 ... NESTRA! Time to dive back into the Super Nintendo selection of utterly mediocre contra clone run and gun games. We've looked at Time Slip, Realm, and now it's time for Gun Force! Er, no, I'm sorry. Gun Force, battle, fire, engulfed, terror, island- What?! Well, those certainly are words they don't really make sense together, but they are in fact things that can potentially happen in a video game. Let's try that again. Gun Force, battle, fire, engulfed, terror, haha, Nope, can't do it. All that title is missing is an AND knuckles at the end. Gun Force started out as an arcade game in 1991 made by Irem, and it's a perfectly decent game with some hilarious-sounding screams when enemies die. You can commandeer all sorts of vehicles and artillery, and you can fix your aim in a certain direction so you can still dodge stuff and keep firing in that direction. It's no Contra, but it's certainly not bad. Unfortunately, when this game was ported to the Super Nintendo, it wasn't done by Irem, but by Bit Studios, who you might know from some god-awful games like Last Action Hero and Terminator 2. And sure enough, Gun Force on SNES is just a big bucket of blah. It's not as bad as the two Arnold games I mentioned, but definitely not as good as the arcade version, not even close. In addition to that, when they brought Gun Force over from Japan and changed the cover, they went from this to this. From some badass artwork to a bunch of confused stormtroopers firing in all directions. Anyway, there's five levels here making this a really short playthrough, so there's no passwords or battery save or anything, which is fine because it's not really necessary here. You run to the right, shoot everything that moves, you fight a boss, one hit deaths, a handful of lives, and a handful of continues, and you continue right where you died. And there's also special weapons with limited ammo. Pretty simple stuff with the only standout mechanics here being able to commandeer vehicles, and being able to fix your aim while dodging enemy fire. What's weird here is that you can only take damage from projectiles, you can run right past enemies. Also, when you're hanging from one of these cables, you don't take any damage? What? But the millisecond you jump off, you're vulnerable again. Also, look at the way this guy wiggles up the ladder. What is that? Commandeering vehicles might sound like a cool idea, and sometimes it works, but most of the time it's extremely clunky. Look at this big honkin' helicopter. I'm out running this screen. This is frickin' ridiculous. The ideas are strong here, but the execution is bad. Gun Force just screams early, Super Nintendo. This game was ported in 1992, and it definitely shows. The backgrounds, the colors, the blockiness, the floaty controls, and man, I mean floaty, it's like jumping on the freakin' moon. This game could have been much better, but the execution just seems rushed. One saving grace for Gun Force is that it's two-player co-op, and this cartridge is usually around $10 or so, so if you want a multiplayer game to play on original hardware and you don't want to shell out $35 for Contra 3, then I can understand the appeal. Gun Force did get a sequel that stayed in the arcades, Gun Force II, also known as Geostorm, and, uh, wow, this game kicks ass. If the first game was a Contra clone, the second game is more of a Metal Slug clone, or at least it would seem that way, right? Gun Force II came out in 1994, but Metal Slug didn't come out until two years later, made by the same team. So this really is like a predecessor to the Metal Slug series, which is kinda cool. It's a great playthrough that's a gigantic improvement on the first game in every way. So, I guess in a roundabout way, that means Gun Force for SNES was an early predecessor for Metal Slug? Boy, that sounds weird. Gun Force is one of those games where your enjoyment depends a lot on your expectations going into it. If you hear that it's a Contra clone, but it doesn't look sound or play as smoothly as Contra, you're gonna be disappointed. If you don't compare it to Contra at all and go into it as just another running gun, eh, who am I kidding? It's still not very good, but hey, sometimes people aren't looking for instant classics. They're just looking for something they hadn't heard of that could potentially kill a quick 30 minutes, and hey, this game can definitely do that, especially with the second player. However, I do have to point out that if you're expecting an accurate arcade port, that's another disappointment, so keep that in mind, too. Personally, I didn't really think much of Gun Force on SNES, and I'd much rather play the arcade version.