Gamera 2000 (Playstation)

Rail shooter
Checkpoints OFF
3 Difficulty levels
8 Stages
Ship speed fixed
- - - - - - -
Developed by TYO Productions / Digital Frontier
Published by Virgin Interactive in 1996

Gamera is a giant monster, or kaiju, originated from a series of Japanese films that started in the 1965 film Gamera - The Giant Monster. A legendary colossal turtle believed to have inhabited the lost continent of Atlantis, Gamera was created to compete with the success of Godzilla and appeared in a total of 12 films, and while it failed to garner the same fame of Toho's fire-breathing lizard it is still fondly remembered by kaiju fans all over the world. Given the obscure nature of Gamera 2000, however, I don't think the same statement applies to the world of video games.

Deeply hidden in the Japanese Playstation library, Gamera 2000 is a rail shooter that doesn't veer too far from the norm in terms of gameplay, which in many ways is very close to the likes of Sega's Panzer Dragoon. Polygon-based graphics set the tone for the action, while low-res cinemas with real actors complete the fan service with campy yet genuinely delightful results. Dubbed in English by default with Japanese subtitles, these can also be watched in Japanese, a feature that's rarely seen in the world of shmups even by today's standards.

Introduction and initial stages of Gamera 2000
(courtesy of YouTube user TGApuleius)

 

At the center of the game and the story is an elite member of the United Nations Science Academy called Jack Morton. He's the one piloting the jet fighter and interacting with several other characters and computer machinery in between levels. Gamera flies by his side, providing aerial support during most of the time. Tap button × or ○ to fire regular shots. Hold × to lock on to enemy targets and release it so that Gamera shoots its homing fireballs against them. Hold ○ and watch as Gamera charges its spinning attack according to a vertical gauge on the right side of the screen, and release it to see the giant monster wreak havoc against any on-screen enemy. The more you charge the longer the attack, but then it also takes longer for Gamera to recover from it in order to have another go.

As the stage progresses in four main locations (Tokyo, Hawaii, San Francisco and Hong Kong) an overhead radar shows the appearance of enemies as yellow dots. Since they can come from all directions, it's possible to turn the camera view 90º left or right by pressing L1 or R1. Pressing both buttons at the same time brings the camera back to the default forward view. At first moving around with the camera isn't that important, but eventually you'll find out that wiping out all threats and targeting boss parts as fast as you can is the best strategy to preserve health and survive. After all, each stage comes with only one full health bar with no recovery in sight. If the health bar is depleted the game is over.

A significant change in the gameplay appears in the forest of stage 3, which starts as if you were directly thrown into the hoverbike scenes from Star Wars Episode VI - The Return of Jedi. The effect is neat and you don't need to worry at all about hitting obstacles, focusing solely on the enemies coming from all sides. During these hoverbike phases Gamera is absent, so you can't rely on its attacks to help you out. The hoverbike sections continue inside an underground tunnel full of mutated dogs and laser-firing bats before you face a huge flying creature that represents the first big challenge of the game. That's where avoiding deadly lasers and destroying enemy bullets with your own firepower becomes absolutely necessary since dodging is nigh impossible.

Even though Gamera 2000 is pretty much a straightforward rail shooter where aiming is an important part of the gameplay, a few obstacles appear here and there, such as the debris thrown by the tentacle mid-bosses when they're about to die. Some levels have splitting paths that take you to different mid-bosses, but I found it's very confusing to figure out where the splits are in order to consciously choose the desired path. Fortunately it doesn't make much difference in the end.

Gamera and a two-headed flying friend

Getting used to the rhythm of boss attacks then becomes the main objective of Gamera 2000. Sure, abusing the spinning attack of the turtle monster whenever possible is an absolute must, just remember to unleash it during the most profitable parts of the battle. The 7th stage in particular is quite a challenge since you must get through three long phases of the Bionic Gyaos boss. A huge flying saucer mothership awaits in the final stage, but if continues are used you won't be able to fight it. The game ends right there and then and awards the player with a "bronze" medal.

More noble closures to the game will be achieved if you at least get to the last stage in one piece ("silver" ending) or complete the mission without using any continues ("gold" ending). The instruction manual also mentions that in order to get the best possible ending you need to gather as much information as possible from the movie screen system in between levels. I'm not really sure of the requirements, but suffice it to say I didn't fret over watching all the clips and still got the gold medal.

Since Gamera 2000 has no scoring system, there's no need to get out of your way to kill everything. Some enemies will vanish after they fly past you, so just move along, do your thing and watch Gamera's victory roar at the end of the levels. The journey isn't really an outstanding ride graphicwise, but it certainly gets the job done for kaiju and rail shooting fans. The overacted sappy movie intermissions are harmless, and if you're able to pay attention to it amidst the non-stop action you'll notice the music is rather decent with a few standout tracks.

As mentioned above, here's my golden badge for the ending of Gamera 2000 on the Playstation, playing in the Normal difficulty of the standard game mode. A special "family mode" is actually a cooperative option where one player controls the ship and the other controls Gamera.