[AC] Gun Frontier - ALL Clear (No-Miss) + Rank Gadget

Turn on captions for text commentary.
Gun Frontier came out in arcades in 1990 and was made by Taito, one of the most prolific arcade shmup developers of the time.
In terms of presentation Taito was way ahead of everyone else, they always had the coolest and most stylish games of that era.
While everyone else was doing generic military shooters here we have a cyberpunk wild west setting where you play as a flying gun shooting other giant guns.
Their soundtracks were also always top-tier, courtesy of ZUNTATA (no ZUNTATA here though).
This came out on PS4 and Switch about a week ago or so courtesy of Arcade Archives.
There was a Saturn port of this in 1997, but that port wasn't very faithful to the arcade since it had no rank among other things.
So essentially this is the first time this got a real port since the game came out 32 years ago.
Gun Frontier is the first game in a trilogy of Taito games.
This trilogy composing of Gun Frontier, Dino Rex and Metal Black.
All extremely good games made by mostly the same people. These people would then later start a little known company you might know by the name of G.rev. Interviews revealed Border Down was very much intended as a spiritual successor to Metal Black.
Dino Rex is kind of the odd one out here, being a dinosaur fighting game that is also somehow connected to the lore of the trilogy??? It's weird man.
This game is also special because it was the primary inspiration for Battle Garegga.
This was Yagawa's favorite game and you can see a lot of Garegga similarities in this. In the way the bomb system works, to the game starting with the stationary tanks that drop bomb fragments, down to the cloud background.
Also the rank. This game has a nuclear rank system like Battle Garegga that you need to manage if you want a chance at clearing the game.
The rank system was very mysterious in how it actually worked but it did eventually get cracked.
The shmups wiki page recently got all the details on it and it's pretty wild: shmups.wiki/library/Gun_Front...
These details seem very unknown, at least I've seen nobody actually dodging bomb fragments before? I mostly figured out these optimal strats by myself, but figuring it out was a lot of fun.
The main things you need to be aware off are:
- Rank increases dramatically the higher your shot frequency is. The highest you can shoot without getting a rank penalty is 6.6hz.
- Rank increases by one every 10 seconds and +1 for every full bomb in stock.
If you have five bombs in stock (which you'll have for the majority of the game), you're essentially quintupling the rank increase. Therefore avoid bomb fragments like the plaque.
From my experimenting I've found it's optimal to start collecting bomb fragments starting from stage 3. Stage 5 will always have very high rank no matter what you do, so it's more advantageous to get a few extra bombs for it to make it a lot more consistent. And the difficulty increase in stage 3 and 4 is negligible.
There's a plugin you can download for Mame that gives you a gadget that shows the actual rank, including the timer rank and rate interval for shot button presses.
Incredibly useful for actually tracking rank and figuring out how to best manipulate it.
You can download it here: ss1.xrea.com/nekoziman.s601.x...
The pixel art and effects in this game are out of control.
Bursting the dam to kill the stage 3 boss, the way those big tanks in stage 5 fall into the abyss below and that stage 2 waterfall are just so sick.
The waterfall is the main reason the game got greenlit and there is a crazy story behind it. The dude that made it had to work in his underwear in a 40 °C room where the pc would overheat every hour. He had to keep switching pc's and copying everything to floppy every time it's wild.
You can read more about this story and the circumstances around the game from this translated interview from the amazing folks over at Shmuplations: shmuplations.com/gunfrontier/
The gameplay in this game is probably one of the most unique I've seen in a shmup.
The dangerous enemies here aren't the bosses or midbosses, or even the medium enemies, it's the popcorn. The popcorn in this game are probably one of the most evil enemies I've seen in a shmup. They have very deliberate design to creep up on you while dodging your shots, and then circle around you while taking pointblank potshots at you from every angle. They'll fire bullets completely horizontal or even from behind you. They can even anticipate where you're going and fire bullets ahead of you. Where they spawn is also completely random. Beating this game requires you to be very intimate with how their AI works and how to deal with them.
00:00 - Intro
01:17 - Stage 1
03:21 - Stage 2
06:56 - Stage 3
10:42 - Stage 4
13:58 - Stage 5
20:46 - Stage 6
22:15 - Ending & Credits
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Twitter: / jaimersstg
Twitch: / jaimersstg

[@drivelikej9962]

Fascinating how long it took to figure out the rank mechanism. Glad to have a reliable, commentated replay with rank strats. A huge help to me, and a real service to the community.
A couple things that might have been overlooked in the fantastic commentary:
1. The MAX coin on Stage 4 powers you up, but also gives you a full bomb instantly. Still exciting if you make it there with max-level shot!
2. You don't just have a carpet bomb, you have The World Famous Steerable Carpet Bomb (TM). You can influence the direction of the bomb with your movement. The control is just inverted. If you want to steer the explosion right, move left etc.
(I know you know, just thought it would be a nice addendum for anyone surfing the comments.)

[@triplehate6759]

Not to be confused with Leiji Matsumoto's Gun Frontier, though there are definitely similarities between the two (this one definitely leans harder into the science fiction aspects, despite the other's connection to Leiji Matsumoto's multiverse of space operas, galactic trains, and pirates fighting for freedom).

[@DarthJend]

Wow, management really set the devs up to fail.
"We want in-house quality, but at the budget we give our subcontractors. We're cutting your programming staff to the bone, the deadline is your birthday (don't miss it or else!), and this waterfall scene absolutely MUST be in the game, or we'll can the whole thing. Oh, and we're too cheap to pay for proper AC, so you'll have to program that scene while dying from heatstroke."
Yeah, I think I know why Taito's planning chief suddenly quit...

