Giga Wing (Takumi, 1999)

So Giga Wing was chosen for Shooting Game Tournament Week #5.

Long ago, before I ever tried Giga Wing, I remember playing rRootage, a doujin shooter created by legend Kenta Cho, and one of my most favorite modes was the "GW Mode", which was supposed to stand for Giga Wing since you were equipped with a barrier that could reflect back bullets at the enemy. All you had to do was hold the fire button down to activate it. I loved the feeling of spreading the barrier in the middle of a huge horde of bullets and watching them stab back at the enemy for some extra damage. I would do that during tight spots to save my own ass or to intentionally hurt the boss.

Anyway, when I played the real Giga Wing, I was a little disappointed because it didn't feel the same as rRootage. You used the barrier mostly to bring about these medals so you could maximize your score, and the whole game was about collecting these medals at the correct time whenever there were a ton of bullets you could reflect back. I guess this is pretty fun playing it this way, but back then, all I wanted was to feel the rush of survival and dodging bullets, so I wasn't willing to sit down with it to learn its scoring mechanics. Not only that, but the number of digits in each score is fucking ridiculous! What's a good score if you can finish the first level with billions of points? Talk about inflation. So I just played it for about an hour and switched to another game. That was years ago.

Now I'm coming back to it. Considering that I only played it for no more than a few hours years ago, I am in no position to compete with people who have played this game for years. My highest score so far today is 3,4955,42460260 ending at stage 5. This is considered to be a relatively low score compared to what can really be earned by the time you reach this stage. But I'm just taking it easy, playing it for survival and seeing how far I can get. I try to score at parts where I think yields a lot of points, but I have no clue what I am doing right or wrong. I was actually pretty pleased I was able to make it that far. Maybe I can 1CC it before the end of the week.