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.
Main Weapon: Concentrated
Secondary Weapon: Sonic Waves
Charge Weapon: Plasma Cluster Shot
Super Weapon: Large Bomb
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.
Main Weapon: Spread
Secondary Weapon: Homing Stars
Charge Weapon: Rabbit Blast
Super Weapon: Crescent Spray
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.
Main Weapon: Concentrated
Secondary Weapon: Side Shot Lasers
Charge Weapon: Wire Punch
Super Weapon: Laser Spray
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.
Main Weapon: Concentrated
Secondary Weapon: Side launched swords
Charge Weapon: Extendable Staff
Super Weapon: Mirage Wing Attack
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
60 years 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.
Main Weapon: Spread
Secondary Weapon: Rockets
Charge Weapon: Rocket Barrage
Super Weapon: Firecracker Bombs
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.
大空の冒険者