[@netdoll]

And then you have the Saturn port where a young T. Fujino (later famous for Triangle Service among other things) got handed the graphics data for the arcade version and nothing else and got told to reprogram the entire game as a copy by eye job.

[@nate567987]

@@netdoll and he rocked it

[@MylstarElectronics]

@@netdoll T. Fujino's name is *Toshiaki* .

[@MusicalMinerdude]

​@@netdollFor what it is...that's dang commendable.

[@netdoll]

@@MusicalMinerdude oh absolutely, it's amazing for a copy by eye job and actually my preferred version of the game.

[@alexhndr]

Okay, that Rank explanation is on par with how to do high score on Battle Garrega
*Looks like Raizing took some notes from this game. Damn, Taito*

[@Xx_Henry_xX]

after all garegga was a big homage to this according to yagawa

[@Shepardus]

I always enjoy reading your commentary. The way stocked bombs multiplies the rate of rank increase reminds me of Parodius Da's rank system - in that game the second and third speedups, as well as the shield powerup, each double the rate of rank increase, so if you have all of them your rank increases at eight times the normal rate.

[@BIL0471]

Superb detailed notes as always!

[@Azel954]

The rank system is fascinating. Appreciate the detailed notes.

[@julianseph842gamez5]

How rank system works in "Gun Frontier"
-The game starts with the rank at level 16.
For every 60 seconds, the rank will increase by 1 level.
The rank can reach up to level 255.
「ガンフロンティア」のランク制度について
-ゲームはレベル16のランクから始まります。
60秒ごとにランクが1段階上がる。
ランクは最大レベル 255 に達することができます。

[@FatDragonHats]

The filter effect looks pretty good, oh and nice run etc

[@weebnerdgaming4908]

GG! Very interesting to see a deliberately low rank run.

[@adolx5828]

Awesome and very hard shoot-em-up

[@Rivalseeker]

Well, I'm happy to have bought this game on Switch... but seeing this makes me wish that Hamster included a similar plug-in that shows how the game is calculating its unique ranking system.
Well, thanks for showing how it works here!

[@MusicalMinerdude]

Hamster finally bothered with one for Daioh, thankfully.
Even if it is still the most basic you could get.

[@Ishmokin]

GG!

[@tuxysmagicaljukebox5431]

Wikipedia said something about finding secrets. How do you get to these secrets and what do they provide? And how come you aren't shooting most of the enemies? And the shmup wiki says something about "Defeating the blue medium-sized planes in stage 2 with a bomb awards 10,000 points per plane destroyed, but also raises the rank by 5 for each plane destroyed. For example, destroying 4 planes with 1 bomb awards 40,000 points, but also increases rank by 24 (5 rank * 4 planes + 4 rank * 1 bomb)."

[@NB-1]

Don't know if I overread it somewhere but you can choreograph your smart how it moves over the screen. And thank you for the great insight:)

[@AndrewBlechinger]

Popcorn that can anticipate your moves and lead their shots accordingly? Man, that's fucking DUMB.
Also didn't ZUN work at Taito once upon a time?

[@alexhndr]

Correct me if i am wrong, but yes
He is one of the programmer at TAITO
And i believe he is also part of Zuntata, "Rayforce" Composer team. He quit TAITO shortly after.
So if you are wondering where the ZUN name came from, now you know.
*Touhou x Rayforce fangame when?*

[@armormodekeeg]

@@alexhndr He never did music for Taito, and he was largely there in the early 2000's, with programming credits on games like Graffiti Kingdom and Bujingai.
ZUN comes from his real name, Jun'ya Ota; he's stated that the similarity to Zuntata is coincidental. But yes he did work there!

[@nate567987]

also hope to see a scoring video using this new info

[@SleepyDirty]

Is there any difference between Gun Frontier and Gun & Frontier? I notice the title screen on this video shows Gun & Frontier.
Chinopolis clear of Gun Frontier doesn't have the ampersand, and the intro text on that video is in Japanese.

[@zerwardzelaiine7622]

I'm very new to shmups, so...what does _no miss_ mean? You destroy all targets or something?

[@Shepardus]

No deaths.

[@zerwardzelaiine7622]

@@Shepardus ahh ok, ty

[@nate567987]

need a video on how frames on and off tl to autofire

[@Blahblahblah28504]

This is the only game I can think of where the most dangerous enemies are not the larger foes, but the popcorn. I hate stage 5 with a passion.

[@kot32_fake]

What exactly does 30Hz'ing mean in the context of this shmup?

[@JaimersSTG]

30hz autofire translates to pressing the shot button 30 times per second.
For a 60fps game that's the fastest you can shoot with external autofire, since it takes one frame for the input to register.

[@soratheorangejuicemascot5809]

How the hell is Gun Frontier related to Dino Rex????

[@dougggtheoof]

Yeah I was thinking the same thing. Dino Rex is, well... Dino Rex. But this actually looks like som effort was put into it.

[@kirimusse]

Hey Jaimers, are you open to recommendations? There's a fun little game called Chain Blaster in the 3DS's eShop. Btw, if you don't feel like buying it yet, you can still buy it after this month's 29th by doing this ( czcams.com/video/TgI9G4fRf5M/video.html ); I'd be kinda interested in seeing a playthrough on that game done by you…