#shmups

Concept Sketches for ESP RA. DE.

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Game 88: Tail Gunner Mar2026 Tail Gunner is a neat little endless shmup about surviving an onslaught of airplanes trying to gun you down. While the control scheme leaves a lot to be desired, the overall premise and enemy design pretty much stands on it's own to more than make up for it. Despite some early exploitation you can have in the corners eventually the chaos becomes too much, and bigger enemies start targeting you so you have to move and pay attention to your surrounds to the point it feels like your zipping and zapping all over the place. It really ends up becoming fairly interesting and a testament to dog fights as much as a 2D environment can thrive on. Honestly, the only real problem is that you consistently have to wait to get into the fray each time you die rather than earning points to get an extra life or continue which I feel would have helped the potential for crazier runs that feel more thrilling rather than killing all the momentum it built up. This in tandem with the control scheme only offering a very awkward and not always responsive mix of mouse clicking and arrow keys movements ends up also lowering the potential for this game. That said Tail Gunner is at least properly functional and can really show you a good time if you can get into it enough. The sad part is it's kind harder to get much further once you hit a wall as each time you die sends you all the way back rather than continuing the madness this game can be.

I dont care too much about 1ccs but trying to get as far as you can on one continue does very much help get better at the game, the one game i do want to try and clear in one go gotta be zeroranger which anyone reading this should also play (its my fave game of all time)

Source: Login (#159, 11/20/1992) || Internet Archive; bakuDD, Elemhunter