Gun Nac = 8-bit bliss.

[Dylan1CC]

Played Gun Nac for the first time yesterday, got it loose off ebay for just $5 and I love it! The atmosphere of the game is so crazy, love the evil rabbit theme I haven't played a comical shooter with this much personality in awhile. It's seriously like Aleste meets Star Parodia. Oh yeah, and ya gotta love Blue Lander.

My fave weapon so far is #5. I kept avoiding the other weapon capsules just so I could keep it. So far I have only played into part of stage 2 and cannot believe what a nicely hectic little game this is.

Anyways, I should be getting a new and sealed Guardian Legend in the mail soon too (which I got for $2.99 minus shipping, crazy steal).

[Shatterhand]

IT gets a LOT more hectic later...

THis game indeed rocks, its among the top stuff made made Compile.

I find weapon 5 to be the most useless of all, its too hard to aim with that.

All the other weapons have their degrees of usefulness, with some being more useful in certain spots than other, but I have the tendency to stick with weapon 1 with most of time.

[Dylan1CC]

5 may be hard to aim yes, but it looks neat and packs a wollop. Anyways I am sure after I get used to the requisite million different weapons Compile put in I will pick another.

Oh yeah, and that megabomb shaped like raindrops kicks ass.

[LoneSage]

No, Kosh, Gun-Nac is not 8-bit bliss.

Gun-Nac is like the bastard child of manic shmups and orgasmical fantasy in one cart, that, when placed inside your NES, becomes one of the fastest and bestest NES games, ever.

Gun-Nac is an amazing game, and whenever someone praises the glories of Zanac, I can only shake my head and laugh. Gun-Nac takes a massive shit over Zanac and nearly every other 8-bit, not just NES, shmup.

Fast vertical Parodius indeed. Carrots are the bad guys! CARROTS.

[Zero]

Never played it before. Might try messing around with it on my emulator.

[Dylan1CC]

No, Kosh, Gun-Nac is not 8-bit bliss.

Gun-Nac is like the bastard child of manic shmups and orgasmical fantasy in one cart, that, when placed inside your NES, becomes one of the fastest and bestest NES games, ever.

Gun-Nac is an amazing game, and whenever someone praises the glories of Zanac, I can only shake my head and laugh. Gun-Nac takes a massive shit over Zanac and nearly every other 8-bit, not just NES, shmup.

Fast vertical Parodius indeed. Carrots are the bad guys! CARROTS.

I can definitely say that I like it much better than Zanac so far.

[Andi]

Yeah, I played Gun-Nac and fucking loved it and then bought Zanac and was extremely disappointed. Zanac feels so primitive in comparison, and entirely lacks style.

[Dylan1CC]

I think one of Zanac's problems is the weapons just don't seem to pack enough punchfor how tough the enemies can be and the levels felt painfully long even for a Compile game. Took me 2 hours to beat it one night back in 2001. Unlimited continues ahoy.

edit: It is a very tough game, I will say that. On the final level I had to keep hitting the face-thing to get extra lives so I could outlast the game, ha.

[professor ganson]

So this is available for NES? I'll have to check it out, if I ever get that NEX from Playmessiah. My NES console is terribly unreliable.

[Zero]

My god, I just started playing it and this game is ahead of its time. I wish I would have found this game a long time ago. I wonder if it will ever get a nice re release with a graphical update.

[Dylan1CC]

So this is available for NES? I'll have to check it out, if I ever get that NEX from Playmessiah. My NES console is terribly unreliable.

Yup. NES cart.

[Shatterhand]

Dylan, why did you begin playing Gun Nac just now?

I had known this game for a while, but just a few days ago I decided to play it for more than 5 minutes

You see, thats why my signature makes so much sense

[MadSteelDarkness]

Gun Nac's one of my all-time faves. It's a constant fixture in my NES.

[Bydobasher]

I first played Gun-Nac only a few years ago, and I was all over it at first. I still like it, but as far as Compile's early 8-bit shmups go, I really prefer Aleste (MSX). I'm not generally a fan of the "parody" subgenre -- Parodius, Star Parodier etc. -- so that may have something to do with it.

I was also never a big fan of Zanac until I played the MSX version, which both looks and feels better than for NES.

[Dylan1CC]

Dylan, why did you begin playing Gun Nac just now?

I had known this game for a while, but just a few days ago I decided to play it for more than 5 minutes

You see, thats why my signature makes so much sense

Why now? One of those games that stuck in the back of my head whenever I remembered vague posts from "best of NES shmup threads" I guess. It may take me awhile but I always eventually get around to all the greats one way or another.

