Design

Index

• Narrative structure
  • Diagram Individual Mode
  • Diagram cooperative Mode
• Characters
• Anlysis of each level
  • Difficulty
  • Items
  • Enemies and bosses
• Gameplay
• Tips and useful mechanical knowledge
• Controls

Narrative structure

In Gunbird you can fine different adventures who wants to obtain the magic mirror that can fulfil you one wish. They all want their dreams come true, but that won’t be easy because a band of pirates called The Trump, which the adventurers will fight against. Each character have two wishes which wears you into different ending, and two additional endings, for couple, if you play with a friend. You will be on de skin of the character of your election and fight for been able to get de mirror and have a wish come true. You must defeat the bosses in order to be awarded with it, if you are not stronger enough your dreams won’t become true.

Diagram Individual Mode:

Diagram cooperative Mode:

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Characters

NAME	IMAGE	DESCRIPTION
Marion		She is a 13 years old witch from England and she is accompanied by fluffy rabbit called Pom-Pom. She really likes to have fun and better if it’s accompanied with a bit of violence. Often, she treats poorly Pom-Pom. Her goal is became an adult because it seems that witches are more powerful when they are adults.
Yuan-Nang		She is a stronger fighter from China. Her design is influenced by Sun Wukong, also known as Monkey King and form the Chinese classical novel Journey to the west. She is not really interested in making a wish, she only wants to fight up monsters and destroy things.
Valnus		Is a robot created in Russia working under the orders of the Communist. He has the mission of taking the wish his superior’s ordered. He secretly wants to be a human and stop following orders from his communist overlords.
Ash		He is a 28 years old man from Germany who turns out to be a pedophile. He takes a disturbing interest in Marion if you choose them in the two player mode.
Tetsu		He is approximately 60 years old martial arts master from Japan. He is homosexual and does not hide it, he even calls himself a “faggot”. He was in love with Sabu, one of his students, until his death. His motivation on getting the mirror it is to wish him to come back to life.
The Trump		They are a group of three pirates formed by a woman as the leader, a maculate and strong man who is apparently an idiot, and a thin smart guy. They are from England, her name is Rouge, the stronger man is Claude and the last one is Ace.
Alter		Alter is the genie of the mirror and concedes the wishes to the characters ending up in a very funny way. But first you must prove your strength.

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Analysis of each level

This game has a total of 8 levels, 5 of them are chosen randomly and you end up playing 4. After getting the mirror, you play 3, those does not change, and they are every time equal.

Difficulty

The difficulty of this game works in the following way. We have to play 4 of the 5 randomly levels, these increase the difficulty according to the order in which they appear. This means that the order is important and mark the difficulty of the random levels. At last we have 3 more levels, these don’t have a change. They are equal all the time.

At the moment you conclude the game and you play it again (without turning it out), it increases the difficulty of the levels with the same conditions described above. The enemies will be harder to deal with and the shots will be faster and more uneasy to dodge. Besides, some enemies that just acted like collide objects in the first loop are no longer harmless.

Items

IMAGE	NAME	DESCRIPTION	SCORE POINTS
	Power-ups “P”	Increase the power attack until 3 times, then gives points.	2000
	Bombs “B”	You receive one especial attack shot.	2000
	Coin	The coins appear after breaking some objects in the levels.	200

Enemies and Bosses

The hit points and score points are based in Marion's basic shot so it may be some differences with the other characters. Moreover, some bosses' hit points might be missing due to the fact that they kill themselves after 40 seconds so it is not possible to kill them with the basic shot in this short period of time.

A lot of enemies appear in more than one level. To avoid repetition in each table we've included the stages where this enemies can be seen.

