Gekirindan

Released: 1995

Pitch: Blast your way through time periods in this vertical-scrolling shoot-'em-up.

Gekirindan is a cool game with a weird name. It's a vertically-scrolling shmup where you have to travel back in time to stop an evil robot from rewriting human history. Or something. I do feel the premise is a little wasted. There were only two levels that occur before what is the present for us, so most of the game is in the future, even if it is the canonical past for the game. But it's a fun game. The sprite work is nice and while the game does use some rudimentary 3D, it's mostly for the backgrounds and doesn't distract from playing the game. There is a nice variety to the available ships and weapons and enemies. The one thing I really don't like is that the playfield is bigger than what you can see on the screen. So if you go far enough right or left, the whole screen moves. I much prefer being able to see everything at once.