Gunnail [PS4/Switch]

[EOJ]

This 1993 NMK arcade STG finally got a home port on Hamster's arcade archives on 1/13/2022. For $7.99, I thought I'd buy it and give it a try. Soon I realized you need to suicide all your shield blocks (=lives) at the start of stages to maximize the multiplier for the bosses. OK, I can do that. But then when your shield is empty, an annoying alarm clock siren keeps blasting the whole time. I checked the options in the game but could not find one to turn this off. So now I play the game with the sound off.  I get that it was in the arcade game, but in a home port you think they'd let you turn off the stupid siren and keep the music and other sound effects on.

[EOJ]

I just discovered there is an option in the 'preferences' menu to turn off the "warning sound when SHIELD is 0". Hooray! The game is now playable for me with the sound on.

[EOJ]

I've been playing this a lot the past few days and I am really impressed by all of the innovative features in this game from 1993, many of which were adopted by CAVE and Raizing later. Actually, the game reminds me of Pink Sweets in many respects:

-Some of the stage layouts are very similar (the cloud stage enemy designs and placements in Stage 6 are similar to Stage 6 in PS, for example).
-Descructible bullets on the bosses, which you can milk for points.
-The need to beat most of the game without dying for maximum scoring. In PS, this is necessary to trigger infinite lives. After you trigger that, you need to die a lot to score. In Gunnail, you die a lot in the first few stages, then have to no miss the rest, in order to score optimally.

It reminds me of Ibara with all the bombs you get, and the need to play most of the game without lives in stock. Some of the bosses remind me of bosses in Muchi Muchi Pork.

The multiplier tied to lives in stock (no lives = biggest multiplier) is the inverse of what we find in Futari Black Label (max lives + bombs = biggest multiplier), but it's the same basic idea (no miss the game, and you are rewarded with a huge bonus).

The PS4 port emulates the PCB's slowdown well, from what I have seen, and the options to have separate rapid fire buttons and turn off the stupid warning siren make this the best way to play the game, IMO (Save states for practice, and nice scanline options, too!). And it's only eight bucks! Input lag is fine, I'd guess it's around 4 frames.

[Codiene]

trap15 had a hack for the original rom to do the same thing as anyone that plays it for score hates that sound, it was pretty daft to put it in when the whole score system revolves having no lives in stock for the big multiplier, although I'm not good enough to be playing for score on any shmup really 

The original is still a great looking example for a game of it's age.

http://daifukkat.su/hacks/gunnail_alarm/