japanese in a very comforting, retro way. Like the inverse of the "americana" look you get in a game like Chip's Challenge. Check out that review for more on that: https://www.backloggd.com/u/altron60/review/630327/

The title is certainly basic when compared to today's standard and a level select would certainly be nice. For that and a better way to curve the mildly frustrating difficulty towards the latter half of the game, emulating the title is pretty helpful. Even without save states however the final difficulty bump is only a bit of an annoyance thanks to unlimited continues and the game's arcade nature. It appears that if you get quite good you could horde cash, lives and bombs quite viably for the late game if need be.

This game is so infuriating. I just can't force myself to memorize bat placements for such an average experience. Considering the PC platformer landscape of the time, the large detailed sprites and widescreen were probably a draw but visually its actually much blander than the competition. With hindsight the visual flourishes really seem to be a silk screen or diversion from the simple and plainly colored environments. Jill of The Jungle comes to mind as a title with plenty of traditional jungle environments like Realms but shows how much color and artistic vision can bring a graphically basic game to life. The various powerups and dual character element could help liven the gameplay up later on but for me it just expects too much trail and error for how little interesting it shows (or has to show).

I didn't give this one a lot of time but with how simple it is and how much better other similar games are, I don't know if I really need to in order to understand what Chaos was to offer. I recommend grabbing a list of cheats before playing this one if you end up doing so, which I have a feeling could help squeeze a bit more blood from the stone if your keen on giving Realms of Chaos a look.