Heavy Barrel is a 1987 overhead run and gun arcade game by Data East. Terrorists have seized the underground control complex of a nuclear missile site, and it is up to the player to infiltrate the base and kill the enemy leader. Players begin armed with a laser gun with unlimited ammunition and a limited supply of grenades. Improved weapons and grenade powerups are made available within the game, either in plain sight or within crates that must be unlocked using keys. Additionally, crates may contain orbs or one of the six pieces of the Heavy Barrel superweapon. Like SNK's Ikari Warriors, the original arcade version featured 8-way rotary joysticks. The name of the game is from an in-game weapon. The Heavy Barrel is found in six pieces and is an energy cannon capable of destroying any enemy in the game with a single shot (except the final enemy, and possibly one other boss that may have required two shots). The weapon has a wide arc of fire and can be fired as fast as the player's trigger finger permits, but after thirty seconds its use is exhausted, at which point the bearer reverts to his previous weaponry. Best used to get past tough bosses, the weapon could be built several times in a single game (probably three or four times). In a two-player game, whoever collects the sixth piece is equipped with the Heavy Barrel.
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The arcade original has a rotary joystick, the joystick itself does movement while twisting the stick rotates the guy on screen 360 degrees (but really it’s 8 angles).
The version I played is on Switch has an alternate control scheme consisting of ZR and ZL to rotate the guy, and it works.
The angles are necessary as the game shifts from moving up the screen to sections requiring movement from left to right and vice versa. Has a free scrolling feeling to it.
Heavy Barrel itself is a really difficult game, the best players I saw online have item management down to an art, they’ve memorised what weapons are in each chest, when to use bombs or stick to shooting as well as when it is best to build the “secret weapon” Heavy Barrel.
The upgrades include a spread shot, a fire blast and grenade upgrades that explode on impact instead of bouncing with a timer. Heavy Barrel has incredible range, firing frequency and renders you basically invincible.
You need each of these because in typical Data East fashion, if you’re not thinning out the enemy numbers you’ll easily be overwhelmed with foes, doesn’t matter if you keep on dropping credits into the game. If you’re that overwhelmed it’s a waste of money as you’ll die immediately once the invincibility frames drop.
I’d be curious to see if I could do it with better equipment management but eh I’ll see. I’d like to pull more games from the list and I don’t believe beating every single one is an attainable goal for me. Heavy Barrel is repetitive after a point of time and has Data East style difficulty.