Saturday, May 16, 2009

New PCB: Air Gallet - Gazelle, high score #1

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After playing the hell out of some Toaplan games recently, I started playing this a bit and really got to enjoy it. I got lucky and got a pcb stateside off a seller on ebay for pretty cheap.

For those who don't know, Gazelle was one of a few companies formed from the remains of Toaplan (with Cave and Takumi bring two others) and they only put out two games - Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon and Air Gallet. Both feature artwork from Joker Jun and he's on point with Air Gallet for sure.

The game itself is pretty hard and features some interesting reworked bits, like the "Game Over" text being exactly the same as Batsugun with a very similar status bar as well.

It plays like a cross between Batsugun and Twin Cobra with fast bullets. The first stage is pretty difficult and there is a slight ramp up in difficulty as the game goes on. There are numerous shot types and a cool medal bonus system that forces you to be really aggressive or extremely patient to score well.

I love the artwork and the soundtrack is really good as well. There are so many good graphical bits, like when two former bosses slam into each other before the last boss and destroy each other or when the bomb carrier ship destroys the building before the second boss. Fantastic.

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Not the worst starting score, but the shmups board has like 55 scores taken for the game and this puts me pretty low indeed. No worries though as I am kind of hell bent on the 1cc here. Hopefully, I'll be able to hit 2 mil pretty soon. The extend at 1,5 mil will certainly help.

5 comments:

gunbird18 said...

Glad to see you get this, drboom!
I'll be even more ecstatic when I get to fire this up in a cabinet!

Awesome game! Joker Jun as the lead artist is just icing on the cake!

Jealous fo sho!

drboom said...

Strangely enough tho, I ended up playing APB almost all weekend- especially after watching KET play live from Japan on Sunday morning. Sooooo cool!

Here's his twitter link:
http://twitter.com/ket_garelab

Watch it over the weekend and when he posts a link to the page, go to it! Really very cool.

gunbird18 said...

Okay, will do!

Thank you for the info!

Arcade Fever said...

I should also be getting this PCB by end of week, and if time will allow, will join in on the fun. The reason there are so many scores posted on the shmups board is because this was an STGT title, which always ends with everyone hating the game when its over. LOL

drboom said...

I figured it was something like that. :)

You'll dig the game Dave_K. It's old school meets kinda new school with a really deep Toaplan feeling. I'm playing this again, trying to get a 2mil score (which is my goal for the week). I'm going to shoot for the 1CC and it seems like the game is challenging enough from the get go that it'll keep you interested in the early stages - even when you have played them a ton of times.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the game when you get it.