Game:

Gemini Wing (1987)

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"Gemini Wing" is an interesting vertical-scrolling shooting game originally developed by Tecmo in 1987 for Japanese Arcades that was ported to a variety of different platforms throughout the late 80s to early 90s, with its most recent release being on the PS4 and Nintendo Switch as part of the "Arcade Archives" collection. That said, this is an excellent port of a great Arcade game by System Sacom and easily one of the best versions of the game to this day (if not THE best)! It is also a rather challenging game!

As a late 80s Arcade game, Gemini Wing really doesn't appear to have much of a plot. We can assume that it features your staple fighter pilots boarding souped-up aircrafts (Gunships) to save the planet from a plague of alien menaces (mostly insectoids) led by the Insect Queen, but I couldn't tell you much beyond that. The player flies and shoots enemies while avoiding projectiles and obstacles in a mostly orthodox fashion, but the catch is that the player can acquire or steal a variety of power-ups (Gunballs) from enemies known as "Bringers". These power-ups will trail behind your ship like a tail and are finite but powerful and are consumed in the order they are acquired. You can also manipulate the strategy of the game by hitting bringers with a Gunball to change the weapon type in an attempt to accumulate a particular type of power-up you like or need.

The game is comprised of seven main stages each with cool scenery and plenty of bugs to shoot. I like that the game has a decent variety of enemies, cool boss encounters and a larger than normal soundtrack; in addition to the stages having different music, each boss also has their own theme which helps set the tone and personality of each one. Gunball types range from weaker large AOF spreads to 360-degree blasts to handle foes from every direction, a powerful flamethrower which swings back and forth, a simple three-way shot, homing missiles, bonus point extras, speed modifiers and even one-ups. Your ship has a moderately fast rapid-fire function, but you can shoot a little faster if you're good at button mashing, which is also a nice touch. You can play alone or with a friend.

While it should go without saying that most of the staff members for this game went on to work on other Tecmo games, there are two notable staff members. The first is Hideo Yoshizawa. While he did the screenplay for this game as one of his first works, he would later go on to be fairly prolific and spend most of his time working with Namco with such titles under his belt as "Klonoa and Klonoa 2", "Ridge Racer Type 4", "Mr. Driller", "Ace Combat 3" and more. The other is Mikio Saitou, who did the sound for this game. Mikio would later work almost exclusively for Konami by the early-mid 90s and is best known for working on "Detana!! TwinBee", "Castlevania: Rondo of Blood", "Tokimeki Memorial", various iterations of "Dance Dance Revolution" and other titles. While it goes without saying, Gemini Wing is not a bad game at all and those two went on to even greener pastures.

This is a video of the game in action. Enjoy.

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