Stargunner: Difference between revisions

[[File:Stargunner_2944.gif|frame|It must be quite epic if it's between only two planets...]]

 

 

''Stargunner'' is a [[Horizontal Scrolling Shooter]] released in 1996 by Apogee Software.

In the distant future in the Andromeda galaxy, the Zilions begin to harbour a thirst for conquest. They prepare for an invasion on a nearby planet, Ytima. The Ytimians, suspecting a build-up of Zilian forces and knowing full well that they will not survive against an all-out Zilian invasion of Ytima, train an elite squadron of pilots, known as [[Title Drop|Stargunners]], to attack the Zilians's three strongholds on their planet first, before the war fleets of Zile receive deployment orders.

 

 

The game has 33 stages divided into four parts, with the first one, a six-stage episode called Scout Mission, being the only available episode in the Shareware version, detailing the Stargunners' reconnaissance against all three strongholds of Zile. The full version adds three nine-stage episodes, titled Stellar Attack, Terran Assault and Aquatic Combat, with each episode detailing the strike on each of the Zilions' three strongholds.

 

 

 

The actual game itself can be run smoothly on a computer with a 486DX/33 processor, which is quite a feat given that said processor was manufactured seven years before the game's release and most other MS-DOS games released at around the same time as ''Stargunner'' required a 486DX/66 (which has [[The Same but More|double the processing speed]]) to run just as well.

{{tropelist}}

 

* [[Asteroid Thicket]]: Stage 2 of Scout Mission and Stages 4 and 6 of Stellar Attack have asteroid field segments that can be quite dangerous if you don't have your main weapon powered up high enough and/or are using sidearms that do not really focus on forward firepower, such as the Maxipow Evolter.

* [[Beam Spam]]: The Dual Laser.

** [[Wolfpack Boss]]: The five bronze gears in Terran Assault.

* [[Cap]]: A designer-imposed inventory cap exists in the form of the maximum number of Nuke Blasts (four), moons (two) and extra lives (nine) you can carry on your ship at one time.

''"You've got enough already!"'' }}

* [[Continuing Is Painful]]: If you die during a level and have lives to spare, your primary weapon drops two levels when you respawn. This can happen surprisingly often due to ''Stargunner'' being [[Nintendo Hard]], even on Ensign difficulty.

* [[Direct Continuous Levels]]: The latter two-thirds of Stellar Assault, Terran Attack and Aquatic Combat feature several stages that are directly continuous to one another, separated only by the bonus points given out at the end of the preceding stage and the shop screen between the stages.

* [[Earthshattering Kaboom]]: {{spoiler|If you defeat the final stage guardian of Aquatic Combat, you trigger and escape the destruction of planet Zile, shown in a following cutscene.}}

* [[Every Ten Thousand Points]]: Apart from buying extra lives or obtaining them from powerups during levels, you can also get extra lives through scoring. The first extra life is given to you when you reach 500,000 points and the second is given at 1,000,000 points. You get extra lives for every 1,000,000 points after that.

* [[Have a Nice Death]]: In the full version, when you run out of lives, you are given the option to retry, while at the same time watching your ship's flaming wreckage streaking towards the ground. If it crashes before you [[Press X to Not Die|press Y]] [[Press X to Die|or N]], [[Game Over|the game assumes N]].

* [[Idiosyncratic Difficulty Names]]: Ensign, Captain, and Admiral, which corresponds to easy, normal and hard respectively.

* [[MOD]]: Used for the game's music.

* [[Macross Missile Massacre]]: Stage 4 of Scout Mission and Stages 6 and 9 of Terran Assault have one segment of this each.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Horizontal Scrolling Shooter]]

[[Category:Video Game]]