Gynoug | Playstation, Switch, Xbox | Nov 12

[Sengoku Strider]

Gynoug is a nice game, but no amount of memery will make it a top 10.

Ah well the sticky says otherwise!

MegaDrive / Genesis:

• Biohazard Battle / Crying
  Fire Shark / Same! Same! Same!
  Gleylancer
  Gynoug / Wings of War
  MUSHA Aleste
  Thunder Force 3
  Thunder Force 4 (Lightening Force in the USA)
  Truxton / Tatsujin

Funny these are all on Switch ("sorta" for TF3), or coming soon, except Truxton (afaik?)

It seems a bit outdated. I'd definitely move gynoug and truxton out.

However it's worth noting that the the list isn't strictly in terms of gameplay, and more of an overall top 10. This would make Gynoug a perfectly viable candicate for the fantastic design direction alone.

Some people really vibe with Truxton. I was watching a video yesterday ranking every Toaplan arcade shmup and the guy put it at #1.

If I were to plant a flag, I'd say these 5 games pretty much have to be in a Mega Drive top 10, I feel like they're in a unique class:

Musha Aleste
Thunder Force IV
Gaiares (seriously, how is it not making these lists?)
Thunder Force III
Eliminate Down (seriously, how is it not making these lists?)

Gley Lancer would be in the next tier right after. I really like Same!³ (SameCube?), and would personally have it on my list, but I like it in a meat & potatoes comfort food kind of way; I could see if someone wanted another title in its place.

[jehu]

Some people really vibe with Truxton. I was watching a video yesterday ranking every Toaplan arcade shmup and the guy put it at #1.

If I were to plant a flag, I'd say these 5 games pretty much have to be in a Mega Drive top 10, I feel like they're in a unique class:

Musha Aleste
Thunder Force IV
Gaiares (seriously, how is it not making these lists?)
Thunder Force III
Eliminate Down (seriously, how is it not making these lists?)

Gley Lancer would be in the next tier right after. I really like Same!³ (SameCube?), and would personally have it on my list, but I like it in a meat & potatoes comfort food kind of way; I could see if someone wanted another title in its place.

I'll throw in another voice of support for Eliminate Down. It's an incredible game, but one you probably never came across organically if you lived outside of Japan. Praise the deity of blast processing that emulation exists because the price on this one is astronomical. This is probably why it gets overlooked, but I think it'll settle into its rightful place in the MD-STG canon when all's said and done.

Two others that I absolutely love are Battle Mania Daiginjou and Elemental Master. Both of them are on the easy side, but they're great fun for those nights you want something to have a real shot at beating on your first handful of tries. (MUSHA and TF3 are both games like that for me, too, and I love them to death). The music in all four of these games is glorious - they're the complete package.

I've also been known to white-knight for Truxton/Tatsujin, but I'll leave that to rest. A polarizing game, I've come to learn.

[To Far Away Times]

Some people really vibe with Truxton. I was watching a video yesterday ranking every Toaplan arcade shmup and the guy put it at #1.

If I were to plant a flag, I'd say these 5 games pretty much have to be in a Mega Drive top 10, I feel like they're in a unique class:

Musha Aleste
Thunder Force IV
Gaiares (seriously, how is it not making these lists?)
Thunder Force III
Eliminate Down (seriously, how is it not making these lists?)

Gley Lancer would be in the next tier right after. I really like Same!³ (SameCube?), and would personally have it on my list, but I like it in a meat & potatoes comfort food kind of way; I could see if someone wanted another title in its place.

I don't vibe that much with Truxton. Those early vertical shmups can be a little bit rough. I will say however that the music in Truxton is fantastic. The key change at the begining of stage 1 is so good. That elevates the whole game a ton. I would put that OST in the elite Genesis OST catagory with Streets of Rage 2, the Sonic games, Thunderforce III, etc.

