Gaiares

Gaiares (ガイアレス, Gaiaresu) is a 1990 scrolling shooter video game developed by Telenet Japan and published by Renovation for the Sega Genesis. The game was released in North America in 1990 and in Japan on December 26, 1990. Gaiares was released at a time when the shoot 'em up genre was immensely popular in the gaming industry; competition was fierce with franchised games like Thunder Force II, R-Type and Gradius, so the developers had to distinguish the game with a unique weapon system. The name is supposedly a combination of Gaia (mother Earth) and a shortened form/abbreviation of the word "rescue" (Res), which is the main objective of the battle taking place within the storyline.

Gameplay

Most horizontal shooters require the player's ship to come in contact with a capsule to gain weapons. Gaiares design was different, and features one of the most original and unique weapon power-up systems in the shooters genre to date. The TOZ System device can be fired out like the R-Type's Force, except each time it comes in contact with an enemy, it would inherit and learn its weapon; the player can steal from the same enemy repeatedly until the weapon's strength is maxed-out. There are 18 weapons in total to be captured, and the appearance of each weapon varies depending on the strength meter.