Space Gun - Arcade

You're in Space, and you have a gun... Gun Space! -ah shit...

Light Gun time again as we venture to planets unknown in search of the mystic plot device as to why people have gone bye-byes and odd creatures are in their place making life miserable for all and sundry. Yep it's the age old alien space monster plot of Distant-Planet-Lost-Contact-With-Space-Ship-Go-There-To-Find-Aliens-Kill-All-And-Run motif. Or DPLCWSSGTTFAKAAR for short.

Blood guts and gore everywhere.

Very quickly the plot in Space Fun falls into the Aliens category of space monster madness in that a spaceship goes silent, so people go to investigate it, then a planet, then you stop an alien army... By yourself (and a friend perhaps) while armed with a machinegun and an assortment of weapons and, wait for it, a PEDAL! Yes that's right ladies and ladies, you heard it first here, a pedal used in a light gun game before Time Crisis was on the scene. Predating Namco's title by around 5 years or so.

The player is hardcore, a slash damage that size from something akin to a bear is an Ouch...

While the gun remains as one might expect, a gun. Space Gun allows us the ability to select between four different special attacks. While specials were available in Beast Busters (and quite a few there too) and also in games like Revolution X, Operation Wolf (Ah the grand-daddy) this time around we're able to select which special we wish to use. Ranging from the flame shot that incinerates most enemies if they're grouped together, rockets for the welcome-home feeling, a laser sword swipe that cuts through all enemies but is very narrow in it's spread of attack and an ice shot that freeze enemies for more damage with the main gun and could shatter most smaller/basic enemies.

Nice and large bosses to battle

All the usual cliché’s are there in Space Gun. Dark and difficult to see corridors filled with monsters that can have arms and limbs blown off, HEADS blown off and still attack you, pods that release ravenous teeth-filled spores, critters, creepy crawlies and many more assorted monsters that get bigger and more stubborn to succumbing to death and are otherwise known as boss monsters. While at the same time you've also got plenty of pods around that can give you ammo and health, or shields against the aliens, other people are around that need saving for bonuses at the end of the level (If you make it that far) and then there's the pedal that lets you backtrack to either slow down the onslaught of enemies or go back for something you missed! EPOCH MAKING!

AHEM-Ripping off Aliens-AHEM

Aesthetically there's some lovely little touches in Space Gun, the occasional instance of blowing glass out of a spaceship results in shielding coming down to prevent exposure to vacuum (but who puts GLASS between a walkway and outer space?), mutations of would-be hostages that become aliens just before you save them are animated in an interesting and fairly unique manner, while most of the game seems to rip/borrow from Aliens up to and even including the planet base looking like the main site of LV-426 from Aliens. Thankfully nothing in the game actually LOOKS like it's from alien... Aside from the eggs and wall crawling little critters... And most of the aliens.

Last boss, Hint: Be accurate...

Plagiarism or Homage? That's not for me to decide, but what I can comment upon is that while the game is fun, it has its hang-ups. For instance, the selection of the extra weapons is sequential, so getting to the one you want, while under the extra pressure and stress of fighting off aliens, you're likely to over shoot the one you need, or not hit the one you want and make various, multiple mistakes. On top of this there's the issue of the game purposefully overrunning you with more enemies than you can attack at once, or just hurling at you bosses and monsters that shrug off multiple shots before arbitrarily just giving you a dry slap.

Did you kill something, or sneeze?

It's not a huge list of awkwardness, and the reverse function with the pedal is rather downplayed. The biggest gripe with the game is the brevity, it's just too short but having said that, the final fight is made all the more interesting by having your accuracy be paramount to success. A fight between yourself and the last boss, while in front of the control panels that fly the spaceship. Happy shooting! It's certainly worth the time to play but don't invest too many credits for it.

Lucky and Wild - Arcade

Not the best title, try Cars and Guns

It's not quite on the rails shooter fun, it's not quite off the rails shooter fun, but the sheer idea alone of being able to drive down the street using a sit-down racer and then slap two extra guns into the dashboard, makes for a lot of fun assuming one player doesn't mind not being able to drive and just shoots things. Lucky and Wild actually brings something a little unique to the mix-up of sprite based light gun/joystick games.

Nope, not seeing the appeal of coming to this place. Not at all... ... Maybe...

It rides upon the idea of Lucky is an upstanding member of society, straight laced and smartly dressed with a reserved personality, Wild is a gung-ho crazy man who lets the trigger talk more than his mouth but never has a bad thing to say about anyone, together they fight crime and drive around town getting into more scrapes and driving mishaps than the Blues Brothers do. (Don't watch the 2000 film though).

This guy gets off lightly with just a Road Rash beating.

So what we have in Lucky and Wild is a 2 player shooter where one player also has to be dexterous enough to drive AND shoot while the second player just shoots. As such there's the accelerator and brake pedals (no clutch thankfully, we drive automatic here) and in the right hand for player one is a gun, while player 2 just gets the gun and has no control over where player one is driving aside from punching them in the arm if they drive into hazards. The arm punching becomes a quick and effective control method.

