Jets'n'Guns

THE ULTIMATE FIERY AND BLOODY EXPERIENCE

Jets'n'Guns (also called Jets N Guns or JnG) is a Horizontal Scrolling Shooter by RakeinGrass, originally released in 2004, one of the few such games made in recent years.

It's Twenty Minutes Into the Future, and it's quite Used. You are an ex-military space pilot taking mercenary contracts to make a living, when all of a sudden, your former commanding officer Colonel Troubleman calls you up for immediate re-enlistment with the United Space Hero Force (U.S.H.F.) to hunt down and kill the evil dictator Xoxx. Xoxx has captured Professor von Hamburger, the man behind the construction of a massive quantum cannon out in space. The professor's original intent was to use the cannon for peaceful purposes, but Xoxx obviously had other ideas and captured him, forcing von Hamburger to finish the cannon so that Xoxx can fire it and destroy the universe as we know it.

You and the crew of the space cruiser USS Impotence travel across the galaxy in search of clues that can hopefully lead you to the cannon and, ultimately, Xoxx.

You start off with a few credits and a small ship with only a basic gun equipped. In every level, you gain points and credits from killing enemies. Certain levels also contain checkpoints that, once reached, allows you to resume from that part of the level with your ship in the state it was in when you reach that checkpoint until you abort the mission completely. At the end of every level, you can spend whatever credits you have on purchasing and/or upgrading equipment, guns and additional weaponry such as missiles and bombs.

There are two main gauges on your ship. One shows your ship's hull integrity, the other shows your ship's heat sink.

Your hull integrity gauge starts off at 100 for every mission, and decreases when you are hit by an enemy shot, or collide with the terrain or an object of considerable size, and increases if you have Nanomachines installed or if you pick up hull integrity bonuses throughout a level. When your hull integrity gauge drops to 0, you die, and you will have to restart the mission from the last checkpoint.

Your heat sink gauge starts at 0, increases when you fire your weapons, and only decreases if you stop firing. If your heat sink gauge reaches 100, your ship will automatically prevent you from firing any weapons that generate heat until your heat sink cools down to 80.

RakeinGrass originally made Jets'n'Guns as a sort of memoir to the scrolling shooters of old. Word of God as per The Other Wiki is that they were also inspired by other scrolling shooters like Tyrian, ProjectX and Walker. It is considered by many who have played it to be one of the best modern indie scrolling shooters in the market. RakeinGrass is also proud of the fact that Jets'n'Guns has also won several awards from organisations that nobody knows about, but are still awards.

The game is also notable for its incredible original soundtrack by Machinae Supremacy.

In December 2006, RakeinGrass released an expansion, called Jets'n'Guns Gold (also called JnGG, although since its release most people also refer to it as JnG). Jets'n'Guns Gold featured additional ships, levels, weapons and even a reworked ending.

A sequel is in the early works, and RakeinGrass will not rush its development, so apart from what is shown here^{[dead link]}, do not expect a release anytime soon.

The official web page for the game is located here, and the soundtrack for both the original game and Gold Edition can be located and downloaded for free here and here.

Tropes used in Jets'n'Guns include:

Abnormal Ammo: Everything fades in comparison to the Omnigun, which fires universes. By a strange coincidence, it also kicks ridiculous amounts of ass.
Ancestral Weapon: The legendary Plop Fragmentation Gun.
Ascended Glitch: Two in-universe examples. The history of the Hexagun and Demijohn reek of Epic Fail, with the former originally meant to facilitate chess games by shrinking people down to the size of the chess tokens (it vaporised them instead), and the latter originally meant to be a forward-firing plasma gun (that, due to a design flaw, not only fired forwards, but backwards through itself and the ship that was mounting it). In both cases, instead of fixing the faults, the guns were remade around them (the Hexagun was marketed as a weapon, and the Demijohn was retooled into a disposable missile with an additional hole at the back), and these flaws were what ended up setting these two weapons apart from most of the others. It is also worth noting that these two weapons are two of the most powerful and useful in the game.
Apocalypse How: Xoxx wants to achieve a Class 5. He succeeds.
Attack Drone: These come in both airborne varieties that float near your ship, and spider-legged ground ones.
Awesome but Impractical: There are a number of extremely powerful guns that you can buy that can easily overwhelm enemies as easily as they can overheat your ship's cooling system.
Back from the Dead: The Jet-Pack Rescue System turns your character into this. When your hull integrity reaches 0, your ship will blow up, but lo and behold as you watch your hull integrity suddenly shoot back up to 100, and you emerge from the explosion flying on an ejector seat with an Emergency Weapon in the form of a small gun. Which is pretty much useless given that anything strong enough to destroy your ship is likely to destroy your enhanced Jet-Pack too.
Badass Boast: The description of the S.T.Y.X.. Sort of.

