Slap Bass Shmup
Come 2025, I will not be surprised if retro publisher Hamster still has at least 800 further shmups to deliver to its fans on a weekly basis. At least it’s a great genre to be inundated with, despite the somewhat repetitive nature of the titles’ design. Anyway, this week sees the return of NMK blaster Gunnail.
Released in arcades back in 1992 and never ported to any home platforms, Gunnail is a vertically scrolling shmup taken from the wild mid-era of the genre. This is a time where shmups were progressing from the side-scrolling R-Types of yore but hadn’t quite reached the twitch-inducing realm of bullet-hell just yet. It is a time when incredibly large projectiles, screen-rocking smart bombs, and enormous bosses were the order of the day, and Gunnail has all of the above to spare.
One or two players blast their way through an industrial sci-fi universe,…
