Gyrodine (Playstation 2)

Vertical
Checkpoints ON
2 Difficulty levels
1 Stage (loopable)
Ship speed fixed
- - - - - - -
Developed by Crux in 1984
Published by Taito in 2006

As usual in the history of arcade development, many were the titles that followed in the footsteps of Namco's massive hit Xevious. One of the lesser known is Gyrodine, a gray point of connection between developers Taito and Toaplan. Both a secondary company to Orca and also an embrionary bridge to Toaplan according to most sources, Crux had in Gyrodine its only full-fledged arcade release with the newlyfound publishing aid of Taito. The relationship was so successful that during their long partnership game rights would sometimes blur between both companies, as hinted by the fact that Gyrodine got included in the Taito Memories II Vol. 2 compilation for the Playstation 2 (why not appear in Toaplan Shooting Battle, for example?).

Helicopter-based shooting wasn't exactly a novelty back in 1984, but Gyrodine still tried to offer something unique despite the drab visuals and the lack of a proper soundtrack. Two buttons are used, one to engage aerial enemies and another to shoot the ground at a predetermined distance. When these buttons are pressed at the same time the chopper fires an air-to-ground missile whose heat-seeking ability is able to target enemies in a tilted trajectory. And that's it, the rest of the gameplay consists of coming to grips with the incoming waves of resistance as you fly seamlessly over land and sea.

Player one start!
(courtesy of YouTube user Alcyon)

Controlling the helicopter comes with an unusual feeling due to the way the flight movement is implemented. As you move around your shot's direction is determined by the chopper's momentum. That means the only way to fire in a straight vertical line is by having the helicopter in standstill or moving strictly up/down. You can't lock shot direction to strafe left and right, a limitation that ends up demanding good anticipation from the player as enemies and bullets pour down more and more frequently. It's not uncommon to see those pesky jets and planes survive your attempts to take them down and leave, or worse, collide with your craft and take away a precious life. On top of that, the heat seeking missiles can behave quite erratically, missing easy targets or hitting the enemy in the most unexpected angles.

All the tiny details described above might drive people away from the game, but in my opinion Gyrodine isn't as hard as it seems. It also has that one-more-go factor that draws players back once they get more familiar with the layouts of the terrain and the enemy behavior. I for one was always curious to see what lied ahead because the game has no definition at all for stage progression and it's impossible to continue. It does loop with a higher difficulty though, you'll know you're starting over once you reach the beach with the couple of parasols on the ground. Enemy bullets don't seem to get any faster by then, but they do increase in numbers. Speaking of difficulty, let it be known that Gyrodine has only two settings, Easy and Hard, with the arcade default set to Easy.

Warning, civilians in barbecue formation ahead!

While scoring in hoary games like this one is as straightforward as it gets, players need to watch out for situations that can actually reduce the score instead of adding to it. This happens with a characteristic muffled sound whenever you kill civilians or animals. Now for a little secret: halfway into the loop you'll see a green civilian surrounded by three tanks on the right side of the screen; destroy the tanks without killing him and you'll earn an extra life. Another nice secret is the uncovering of mermaids, which give 10.000 points each. They're always located close to island's shores or within river banks, but just like the hidden flags from Xevious their exact position is randomized from one credit to the next.

Besides the extra life the green guy gives you there's also a score-based extend routine that starts at 20.000 points, continues with 50.000 points and goes on and on at every 50.000 points. More often than not the bulk of the life stock has serious chances of depletion during the passages where those crawling creatures clutter the screen with bullets or when multiple enemies decide to overlap their attacks. Since the screen never stops scrolling, sometimes you're better off just circling the danger to avoid the need for risky maneuvers. An interesting detail is that even though it's essentially built upon checkpoints, Gyrodine revives players pretty much in the same place where they died. A simple extra trick to obtain one more life from every run is to add at least one more coin/credit (button R2) before starting the game: when the last life is lost you'll see the pilot escaping death on a parachute, which is then followed by a final chance to proceed with a message of EXTRA PLAY START.

Click for the option menus translation for Gyrodine on Taito Memories II Vol. 2

Though devoid of any acompannying soundtrack, the game trusts in its sound effects to convey some sort of aural interaction. Granted, it's not as full of peeps and bleeps as Super Cobra, but it gets the job done – note how the chopper makes three different sounds for some ever-present white noise as it moves around. Enemies rarely make any noise because they're seemingly more worried about taking you down. As mentioned above, higher loops come with more bullets but also with different and more crowded aerial enemy waves (ground enemies remain the same no matter what). There comes a point, for instance, where those bullet-spraying red choppers start appearing non-stop instead of coming in waves of three.

I was able to get to the 4th loop of Gyrodine in the default difficulty (Easy), playing on a 20 inch CRT in TATE mode. The port is arcade-perfect, much like the other titles included in the Taito Memories II Vol. 2 disc. As for the version released for the Famicom, it's a tad different from the arcade source. I expect to loop it one day too, if only to quench some long overdue nostalgia itch.