I love 4 of those games in the top 5. Gairies makes a great first impression and indeed the first 5 levels are pretty well designed. Then the game just completely falls apart for stage 6 and 7. Like they ran out of time or money or both. Very limited art assets (what happened here?), no real stage design, a plodding re-used boss rush to pad out the game, and the stage 6 boss is incomprehensibly bad. It has like 4x the health it should have, and fires a dumb repeating patern you will see dozens of times. It becomes an absolute dumpster fire. So I would say its 5/7 of a very good shmup and 2/7 of a bad one. I was going for the 1CC at one point but then I thought, if the developers stopped caring, why should I? I don't think I've ever seen such a weak close to a game that started out strong.

[Stevens]

Late to the party here, but I'd like to say it pleases me to no end that it took a total of one post for dickman to be mentioned.

Well done Bil, I love this place.

[Sima Tuna]

I can only give my first impression from the perspective of someone who doesn't have nostalgia for these games. I'm not sure how to feel about this one. I liked Gley Lancer. It was visually impressive and had some cool design. Sort of a slow game, with too much obstacle dodging and weird balancing, but overall fun. Gynoug... Jinuge? WINGS OF WOR isn't impressing me much. The scrolling speed is very, very slow. You lose all your items when you die. Your ship (flying guy?) has to collect multiple speed powerups before he moves faster than a floating slug.

The game has tons of the famous "BFB" or Bullshit From Behind. That's fine when you can pick up the powerup to shoot behind yourself, but it's pretty annoying when enemies spawn behind you and fire aimed shots directly up your asshole. One time I died and couldn't tell why. Turned out an enemy had spawned and I was hugging the back screen. I died before I could see any part of him. Play this game long enough and you start to smell the bullshit coming from behind. Some of the aimed shots from enemies are hilariously fast. That's fine if your ship is fast too, but when you're slow, it's rough.

The shield only gives you eight fucking seconds of invincibility. I'd have rather had the Thunder Force shield which takes x amount of hits but stays around forever.

Enemies are kinda tanky too. Not when you're at full weapon power, but when you get powered down.

Someone who knows more about this game can weigh in and contradict me if they think I'm full of flying birdman poop. I'm just giving initial impressions of the game. The port seems fine. I'm not good at detecting input delay so I have no idea how that is. But you get at least 6 quicksave slots and all the same extra customization features that Gley Lancer had. It's the same interface as the last ratalaika port.

[To Far Away Times]

Glaylancer is a good game and Wings of War is just okay.

[Marc]

As someone that's never played it before, I don't like Gley Lancer at all.

[Sengoku Strider]

Someone who knows more about this game can weigh in and contradict me if they think I'm full of

It's hard and makes you manage enemies from both directions, all true. Mercifully you have the rewind button in this one, so getting caught from behind just becomes a learning experience.

I wouldn't put it on Gley Lancer's level either, but the visual effects & theme made it stand out among the MD's library. I'm glad it's here, and costing $7 cdn instead of the $170 it's averaging on Pricecharting.

As someone that's never played it before, I don't like Gley Lancer at all.

At all? Like, none of the weapon setups appeal in any way? Music does nothing for you? Waving light sabres around in a shmup?

[Sengoku Strider]

The shield only gives you eight fucking seconds of invincibility. I'd have rather had the Thunder Force shield which takes x amount of hits but stays around forever.

One thing it occurred to me you may not have figured out yet (which is understandable because the game has no instructions), is that the power of the magic weapons depends on how many of the same power up you've collected before you activate it.

So if you have one S, you get 10 seconds of shield, but activating with 2 is 25 seconds, and 3 is 40 seconds. Similarly, the energy balls they give you in the first stage are useless if you activate with one, but with 2 they fire in an X pattern, and 3 is a 6-way pattern. The amount of shots they give you increases as well. So having 40 shots of a weapon that shoots behind you makes the popcorn enemies which attack you from behind relatively trivial. There's a definite element of using the right weapon at the right time in this game.

The other thing is that the game doesn't want you to hug the back of the screen, it's very much about controlling the territory at the centre, so you're able to respond to attacks from all directions.

[Sima Tuna]

The shield only gives you eight fucking seconds of invincibility. I'd have rather had the Thunder Force shield which takes x amount of hits but stays around forever.

