Gunbird

Gunbird is a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up developed by Psikyo. The game is set in a fantasy setting with steampunk elements. Lush forests and medieval castles meet steam trains and mech robots. Instead of piloting the genre-traditional space ships, Gunbird lets the player chose between five different characters (Ash, Marion, Valnus, Yuan Nang and Tetsu) who traverse the game world on broomstick, jet packs and pedal-powered helicopters on a quest to find the pieces of a magic mirror across seven stages.

Unorthodox vehicles aside, the gameplay follows traditional genre standards. The main goal is to dodge all bullets that fill the screen while collecting power-ups to make the character stronger. Gunbird features one power-up that incrementally increases the firepower of the standard weapon (P-items) as well as additional ammo for the screen-clearing special ability (B-items). Standard weapon and special ability differ from character to character. Where some characters excel in high firepower in a straight line others allow for a wider spread of bullets or additional homing missiles.

History:

The chief director was Naozumi Yorichika, while the programming design team consisted of Wataru Yamazaki, Emi Taniguchi, and Hyoue Ogawa. Hirofumi Nakamura designed the characters and art style for the game.