Mobile Suit Gundam: Final Shooting Longplay (Arcade) [4K]

Game Info
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Developer: Banpresto
Publisher: Banpresto
Year of Release: 1995

Game Review & Impressions
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With a title that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, Mobile Suit Gundam: Final Shooting takes the popular sci-fi series, turns it into an overly-long on-rails lightgun shooter, and charges you for the privilege. I feel you'd need to be especially dedicated to sit through the entirety of the game in a noisy arcade, not to mention somewhere to store the copious amount of coins it would take to see this through to the bitter end because, oh boy, it's hard.

The principle of the design is incredibly simple. You simply move the on-screen reticule over targets and shoot them before they have a chance to attack. Much like Operation Thunderbolt, there's an invisible line running vertically down the centre of the screen, with enemies on the left half damaging player one, and the right side player two. The idea is each player covers one half of the screen, with some level of convergence to deal with attacks coming from the centre.

In terms of armament, your Gundam comes equipped with a repeat-fire power blaster and limited number of cluster bombs. Your blaster's relatively slow rate of fire is part of the reason why the game is so difficult, because missing a shot almost guarantees there won't be sufficient time between the next shot firing and the enemy's attack damaging you. In fact, you often have to know exactly where enemies will appear (the waves are pre-determined) to be ready to blast them the moment they appear. It is, therefore, most fortuitous that you can equip a shield which absorbs a limited number of attacks, as well as find suit-energy recharges in weapon cases on the battlefield.

I can't say I was a huge fan of the gameplay, and I felt the graphics and presentation were also somewhat lacklustre. When you consider that Sega's Alien 3: The Gun was released two years prior to this and looks better in every conceivable way, it doesn't say much for this game, which was released in 1995. The sprite artwork for the enemies IS quite good, mimicking the cel-shaded style from the actual animated series, but they feel oddly incongruous with the background artwork, rather like stickers stuck over the top.

I sat through the entirety of this game feeling completely uninspired, and I definitely would have walked away in a real arcade once my credit had been used up. MSG: Final Shooting just doesn't do a good enough job of recreating the power fantasy of piloting a Gundam and zapping oversized enemies to warrant the price of admission.

Chapters
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00:00 Attract mode
02:29 Stage 1
07:46 Stage 2
16:38 Stage 3
25:05 Stage 4
38:15 Stage 5
51:31 Ending