Steel Gunner

Steel Gunner (スティールガンナー, Sutīru Gannā) is a first-person shooter arcade game that was released by Namco in 1990; it runs on Namco System 2 hardware, and was the second game from the company to utilize lightguns (the first was Golly! Ghost!, which was released earlier in 1990 and it was also their fourth game to allow scores not ending in "0"). A sequel, Steel Gunner 2, was released in 1991 and the US version of it was also the second game from the company to feature the Federal Bureau of Investigation's "Winners Don't Use Drugs" screen in the attract sequence (the first was Tank Force, which was released earlier in 1991) - and it would later go on to feature in five more US-released Namco titles.

Gameplay

Steel Gunner 2

Steel Gunner 2 (スティールガンナー２, Sutīru Gannā Tsū) is an arcade game that was released by Namco in 1991; it runs on Namco System 2 hardware, and as the name suggests, it is the sequel to Steel Gunner, which had been released in the previous year. The US version was also the second game from the company to feature the Federal Bureau of Investigation's "Winners Don't Use Drugs" screen in its attract mode (the first was Tank Force, which was released earlier in 1991) - it was also sold as a conversion kit for Taito Corporation's Operation Thunderbolt (which was released in 1988 as a sequel to Operation Wolf, which also used a Yamaha YM2151 FM sound chip, for its effects as well as its music, but it used an OKI MSM-5205 PCM sound chip for speech synthesis, as opposed to a C140).

Gameplay

Again, the players must take control of the Neo Arc (which, again, is a pun on Newark, New Jersey) policemen, Garcia and Cliff, but this time they are on a mission to destroy the evil army of Vanguard who are attacking the city (and also named after the player's tank from Blazer); as with the original Steel Gunner, it creates the illusion of not having a scoring system (like The Return of Ishtar and Yokai Dochuki), but, unlike its predecessor, it does not have the text "1UP", "HI-SCORE" and "2UP" on its title screen, which further enforces the illusion. Some of the enemies from the original game make comebacks, but have undergone a makeover since the first time Neo Arc saw them, in 1990 - and several new enemies have also been introduced as well. Again, the players can shoot anything on the screen, including background objects, and even innocent bystanders (of which there are only eight types now as opposed to ten); but again, if they should do the latter it will cause them to lose energy as if they got hit by an enemy.