Gun Nac (1990)

Preliminary: This has everything I look for in a shmup: frequent power-ups, reasonable difficulty, good music, ability to shoot away most enemy projectiles etc. However, it feels quite innocuous. And the NES Look is quite meh at this point in my chronology project.

Welp, the first Area is cleared. I had fun. Not sure about all 8 levels tho. And I am playing the original Japanese version so I can't understand this Shop text lol. But at least the Shop music is great :-p

Yea it's unfortunate cuz the gameplay is great. Definitely the best NES shmup that I recall rn, and among the better shmups. But with a blah Look and only okay Sound, and me being quite tired of the shmup formula, I stopped near the end of Area 2. Part of me wants to give it a 3 star because of its good qualities. But I didn't play it very long, and the Look really is borderline bad. Maybe that's just 91 SNES era me talking, and not fair since this game technically came out 1990. I dunno. I suppose I'm just moving on.

Well, you know what. No. Honorary 3 star. Because I want to remember it as one of the more worthwhile shmups to return to.

Gun-Nac plays fast and fluid, with acceleration speed power ups and Weapon System Upgrades you can collect same numbers to Build a Bigger Blaster! Grab some cash and buy/booster up your Blaster at the end of each the 8 Areas. I like it. There's surprisingly, a minimal amount of lag or jitter or sprite strain if any exists at all.
Level's and bosses are very mechanical and don't offer that much variety, which is what holds the great gameplay back from being one of the best and fastest shooters on the NES.

I liked Weapon 3 Auto Homing.

A game where you fight killer carrots and mutated rabbits might sound strange, and indeed it is, but Gun-Nac is fast-paced action and non-stop fun. One of the things I love most about this game is for a shooter, a genre that can be cruel in how unfair it is to the player, this one is firm but fair. You never feel overwhelmed and with the wide variety of weapons available, you feel like you always have a chance.

The music is fantastic. I think honestly it's some of the best music on the NES.

The graphics for the NES are pretty solid. Also, for an NES game with a lot of stuff on the screen, I never encountered slowdown of any kind ever. It's quite impressive.

Gun-Nac is another one of those great NES games that few ever talk about. I highly recommend giving it a go if you love shooters, especially ones with a great sense of humor.

Platform:

NES version.

Graphics/Sound:

Graphic are very good considering NES limitations. And one can see this is where Tyrian drew some of its influences from. It's fun to see a cat, a rabbit mech, flying vegetables or attacking tree stumps or poker chips. Every area has its own theme, so graphics vary quite a bit throughout the game.

Gameplay:

It's compile, it's a classic vertical shooter, so the in-level gameplay is pretty much exactly what you would expect, shoot obstacles, dodge enemies, collect powerups. The powerup system is simple enough too, you can upgrade your ship once, and I think there was 8 levels of weapon upgrades, the higher levels only reachable when having the ship powerup. additionally there was collectible bombs of different kinds. Also notable is a shop system between levels where you can buy upgrades should you have lost some. You can also schedule bonus drops in the upcoming level.

Difficulty:

Shmups are notoriously some of the hardest games out there. Among the shooters I played the difficulty felt about mid range. At times extremely hard, other times I managed relatively well. I didn't feel that the difficulty was progressing strictly linear, but had some spikes here and there.

Conclusion:

It's a great shmup, probably one of the best on NES. Doesn't have much replay value once beaten because it's completely straighforward. Still liked the level design and style, and how it even fitted into the story.