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Gun Stream (also seen as "GunStream") is a cool Aleste / Blazing Lazers derivative from former Aleste / Spriggan devs that is currently in development and first demoed in... 2023? Yup. In cooperation with the Doujin circle, Habit Soft, "Gun Stream" is a new game being developed for Sega's 30+ year old Game Gear unit... and it's shaping up to be really good. There's not much to say about it right now without getting really long-winded as there is only a 3-minute Caravan-style version available at the moment, but it's worth noting that there's mainly 3 developers: Takumi Yamashita (aka "Takin" and "Zeppachi") in charge of programming, Hiroki Kodama on graphics and Takeaki Kunimoto on sound. These three fine folk have over a century of combined experience in the industry, so I have no doubt that the full game will be a noteworthy addition to the library when (or if) it sees completion. Oh! It also has a plot!

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AD 2099
Humanity was on the brink of extinction due to the Space Pirate Union, a plunderer from outer space. A long defensive battle had been fought to no avail, and the Earth's total population had been reduced by half. Meanwhile, a new energy source was discovered:

"Talisman," the life of the planet that brought various benefits to Earth and hope to mankind.

The military brass came up with a plan to turn it into a weapon,
and from the mobile weapons they captured from the enemy, they obtained technology that was said to be several centuries ahead of its time. The time to strike back was ripe, but the war situation was about to become a quagmire...

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More details may emerge for the full game, but we at least have a worldview here. The gameplay is pretty straightforward with two shot types (a vulcan and laser shot) and two missile types (homing and all-range gunpod) and the obligatory bomb. The game's draw is chasing the highest scores with the game's "bonus chip" system. These green bits give 500 points when grabbed and increase up to 10000 each. When your weapon is powered up, these chips are more frequent and when one is missed, the point values reset (demonstrated in the video). It's a fairly novel system that's fairly commonplace in the modern Shmup, but casually racking up millions of points wasn't something you did back in the average shooter of the day. The graphics are stellar and the music is also really good, and the controls are tight. Overall, it's definitely old-school and Compile-esque, and I can only deem that as a compliment.

The game is currently rather easy, but maybe that will change in the final game. As-is, it's an impressive demo of sorts and hopefully the Caravan-style transitions into the main game as an optional mode. This is a video of the game in action.

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