Humans and aliens are living in harmony in the future, until a tabloid journalist stirs up hatred towards aliens. They respond by invading the planet, and it's down to the protagonist to clear up a situation scarily similar to reality in this arcade conversion. Gemini Wing is a vertically-scrolling shoot 'em up, which is distinguished by its unusual power-up system. Instead of gaining occasional tokens which lead to lasting weaponry improvements, occasional flurries of tokens are released to ensure a quick burst of improved fire. The organic backgrounds are detailed, and have many sections which fire at the player character.
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It's a solid, competent shooter, but the upgrade system and boss fights don't add enough to make it stand out enough in a sea of other games in this genre.
It is hard to believe that this innovative and beautifully realized shooting gem came out in 1987. Gemini Wing, like many other shooting games from its era, focuses more on the simpler and more immediately accessible aspects of shooting. While I'm more of a danmaku guy, Gemini Wing has been a great reminder that these games don't need insane bullet patterns, nor scoring mechanics that makes me learn ridiculous strategies, to grab hold of me. Old-School shooters can be unique, fun and memorable in their own ways, and Gemini Wing is hands down the most overlooked/underrated shooter I know about from the 80s.
First of all, if there's one drawback to the danmaku genre, it's that the less abstract audiovisual feedback tends to take a backseat. Take for example Mushihimesama and Futari, while there's surely effort put into making some pretty backgrounds to help realize the game world, it's all drowned out by a sea of bullets anyway. Basically, danmaku games come with a price. Before danmaku was really a thing, devs were forced to put more attention into making the game look and feel appealing to a wider audience, through a detailed and expressive game world. Gemini Wing shines in this regard, it's truly a vibrant, colorful game with a lot of variety in the stages. I'm not really sure how to express what the progression feels like in this game, but the feeling, the emotion is all there. It really feels like an adventure. The soundtrack is also very good. I wouldn't call the atmosphere awe-inspiring, but it makes an impression.
Where a lot shooters from this era lose me, is the the pure fun factor and longevity. I love danmaku because I enjoy pushing my skills to their limits, forging elaborate strategies, dodging complex bullet sprays... Old school shooters tend to not give you all that much to do in the long run, there's some dodging and shooting in the stage, maybe a barely functional scoring system, and bosses that repeats one or two patterns. I'd rather spend my time on a game with a high skill ceiling. Gemini Wing, despite being from 1987, has scoring that isn't completely broken or boring, so in my book, it's a game that is worth playing for a long time, rather than just clear and move on. Thankfully it avoids the trap of loops unlike so many other shooters. Gemini Wing is also a vertical shooter with stage hazards which is somewhat unusual, but well done in this case. Only some of the stages have any hazards (stuff like walls or moving objects) but they never really feel like much of a chore, in fact, I think the final stage in particular is very well designed. It doesn't rely on hazards as much as, say, Image Fight.
Anyway, lets start from the top with the mechanics. Gemini Wing lets you use a peashooter, which is hardly very impressive, and which you cannot upgrade. In this sense, you need to pick out your targets with accuracy. On the other hand, the main ability is unique. There are specific foes in Gemini Wing that carry so-called "gunballs", which are basically single-use attacks (or point-bonuses/extends/speed-ups). There are several different gunballs, some more effective than others. These specific foes "hold" them, so they will have a trail of gunballs behind them. You can shoot these enemies to change the type of gunball they carry, probably inspired by the bell system from Twinbee. You can then choose to either steal the gunballs by picking up the trail (this could get tricky to pull off) or kill the enemy in which case the gunballs will scatter across the screen so you can grab them. When you grab a gunball, it trails behind you just like it did with your enemies, so then you simply use the gunballs in order.
The effectiveness of gunballs vary greatly, but the idea is that you must use them. There are gunballs that are only mildly effective, like the green rockets, or the purple wave. What you really want is the screen clearing beam or blue circle thingie... there's also a sword-like swinging fire thing that can be very strong in some places. The gunballs are blatantly imbalanced, but since you can put in the extra effort of trying to collect the specific gunballs you want, I think that is actually in the game's favor. Fighting with both peashooter and gunballs creates a fun dynamic gameplay where you're trying to defeat all that you can and stay alive, without running out of gunballs, since that may well spell doom for you.
