Gunbird
From Sega Retro
Gunbird | ||||||||||
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System(s): Sega Saturn | ||||||||||
Publisher: Atlus | ||||||||||
Developer: Psikyo | ||||||||||
Licensor: Psikyo | ||||||||||
Original system(s): Psikyo arcade hardware | ||||||||||
Sound driver: SCSP/CD-DA (24 tracks) | ||||||||||
Genre: Shooting[1][2] | ||||||||||
Number of players: 1-2 | ||||||||||
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This short article is in need of work. You can help Sega Retro by adding to it.
Gunbird (ガンバード) is a vertical shoot-'em-up game to the Sega Saturn. It was followed by Gunbird 2, which saw a release on the Sega Dreamcast.
Contents
Gameplay
Playable Characters
Ash, The Famous Adventurer | |
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27 years old German Engineer and Scientist, currently living in London. Flies around using a jetpack he himself built. If paired with Marion, he develops a rather "disturbing" interest on the little girl.
Focuses firepower towards the front with limited coverage. Charge weapon fires an energy blast causes good damage then splits into smaller balls, spreading around. Super weapon drops a large bomb that has a short range but causes great damage and block enemy projectiles. | |
Marion Sorin, The Witch Girl | |
13 year old witch from England. She is accompanied by Pomme-Pomme, a talking rabbit who is dressed in a Victorian era suit. Generally likeable and curious, she also has a selfish personality and can occasionally reveal her mean side, which poor Pomme-Pomme often becomes a victim of.
Focuses on coverage with low firepower. Secondary weapons fire star shaped projectiles that will home on enemies with good accuracy. Charge attack fires a rabbit shaped large projectile, similar to the one fired by Ash without spread effect. Special weapon fires crescent shaped projectiles in eight directions with low damage but screen clearing effect. | |
Valnus, The Robot Soldier | |
A clockwork robot built in Imperial Russia. His CPU stops working if his body is not manually cranked every six hours. Fight for the glory of his homeland but secretly wishes to be a human.
Secondary weapon fires several lasers towards the front in an L shaped pattern. Charge weapon throws his punches with short range but high damage. Super weapon fires multiple small lasers in a cross pattern. | |
Yuan Nang, The Oriental Fighter | |
A brave, beautiful but also somewhat rowdy warrior from China. She joins the fight to become strongest person in the world. She seems to have based on the "Monkey King" from the famous Chinese novel "The Journey to West", right down to flying around with a cloud and having an extendable staff.
Secondary weapons give slightly better area coverage. Charge weapon hits with her staff for good damage but low range. Super weapon creates several mirages of Yuan Nang and charges them forwards, drilling through enemies and causing great damage. | |
Tetsu, The Stubborn Old Carpenter | |
A 60 year old Japanese carpenter who joins the adventure to revive his dead "wife". He flies around with a pedal-operated helicopter made of wood. He is rather "open" about his sexual orientation.
Secondary weapons fire a large number of rockets after a very short delay but has somewhat low fire rate. Charge weapon fires multiple rockets in a short barrage for better firepower. Super weapon drops 4 fire waves that move towards the edge of the screen, causing great damage and blocking enemy shots. |
Versions
The Saturn version of Gunbird was only released in Japan, however a version for the PlayStation did surface in the West under the name Mobile Light Force (complete with entirely unrelated packaging and removal of cutscenes) some years later.
For the most part, both the Saturn and PlayStation games are broadly similar, however the PlayStation has more intrusive loading sequences during gameplay, and lacks the "tate mode" option of the Saturn conversion, which rotates the game by 90 degrees to benefit from vertical monitors (which the arcade game was designed for). The PlayStation version also lacks the ability to save progress, and while some sound effects (most noticably speech) is seemingly played back at a higher quality, the artwork can appear darker and less saturated than its Saturn counterpart.
There are also very minor aesthetic differences between menus and the positioning of elements in the HUD.
