Arcade Video game published 29 years ago:
Gun Frontier (c) 1990 Taito Corp.
The year is 2120: Earthlings have spread beyond their galaxy and have started to colonize uninhabited planets in different solar systems. One such planet to be colonized was the Earth-like planet Gloria which happened to have an enormous natural supply of gold. This discovery became pivotal to Gloria's emigration, so much that emigrators would be impoverished by the cost of reaching the planet. Because of this, life on the planet thrived in a setting similar to the American Old West. Though poor, the gold trade aided the Glorian's in advancing technology and knowledge, so much that among the inhabitants lived talented inventors and engineers.
However, the Glorian's were not the only ones who were tempted by the planet's gold: Space pirates known as the Wild Lizards quickly invade Gloria and decimate the towns of the people and enslave those who survived in an attempt to deplete the planet's gold supply. Two inventors of Gloria who were a part of the planet's development teams decide to strike back at their invaders using two fighter jets in the shape of giant revolvers with plane wings.
As far as vertical scrolling shooters go, Gun Frontier is very standard. Players start with dual machine guns which are strengthened and multiplied by upgrades that come in the shape of US dimes taken from buffalo shaped enemies and every five dimes empowers the ship's guns. Players also start with a bomb supply which is upgraded to further destruction by collecting gold bars from destroyed ground forces. Once a player accumulates 25 bombs, they are granted access to the Bomber Max, the strongest of the player's bombs.
The players can also pick up spinning coins with two different sides: a silver side and a gold side. If the player collects the coin on the silver side, then the player merely gains another coin for their guns. However, if the player collects the coin on the gold side, then the player's guns and bomb supply is maximized to full power.
A unique feature to the player's bombs is that the direction of the bomb's blast can be determined by the player's movement. If the player moves their plane to the lower right of the screen and launches their bombs, then the direction the bomb will travel in the opposite direction the plane's movement. This feature can only be used however when a player has a large bomb count as only having one or two bombs will result in a small directionless explosion. Like most bombs in shoot 'em ups, the bombs also work as a shield against enemy fire.
The game uses a check-point system in which a downed single player will start off at the beginning of the check-point they died at.
Gun Frontier also employs an anti-autofire mechanism where the difficulty will max out by the second stage if the player is sustaining too fast of a fire rate.
- TECHNICAL -
Runs on the "Taito F2 System" hardware.
Game ID: F2-System No. 09
Prom Stickers: C71
Players: 2
Control: 8-way joystick
Buttons: 2 (SHOOT, BOMB)
- TRIVIA -
Gun Frontier was released in January 1991 in Japan. It had very good graphics and sounds for its time but the gameplay had a lower quality. So, Gun Frontier was a flop.
This game is known outside Japan as "Gun & Frontier".
The Director of this game, Mr. Takatsuna Senba was an animator when he joined Taito, his first work was "Master of Weapon". He soon became a famous director, by directing "Metal Black" and Gun & Frontier. These two shoot'em ups have great graphics and BGM, many Japanese gamers remember his name, thanks to these two games.
This game was dedicated to the late Mr. Katsujiro Fujimoto.
This game was inspired from the Anime series of the same name by Leiji Matsumoto. It is a hilarious, thrilling and outrageous story that takes place on a lawless planet in deep space. In a wild land where the dust of sand swirls, two totally different men, Harlock 'the Quick Draw' and Tochiro 'the Master Swordsman,' meet a mysterious woman called Sinunora and travel together. "This odd threesome gets involved in thrilling and outrageous brawls and seems to attract one fight after another!".
S. Yagawa paid homage to this game by programming "Battle Garegga", which has a lot of features taken from "Gun Frontier" (not only design, you can destroy scenery, weapon and bombs system, etc).
Leiji Matsumoto, in his series 'Cosmo Warrior Zero', recycles the "Gun Frontier" settings for the 'Silvana' character. Since the Sony PlayStation tie-in was produced by Taito, the planet looks like planet "Gloria", the one featured in this Taito shmup.
Like in "Master of Weapon", Hisayoshi Ogura, who is credited on the credits roll, didn't compose the BGM. According to Takatsuna Senba, Some BGMs were specially ordered from V. Ohashi.
According to the producer, Takatsuna Senba, summer 1990 was very hot and they ordered fans to cool the offices. But the computers had overheats and all the datas and game sources have almost disappeared.
Pony Canyon / Scitron released a limited-edition soundtrack album for this game (Runark, Gun Frontier - PCCB-00060) on April 21, 1991.
Zuntata Records released a limited-edition soundtrack album for this game (Zuntata History L'ab-normal 1st - ZTTL-0038) on April 1, 1999.
- TIPS AND TRICKS -
* INSTRUCTIONS:
- Press the Fire button to shoot.
- Press the Special Attack button to launch your bombs or a Bomber Max. After launching, press a direction button to determine the direction of the blast:
-- Down : Forward
-- Up : Behind
-- Left : Forwards then right
-- Right : Forwards then left
- Collect five silver coins to upgrade your shot level (to a maximum of five).
- Each time you collect a gold bar you gain a bomb. When you have twenty five bombs, they are combined to give you a Bomber Max.
- Collect a Max coin and it will flip heads or tails. If you are lucky, you might get a full power-up!
* RANK SYSTEM:
Gun Frontier has a Rank System! If you played well, you can achieve a high rank. But in order to achieve this you have to play differently.
- SERIES -
1. Gun Frontier (1991)
2. Metal Black (1991)
- STAFF -
Author & producer : Takatsuna Senba
Game Design : Takatsuna Senba, Takamasa Hoei, Takayuki Ogawa, Naoya Kuroki, Brody Tadashi, M&F Nagai, Yasuhisa Watanabe (Yack.)
Programmer : Tarabar, Naoya Kuroki
Sound composer : Yasuhisa Watanabe (Yack.), Hiroshi Ogura(ORG)
Cast : Lee Ho Chan, Ogawa Shonen
Special Thanks : Hideki Hashimoto, Hidehiro Fujiwara, Toshi Kouno, Akr Fujita, Zak Munn, Jinsei Tany, Ohno wepokichi, Tsuyoshi Sato, Ryohcho Yagi, Nakamura Taicho
- PORTS -
* CONSOLES:
[JP] Sega Saturn (sept.25, 1997) "Gun Frontier [Arcade Gears Vol. 2] [Model T-26109G]"
[JP] Sony PS2 (aug.25, 2005) "Taito Memories Gekan [Model SLPM-66092]"
- CONTRIBUTE -
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