CASTLE LEVEL

IMAGE	NAME	DESCRIPTION	STAGES	SCORE POINTS	HIT POINTS
	Metallic hot air balloon	This enemy attacks you. It shoots with its 4 canons in burst of two.	Castle, City, Forest, Mine and Sea	25	500
	Four canon ground turret	It’s a not-moving turret with 4 canons that rotate while shooting bullets in a flower based pattern.	Castle and City	24	600
	Two canon ground turret	It’s a not-moving turret with 2 canons located in the castle walls. It follows your movement but doesn’t do anything (castle level)	Castle level	20	4000
	Canon ground cylindrical turret	It follows your movement and shoots one bullet to you.	Castle, City, Mine, Maya level 1	2	500
	Zeppelin shaped bomb	This enemy acts like a collide object.	Castle, City, Sea, Maya Level 1	5	200
	Green human robot	It shoots to you with two shoulder canons and with its two other canons in the arms.	Castle, City, Maya Level 1, Forest	240	4000
	Bronze TRUMP's robot	It has two different attacks. The first one is far more frequent and it consist of little bullets coming from the robot arms. The second one Is less frequent and comes from turrets on the robot shoulders. This shot is more powerful and has a circle shaped pattern that increases its radius.	Castle and city	240	4000
	Boss mechanical turret (form 1)	It shoots in three different ways. 1. A grey ring shoots a lot of small bullets that follow you. 2. The two central canon fire two big bullets each time. 3. Two lateral canons shoot big bullets in diagonal.	Castle level	UKN	400
	Boss Giant Knight (form 2)	This final boss has a circular movement. It shoots bullets in a fan pattern from his head, shield and lance.	Castle level	UKN	33000

FOREST LEVEL

IMAGE	NAME	DESCRIPTION	STAGES	SCORE POINTS	HIT POINTS
	Metallic fly	This enemy acts like a collide object.	Forest Level	4	200
	Fix red turret	It’s a not-moving turret. It has a multiple canon and it shoots small bullets.	Forest Level	16	400
	Flying robotic TRUMP'S ship	It has two lateral canons which shoots small bullets in circle form.	Forest Level	92	5000
	Mini red turret	Shoots you a small bullet.	Forest Level	5	200
	Orange TRUMP’s robot	It has 4 canons, two multiple canons in its (?) arms and two more in its shoulders. The arms canons shoot forward three small bullets and the two others shoot three big bullets in diagonal.	Forest and city	92	6000
	Helix turret	It has one canon and shots to you 1 bullet.	Forest Level	1	500
	Boss Mechanic Tank (Form 1)	It has 3 fire points. The main canon is in the centre of the tank. It shoots burst in fan form. The two other canons are in the each side. It has 5 canons and shoot aiming you.	Forest Level	120	4500
	Boss Mechanic Flying tank (Form 2)	It starts to fly with for helix. Now it has 7 fire points situated in the centre. All of them shoots aiming you. The lateral canons shoots small bullets and the main canon, shoots big bullets in a fun pattern. When you damage it enough appears 4 more canon in the helix points. They shoot in a cross pattern.	Forest Level	245	16000

CITY LEVEL

IMAGE	NAME	DESCRIPTION	STAGES	SCORE POINTS	HIT POINTS
	Metallic hot air balloon	Now this enemy attacks you. It shoots with its 4 canons in burst of two.	City, castle, mine, sea and forest and Maya level 1	25	500
	Green human robot	It shoots to you with two shoulder canons and with its two other canons in the arms.	City, castle, forest	88	4000
	House canon	Shoots one small bullet.	City Level	5	200
	Zeppelin shaped bomb	This enemy acts like a collide object.	City, mine and Maya level 1	5	200
	Rooftop four-canon turret	It shoots a burst of 2 small bullets aiming you.	City Level	10	200
	Rooftop two-canon turret	It shoots a burst of a small bullet aiming you.	City Level	8	700
	Flying red turrets	It aims you and shoots one small bullet.	City Level	1	500
	Small Helix turret	It shoots to you a small bullet	City, mine and sea	1	200
	Boss first carriage: TRUMP’s three humanoid robots	Blue attacks first, in its shoulders has two canons that shoots a burst in diagonal each one. In the arms has also canons which shoots small bullets. Secondly, attacks the bronze robot. The attack of the arms’ canons are the same as the blue robot. Only change the shoulder canons which shoot a burst of big bullets in circle pattern. Finally is the turn of the orange human robot. The cadence of the burst are higher and the velocity of the bullets too. The shoulder shoots a big bullets whit high cadence and aiming to you.	City Level	348	18000
	Boss second carriage: Turret-rooftop	There are 6 two canon turret and 2 machine guns. The two canon turret shoots a pair of bursts of two bullets each one. The machines gun shoot a burst aiming you whit a higher cadence of big bullets.	City Level	72	4600
	Boss third carriage: 6 single canons	Burst of two bullets for each one.	City Level	150	1000
	Boss final form: Locomotive robot	It appears from the train engine. It has 12 canons. Four in the chest and the other 8 in the fists, 4 for each one. The chest canons shoot big and small bullets in burst of 2. The fists attacks goes with a punch first and then shoots a burst with a circle pattern. Finally, when you destroy the robot its head turn to a machine gun and shots a burst in spiral form.	City Level	300	10000

