Gaiares
System: Genesis
Release Date: February 1991
Developer: Telenet Japan
Publisher: Renovation Products
Genre: Shoot ‘em Up
Become another one man wrecking crew hell bent on rebuilding Earth in Gaiares! By the year 3000, the Earth has become a polluted wasteland. Nothing can live on the planet’s surface and what’s left of humanity has migrated into a space station orbiting the planet. But a group of terrorists have set their sights on building weapons from the pollution. A messenger from a star system much more advanced than our own comes to warn the last hero left. As ace pilot Dan Dare, you will have to defeat the terrorists through eight levels of bone crunching action.
The gimmick we have here is the TOZ weapon system. With a press of the C Button, you launch your option forward to latch on an enemy. If you succeed, you will take their weapon or powerup your currently equipped attack. There are many different types of shot you can acquire through the game. These range from lasers to missiles, to clusters, to rotating beams, to my go to, the giga beam. Once powered up, the giga beam carried me through the game, as the other weapons didn’t feel nearly as powerful.
You’re constantly moving forward in stages, but occasionally come to a branching path. You may be able to go up or down and face different challenges. As you die, you keep the level of your collected weapons in memory, which is nice, but you’re going to die a lot to errant bullets. As you keep playing, you’ll begin to memorize the enemy layout and be able to anticipate what you need and when.
There are a lot of enemies that you need to maneuver into a position to kill or avoid. The A Button changes among three different speeds. I didn’t find the slow speed useful, but to each their own. You can hold the B Button to fire indefinitely, but this may not be the best tactic depending on the weapon you currently have. These levels are hard, and unless you have found a barrier in a defense pod, you die in one hit. Your option is invulnerable, so if you can get it in the path of whatever bullets are coming your way, you can get through the level unscathed.
The hardest parts are the mini-bosses and stage bosses. As expected, these guys take a ton of hits and will wipe you out multiple times until you learn their patterns. Missions 6 and 7 are gauntlets against the mini-bosses and stage bosses respectively. If it weren’t for time travel, it would have taken me weeks to get through these levels. If you’re a masochist and want a challenge, this is your kind of game, for sure. The final boss comes equipped with a TOZ of their own, and I got wiped out when I had the cannon, but when I tried again with the giga beam, it was a cakewalk.
Graphics: 3.5
The cutscenes, sprites, and background effects are all great, but the slowdown keeps this from top marks.
Sound: 3.0
Music is pretty good and I didn’t get annoyed by the sound effects.
Gameplay: 3.0
Stealing weapons from enemies is novel. You can choose the weapon you like the most.
Difficulty: 2.0
Five lives and four continues gives you 25 chances. You won’t beat this game in 25 chances.
Fun Factor: 2.0
I was enjoying myself until I got to the boss gauntlets. I honestly hate these kinds of levels.
Overall Rating: 2.7
Gaiares earns a B-. This is a good shoot ‘em up, but it’s hard. Like really hard. You should totally give it a shot, though.