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Gaiares is a rare and incredibly brilliant and gorgeous horizontally scrolling shooter. One of the very best on the MD, or any system, come to that. If you're a shooter fan, you really need to own this game. Noted at the time for it's 8-odd minute intro, but the game itself more than lives up to the excitement generated (back in the pre-CD-ROM days) by the intro. Excellent sound (very catchy music!), superb graphics, fairly high difficulty, and great gameplay which somehow reminds of both the Gradius and Thunder Force games and even Macross in it's graphical style, but your little satellite (TOZ system) can be fired R-Type style. There's a bit of a balancing act going on though because while you fire it, you can't shoot at all. If the TOZ system hits something on it's way back to you, it will kill an enemy or even a row of enemies which feels pretty awesome but you have to move up or down quite quickly to make this work because on the way out, the TOZ system will face hug itself onto an enemy ship, which then allows you to steal it's weapon system. You can power up by stealing the same type of enemy's weapon system more than once.

Another thing to note is that, a bit like Majuu Ou for the Super Famicom, there are a HUGE amount of different enemies in the game. Many shooters have wave upon wave of exactly the same enemy running throughout the level or even the game. There's nothing especially wrong with that - I'll cite my undying love of Kyukyoku Tiger to prove it - but if you play through Gaiares in it's entirety, one of the things which really stands out is the vast array of different ships you get to shoot down. Combined with the big intro, you'd be forgiven into thinking this must surely be a 32 Meg cartridge but far from it (and they didn't exist on the MD when Gaiares came out). It's limited Western release is obviously part of the reason Gaiares hasn't quite earned the price tag of something like Gleylancer or Eliminate Down (plus they made more of them in Japan) but, given that the game is a Mega Drive exclusive, I wouldn't be surprised if, within a few, Gaiares becomes as expensive as Gleylancer is right now. Ignore it now and regret it later.

Overall good condition but see pictures for details: ACTUAL ITEM PICTURED.
Note that we only ever crop our photos. We never enhance/retouch them!

Gaiares - *** by Renovation/Telenet
MD/Genesis \| Jap \| 1 Player \| Traditional Shooter
Gaiares is a rare and incredibly brilliant and gorgeous horizontally scrolling shooter. One of the very best on the MD, or any system, come to that. If you're a shooter fan, you really need to own this game. Noted at the time for it's 8-odd minute intro, but the game itself more than lives up to the excitement generated (back in the pre-CD-ROM days) by the intro. Excellent sound (very catchy music!), superb graphics, fairly high difficulty, and great gameplay which somehow reminds of both the Gradius and Thunder Force games and even Macross in it's graphical style, but your little satellite (TOZ system) can be fired R-Type style. There's a bit of a balancing act going on though because while you fire it, you can't shoot at all. If the TOZ system hits something on it's way back to you, it will kill an enemy or even a row of enemies which feels pretty awesome but you have to move up or down quite quickly to make this work because on the way out, the TOZ system will face hug itself onto an enemy ship, which then allows you to steal it's weapon system. You can power up by stealing the same type of enemy's weapon system more than once. Another thing to note is that, a bit like Majuu Ou for the Super Famicom, there are a HUGE amount of different enemies in the game. Many shooters have wave upon wave of exactly the same enemy running throughout the level or even the game. There's nothing especially wrong with that - I'll cite my undying love of Kyukyoku Tiger to prove it - but if you play through Gaiares in it's entirety, one of the things which really stands out is the vast array of different ships you get to shoot down. Combined with the big intro, you'd be forgiven into thinking this must surely be a 32 Meg cartridge but far from it (and they didn't exist on the MD when Gaiares came out). It's limited Western release is obviously part of the reason Gaiares hasn't quite earned the price tag of something like Gleylancer or Eliminate Down (plus they made more of them in Japan) but, given that the game is a Mega Drive exclusive, I wouldn't be surprised if, within a few, Gaiares becomes as expensive as Gleylancer is right now. Ignore it now and regret it later. Overall good condition but see pictures for details: ACTUAL ITEM PICTURED. Note that we only ever crop our photos. We never enhance/retouch them!