SEA LEVEL

IMAGE	NAME	DESCRIPTION	STAGES	SCORE POINTS	HIT POINTS
	Metallic hot air balloon	Now this enemy attacks you. It shoots with its 4 canons in burst of two.	Sea, City, Castle, Mine and Forest	25	500
	Zeppelin shaped bomb	This enemy acts like a collide object	Sea, Mine and City and Maya level 1	5	200
	Canon cylindrical turret	It follows your movement and shoots one bullet to you.	Sea, Castle and Mine	2	500
	Sea turret	It has two canons, they shoot small bullets but a high cadence and they move fast following a circle pattern.	Sea Level	48	2000
	Battleship	It has 6 canons, two in the centre that shoots two big bullet to you. The other canons shoot a small bullet.	Sea Level	60	1000
	TRUMP’s flying blue robot	It has 3 fire points, two in the extremes and the main in the centre of the ship. The extreme canons shoot a burst of small bullets. The main canon shoot 4 big bullets to you.	Sea Level	92	5400
	Boss First part	Composed for 6 two canon turrets and three more canons (each one whit two vents). These shoot burst of two bug bullets with high cadence	Sea Level	236	8800
	Boss Second part	There are two two canon turrets, two canons (each one whit two vents) and finally a kind of cross which has three fire points. Each one with two vents and shoot bursts of 3 small bullets.	Sea Level	165	5000
	Boss third part	A structure that has three fire points, the main canon in the centre and two more in the laterals. The main shoots bursts of four big bullets and the other two shoot big bullets too but in bursts of 2.	Sea Level	390	15600
	Boss final form: Robotic raven	It has five canons in each wing that shoot bursts of 2 small bullets. It does it with a big cadence and very fast. When you destroy these 10 canons you have to beat 5 more. One in the centre of the robotic bird and the other for in the wings top.	Sea Level	370	10000

MINE LEVEL

IMAGE	NAME	DESCRIPTION	STAGES	SCORE POINTS	HIT POINTS
	Tank	It has three spots from where it shoots. Two of them are a one hole canon and the other one has four canons that rotate. This enemy stays always in the same place without moving. The pattern of attack is as it follows: first the two one hole canons appear and start shooting you with one bullet each time; then the four hole canon appears and shoots you with two bullets each time coordinated with the others.	Mine	5000	52
	Green hovercraft robot	Appears from down and starts going up and begin its attack. It shoots you first with four bullets that go straight in two groups of two (easy to avoid if you stay in de middle). Then it shoots again with a two groups of five bullets that form a semicircle and increases its radius as it gets closer to you (again, easy to dodge if you stay in de middle). This pattern repeats itself until either you kill the tank or pass it.	Mine	200	UKN
	Flying red turrets	They doesn’t attack you in the mine level, they just act like a collide enemy. Their movement pattern is very simple. They appear from the sides of the screen; 3 for each side forming two rows of four and two turrets. Then each group goes form right to left change its positions and crossing each other three times before they go away as they’ve come.	Mine, City and Sea	1	500
	Mine boss form 1	This boss appears form above the ground. First, it shoots you with a two bullet shot from his centre four times, the eight bullets disappear on both sides of the screen in groups of four. Then he starts to throw bigger bullets form each side, one per shot along with two bullets form the centre, all of them go straight to you. After that, two other canons appear on each side in the back and shoot you with two bullets each times combined with the other canon shots all at the same time. This shooting is repeated until two hole canons appear on the front of the ship. They rotate while shooting you (and move forwards and backwards) with one big bullet each time along with the other canons.	Mine	8000	140
	Mine boss form 2	The ship explodes and splits in two revealing a jet propelled humanoid robot inside. The robot begins to fly and starts his attack. He shoots from his head two row of big bullets in a semicircle shape that increases its radius as it gets closer to you combined then with two three bullet shots form his arms. Then, he flies away and sends eight platter shaped robots that act like collide objects without attacking you. Once you either kill or pass them the robot gets back and starts again. This process is repeated four times if you don’t kill the boss.	Mine	15000	140

