Gunbird cabinet sign

Genre

As we mentioned in our presentation page, Gunbird is a vertical scrolling shoot'em up game released in Japanese arcades in 1994 by Psikyo. A vertical scrolling shoot'em up is a video game genre that scrolls the game in a single direction while the character you controlcan move around the screen. The character has to shoot all the enemies who try to kill him/her while he/she dodge the enemy attacks, the acquaintance "run and gun".

Gunbird: Ash and Marion characters

Making a brief reminder of the past of videogames, specifically this genre, the shoot'em up games began in 1961 with the videogame called: Spacewar, developed by Steve Russel. The first shooter that consists in a fight between two spaceships using vector coordinates. In the late 60's, Bill Pitts created the first prototype of a gaming machine: the first recreative machine with the Galaxy wars game. Later, in 1987, Space Invaders was developed, actually considered as the beginning of the shoot'em up genre despite the previous mentions.

The popularity of shoot'em up stood out in the 80's considered as their golden age. However, in the early 90's, the shooter genre became too common and overexploited. In addition, the popularity of the new 16-bit games began so, to maintain their popularity, they had to create a new type of shoot'em up: Bullet Hell, where the player had to fight against an exaggerated number of enemies and improve their ability to reaction. In particular, Gunbird only highlighted in its manga theme and for being one of the first videogames to include a homosexual character and a pedophile man but it had good reviews and great ratings.

Technical Profile

The game uses the 1st Generation Psikyo Hardware structured in:

• CPU: 68EC020 + PIC16C57 [Optional MCU]
• Sound: Z80A + YM2610 or LZ8420M (Z80 core) + YMF286-K
• Custom Chips: PS2001B, PS3103, PS3204, PS3305

Hardware

Monitor:

• Orientation: Vertical
• Type: Raster: Standard Resolution
• CRT: Color

Standard Resolution

Controls:

• Number of simultaneous Players: 2
• Maximum number of player: 2
• Gameplay: Joint
• Control Panel Layout: Multiple Player
• Joystick: 8-way
• Buttons: 2 [FireBomb] Buttons

Cabinet style: Upright/Standard Cabinet machine

History of the game

Psikyo logo

Gunbird was developed and published by Psikyo in 1994. His artist was Hirofumi Nakamura. The music was composed by Masaki Izutani.

The game is an aircraft vertical scrolling game that consists of destroying as many enemies as possible while travelling around the world collecting the four pieces of the magic mirror that will grant you any wish. When you destroy enemies, they can possibly leave on the map bullets for improve your usual shoot: Power up or collect more bombs to use it at any time. This game had a sequel, Gunbird 2 in 1998 and it was included in Gunbird Special Edition.

Gunbird has been re-released multiple times. Versions:

• Arcade: Japan, Psikyo, 1994

Recreative machine

• Sega Saturn: Japan, Atlus, December 1995

Sega Saturn cover

• Play Station (Mobile Light Force):

• Japan, XS Games, December 1995
• Europe, XS Games, 200
• North america, XS Games, March 2003

PlayStation cover

• Yahoo Mobile: Cave, 2002

• PC: Steam, July 2015