Drive and gun, shoot anything and everything that moves while player 1 drives and shoots.

Lucky and Wild plays out like an 80s cop show involving fast car chases and excessive levels of inaccurate gunfire from everyone involved. Except for the gunfire part. Our two protagonists will happily spout phrases and warnings and become more and more upset while their beloved car (which is about as much of a character in this as our heroes) takes more and more damage because the players are either not driving around trouble or not killing/destroying threats fast enough.

I can hear the Peter Gunn theme in the distance... From here to Chicago.

Each level within Lucky and Wild, has a boss and with that boss is a timer to take them down and decipher their weakness. For example, the first boss cannot be shot or blown up and is only defeated if you kill everyone on board (including guys with rockets and grenades) when they pop out to take a shot at you. Later bosses include trucks, monster trucks and more automobile related fun. While at the end of each level you get to go to a cat girl themed repair shop (a sort of cat-house I guess...) and the points/score you earn are converted into replenished health and an abundance of lipstick marks over our heroes faces.

Get points, score bonus, gather health.

The music and sound effects complement each other like Miley Cyrus does a Wrecking ball, badly and worth seeing once but you then wish you hadn't. The sound effects are over the top and actually add to the high paced action of the game while the music tends to be drowned out though what you can hear, fits almost perfectly as a theme tune to an 80s/90s cop show with a fast car. But for the most parts it's the onomatopoeic noises of Booms, Bangs and Phoomps (I'm claiming this one) that will ring out through the speakers in this arcade more than anything else.

More tank than truck, and this is one of the easier bosses.

Overall, Lucky and Wild is worth the play but I'd recommend having two players for the experience, some of the sections can be brutally painful on the health bar with the act of being swamped and swarmed by grenades, rockets, bombs, choppers, bikes, gunmen and plenty more, ALL AT ONCE. But then it's clear that some of these parts are just credit sucks to empty your pocket out, it's not impossible to beat the game on a credit but could end up being more effort than it's actually worth doing.

That's the best body work I've seen after all the bullets and bombs it took earlier

Line of Fire - Arcade

You're firing, in lines... Maybe.

Sega seem to enjoy milking this game engine in particular for over the top gunnage (it's a word now, I said so) and for giving people the chance to be Rambo. Having reviewed Jurassic Park back in the J section of these reviews, I thought I'd take a gander at Line of Fire.

Missions are complicated and involve a lot of thought and consideration.

The arcade of Line of Fire, sported two heavy machine guns mounted to the cabinet in both the stand up and sit-down versions of the machine which added an extra level of immersion to the game while the game itself did away entirely with the idea of ammo, reloading, driving or guiding any real vestige of control related to gaming and just have you on rails and shooting stuff, you don't even overheat the guns and the power remains at the maximum. Seriously, if this was a gun in the military, EVERYONE would want it. (I already do)

The game puts a huge focus on the importance of timing.

The plot is pretty much that though in Line of Fire, someone has made these guns and you're part of a team (or solo) that have gone in to steal them. In doing so, you get caught and decide to use the guns to escape while kidnapping a driver in a jeep (I think, against his will) and make a Beeline for the nearest pick up point to be rescued while fighting off everything you could possibly imagine that an army would throw at you at even more.

Shots taken at your are often hard to see and camouflaged.

So off you go through the game of Line of Fire shooting everything from soldiers with rifles, grenades, knives, rocket launchers and more to tanks, helicopters, jets, AWACS (which are on your side... not very stealthy really) and a whole host of assorted vehicles that tend to act as bosses at the end of levels to whittle away your health bar and make you use up your explosive "kill all on screen" shots.

Enemy vehicles often blend in with the scenary.

There's a significant challenge within the game in that Line of Fire just bombards you figuratively and literally, with an enormous amount of enemies in faster time than most games will introduce their whole line up, in just one level. The action rare, if ever, lets up but you've got infinite bullets and you'll going to have to make them count while cutting swathes of damage through line after line of opponents and obstructions.

There's multiple routes of travel and most will have very few enemies on them.

While the sound effects in Line of Fire are fairly suitable, I can't say the same for the music which is usually drowned out by the shooting, explosions, bombs, rockets, people dying, people throwing things at you and pretty much everything else in this game. Thankfully, you're not going to be missing much with the absence of music and the focus on shooting and killing takes priority, not such a bad thing but to be honest, this is ALL this game is about.

Bosses are often a long distance affair.

It can be rather intimidating at times in Line of Fire when you're being nothing less than overwhelmed by the sheer volume of attackers and assaults on the player. At times your only real option to escape damage is to use up one of your bomb/rockets or hope that soon after that particular point, there will be health items to shoot and/or bombs to shoot as well to boost your stock of explosive One Hit Kills.

This game causes image captions to be lies... Maybe.

If you can manage to navigate through killing as many threats as possible and also to predict where rockets and heavier vehicles will spawn from, you can last quite a while and enjoy some longevity from your credit, you might even want to play it through to the end just to see the bigger and more powerful bosses, but like other gun-games, it's almost certain you'll want to play it once and leave it at that.