MAYA LEVEL 1

IMAGE	NAME	DESCRIPTION	STAGES	SCORE POINTS	HIT POINTS
	Small Helix turret	It shoots to you a small bullet	Maya Level 1 City Level	1	200
	Metallic hot air balloon	This enemy attacks you. It shoots with its 4 canons in burst of two.	Maya Level 1, Castle and City	25	500
	Canon ground cylindrical turret	It follows your movement and shoots one bullet to you	Maya Level 1, Castle and City	2	500
	Circular red turret	Throw a burst of bullets against you	Maya Level 1	10	1000
	Green human robot	It shoots to you with two shoulder canons and with its two other canons in the arms.	Maya Level 1, Castle and City	88	4000
	Bronze TRUMP's robot	It has two different attacks. The first one is far more frequent and it consist of little bullets coming from the robot arms. The second one Is less frequent and comes from turrets on the robot shoulders. This shot is more powerful and has a circle shaped pattern that increases its radius.	Maya Level 1, Castle and City	90	6000
	Zeppelin shaped bomb	This enemy acts like a collide object.	Castle, Maya level 1, City, Mine and Sea	5	200
	Trump robots	They all three come together and they start to shot in the following order: first the red one, then the blue one and finally the bronze one. All of them have same circular pattern repeated twice. First they shot a burst of two row bullets in a semi-circular shape and after that they do the same but with a full circular pattern this time. All bullets come from the two main canons that open up on the front of the robots. Finally they join together and try to attack you with two red missiles but the final boss appears and they disappear.	Maya Level 1	UKN	15000
	Giant Maya Head	He starts shooting at you with eight bullets coming four from each eye. Then he shoots four semi-circular shaped bursts of bullets from his mouth. Then tow little clone heads appear on both sides. They have the same patterns as the big head but with fewer bullets. Next, the big head turns into a stronger one with spikes around his neck which shot three bullets each time. Then he shots six bullets, three from each eye, while throwing cubes to you. This patterns continues until you either kill him or 40 seconds pass.	Maya Level 1	UKN	27000

