Gamshara (Arcade)

 I'm sure I was far from the only person who had been waiting a long long time for this game to be added to MAME, but at the same time, it's a game of which a lot of other people will be totally unaware. It's also an interesting little anachronism, being a Cabal-like that was released in 2002. But I guess that's a big part of why it had such allure in all those years it went unemulated, and also why it was only big arcade game enthusiasts who really cared about it.

 

Though Cabal was obviously the patient zero of the genre, I think a more widely accepted point of reference nowadays would be Wild Guns, thanks to its excellent remake on modern consoles a couple of years ago. In case there are readers for whom neither game is familiar, it's kind of like a light gun game where you move an aiming reticule around the screen to shoot at enemies that pop up or wander across your field of view, but with the added caveat that you're also controlling an onscreen character in the foreground, who has to avoid the incoming enemy fire.

 

The controls are as simple as you'd expect: the reticule always moves when you move the joystick, your character only moves when you aren't holding down the fire button. You also have a jump button. You can jump while shooting, though you won't keep shooting while you're in the air, and while you're in the air, you're also invincible. I'm still slowly building my skills (I can currently get as far as the boss at the end of the fourth stage, a water ninja who summons a water spout to drop dead bodies and sunken boats on your head), but I'm pretty sure the secret to good play is going to lie in the fact that you can do an invincible jump without letting go of the fire button. A third button activates Gamshara mode, which causes a big explosion and gives you a few seconds of super-powerful shooting.

 

The game is set in samurai times, and sees you picking one of two machine gun-toting samurai who are fighting against the enemy forces alone. There's Saika, described as "powerful", and Hotaru, described as "speedy". This isn't just a stat difference, though, as they each have a skill the other doesn't: Saika has a powerful charge shot that's fired by releasing the fire button after every couple of seconds of holding it down, while Hotaru has a double jump. Despite the differences, I can make just about the same amount of progress as either character, though I tend to score better as Saika.

 

On the topic of scoring, the system for doing so in this game is simple and fun: shooting stuff, whether it's enemies or bits of destructible scenery, builds up a chain meter, and the amount of points scored for killing enemies is multiplied by the current number on that meter. So, if you play well, you can be gunning down rows of one-hit-kill ninja (which is very satisfying, and happens a lot), and scoring well over ten thousand points from each one. I quickly realised that this means that holding your fire for a few seconds to run around collecting the piles of gold that are worth a couple of thousand each is a waste of time.

 

You've probably figured it out by now, but despite the long wait, Gamshara is definitely not a disappointment. It's a ton of fun to play, it's got a bunch of interesting systems to get into, and I'm looking forward to getting better at playing it, and also seeing it get the love it deserves from more players now that it's actually accessible. The only negative thing I really have to say about it is that the pre-rendered sprites are kind of blobby and ugly, but I think there's enough spectacle and imagination in what they're depicting to make up for that. It's also not as good as the Wild Guns remake, but that's an absurdly high bar to reach. Those NatsumeAtari remakes are among the most perfect videogames ever made, after all.