One Quarter One Play - Gyruss

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BeardedSonOfNel BeardedSonOfNel

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Published on September 9, 2019 6:49:20 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfEIDhh6kxs

Game:

Gyruss (1983)

Duration: 3:25

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3

Welcome to this weeks One Quarter One Play. This week I take on game designer Yoshiki Okamoto’s 2nd and last game for Konami. As you all know by now I’m talking about the game Gyruss. I covered Mr. Okamoto’s first Konami (Time Pilot) game back in June. Time Pilot is a great game, and if you haven’t played it; you’re missing out!

In the Time Pilot thread I talked about Mr. Okamoto’s accomplishments in the industry, and below is a little refresher from that article.

"The game’s designer Yoshiki Okamoto did one other game for Konami which is the classic Gyruss. He then joind Capcom. At Capcom he was involved with the following games.

1942 – Director
SonSon – Director
Side Arms – Director
Gun Smoke – Director
Forgotten Worlds – Director
Final Fight – Producer
Street Fighter II – Producer
Resident Evil – Producer
Resident Evil 2 – Producer"

Gameplay
That said, Gyruss is a tube shooter kind of like Tempest. You control a ship that can rotate 360 degrees around the edge of the play field. Enemies zoom in and out of the tube star field, and you try to blast them. Most of the enemies you battle are space ships, but you’ll also encounter asteroids, laser beam generators, and satellites. Satellites appear in threes. Shooting the center one will power up your ships guns.

When starting the game you are greeted with a message stating that you are “2 WARPS TO NEPTUNE”. The player must complete a level to warp, and each warp takes you closer to a planet. Once you make it to a planet; you’ll see your ship fly towards it, and this launches a bonus stage (kind of like Galaga.)

In the game you’ll fly to Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and Finally Earth.

Music
The background music in Gryuss is an arrangement of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565. Gyruss’s sound is in stereo, which according to the bonus material for Konami Arcade Classics, was achieved by utilizing discrete audio circuits.

Ports
Gryuss was ported by Parker Bros.to just about every computer, and console in 1984. Parker Brothers did a nice job of porting arcade games back in the day, and they did a fine job with Gyruss. I first owned Gryuss on the Atari 2600, and it even has music playing through the game. A year later I upgraded to the Commodore 64 version.

I thought I was done buying Gyruss, but in 1988 Konami would release a remake of the game for the Family Computer Disk System, and later that year it would be released on the NES under Konami’s Ultra label. I really like this version of the game. It adds so much, like a secondary weapon, more power ups, and boss battles. Additional stages were added as well including Venus, Mercury, and the Sun. Oh, and entering the Konami code at the title screen will net you extra lives.

Hardware
CPU:

2 Z80 @ 3.072 MHz
1 6809 @ 2 MHz


Sound:

1 Intel 8039 @ 533 Khz
5 AY-3-8910 @ 1.79 MHz


Display:

Raster @ 224 x 256
Overall
As you can see, I like Gyruss. I bought it three times back in the 80s. At the time it was a different take on Space Invaders, and Galaga, and the graphics were impressive with the ships zooming in and out of the play field. Normally my favorite version of a game is the arcade version, but this is one of the rare occasions were I prefer the NES version.

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