Air Gallet is a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up

Shoot 'em up

Shoot 'em up is a subgenre of shooter video games. In a shoot 'em up, the player controls a lone character, often in a spacecraft or aircraft, shooting large numbers of enemies while dodging their attacks. The genre in turn encompasses various types or subgenres and critics differ on exactly what...

 arcade game

Arcade game

An arcade game is a coin-operated entertainment machine, usually installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars, and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, and merchandisers...

 developed by Gazelle

Gazelle (software company)

Gazelle was an arcade game developer founded by former Toaplan employees after the bankruptcy of the latter company in 1994.They developed only two games: Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon, a beat 'em up, 1995 and Air Gallet, an extremely difficult "manic" vertically scrolling shoot 'em up, 1996. Both...

 (one of the offshoots of Toaplan

Toaplan

, sometimes written as Toa Plan, was a video game developer from Japan. They were responsible for the creation of a wide array of relatively famous scrolling shooters and arcade games, yet the company declared bankruptcy in 1994.-Games developed :...

) and released by Banpresto

Banpresto

is a Japanese toy company, best known in America for game development, headquartered in the Shinagawa Seaside West Building in Shinagawa, Tokyo. It was founded April 1977 as Hoei Sangyo, Co. Ltd. The company was renamed Coreland in 1982, and during the 1980s it worked mainly as a subcontractor for...

 in 1996

1996 in video gaming

-Notable releases:*January 29 — Duke Nukem 3D, successor to the simple side-scrolling originals, and a genre-redefining title for first person shooters....

. It runs on the Cave MK 1 hardware.

Gameplay

The player controls a fighter jet and shoot enemies in the air and on the ground, collects power-up

Power-up

In computer and video games, power-ups are objects that instantly benefit or add extra abilities to the game character as a game mechanic. This is in contrast to an item, which may or may not have a benefit and can be used at a time chosen by the player...

s, and defeat bosses

Boss (video games)

A boss is an enemy-based challenge which is found in video games. A fight with a boss character is commonly referred to as a boss battle or boss fight...

 to advance levels. The player must collect four power ups to upgrade their weapon. There are four weapon types:

• "L"(blue)- Shining Laser, a narrow but exceptionally powerful beam of blue energy.
• "S"(green)- Hunter Seeker, a support drone that fires twin bolts of green energy in three directions. The first direction is always straight forward, while the other two directions are changed by the player's motion, rotating while staying 180 degrees apart. If the fire button is kept pressed down, the guns will not rotate while moving.
• "M"(yellow)- Tracing Missile, releasing periodic swarms of homing missiles alongside rapid bursts of forward dumbfire missiles.
• "F"(red)- Gatling Fire, a spread-out vulcan bullet shot.

Four levels of power-ups are available for each weapon, however each level requires four power up tokens be collected. There are also two special "bomb" weapons available for collection - green Energy Spark for a screen-covering swarm of lower-power bombs and blue Thunder Drive for a narrower and more focused attack. The Energy Spark clears all bullets from the screen, while the Thunder Drive only clears bullets that actually touch the blast. This blast starts momentarily atop the player, but quickly moves forward a short distance and stays stationary for a few seconds before dissipating.

External links

• Air Gallet at Arcade History
• Air Gallet at GameFAQs
  GameFAQs
  GameFAQs is a website that hosts FAQs and walkthroughs for video games. It was created in November 1995 by Jeff "CJayC" Veasey and was bought by CNET Networks in May 2003. It is currently owned by CBS Interactive. The site has a database of video game information, cheat codes, reviews, game saves,...