Moving on from gunballs, the idea behind scoring is not immediately obvious. More was found out about the inner workings in Gemini Wing during a Shmups Forum tournament in 2014. Of course, Japan must've been aware of this since the 80s, but there's very much a divide between east and west in the shooting game scene, so strategies for obscure games like this are often completely undocumented and thus unknown to anyone that wasn't part of the eastern arcade scene. There's more to it but to put it briefy, there's a "queue" for the enemies which actually spans the entire game. Think of it like a caravan shooter (those 2-5 minute mode games) where you kill enemies quickly to spawn even more enemies. Gemini Wing works sort of like that except it spans the whole game, so a newcomer would spawn enemies in stage 2, that a score player will spawn in stage 1. This puts a lot of pressure to constantly get the best gunballs and kill everything efficiently.
Enemies also come in a wide variety which is yet another reason why this game is so fun. The way the enemies behave is more about how their movement works rather than how they shoot their bullets, and the game pretty much never gives you a pause. Foes are plentiful and will just keep on swarming the screen, which is very satisfying given the game system.
I enjoy Gemini Wing a ton, but bosses are a little lacking. This is normal for the old-school style, the bosses are more there to make an "impression" than to provide a really challenging and fun fight. The final boss, however, is not just lacking, but it is one of the worst bosses in any shooting game, and the reason why I was a little hesitant to give Gemini Wing such a high rating. The final boss will never time out, covers almost the entire screen, and you have to wait for it to spawn random eggs to kill, with random gunballs in them. You cannot damage the boss with your peashooter without actually moving behind it (more on that later) and most gunballs are completely ineffective. The boss follows a very, very slow and tedious movement pattern that means you're given sparse opportunities to do any damage in any way. At first, I used a "safe" strategy, but I remember failing to take out the boss in as long as 15 minutes the first time I reached it in an early 1cc attempt. The only effective way to take this boss out that I know of is to do a kamikaze attack during a specific point in the pattern, where you go into its weak point (tip of its tail) which actually doesn't have a hitbox, and is the only place where you can shoot it with the peashooter. Then autofire pointblank. It'll die pretty quickly from this, but there's a high risk that you'll die first, since the eggs spawn here at random times. There are gunballs you can use to speed up the process and slightly reduce the luck aspect, but you get a bigger clear bonus the more gunballs you carry! If you're serious about this game and you die here, then kiss a high score goodbye because both lives and gunballs in stock are precious for the clear bonus. If you die, you will have to painstakingly wait and collect gunballs for minutes on end until you can attempt the kill again, unless you don't care about score, in which case you could just stock up a few specifically effective gunballs. The patterns while waiting aren't terribly hard, but not trivial either, so there's some pressure there.
Despite the awful boss fight at the end, Gemini Wing is a truly remarkable game that deserves more attention. If you have any interest at all in STG then go play this in MAME.
First of all, if there's one drawback to the danmaku genre, it's that the less abstract audiovisual feedback tends to take a backseat. Take for example Mushihimesama and Futari, while there's surely effort put into making some pretty backgrounds to help realize the game world, it's all drowned out by a sea of bullets anyway. Basically, danmaku games come with a price. Before danmaku was really a thing, devs were forced to put more attention into making the game look and feel appealing to a wider audience, through a detailed and expressive game world. Gemini Wing shines in this regard, it's truly a vibrant, colorful game with a lot of variety in the stages. I'm not really sure how to express what the progression feels like in this game, but the feeling, the emotion is all there. It really feels like an adventure. The soundtrack is also very good. I wouldn't call the atmosphere awe-inspiring, but it makes an impression.
Where a lot shooters from this era lose me, is the the pure fun factor and longevity. I love danmaku because I enjoy pushing my skills to their limits, forging elaborate strategies, dodging complex bullet sprays... Old school shooters tend to not give you all that much to do in the long run, there's some dodging and shooting in the stage, maybe a barely functional scoring system, and bosses that repeats one or two patterns. I'd rather spend my time on a game with a high skill ceiling. Gemini Wing, despite being from 1987, has scoring that isn't completely broken or boring, so in my book, it's a game that is worth playing for a long time, rather than just clear and move on. Thankfully it avoids the trap of loops unlike so many other shooters. Gemini Wing is also a vertical shooter with stage hazards which is somewhat unusual, but well done in this case. Only some of the stages have any hazards (stuff like walls or moving objects) but they never really feel like much of a chore, in fact, I think the final stage in particular is very well designed. It doesn't rely on hazards as much as, say, Image Fight.