As for the sig, ha um.... "Hate responsibly." Bobcat Goldthwaite

[BrianC]

I still need to get Gun Nac. I like Zanac, Blazing Lazers, GG Aleste, and Guardian Legend quite a bit and I like parody games too.

[zubiac]

Since I got the NESDS emu running fullspeed,fullscreen with sound on my DS I'm totally sucked into NES shmups.Shmuping on the couch or
on the toilet is somehow different.Yesterday I played 2 hours straight "Crisis Force" which is the technicaly most impressive famicom shmup ever.
Just started to play "Gun Nac" 10 min ago and it IS a blast.
Holy crap....the NES(or better my DS) has lots of gunpower to offer.
NES shmuppers should also look into:
Over Horizon (great)
Abadox (a gory and bloody shooter but plays good)
Battle Formula (racing+shooting)
Zombie Nation (graphical VERY impressive "shoot'em up".weird gameplay:You are a cut off head which destroys whole towns...horizontal scrolling)
Section Z (not really a shmup but has something addicting)
Choujikuu Yousai-Macross (hard shmup with weird japanese music)
Exed Exes (more a psychotrip than a shmup!Music=sick)
Exerion (something different:You must kill enemies to earn your bullets!Also I like to call it the grandfather of Axelay cause it uses the same 3D perspective)
Kyuukyoku Tiger (easily the best heli-shmup for famicom/NES.too easy and too long stages though.good action)

[Specineff]

Since I got the NESDS emu running fullspeed,fullscreen with sound on my DS I'm totally sucked into NES shmups.Shmuping on the couch or
on the toilet is somehow different.

TMI, man. TMI. I'll dread to think of a smart bomb with that image in mind.

[shiftace]

So am I the only one who likes Zanac more than Gun-Nac? Then again, I mostly enjoy Zanac when the rank is unmanageable, and really blowing up the rank takes some doing.

[Sabreman]

Spooky! I played Gun Nac for the first time tonight because I'd been reading that Compile topic, then decided to have a blast on Gunhed (which I haven't touched for years). Gun Nac was loads of fun, it really stands up well. I usually steer clear of 8-bit shumps these days because most of them are wonky as hell but this one was quite a treat.

As a side note, I performed better on Gunhed than I ever did back in the day. Must be all that practise I've had with bullet-hell since

[ST Dragon]

Since I got the NESDS emu running fullspeed,fullscreen with sound on my DS I'm totally sucked into NES shmups.Shmuping on the couch or
on the toilet is somehow different.Yesterday I played 2 hours straight "Crisis Force" which is the technicaly most impressive famicom shmup ever.
Just started to play "Gun Nac" 10 min ago and it IS a blast.
Holy crap....the NES(or better my DS) has lots of gunpower to offer.
NES shmuppers should also look into:
Over Horizon (great)
Abadox (a gory and bloody shooter but plays good)
Battle Formula (racing+shooting)
Zombie Nation (graphical VERY impressive "shoot'em up".weird gameplay:You are a cut off head which destroys whole towns...horizontal scrolling)
Section Z (not really a shmup but has something addicting)
Choujikuu Yousai-Macross (hard shmup with weird japanese music)
Exed Exes (more a psychotrip than a shmup!Music=sick)
Exerion (something different:You must kill enemies to earn your bullets!Also I like to call it the grandfather of Axelay cause it uses the same 3D perspective)
Kyuukyoku Tiger (easily the best heli-shmup for famicom/NES.too easy and too long stages though.good action)

Yeah the 3D perspective of Exerion does resemble that of axelay a bit...

These are some of the best 8-Bit Nes Vertical shooters:

1942
1943
Alpha Mission
ASO - Armored Scrum Object
B-Wings
Battle Formula
Captain SkyHawk
Crisis Force
Dragon Spirit - Aratanaru Densetsu
Dragon Spirit - The New Legend
Guardian Legend
Gun Nac
Gun Smoke
Gyrodine
Image Fight
Isolated Warrior
Kyuukyoku Tiger
Legendary Wings
Sky Shark
Star Force
Star Soldier
Starship Hector
Summer Carnival '92 - Recca
Super Star Force
Terra Cresta
Thunderbirds
Tiger-Heli
Twin Cobra
Twin Eagle
TwinBee
TwinBee 3
Zanac

Especially, Summer Carnival '92 - Recca, is awesome!
It has incredible firepower & looks & plays more like the Star Soldier Series & Gunhed on the PCE/TG-16.

