NIGHT STRIKER GEAR - All Clear (AD'EC'G - 66.9m)

Night Striker Gear is a brand new sequel to the 36 year old arcade original from Taito. Gear was developed by M2, with Hiroshi Iuchi as director, who's best known for Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga, and Gradius V. This is his first new game in a long time, and it delivers. This came out head to head with Ninja Gaiden 4, so I hadn't played or even seen any of it until my flight back from Japan a few days ago. I loaded it up on the plane and was instantly hooked. Everything about the game is executed extremely well, from the retro art and graphics, to the soundtrack, and perhaps most importantly, the scoring. Scoring gives games infinitely more longevity, so it's important to refine the details and make it engaging. And that's exactly what they did with NSG. It's actually a very simple system, too. Most enemy formations have one red enemy in them, and if you destroy that one first, you get a 100,000 point bonus. Which enemy in the lineup is red is usually random, so sometimes you'll want to delay shooting until you have a clear shot. This gets risky because new enemy waves come in quickly, so if you wait even a tiny bit too long, you'll start getting overwhelmed, have to dodge some bullets, and may end up letting some enemies get away. There's a million point "wipe out" bonus at the end of each stage if you destroy most of the enemies in it, so it's really important to not let too many escape. It's very hard to get every 100k bonus in a stage, let alone the whole game, so there's a scoring ceiling here that could keep anyone busy for a very long time. With that said, this isn't the highest scoring path through the game. It's better to take B' instead of E, then go on to F'. But this is what I played the most, so I just stuck with it. It would be cool if the leaderboards had different boards for each end stage route you could take, but there's just one board for everything. If you want to score as high as you can, there's no reason to do anything but the optimal path. M2 definitely understands this, given their work on the Darius games, so I'm sure they had some reason to not split it (tech issue or budget?). It's not too big of a deal because there's also the unlockable B-Side mode, which has you play every stage in the game in order, instead of the standard Darius choose your own adventure style. I do have some more gripes with the game though, one of which is pretty major. First, all of these Space Harrier type games have poor visibility, and this one is certainly no different. It can be hard to see what's coming at you because your ship blocks your view, but that's just an inherent part of the genre I suppose. The one thing that's really unforgivable is the lack of any training options. Again, M2 always does this better than any other developer on the planet, so they must have had some reason to not include at least a basic stage select. But whatever the reason is, this is an absolutely necessary feature for any score attack game, so I really hope they add it in an update, at least. It's like releasing a fighting game with no training mode. You just don't do that. With that said, Night Striker Gear an absolutely excellent game, and it'll probably end up being my second favorite game of 2025, at least. I couldn't give it a stronger recommendation, so check it out! This was a bit of a detour for me though, so before I start working on the higher scoring arcade mode path (or doing B-Side), I'll get back to Ninja Gaiden 4... You can buy Night Striker Gear on Steam or Switch for $18.99. It's currently not available on Playstation, for some reason. https://store.steampowered.com/app/32... https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/pro... 0:00 Intro 0:59 A - City 3:37 D' - City 2 6:33 E - Highway 8:53 C' - Desert 2 11:36 G - Backbone 15:00 Ending & Credits ----- Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight):    • Beat 'em Ups   2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug):    • 2D Action   STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi):    • STG Replays