"The gun was developed for disinfestation of space stations and parts overrun by cosmic glow-worms. The bugs became immune after a few weeks of the cleaning campaign, but humanoids are still quite sensitive. Just try and see."

The Bad Guy Wins: In the original Jets'n'Guns, Xoxx fires the cannon and destroys the universe. You blow up his vessel, but he escapes in his backup time washing machine to the past where he will enslave the world. You somehow survive the destruction of the universe and are left wandering the remains of it until you accidentally get sucked into a time warp and end up at... the start of the game, this time with everything you bought. The ending for the Gold Edition has been reworked into an inverted Diabolus Ex Machina.
Battle Aura: Your ship gives this off whenever it picks up a Quad Damage powerup.
Beam Spam: The VX-Quattro. At the maximum upgrade level, this gun fires four lasers simultaneously and continuously at seizure-inducing speeds.
BFG: The Kaiser Franz 650, which can be mounted on fighters despite being made for battleships. Even the projectile it fires looks physically huge coming from your ship.
Big Bad: Xoxx, although this is only mentioned and maintained till the end of the game after the first few missions.
Bonus Level: There are many bonus levels scattered throughout the game.
Boring but Practical: Daisycutter Mk III (one of the first weapons you get), when upgraded, becomes a cost-effective mid-end weapon.
Boss Arena Recovery: Lord Krutor drops a hull integrity bonus once you destroy enough guns on his ship.
Boss Subtitles: There are three of them; the latter two are unique to one boss each in the Gold Edition.

WARNING!
BOSS CLASS ENEMY/DRUNKEN MASTER OF DELIRIUM/FLYING MAUSOLEUM AHEAD!

