Giga Wing

About Giga Wing

Giga Wing (1999) is Takumi's steampunk vertical shooter for Capcom, unusual for running on a horizontal monitor, built around a Reflect move that sends enemy bullets back at their owners.

Giga Wing in Depth

Set during a fictional war in a steampunk world, the game has the player fly one of four futuristic aircraft through seven stages, destroying aircraft, tanks, ships and buildings, with a boss at the end of each. Every ship has three attacks: a normal spray of bullets, a Reflect that turns enemy bullets back to damage their ships, and a Force Bomb that cancels every bullet on screen. Ships start with two bombs and can carry up to seven, and bombs left after a boss fight earn a bonus. Destroyed enemies drop power-ups and medals that raise the score multiplier, and the game adjusts its difficulty according to the player's score at the end of each level. Three lives are given, and the seventh stage can be reached only without using a continue.

The four pilots, Sinnosuke, Ruby, Isha and Stuck, each have their own storyline, and two players together get a team storyline. The heroes are trying to destroy a powerful Medallion that many bosses use as a weapon, controlled by an evil man piloting a ship called the Stranger, revealed to have caused this war and earlier conflicts including the Second World War. In the bad endings a pilot sacrifices themselves in a kamikaze attack to destroy the Medallion.

Making Giga Wing

Takumi Corporation developed Giga Wing, and Capcom published it in arcades in 1999, with a Dreamcast version following. Game Machine listed the arcade version as Japan's tenth most successful arcade game in its 1 May 1999 issue. The Dreamcast release, which reached the US on 18 July 2000 after a delay from April, received mixed reviews on GameRankings: Game Informer was favourable and EGM mixed while the game was still in development, and Famitsu gave it 28 out of 40. The arcade original was later re-released in Capcom Arcade Stadium.