Thread for the 1984 stg Gyrodine (Buzzard in the West). Made by Crux, who later went on to become Toaplan. Not the greatest game but interesting historically (sort of).
There are only two difficulty settings, easy and hard. Easy is the default so that's what we'll go with. 3 lives.
There's no fanfare or anything when you clear the loop, you just seamlessly arrive back at the beginning again. I didn't even realise until I saw the beach party people on the ground again.
I can't be sure but I'd say it takes something like 20 - 25 minutes to loop it. I made it about halfway through the second loop, so I guess to break a million would take something like 4 or 5 loops.
Got to loop 3 where the difficulty picks up quite a bit - it's not too problematic during the normal sections, the little crawlers can easily fill the entire screen with projectiles, though, meaning that you probably lose at least one life on them if you don't have a precise route. Even the recoveries can be rather daunting.
It should be mentioned that the Famicom/NES port is a lot harder than the arcade original, there are some fortress boss fights that are a veritable nightmare on account of having no space to manoeuver in and having terrible visibility due to horrendous flicker.
Figured I'd record a video of this since there is no marathon run of this anywhere as far as I'm aware, almost cleared five loops! Had to get into it at first, but I got a lot of supreme dodging extravaganza as the run went on, had a blast. I've also noted it in the video description, but you can actually get an extra life if you save one of the green-clad civilians from the tanks, what a grand vignette in such a hoary game.
First credit w/defaults, I didn't even realize that I looped the game until I passed by the two turret formation on the grassy inlet that I encountered at the beginning of my credit, & then the highway bridge/ two beach umbrellas immediately afterwards. Didn't get much further into loop 2 till the second forest w/ the hidden turrets. Not too bad for '84 tbh; might actually record a future credit