Gun Frontier

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 Glorians in advancing technology and knowledge, so much that among the inhabitants lived talented inventors and engineers.

However, the Glorians 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 planes in the shape of giant revolvers with plane wings.

Gun Frontier is a 1991 vertically scrolling shooter video game developed and published by Taito for arcades. It was only released in Japan. It is set on the fictional planet of Gloria in the 22nd century, where an alien race of space pirates known as the Wild Lizards have invaded the planet and enslaved its inhabitants for gold extraction. Players assume the role of settlers who were part of the planet's colonization team, taking control of revolver-shaped fighter aircraft in an attempt to overthrow the invaders and free their surviving civilization from slavery.

Gun Frontier was conceived by Takatsuna Senba, and served as his first original work under the role of both designer and producer. The game was one of several created to promote the then-newly released Taito F2 System hardware. It had a turbulent development cycle, undergoing through various changes before its eventual launch for arcades. The game was later ported to the Sega Saturn in 1997 as part of Xing Entertainment's Arcade Gear series of releases for the console. It has since been re-released through compilations such as Taito Legends 2 in 2006, with each one featuring several changes compared to the original version. The game is dedicated to F2 System hardware engineer Katsujiro Fujimoto, who died during development in an accident.

Gun Frontier has been met with mixed critical reception from video game magazines and dedicated outlets since its initial launch in arcades and later on the Saturn. Despite its mixed response, Senba and some of the members in the development team would go on to create Metal Black for Taito after its release, which was produced under the internal working title Project Gun Frontier 2, although its actual connection to the original entry is loose. Battle Garegga and Recca programmer Shinobu Yagawa has since referred to Gun Frontier as one of his favorite titles.

Gameplay

Gun Frontier is a space Western-themed vertically scrolling shooter game. Players assume the role of planetary settlers who formed part in the colonization team of planet Gloria taking control of revolver-shaped fighter aircraft through six stages, in a last-ditch effort to defeat the Wild Lizards and free their surviving people from enslavement by the space pirates. Players start with dual machine guns which are strengthened and multiplied by upgrades that come in the form of US dimes taken from buffalo-shaped enemies and every five dimes empowers the aircraft's firepower. Players also start with a set number of bombs that can be upgraded to deal further destruction against enemies and scenery by collecting gold bars from destroyed ground forces and once a player accumulates 25 bombs, they are granted access to the Bomber Max, the strongest of the player's bombs.

The direction of the blast radius of the player's bombs correspond to their 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 of the aircraft's movement. This feature can only be used when a player has a large bomb count as only having one or two bombs will result in a small directionless explosion and like most bombs found in other shoot 'em ups released at the time, the bombs also work as a shield against incoming enemy fire. Bombing on determined locations is also crucial for reaching high-scores to obtain extra lives, as certain setpieces in some stages hosts a bonus secret within their scenery, as well as destroying enemies on certain spots.

A recovery system after using a credit during the continue screen is used, as players can pick up a spinning coin with two different sides: a silver side and a gold side. If the player collects the coin on its silver side, then the player merely gains another coin for their guns, but if the player collects the coin on its gold side, then the player's firepower and bomb supply will be maximized to their full power. The game also uses a checkpoint system in which a downed single player will start off at the beginning of the checkpoint they managed to reach before dying. The title 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. Getting hit by enemy fire will result in losing a live, as well as a penalty of decreasing the aircraft's weapon to one level and once all lives are lost, the game is over unless the player inserts more credits to continue playing.

Plot

Gun Frontier takes place in a futuristic sci-fi setting during the 22nd century. Mankind has managed to expand into the stars beyond the Milky Way galaxy and have started to colonize uninhabited planets through different solar systems, among them being the Earthlike planet known as Gloria, which harnesses an enormous natural supply of gold. This discovery would later prove to be pivotal in the emigration towards Gloria, so much that due to the expensive cost of reaching the location, immigrants would be impoverished. However, life on the planet thrived in an ambient similar to the American Old West. Although the Glorians were poor, gold trading aided them in advancing their technology and knowledge to the point where talented inventors and engineers lived among the inhabitants. However, the Glorians were not the only living beings tempted by the abundance of gold on the planet, as an alien race of space pirates known as the Wild Lizards quickly invaded the location, decimating towns and enslaving those who survived the assault for the purpose of gold extraction. Two Glorian inventors who were part of the planet's development teams decide to strike back against the invading aliens by taking control of revolver-shaped fighter aircraft.

== Development ==…

Adapted from Wikipedia , licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text may have been shortened.