Bottomless Magazines: All missiles, bombs and cartridge-based weapons exhibit this. Especially missiles.
Bullet Hell: Inverted. You create this for the enemies, given the ridiculous number and power of your guns.
- On the higher difficulties, where even the smallest enemy shots have to be taken seriously, played straight as well.
Bullet Time: The Time Compressor.
Climax Boss: Xoxx's backup time washing machine in the Gold Edition.
Commercial Pop-Up: Happens twice during the Carnage TV Fun Centre mission in the Gold Edition.
Deflector Shields: The Power Shield. Careful, successive hits cause a massive heat spike.
Description Porn: Everything that's sold in the shop. This basically means every gun, missile, bomb and ship you can buy.
Diabolus Ex Machina: Inverted. In the Gold Edition, Xoxx fires the cannon and destroys the universe. You blow up his vessel, but he escapes in his backup time washing machine to the past where he will enslave the world. You somehow survive the destruction of the universe and are left wandering the remains of it until you find yourself flying past a restaurant. You enter and meet an old man who tells you about not thinking four-dimensionally. That inspires you to upgrade your ship and enable it to travel time, giving you another chance to chase after Xoxx and ultimately destroy him.
Disintegrator Ray: The Vulcan Disintegrator. The Hexagun falls under this as well if its Ascended Glitch history is taken into account.
The Dragon: There is a certain vessel in the game called the Dragon by Word of God. While it doubles up as an Elite Mook as you see several of these vessels throughout the game, it also shows up just before you confront Xoxx at the Lord Chaos Mk. I quantum cannon.
The End - or Is It?: In the Gold Edition, the credits roll as your ship wanders the remains of the universe after you confront Xoxx at the Lord Chaos Mk. I quantum cannon. As the credits finish, you fly past a restaurant, and the inverted Diabolus Ex Machina, detailed above, comes into play.
Escort Mission: There is one such mission in the original, and three in the Gold Edition. Rest assured that you will not forget them in a hurry because of what you're escorting.
Final Boss, New Dimension: The final boss fight of the Gold Edition takes place in time.
Fragile Speedster: The Crocker Cr-2 in the Gold Edition. Its deficiencies in terms of its small heat sink and fairly subtle hull are noted on its purchase screen, and its description even provides advice on how to avoid overheating. It is, however, one of the more agile and faster ships in the game.
Frickin' Laser Beams: Starting off with the VX-Masterblaster Laser, and then adding Beam Spam with the VX-Quattro.
Fun with Acronyms: Apart from U.S.H.F., there's also the L.E.D. (Large Enemy Device) Zeppelin and Z.W.A.T. (Zogrim Weapons And Tactics).
Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: Most of the bosses are like this. The player only knows about them when they see the boss-class warning appear on their screen.
Harder Than Hard: The highest difficulty setting that the player can set a campaign to at the very beginning is "Hard". However, upon completion of the game on "Hard" difficulty, the New Game+ starts on the next difficulty level, "Nightmare". This cycle goes on, from "Total Mayhem", then "Inhuman"... right up to "Mission Impossible".
Harpoon Gun: The Kraken 2000 Harpooner.
Healing Factor: The Nanomachines, but only if you upgrade them to Level 2 and beyond, and if your heat sink stays at 0 for a few seconds. At Level 1, Nanomachines do absolutely nothing.
Heroic BSOD: After the universe is destroyed, the player character does this by attempting to get drunk in a restaurant that he flies past.
Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The Easy difficulty setting for the Gold Edition is called "Too Fat To Die".
Infinity+1 Sword: The TMiG-310 Atomic Emu has incredible stats and a mind-blowing number of weapon slots, including up to five forward mounted weapons. It's only available at the last level, but you'll need it for those higher difficulties once you complete the game.
Jack of All Stats: The TMiG-226 Koala Killer is this in the Gold Edition.
Jet Pack: The game is filled of jetpacked mooks, and in several levels you have to leave your spacecraft and infiltrate an enemy base wearing a jet pack.
Joke Item: The Punisher, which is a baseball bat that you can get by shooting down a flying toilet somewhere near the end of the game. It is one of the most powerful weapons in the game, but it's hardly worth using because of its ridiculously short range.
- It is also 37.182% cooler.
Kill It with Fire: The F-8000 Cremator, essentially a space flamethrower.
Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: This is actually an official game tip for players who experience overheating issues.
Lethal Joke Item: The Tomator Deluxe, yet another secret weapon. Mounting it on your ship will make you an Improbable Weapon User, but if you upgrade it, you may be surprised at how its relatively high fire rate offsets its sub-par damage rate per shot.
Machinae Supremacy: Yep. They made the soundtrack for the game, and it's all free.
Made of Explodium: Your ship, once its hull integrity reaches 0. And pretty much everything else.
Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: Professor Von Hamburger's daughter Erecta accompanies you, growing increasingly frustrated with the slow progress of the team's investigation.
Mighty Glacier: The L.E.D. Zeppelin in the Gold Edition. It is one of the most durable ships in the game, and has the same heat sink as the TMiG-310 Atomic Emu, allowing it to comfortably mount and fire several BFGs at once. However, it is as slow as the speed of the living dead.
Mind Control Device: The RemCon can be used on hostile RoboTrucks and rockets, causing them to work for you rather than being a obstacle to avoid.
- The Gold Edition also adds the radio tower on Planet Plop and a videotape with the latter as a plot device. The radio tower is further described in the The Paralyzer entry. As for the videotape, the Gold Edition's plot has it that this tape causes anyone watching it to go mental. Xoxx has his eyes on this tape because he intends to use the mental energy expelled from countless inhabitants across the planet, as a direct result of watching this tape, to power the Lord Chaos Mk. I quantum cannon.
More Dakka: In spades. Many of the guns that you can mount on your craft have ridiculously high fire rates.
New Game+: Once you kill Xoxx or get sent back in time, you start over on the next difficulty level with everything you have accumulated so far. While this is relatively pointless in the original unless you're pursuing bragging rights, replaying the game on the same pilot up to three times is necessary in order to unlock the extra super-weapons and ships.
No Arc in Archery: Averted with the Tomator Deluxe and Plop Fragmentation Gun.
No Ending: The original game was this, with New Game+ slapped onto it.
No Fair Cheating: Typing in a cheat code just once during the game will earn you a nice red ! CHEATER ! in your Federal Hero License below the current difficulty setting, and it will remain there forever for that particular game.
Oh Crap: Your character says this after getting through the whole of the Abacus-I Artificial Asteroid.

"Oh, shit! Something's gone really bad...
Let's haul our ass outta here..."

