Goldrunner (GBA) by Foxysofts

[Turrican]

http://www.foxysofts.com/index.php?l=co ... runner.inc

Doing a quick search on the forum for Goldrunner and you won't find much discussion about this Atari ST shooter by Steve Bak. Being an Amiga user myself, i still managed to miss it (but then again, amiga version apparently replaced stick control with mouse, which can't be a good thing). Too bad, because the idea of a looping, vertical version of Uridium does sound like my cup of tea.

Anyway, this is surely old news (welcome to 2007), but renowned coder Foxy (GBA Another World, Nebulus, all his releases are worthy a check) released a fully playable port of the game for Gameboy Advance. The scrolling is impressive, the graphics and sounds seem to have been adjusted with great care, and it saves the score too. Overall, I recommend this one to every GBA owner craving from frantic shmup action. We can't have enough of free, portable games with Rob Hubbard music now, can we!

[CID]

So is there a physical cart of this? If not, what's the best way to play this on an actual GBA?

[Op Intensify]

GBA flashcarts. They're pretty impossible to find now, though.

[Turrican]

Actually, a physical hard copy can be (well, could have been at some point at least) bought. It's here:

http://www.gooddealgames.com/Publishing ... vance.html

bundled together with eight other games in the "XE GamePack". All by Foxy and some of them quite good.

Still, the game works like a charm in my old Supercard SD.

Speaking of the game, can you remember many other shmups where the ship is invulnerable to enemy collision? Poor Triton aliens meet an horrible death if they touch the Salvo. Only bullets and background obstacles can harm you (and they will, stay sure).

[Fudoh]

GBA flashcarts. They're pretty impossible to find now, though.

not really, the EZ-Flash IV 4 is still in production, easily available and quite cheap. It runs everything except for some real-time timer stuff like Pokemon.

[Turrican]

best overview of the original I've found:

http://www.grospixels.com/site/goldrunner.php

[null1024]

GBA flashcarts. They're pretty impossible to find now, though.

not really, the EZ-Flash IV 4 is still in production, easily available and quite cheap. It runs everything except for some real-time timer stuff like Pokemon.

This. If it wasn't for the fact that my phone has actual gaming buttons [and emulates the GBA, and has a backlight, as my SP broke years ago, so I'm stuck with a wide not-backlit GBA], my EZ-Flash IV would be the best thing I own.

Also, it has had a few issues with certain games outright not booting, but I'm willing to put that to bad dumps [although they did run in nocash].

They go for about $35 last time I checked, which was a few months ago.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Bump.

Speaking of the game, can you remember many other shmups where the ship is invulnerable to enemy collision?

Guardian Force and Zero Gunner 2.

[LordHypnos]

Bump.

Speaking of the game, can you remember many other shmups where the ship is invulnerable to enemy collision?

Guardian Force and Zero Gunner 2.

Mars Matrix, Twin Hawk (b/c all enemies are ground based), and Giga Wing 2 as well. I really wish this had been widely adopted in shmups. One of the best ideas, IMO, especially when you need to get all up in your oponent's grill. Additionally, Gunbird, Gunbird 2, and I think Dragon Blaze (probably other Psikyo games too) will only power you down for bumping into enemies rather than actually killing you. FWIW, bumping into non-bullet things in Fast Striker 1.5 will deplete all of your shields the first time, and only kill you if you're out of shields, but this is still fairly punishing, I would say.
In none of these cases will your ship actually kill your enemies (except with your shot, obvs), though. Probably not in ZG2, either, but IDK about Guardian Force.