Crisis Force by Konami, is another cool shooter that should not be overlooked.
I think it was too used as a showcase at the:
The 2nd Tournament
Summer Carnival '92
Official Soft

But I could be wrong…

[zubiac]

[quoteCrisis Force by Konami, is another cool shooter that should not be overlooked.
I think it was too used as a showcase at the:
The 2nd Tournament
Summer Carnival '92
Official Soft

But I could be wrong…

I guess you're wrong cause AFAIK games had to run on actual hardware without any modifications.
And "Crisis Force" has a "pimp up my graphics"-co CPU which made some effects(the zooming enemies in Level 1) even possible

[ccovell]

I guess you're wrong cause AFAIK games had to run on actual hardware without any modifications.
And "Crisis Force" has a "pimp up my graphics"-co CPU which made some effects(the zooming enemies in Level 1) even possible

Must we go through this again? Here is my comment from an older topic on Crisis Force:

I think that calling the Fami's/NES' memory mappers CPUs is stretching it a bit. They're just glorified bank-switchers with perhaps added circuitry for IRQ timing. It's just a bunch of logic chips and timers, basically.

And besides, the memory mappers are built into the cartridges, so the base system is never modified. Further, scaling enemies are done in software (swapping characters), not actual CPU-intensive scaling.

[metallica_tyler]

I asked around on this board and gamefaqs, anywhere I could.. gamestores. I could only describe rabbits, numbered powerups and an anime chick but no one could seem to find out what game it was (for some reason).

For about a year now I've been hardcore into Compile shmup's and they reminded me so much of this game that I knew the game had to be made by Compile.. I looked up their game history and looked through every game and finally found it. I then emulated and was almost brought to tears!!

I played this game when I was young back in the day.. man it was so great.. I'm thinking of buying an NES (again) just for this game and Kirby.

[BrianC]

These are some of the best 8-Bit Nes Vertical shooters:

1942
1943
Alpha Mission
ASO - Armored Scrum Object (J).zip
B-Wings
Battle Formula
Captain SkyHawk
Crisis Force
Dragon Spirit - Aratanaru Densetsu
Dragon Spirit - The New Legend
Guardian Legend
Gun Nac (U).zip
Gun Smoke
Gyrodine
Image Fight
Isolated Warrior
Kyuukyoku Tiger
Legendary Wings
Sky Shark
Star Force
Star Soldier
Starship Hector
Summer Carnival '92 - Recca
Super Star Force
Terra Cresta
Thunderbirds
Tiger-Heli
Twin Cobra
Twin Eagle
TwinBee
TwinBee (did you mean Twinbee 3?)
Zanac

Isolated Warrior is not a vertical shooter. It's an isometic shooter ala viewpoint, but with a walking character rather than a ship. Dragon Spirit: Aratanaru Densetsu and Dragon Spirit: The New Legend are the same game. ASO and Alpha Mission are the same game too. Legendary Wings has horizontal sections. Some choices on the list seem a bit questionable as far as quality goes, but to each their own.

I heard that Gun Nac is actually one of the rarer US NES games. I'm not sure if this is true becuase it occansionally sells for cheap.

[ST Dragon]

A more conservative list would be:

1942
1943
Crisis Force
Gun Nac
Kyuukyoku Tiger
Sky Shark
Star Soldier
Summer Carnival '92 - Recca
Tiger Heli
TwinBee
TwinBee 3
Zanac

But then again, the NES was never known for its large library of quality vertical shooters imho.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Back in the day when Video Park was still in business (at least in the USA), they had a bunch of used NES games for sale. One particular game caught my eye, and it was indeed a used copy of Gun-Nac for $9.99 USD. This was in 1994 and I bought it thinking it was used...but that wasn't the case here. It turns out that it was a brand new copy complete with spanking brand new instruction manual that had been slapped with a "used game sticker"...not bad paying a cheap $10 bucks for a brand new NES game back in the day.

I had previously rent Gun-Nac from Video Park to see how it played and it reminded me so much of the TG-16 shmup title of Blazing Lazers.

There is a secret "Level Select" for the USA version of Gun-Nac:

Go to the option screen and select #7 of the BGM selection and go back and highlight the stage number and press left or right to increase or decrease the stage number setting...you can change the stage from 1 through 8 and start on the beginning of that stage.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~