One thing it occurred to me you may not have figured out yet (which is understandable because the game has no instructions), is that the power of the magic weapons depends on how many of the same power up you've collected before you activate it.

So if you have one S, you get 10 seconds of shield, but activating with 2 is 25 seconds, and 3 is 40 seconds. Similarly, the energy balls they give you in the first stage are useless if you activate with one, but with 2 they fire in an X pattern, and 3 is a 6-way pattern. The amount of shots they give you increases as well. So having 40 shots of a weapon that shoots behind you makes the popcorn enemies which attack you from behind relatively trivial. There's a definite element of using the right weapon at the right time in this game.

The other thing is that the game doesn't want you to hug the back of the screen, it's very much about controlling the territory at the centre, so you're able to respond to attacks from all directions.

I didn't know any of this, haha. I saw the power things going up as I collected them, but couldn't figure out what it did. That does sound like it makes the game easier.

I still have a problem with how you die and then lose everything, which makes "controlling the center" really hard when enemies spawn from behind and fire fast aimed shots. Seems like the kind of game where you can't die ever.

[Sengoku Strider]

I still have a problem with how you die and then lose everything, which makes "controlling the center" really hard when enemies spawn from behind and fire fast aimed shots. Seems like the kind of game where you can't die ever.

Mercifully the game's not quite that dire. When you die you lose any magic weapon that was active, but anything you have collected but not activated yet remains. Your main shot only powers down one level (out of 5) - you can tell by the blue and red bars in the top left - blue is shot power, red is the size of your firing pattern. Your speed is not displayed, but I believe that only goes down a level or two as well (it goes up to 8 ).

So it's not so much being punished if you die, as much as if you die a lot consecutively. Where it becomes rough is when you continue, it starts you at the beginning of the stage with zero. But just setting a save state at the beginning of each stage can help get around that if it's enough of a pain point to demotivate from playing.

The good people at Sega Retro have a scan of the manual available for download here:

https://segaretro.org/File:Wings_Of_Wor ... Manual.pdf

[velo]

1) Gleylancer
2) Gynoug
3) [any predictions?]

[Sengoku Strider]

1) Gleylancer
2) Gynoug
3) [any predictions?]

Assuming they continue to mine the Masaya catalogue, Cho Aniki would be the logical suspect.

The other one would be the Assault Suits series. Assault Suit Leynos/Target Earth isn't all that fondly remembered and already has a remake on PS4. But Assault Suit Valken AKA Cybernator is very fondly remembered, and Assault Suit Leynos 2 on Saturn is a major hidden gem that never left Japan.

The Mega Drive version of Devil Hunter Yohko is another viable option, if Ratalaika wanted to brave the licensing. I'm sure it's dirt cheap, but I'm also sure they're not pulling huge margins on these projects.

[Skyknight]

One thing I'm wondering is where Masaya GOT the name "Gynoug". I did a search for the katakana to see if there was just a misromanization, but I only got references to the game. Back to square one, because the manual doesn't mention the word outside of referencing the game itself, not the setting.

(Maybe it's supposed to be the proper name of the demons' leader?)

And I wonder if the Queen's infamous design is supposed to reference a termite queen's abdomen--distended greatly to accommodate egg production.

[velo]

One thing I'm wondering is where Masaya GOT the name "Gynoug". I did a search for the katakana to see if there was just a misromanization, but I only got references to the game. Back to square one, because the manual doesn't mention the word outside of referencing the game itself, not the setting.

(Maybe it's supposed to be the proper name of the demons' leader?)

And I wonder if the Queen's infamous design is supposed to reference a termite queen's abdomen--distended greatly to accommodate egg production.

Now you've got me curious

from Wikipedia: "Gynoug (ジノーグ, Jinōgu)"

That pronunciation wouldn't have been in my top ten guesses, so it seems like iffy romanization even it's a word they made up. If there's a Japanese speaker in the house who's up for checking the manual for clues, here you go: https://segaretro.org/images/b/b5/Gynou ... manual.pdf

I wonder why they didn't title the re-release "Gynoug: Wings of Wor" or something... it's got to have SOME name brand recognition.

