In case you forgot, Old Games That Don’t Suck Thursday are morsels of flashbacks to games that have really influenced the way I look, make, and play games. And while I am not one for upright arcade machines but this one takes the cake. On this week’s Old Game That Doesn’t Suck, it’s Gunblade NY.
What. The. Hell. Gunblade NY is one of those games that really make you wonder about “what just happened” and makes you crave more. It’s a rail-shooting helicopter game about shooting ninjas, missiles and other brutes that are shooting at your helicopter. You take control of a crosshair, pointed by a giant plastic gun that shakes violently each time you pull the trigger. You shoot and shoot and shoot guys in small checkpoint areas until they explode and melt into the ground. Here’s what the machine looks like:
The flythroughs are not controlled by you; the camera is automatically controlled to allow you to focus on shooting the bad guys. The enemies backflip and strafe their way away from your gunfire so at times the camera must quickly flip behind the copter to allow you to finish a guy off. Constant helicopter hover, flipping camera, and enemy dance moves definitely make it a hard battle. On top of that, if an enemy shoots a missile or bomb at your helicopter you must shoot the explosives before they hit the screen.
You get three lives for a few quarters and you can get more lives by dumping in more quarters (always seems to work that way, huh). So the better you play the better off you’ll be. The game is not really that long… I could probably beat the entire game in about 20 minutes for about 6-7 continues. There’s also a hard mode which takes you on an alternate path through the streets of New York and offers up a different battle.
The thing that really reminds you you were playing the game is that the giant plastic guns have such a violent gun shake that your hands and upper body will be ringing for the rest of the day. It’s fairly intense.
Sega is the wonderful creator of this game and luckily this upright arcade machine isn’t that hard to find. A lot of arcades (at least in my area) seem to have some version of the game. If you seek it out and find it, PLAY IT. Good luck!