Anyway, lets start from the top with the mechanics. Gemini Wing lets you use a peashooter, which is hardly very impressive, and which you cannot upgrade. In this sense, you need to pick out your targets with accuracy. On the other hand, the main ability is unique. There are specific foes in Gemini Wing that carry so-called "gunballs", which are basically single-use attacks (or point-bonuses/extends/speed-ups). There are several different gunballs, some more effective than others. These specific foes "hold" them, so they will have a trail of gunballs behind them. You can shoot these enemies to change the type of gunball they carry, probably inspired by the bell system from Twinbee. You can then choose to either steal the gunballs by picking up the trail (this could get tricky to pull off) or kill the enemy in which case the gunballs will scatter across the screen so you can grab them. When you grab a gunball, it trails behind you just like it did with your enemies, so then you simply use the gunballs in order.
The effectiveness of gunballs vary greatly, but the idea is that you must use them. There are gunballs that are only mildly effective, like the green rockets, or the purple wave. What you really want is the screen clearing beam or blue circle thingie... there's also a sword-like swinging fire thing that can be very strong in some places. The gunballs are blatantly imbalanced, but since you can put in the extra effort of trying to collect the specific gunballs you want, I think that is actually in the game's favor. Fighting with both peashooter and gunballs creates a fun dynamic gameplay where you're trying to defeat all that you can and stay alive, without running out of gunballs, since that may well spell doom for you.
Moving on from gunballs, the idea behind scoring is not immediately obvious. More was found out about the inner workings in Gemini Wing during a Shmups Forum tournament in 2014. Of course, Japan must've been aware of this since the 80s, but there's very much a divide between east and west in the shooting game scene, so strategies for obscure games like this are often completely undocumented and thus unknown to anyone that wasn't part of the eastern arcade scene. There's more to it but to put it briefy, there's a "queue" for the enemies which actually spans the entire game. Think of it like a caravan shooter (those 2-5 minute mode games) where you kill enemies quickly to spawn even more enemies. Gemini Wing works sort of like that except it spans the whole game, so a newcomer would spawn enemies in stage 2, that a score player will spawn in stage 1. This puts a lot of pressure to constantly get the best gunballs and kill everything efficiently.
Enemies also come in a wide variety which is yet another reason why this game is so fun. The way the enemies behave is more about how their movement works rather than how they shoot their bullets, and the game pretty much never gives you a pause. Foes are plentiful and will just keep on swarming the screen, which is very satisfying given the game system.
I enjoy Gemini Wing a ton, but bosses are a little lacking. This is normal for the old-school style, the bosses are more there to make an "impression" than to provide a really challenging and fun fight. The final boss, however, is not just lacking, but it is one of the worst bosses in any shooting game, and the reason why I was a little hesitant to give Gemini Wing such a high rating. The final boss will never time out, covers almost the entire screen, and you have to wait for it to spawn random eggs to kill, with random gunballs in them. You cannot damage the boss with your peashooter without actually moving behind it (more on that later) and most gunballs are completely ineffective. The boss follows a very, very slow and tedious movement pattern that means you're given sparse opportunities to do any damage in any way. At first, I used a "safe" strategy, but I remember failing to take out the boss in as long as 15 minutes the first time I reached it in an early 1cc attempt. The only effective way to take this boss out that I know of is to do a kamikaze attack during a specific point in the pattern, where you go into its weak point (tip of its tail) which actually doesn't have a hitbox, and is the only place where you can shoot it with the peashooter. Then autofire pointblank. It'll die pretty quickly from this, but there's a high risk that you'll die first, since the eggs spawn here at random times. There are gunballs you can use to speed up the process and slightly reduce the luck aspect, but you get a bigger clear bonus the more gunballs you carry! If you're serious about this game and you die here, then kiss a high score goodbye because both lives and gunballs in stock are precious for the clear bonus. If you die, you will have to painstakingly wait and collect gunballs for minutes on end until you can attempt the kill again, unless you don't care about score, in which case you could just stock up a few specifically effective gunballs. The patterns while waiting aren't terribly hard, but not trivial either, so there's some pressure there.
Despite the awful boss fight at the end, Gemini Wing is a truly remarkable game that deserves more attention. If you have any interest at all in STG then go play this in MAME.