MAYA LEVEL 2

IMAGE	NAME	DESCRIPTION	STAGES	SCORE POINTS	HIT POINTS
	Rectangular Turret	It appears whith eleven more and each one shoots a small ball.	Maya Level 2	8	1000
	Big Rectangular turret	It shoots one small ball.	Maya Level 2	8	1000
	Big Rectangular turret (five fire points)	It shoots 5 bullets in two bursts. First one shoots three and the second burst shoots the other two bullets.	Maya Level 2	8	1000
	Big turrets group (five fire points first combination)	Now they moving around the map and shoot big bullets. They shoots nine in two bursts. First shoot five and second for bullets.	Maya Level 2	211	2000
	Big turrets group ( two one fire points first combination)	They also moving around like the other combination but, now, the two one fire point turrets shoot four burst of two big bullets each.	Maya Level 2	211	2000
	Red ball	It shoot bursts of one small bullet. Whet is destroyed it shoots a burst of a lot of big bullets in a circle form.	Maya Level 2	10	800
	Maya turret	It shoots five small bullets aiming you.	Maya Level 2	UKN	UKN
	Skull and two turrets	The two turrets shoot bursts of one or five small bullets. And the skull shoots bursts of two, three and four big bullets.	Maya Level 2	266	12000
	Boss form 1	The dragoon head shoots bursts of three and for big bullets. The turrets around it shoots small bullets aiming you. After a few seconds the turrets start moving following a circle pattern. Then, the velocity of the turrets increase and the dragon head begin to move around the map.	Maya Level 2	UKN	11600
	Boss Fish form	This form of boss shoots bursts of two and three small bullets and spawns two small balls that explode after a few seconds throwing 4 small bullets one in each direction.	Maya Level 2	UKN	7900
	Boss Robot form	Spawn two flying balls that shoot a bursts of two small bullets in a different directions. The robot shoots bursts of three small bullets for each hand. Also the robot shoots bursts of four bullets in a semicircle form from its stomach.	Maya Level 2	UKN	UKN
	Boss Skull form	From its eyes shoots a bursts of six bullets for each. After from its mouth shoots a two bursts of eight bullets aiming you. Also, from the skull mouth appears three smaller skulls that shoot bursts of small bullets.	Maya Level 2	UKN	6000
	Boss Tanookie form	UKN	Maya Level 2	UKN	12000
	Boss Eye form	UKN	Maya Level 2	UKN	UKN
	Drake final form	The drake moves all along the screen, shooting from his mouth a burst of energy balls in all directions.	Maya Level 2	UKN	10000

MAYA'S FINAL LEVEL

IMAGE	NAME	DESCRIPTION	STAGES	SCORE POINTS	HIT POINTS
	Maya Ball	This is an easy enemy to deal with. It only have two stances, preparing an attack and shooting it. Is an aerial enemy so he stun and remove one power-up if he collide with your character. He will shoot three balls of energy in a cone.	Maya's second & Maya's final stage	500	4
	Sarcophagus	This is a structure that is designed to be destroyed and bring to the player some supplies like power-ups and bombs.	Maya's final stage	2000	16
	Trump's Little Aerial Robot	This little robot will help the Trump's Mecha-Robot in phase four and five. The robot will fly from the top of the screen to the down and shooting little energy balls. Is an easy enemy to deal with but there will be a lot of this robots.	Maya's final stage	500	10
	Trump's Mecha-Robot Phase 1	In the first phase, the robot will only go from right to left of the screen shooting three balls of energy each two seconds.	Maya's final stage	5000	170
	Trump's Mecha-Robot Phase 2	In this phase you will have to focus in his gun to destroy it, the robot will gain mobility and the shoots are quite faster.	Maya's final stage	5000	170
	Trump's Mecha-Robot Phase 3	This is one of the hardest phase, the robot will grow up and two machineguns will appear in each side of the robot. Not only the machineguns will shoot you, there are some little turrets in the structures so there will be shots from all the places.	Maya's final stage	5000	170
	Trump's Mecha-Robot Phase 4	Now the robot will gain a lot of mobility. The fire power in this phase is decreased but some little Trump's robots will appear.	Maya's final stage	5000	170
	Trump's Mecha-Robot Phase 5	The hardest phases is kind like the third one but with even more power shot. Now the structure will have turrets that spread balls in all directions.	Maya's final stage	10000	170
	Pillar	The pillar will spread balls all along the screen spinning around and shooting in all directions. Against the pillar you will have to deal with some Maya Balls that will spawn every second to help the Pillar.	Maya's final stage	10000	165
	Paper Spike Balls	This is the first invocation and is probably the strongest one because of his resistance. Both spike balls will move around all the screen being a really trouble to deal with.	Maya's final stage	5000	255
	Paper Pillar	The second invocation of Alter, is kind like the Spike balls with the difference that this pillar will shoot triple energy balls in your area.	Maya's final stage	0	170
	Paper Birds	After you defeat the Paper Pillar and the Paper Spike Balls, Alter will invoke this Paper Birds all the time. There are five birds that will shoot you, the good thing is that they have very low hit points so you can focus them and easily destroy them.	Maya's final stage	2000	20
	Alter	Alter is one of the hardest bosses in the game. He will invoke paper creatures that will try to help his master. Alter will move all around the screen teleporting himself and shooting with his staff. The shots scattered all over the screen so is very hard to avoid all the energy balls.	Maya's final stage	32000	350

