Gyruss

"Gyruss, I grew up with Galaga. I knew Galaga. Galaga was a favorite game of mine. Gyruss, you’re no Galaga."

When I was first introduced to mathematical inversion, where you can map circles to lines or vice versa(I solved a math problem that way once, really,) I thought briefly of Gyruss, where you move your ship in a circle firing towards the center, being a sort of inversion of Galaga--for those who have played both it's common knowledge that the two are similar, but given that Gyruss combined geometric inversion(not the sort of math I like) with the mega-classic Galaga, the equation implies that I would find Gyruss OK but not great. It's a nice way to get around the usual restrictions of the side of the board, where you can get stuck, but now there is the additional challenge of never being able to shake the bad guys off. Monsters fly in from outside your circle of movement(they can never hit you on the way up) and align themselves at the center of the circle as you fly through warps to Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, and so on into Earth and back again with no fanfare, where you get your ''chance stage'' which is shockingly similar to Galaga's challenging stage. It's a unique twist, much better than ''oh, look, we have different monsters, so the game's original.'' On later levels there are also asteroids that spiral out, tractor beams that just kill you, and a less mind-wracking power-up than you'll find in Galaga.

The controls have a learning curve, as you must move your ship around in a circle. You always move the shorter distance from where you are to where the joystick indicates you'll be, or clockwise if there's no difference--this is often relevant because it's easier to fire or find save haven from the four cardinal directions. Firing well isn't always easy as the monsters are rather small and you have to draw a trickier imaginary line than for Galaga, and due to a delay after you shoot, you can't strafe an area as you could in Galaga. The novelty will wear off once you lose a few guys you didn't expect to. You'll get impatient and an alien floating lazily toward the edge will sucker you into trying to snipe him and--BOOM.

The levels and challenges again owe a debt to Galaga. There are two levels/warps to Neptune, a chance stage(unlike Galaga, Gyruss's first chance stage is eminently winnable when you know where to camp out, although overall Gyruss is way tougher) and three levels before the next chance stage after that, even when you've gotten to Earth. The chance stages give you bonuses if you completely knock out any one of the four fleets of ten, and I have to say that it's entertaining to figure out how the bad guys circle, even if you are caught off guard the first few times by where the aliens show up. The problem is that there is not enough variety to keep the game entertaining.

The graphics are a problem; yes, the programmers did a good job with the overall perspective, but they aren't jazzy, and they can even be confusing. You can probably overlook how the monsters, once they go all the way out, somehow sneak back in to the center until they are killed. So for starters on the negative side there are blue ships and brown ones, and although there is one set of triads per level that remind you of Moon Patrol, often escorted by a porcupine-cum-spaceship that gives you double firepower(the slightly wider range is nice) there are too many earth tones for this outer-space game. Although you can see the ships tilt in 3-d as they turn, they look lifeless, and they frequently cover up otherwise very clear gold bullets that are being fired at you--which, if compared to Galaga, aren't as cool as the menacing needles. This forces you into a conservative strategy and although there's tension it doesn't get your blood racing as, well, another game with a G in it, where even a battle with one ship can be exciting. Your ship's explosion is probably more physically accurate in Gyruss as well, but it's less impressive. Even the two ships that create a force field together are tame compared to the variety of fluorescent bad guys, and the chance stages don't have the odd varieties that made Galaga a hit with me.

The sounds are more sophisticated, although less helpful. You can't hear when enemies fire. There's a famous classical music tune(A-G-A-G-F-E-D-C#-D) I'm embarrassed I can't remember at the start of the game, but there's something resembling scales followed by a drumbeat afterwards. Good music, wrong game.

Given how the graphics can impede your efforts(monsters are never more than a half-screen away, and it's hard to see them turn) Gyruss was never great value for a quarter, but everyone played it once just to try it. Once you're able to knock out the bonus screen or get the extra guy at a whopping 50000 you probably won't want to touch the game too much. I find it to be yet another example of the variety of games that can be unique and slightly humdrum.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 09/17/01, Updated 09/17/01