It got a lot more than that. We played through it twice in back-to-back sessions, partly out of stunned silence as to what we had just witnessed, and secondly because we wanted to see if we missed anything behind the massive walls of debris and explosions. Keep in mind this is a shooter with barely any auto-fire to speak of, and this probably was the first sign that carpal tunnel will be a serious issue in a few years.
Sure, we love Metal Slug. For what it does, it’s magnificent. It has the edge of Gunforce II in terms of character and the variety in the animations. However, Irem’s stunner is unmatched in terms of pure visceral thrills.
It’s hard to imagine any home console of the day handling this effort. The 16-bit era was still going strong, and the PlayStation and Saturn needed more time for developers to become accustomed to the hardware. Gunforce II simply hit at the wrong time. In the Hunt would land on both pieces of the latter hardware, while Undercover Cops was watered down for a non-US release on the Super NES.
As such, the only way you can take on Gunforce II, assuming you’re a poor gamer given your hobby choice, is via emulation. Unless you’re completely against the MAME project and would never dream of becoming involved, Gunforce II is reason enough to download the software. It’s truly that special.
Images and review courtesy of Digital Press.
Article comments
1 - Doug
Yes indeed a great game, but i think it's debatable whether or not this game surpasses metal slug due to the main fact that metal slug has like 10 games and its very well known where as gun force 2 is one game and anyone who is trying to decide which is better would be like what's gunforce 2? Im not saying its a bad game at all i think its s great game.