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Gameplay

Gunbird is a vertical scroll shooter as well catalogued as bullet hell with simple mechanics in which good reflexes are highly rewarded. The main mechanics are to avoid the shots of the enemies, destroy the enemies and defeat the boss of each level to continue to the next one. In each level we can pic kup power-ups to upgrade our shooting power, store all the bombs we can to use them at the most opportune moment and collect all the coins to achieve the highest possible score.

It is a difficult game but, if we take look to the difficulty curve, we realize that is quite marked. That's because, while in the first levels the enemies and bosses will let you some space to have a breath, when the mirror is completed with all the fragments the game becomes a really hell. That's why Gunbird scares most of the players past that point, but if you are a player that likes the challenges and do not get the easy way, you will enjoy each level of this game.

A great distinctive of this game is the variety of the characters that bring us new types of shots and specials attacks that we recap below:

• Ash: _Ash'_s basic shot is a laser burst that deals medium damage which we can upgrade picking up power-ups to increase the number of lasers, the total size of the burst and an additional projectile that looks like an energy pulse. His special attack will shoot one big ball of energy that will explode and spread in little bullets that will hurt the first enemy impacted and all the enemies behind the first one. The bomb is a huge explosion that will not only hurt almost every enemy but will protect us from all the shots in the blast radius.

• Marion: Her basic shot does low damage compared to the rest of the characters but once we got some power-ups it acquires some remote control star shaped shots which will suit us particularly well against enemies with high mobility. The special shot is a unique shot that moves vertically on the screen and causes a big explosion of huge damage. The bomb covers much of the screen by throwing sixteen boomerangs in eight directions knocking out almost any type of enemy.

• Valnus: The basic shot of Valnus is one of the best of the game dealing pretty amount of damage and, when we store some power-ups it will shoot more parallel lasers that will expand the area of the shot. The special shot deals a huge damage throwing his own firsts, it works especially well against tough enemies. When Valnus active the bomb he will shoot lasers in vertical and horizontal direction dealing a lot of damage in a huge area. The only bad is that, when he is activating his bomb, the mobility will be significantly reduced.

• Yuan Nang: Her basic attack is kind like Marion or Ash with the particularity that when you have a few power-ups, swords will be fired parallel to the shots that improve the width of the attack. She'll attack with his staff as a special attack dealing a huge damage although it is not recommended to use since is the attack with smaller reach of all the characters. The bomb creates clones of Yuan Nang which first move downwards and span the entire horizontal axis of the screen to, after some delay, they throw themselves upwards causing damage to all the enemies they cross.

• Tetsu: His basic shots are blue concentred laser burst of medium damage. As we pick up power-ups we'll enlarge the shots and add some rockets that will deal more damage to the enemies. The special shot is a blast of rockets that will cover much of the screen if we move horizontally. The bomb throws four incendiary charges that will explode forming vertical fire columns.

Tips and useful mechanical knowledge:

1. Every coin that you introduce to the game will give you three lives and one bullet of any enemy will less you one, so you have to play very carefully!

2. There is no damage for getting hit by an aerial enemy but you will lose one power-up upgrade / bomb and you will also get stunned so be aware of the enemies approaching you.

3. Something to have in mind is that all the normal enemies can be obviated but the boss have to be defeated to continue through the game.

4. If you get hitted, you'll have some time of invulnerability that you can take advantage knock-out enemies or picking up all the power-ups or bombs.

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Controls

The original arcade machine had two joysticks with eight directions and two buttons for each joystick. The attack button has two attack options. The first one is the basic in touch shoot, notice that you have to press several times the button to keep firing. The second one is to press and hold the button to charge a powerfull special attack. Finally, the second button is attached to the bomb.

You can found the original operator's manual here.