[Skyknight]

I might have found the components! Using a Japanese-English dictionary, anyway.

First, “ougu” (応供). It’s Japanese for “arhat”, Sanskrit or thereabouts for “meritorious person”, usually when describing a Buddha. Next is “jin”, which I found three candidates for:

—神 (god)
—陣 (battle formation, or just war)
—塵 (in Buddhism, impurity/corruption)

I favor the second if the Gynoug/Jinougu refers to the player-character (“Warsaint”), the third if it refers to the main villain (“Corruption Saint”).

[Sengoku Strider]

I might have found the components! Using a Japanese-English dictionary, anyway.

First, “ougu” (応供). It’s Japanese for “arhat”, Sanskrit or thereabouts for “meritorious person”, usually when describing a Buddha. Next is “jin”, which I found three candidates for:

—神 (god)
—陣 (battle formation, or just war)
—塵 (in Buddhism, impurity/corruption)

I favor the second if the Gynoug/Jinougu refers to the player-character (“Warsaint”), the third if it refers to the main villain (“Corruption Saint”).

Certainly an A for effort, but I don't think that would quite be it for a couple of reasons that would stick out to Japanese speakers:

i) It's written as ji-nou-gu, rather than ji-n-ou-gu, so neither jin nor ou would be one of the components.

ii) For grammatical reasons, the title probably wouldn't be written in the katakana syllabary if that's what they were aiming for. It would be fairly obscure, but also incorrect as ougu is a kunyomi reading and should be written in hiragana (though sometimes the katakana approach is taken with brand/product names for stylistic reasons).

iii) Arhat/Arahant shouldn't really be translated as saint, which is usually denoted with a character like 聖 (sei, hijiri), though I'm sure there are some dictionaries which might try to render it that way. Sei would likely be used in the approach you're thinking of, for instance Kenseiden on the Master System could be translated as Legend of the Sword Saint. Arhat is a term very specific to Buddhism referring to one who has effectively become a Buddha, but also a term largely superceded by bodhisattva and other terms in the broader culture for sectarian reasons.

iv) It doesn't really fit with the Wagnerian/neoclassical theme of the game, which in the Japanese manual is about demons gaining strength in early modernity due to the discoveries of science increasing the ambition in men's hearts. There's a clan of winged warriors living deep in the mountains, and one of their youths sets forth to destroy them.

All that being said, I have no idea what it does refer to. The manual doesn't say, nor does anything else that came up on Japanese Google. But I'd strongly suspect it was just a made up word, like very many game titles of the time were, aiming for a vaguely classical Greek sound. For reasons I'm not quite sure of, Greco-Roman imagery was super popular in Japan in the 80s to early 90s.

[CecilMcW00t]

Sorry for the necrobump. I was just wondering if anyone has been able to save high scores on this? I know it's trivial and I should use the save state to save them. But, I much prefer a "hard save" for high scores. I noticed the "Erase Save Data" option even references high scores, but they are never saved. I'm playing the Switch release, if that matters. Also, does Gley Lancer save them? Not a deal breaker. Just want to know ahead of time before I get my hopes up.

[NYN]

Near as I can tell Gynoug Switch keeps the hi-score in the options. A single one. Doesn't save. Screen grap?
GleyLancer has none, though.

[CecilMcW00t]

Ahh okay, so save states it is for Gynoug.

[BIL]

One thing I'm wondering is where Masaya GOT the name "Gynoug".

With the presence of at least one Big Honkin' Dong, and lots of Womb/Fetus imagery, I've always wondered offhand if it's some play on "Gyno," as in "Gynocide." Far-fetched, but so is a monster dickman named "Queen."

...as we all know, his canon name is Gynoug Dickman. Nothing more or less!

GYNOUG DICKMAN FOR PORTABLES:


ENCOUNTERED AN ASSAILANT

GYNOUG DICKMAN: COVENANT
1: targeted buckshot in ur fuckin face 2: spawn sniper tanks up ur ass 3: Bendy Taito DickLazor