Gun Nac (NES) review "There are too few shmups that explore the terror of rabbits, trees, umbrellas, and flying briefcases. I believe that these things are too controversial for most developers, even the team behind Grand Theft Auto, to seriously address, and thus they hang over video games like a shadow that really wants to talk about dangerous rabbits, trees, umbrellas, and flying briefcases. Unable to release a game about these evil things directly, Compile was forced to set their game in outer space in o..."

There are too few shmups that explore the terror of rabbits, trees, umbrellas, and flying briefcases. I believe that these things are too controversial for most developers, even the team behind Grand Theft Auto, to seriously address, and thus they hang over video games like a shadow that really wants to talk about dangerous rabbits, trees, umbrellas, and flying briefcases. Unable to release a game about these evil things directly, Compile was forced to set their game in outer space in order to get it past Nintendo’s censors.

Okay perhaps that’s not true, but the part about Compile and a shooter in which you go on a rabbit-killing, tree-chopping, umbrella-wacking, flying briefcase genocide is right on the money. Apparently the Japanese have a myth about rabbits living on the moon and pounding rice, which, much like the story we tell children about the moon being made out of cheese, makes very little sense – about as little sense as a lone spaceship flying through the bowels of an alien planet and leaving an entire armada in ruins (see every shmup ever made). I’m not quite sure what was happening at Compile during the NES days, but at the point between Serious Generic Shooter in Outer Space and Serious Generic Shooter not in Outer Space someone said “wait a minute, why are we taking this seriously when it’s so absolutely ridiculous?” and thus Gun nac was made.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: you’re a little ship. You are pointing upwards and everything around you is scrolling vertically at breakneck speeds. Hostile things are flying at you at from all directions and if you so much as touch one of them or one of the little dots that they fling at you, you will explode and come back to life as the exact same ship that just blew up. Enemies approach you in uniform waves as though they should have spent less time practicing synchronized swimming and more time learning to shoot bullets. Sometimes when an enemy dies, it drops an item which grants you a weapon such as a gun that shoots bullets or a gun that shoots lasers or a gun that shoots laser that also shoot bullets. You can collect and use bombs that cause the screen to flash and make all sorts of sounds, which cases everything except you to inexplicably die. After your ship has scrolled along for awhile, you come to a big enemy, the music changes, and the screen stops scrolling until you defeat said enemy and some sort of victory music plays.

Yes Gun nac does all these things, but what makes it keep its head above the water in a sea of boring mediocrity is that Compile decided to cross that crowded sea in a boat manned by rabbits and flying vases and to do so with style and charm. As the introduction tells you, peace is about to be shattered; plants, animals, and toys are attacking people; and the only way to save the universe is to send a hero into eight areas and destroy the creature that seems to be in control of this diabolical army of rabbits and dancing snakes. One of those bosses is a kitten that throws loose change. While it might seem like a minor thing to replace generic robots with rolls of toilet paper, this essentially gives the game license to throw whatever it wants at you, and it does just that. Compile wasn’t new to shooters, having already developed Aleste, Guardian Legend, Blazing Lasers, and a little thing called Zanac which played strikingly like Gun nac without the rabbits, and their experience shines rather brilliantly here. The movements of these flying carrots and propane canisters are well organized and as beautiful as the NES could do; it’s as though all of these things actually did spend their free time practicing synchronized swimming and performing ballets. Even if all the rabbits and flying balloons with cheerful smiles were removed, Gun nac would still be able to rise to the top of that heap of mindless shooters simply because it does shooting so very well.

Gun nac, in case you can’t tell, is absolutely fantastic. I don’t think Compile could have done more with the NES’s hardware than they have done here. They wanted to make a fun shooter in which crazy objects fly at you and that’s exactly what they did. This might very well be the most technically proficient game on the adorable little NES. There’s even an option (and just having an options menu is an accomplishment) to give speed priority over sprites or vise versa. Even with all these flying floor tiles and paper airplanes dashing around, the game hardly ever slows down, which is something that perhaps only Recca can boast of doing on the NES. Unlike Recca, Gun nac isn’t difficult to the point that you must quit your job and live in a windowless, friendless room playing until your thumbs erode down to bloody little stumps because thankfully there is a difficulty setting. That’s right, a shooter that accommodates both skilled and poor players. Not only that, there is a separate option to make enemies fire bullets whenever they die, that way people that actually managed to beat all four loops of Lifeforce will feel like the game wasn’t dumbed down for grandma and granddad. And if you want to jump around and play different levels, there is even a level select code.

I don’t think there is a bad thing to say about Gun nac. That isn’t to say that it is perfect, but that is to say that Compile did exactly what they wanted to do and the results could not have been improved on the NES’s hardware. It’s fun, it’s challenging yet accessible, the music easily gets stuck in your head, and there are space rabbits and a killer octopus. The game is never frustrating, power-ups are not unforgiving yet reward players that don’t die, and again there are freaking space rabbits and evil Christmas candles. There’s even a little shop between levels that looks like a fast food restaurant that sells bombs so you can buy a different weapon if you don’t like the one you currently have.

While Gun nac may not be a methodical masterpiece like R-Type and it may not come close to the intricacy of modern bullet curtains, it still manages to do what it sets out to do so well that if you like shmups and you own Gradius, Lifeforce, and Zanac but not Gun nac, you really should lower your head in shame and wonder at what you’re missing. It’s fantastic. And yes, there really are flying rolls of toilet paper.

Community review by dagoss (May 19, 2008) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.