Gaiares for Genesis
Tobish E Smith
about my first impressions of the game. But first, a question: HOW do you
pronounce the name of this thing??
Gaiares is an 8-meg horizontal shooter from Renovation (Whip Rush, Final Zone,
GranadaX, Arrow Flash), and graphically, it is phenomenal. I was excited to
get M.U.S.H.A. since I knew of its movie-like intro. Gaiares' intro is at
least twice as long, and the music is nicer. Very very slick. The game has
eight levels (with monstrously large bosses at the end of each...) and you
get four continues. As I mentioned before, the graphics on this game are
first-rate - better than TFIII, IMHO. The gameplay is pretty standard, with
a couple of notes: first, it utilizes the WHip Rush-style speed control. You
can set your ship's speed at low, med, or hi according to the situation. I
utilized this quite a bit in Whip Rush (which had more speed levels), but
finished MUSHA (which has the same feature) without ever changing speed. I
haven't noticed a real need for it in Gaiares, yet, but I haven't gotten all
that far yet either. The second interesting feature is the way in which you
power up your weapons. You have a pod that floats along with you, called the
TOZ. The TOZ shoots and is invincible, so just as a friend its handy for
extra firepower and absorbing the occasional enemy shot. But its real use
is for copying the firepower of the enemy critters. This is a neat idea.
When you press the C button, the TOZ shoots forward from your ship, and if
an enemy is in line with it, it will attach to that enemy and transfer its
weapon to your ship. Each different weapon type has 3 levels of powerup
(i.e. it's worthwhile to do the TOZ on three different enemies of a given
type) and the manual lists ten types of weapons. If you have a laser weapon
at levl 2, for example, and do the TOZ on a new type of critter so that you
now have a "plasma cannon" at level 1, the game will remember that you had
the laser powered up to 2, so if you find another enemy that shoots lasers
and manage to TOZ it, you'll have a level 3 laser. All in all, I think this
is a nifty twist on powering up your spaceship.
The graphics are really, really, REALLY excellent... Really. Fun to play,
too (so far) once you get used to using the TOZ (which takes a few minutes).
I'd like to tell you more about gameplay but I haven't played it long enough
to really be fair to it, so I'll refrain. However, I do know that given a
choice between Gaiares and Strider (another expensive 8-meg cart) after seeing
both for equal amounts of time, I'd take Gaiares in a second.