Production credits
- プロデューサー: 丹羽 潤一
- ゲームプロデューサー: 中村 普介
- キャラクターデザイン: 中村 博文
- 挿入歌: 「ガンバード -大空の冒険者-」
- 歌: 片桐 真衣
- 「マリオンのテーマ」
- 歌: 田中 千晴
- ゲストイラストレーター: 桜 玉吉, 寺田 克也, 司 淳, 夏元 雅人, 菅野 博士, 中村 博文
- デザイン: 小川 兵衛, 山崎 渉, 小田 秀之, 塚越 陽子, 吉田 育也, 武森 則和, 谷口 絵美, 上岡 秀都
- プログラム: 杉田 敏典, 佐藤 成希, 斎藤 詩織, 高木 慶介
- サウンドデザイン: 泉谷 雅樹
- スクリプト: 山田 啓史
- テストプレイ: 村田 明美, 原田 大一郎, 鵜飼 基史, 蒲 正広, 下島 有子, 千代 晃裕, 市田 琢也, 天川 浩, 作本 直貴, 一谷 こず恵, 高嶋 伸枝, 大伴 舞, 本永 智子, 近藤 昌浩, 奈良 政経
- 協力: 由佐 伸一, Design-Studio, Tomas
- イラストコンテスト協力: ゲーム遊II, ゲーメスト, 月刊コミックゲーメスト, セガサターンマガジン, 電撃王, 電撃プレイステーション, 週間ファミコン通信, Playstation Magazine, マイコンBASIC Magazine
- ディレクター: 頼近 直純
- 総販売元: アトラス
- 制作・著作: 彩京
- (C)1995 Psikyo All Right Reserved
- Jun-ichi Niwa, Shin. Nakamura, Hirofumi Nakamura, Artmic, Rick Johnson, Hyoue Ogawa, Wataru Yamazaki, Hideyuki Oda, Youko Tsukagoshi, Ikuya Yosida, Hiromi Tanegasima, Norikazu Takemori, Hideto Kamioka, Emi Taniguchi, Masaki Izutani, Toshinori Sugita, Seiki Sato, Shiori Saito, Yusa Tarou
Magazine articles
- Main article: Gunbird/Magazine articles.
Promotional material
Physical scans
Sega Retro Average | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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71 | |
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Based on 13 reviews |
Technical information
- Main article: Gunbird/Technical information.
References
- ↑ File:Gunbird Saturn JP Box Back.jpg
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 https://sega.jp/fb/segahard/ss/soft_licensee1.html (Wayback Machine: 2020-02-27 19:54)
- ↑ File:Gunbird Saturn JP Flyer.pdf
- ↑ File:Gunbird Saturn JP SSEnding.pdf
- ↑ File:Gunbird_Saturn_JP_SSOpening.pdf
- ↑ Consoles +, "Février 1996" (FR; 1996-0x-xx), page 95
- ↑ Famitsu, "1995-12-22" (JP; 1995-12-08), page 1
- ↑ Fun Generation, "03/96" (DE; 1996-02-12), page 50
- ↑ GameFan, "Volume 4, Issue 3: March 1996" (US; 1996-xx-xx), page 14
- ↑ Joypad, "Février 1996 (Joypad International supplement)" (FR; 1996-0x-xx), page 26
- ↑ MAN!AC, "03/96" (DE; 1996-02-14), page 42
- ↑ Saturn Fan, "1996 No. 4" (JP; 1996-02-02), page 62
- ↑ Sega Power, "April 1996" (UK; 1996-02-15), page 50
- ↑ Sega Pro, "March 1996" (UK; 1996-01-25), page 68
- ↑ Sega Saturn Magazine, "1995-14 (1995-12-22)" (JP; 1995-12-08), page 201
- ↑ Sega Saturn Magazine, "Readers rating final data" (JP; 2000-03), page 12
- ↑ Última Generación, "Febrero 1996" (ES; 1996-0x-xx), page 64
- ↑ Video Games, "3/96" (DE; 1996-02-21), page 88
Gunbird | |
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Main page | Comparisons | Development | Magazine articles | Reception | Technical information
Demos: Gunbird Sample (1995) |