Gun-Nac (Nes) Playthrough / When ordinary inanimate objects go berserk.... literally !
8Gun-Nac (1990) by Compile is a great example of a successful, if not the best vertical shooter for the system. The thing is, I don't have much experience with the genre, as it's not my bag. But in all my years of exposure to Nes games, I've never experienced a better vertical shmup on the system. The game is really very dynamic, due to the constant advance of every wave of enemies or terrain barriers. I know that this is the domain of these games, but here it just seems all smoother. There aren't as many slowdowns as in other games in the genre. A big plus is the large number of objects and enemies that can appear on the screen at the same time, very impressive. In general, I don't like the whole narrative about inanimate objects suddenly gaining life, going berserk and attacking civilians. Somehow it completely failed to convince me to play this game and even initially turned me away from it. But fortunately I tried it and found out that it is one hell of a game. It requires constant focus and good reflexes if we are to at least complete it. The whole game is really based on stacking the right weapon and area attack, and then just maintaining that status as much as you can..... because after death our firepower is greatly reduced. Sometimes so hard that if we die too many times in a short period of time it's actually hard to face what's waiting for us It's possible to bounce back from the bottom but it requires agility and quick dodges. All the special weapons are quite good so I won't write about them, but the primary weapons are not very well balanced, and there are a total of probably 5 of them (sorry as I write this, I played the game a few months ago so I might have forgotten this and that). The point is that only 2 of them after the maximum upgrade are actually useful and the rest at best situational or totally useless. As for me the best weapons are the self-guided , and the flamethrower. Both of them shoot fast enough and cover a significant area in front of you to survive what lies ahead. By the way, this is a really enjoyable game in terms of graphics as well as music. The game is quite hard, but the first 6 levels are unlikely to present much of a challenge. Only from level 7 you can see how fragile our life is. I highly recommend it, as you are unlikely to find a better game in the vertical shmup genre, but you may be discouraged by the fact that the game is one of those silly ones.
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"Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"