Overclocking Attack: The RemCon can be used to overheat (ie. violently explode) some enemy missile launchers.
Overheating: Fire your weapons continuously for too long and they shut down to cool off.
The Paralyzer: The RemCon is used to "Jesterize" the Dragon, causing it to drop a huge credit bonus and stop firing on you, turning it into a sitting duck for you to destroy. The RemCon is also used in the Gold Edition to turn on a radio tower, causing all Mooks within range to drop their weapons and dance on the spot, allowing you to kill them.
Power Levels: Each weapon in the game has a bar of skulls that represent the amount of damage it does per shot. A weapon with no skulls does almost no damage, whereas a weapon with seven skulls (the maximum) does the most amount of damage. Keep in mind, however, that the overall usefulness of a weapon is subjective, and may also be influenced by its other "power levels" for heat generation and refire rate.
Precision-Guided Boomerang: The Boomerang Blaster.
Quad Damage: Comes in the form of a silver fist-shaped powerup that grants a Battle Aura and four times damage per shot for twenty seconds. Combine with More Dakka for maximum satisfaction.
Ramming Always Works: The Banzai Rammer. Also, as a rule of thumb, if something is extremely small, not meant to do damage on impact and can be shot down, you can ram it to smithereens with your own ship. There are absolutely no exceptions to this, not even when killing Xoxx.
Ray Gun: Starting with the Pulse Gun available at the start of the game, and then adding quite a few more over the course of it, such as the Tectonic Laser and Skywalker Hypergun.
Recurring Boss: The first variant. Crtex flees when you deal sufficient damage to him the first time. Near the end of the game, he returns with upgraded weapons.
Recursive Ammo: The Banjo missile plays this trope straight and true, but the particles generated by the CHAOS Particle Generator takes it Up to Eleven, with an individual particle cloning itself upon hitting something, and then the clones cloning themselves upon impact, and then the cycle repeating itself again, and again, and again...
Refuge in Vulgarity: The original had the subtitle "CADDISH UNFAIR ATTACK OF XOXX'S STELLAR BASTARDS" printed right below the title on the front cover, and the game featured a teddy bear item that bleated "Blast those bloody bastards!" when pressed. Countries that do take offence to the vulgarities censor them by replacing all instances of the first with "MANIACS" and all instances of the second with "gangsters". The Gold Edition removes the subtitle completely, but leaves the teddy bear intact.
Shock and Awe: The Charge Generator, ElectroBall and TESLA Devastator come into mind.
Shout-Out: There are enough shout outs in Jets'n'Guns to warrant a separate article.
Space Is Noisy: Oh yes it is.
Spread Shot: Starting off with the Pink Panther and then diversifying from there.
Stuff Blowing Up: Check.
A Taste of Power: The Gold Edition features a few weapons labeled as "Trial Versions" of more powerful weapons. These special weapons are located at the start of certain levels where they, upon your first visit, are far stronger than any weapon you can possibly afford, despite their description claiming that they are only a basic version of the real thing. The drawback? These guns will expire after a limited number of shots, and you cannot sell them for any extra credits.
Took a Level in Badass: The La Fontaine gun is the cheapest and weakest gun you can buy in the game, and even with full upgrades, it's only half-decent. Even the first three words in its promotional description says it: Cheap toy gun. Come the Gold Edition, and the La Fontaine Mk. II, which costs 4 100 000 credits for the base model and is one of the strongest and most expensive guns in the game. The Daisycutter also qualifies, although to a lesser extent. In the original, the Daisycutter was in its Mk. II phase and, with full upgrades, became a decent machine gun with an equally decent area of fire. The Gold Edition upgrades the Mk. II to Mk. III, which can be further upgraded to do damage equal to some of the most powerful guns in the game, albeit with a reduced area of fire compared to its maxed out Mk. II counterpart.
Video Game Cruelty Potential: There are so many ways to maim enemies in this game. Ships that you shoot out from the sky will fall towards the ground and destroy everything below it, and radioactive waste and fire will instantly disintegrate any unprotected person foolish enough to wander near the source. Shockwaves generated by the Cauldron bomb, beer tankers, or even the ground collision protection device that you can install on your ship, will rip through everything within their effective radius. If you leave blood and gore enabled in this game, expect every living organism you destroy to spew blood or green ooze, in the case of zombies in the Gold Edition, from every orifice, or otherwise be blown to bits, regardless of whether you pulverise them with a Wave Motion Gun, or fly into them. There's even a secret level in the Gold Edition;; where you get to mow down an entire army of poorly-armed spammers. And then we have some weapons that were made for this trope...

"This terrible gadget was designed especially for use against living beings."

—Description of the Acid Gun

- With the Carnage TV Transmission Set, you get instant cash for killing enemy troops in large numbers at once, among other unarmored humanoids; the more killed at once, the more money you get.
Violation of Common Sense: Flame and gas weapons work exactly the same underwater as they do above water.
"Wake-Up Call" Boss: The first boss in the game, the Coffinator, isn't very difficult, but only if you've been keeping the hull integrity of your ship in check.
Wave Motion Gun: The Chroniton Riffle in the original. The Gold Edition of Jets'n'Guns adds the Armageddonator.
With This Herring: We want you to save the universe from destruction! Here's an entry-level ship and a bit of pocket money.
Zerg Rush: The Swarm gun is essentially based on this trope.