Play Gekioh: Shooting King Online

Summary

Gekioh: Shooting King is an enhanced PlayStation port of the arcade shooter Shienryu, and it packs nine distinct arcade‑style modes into a single disc. The most eye‑catching additions are the novelty modes: Pocket Mode mimics the low‑res PocketStation look with blocky, heart‑shaped enemies; Comical Mode swaps the soundtrack for laugh tracks and applause that grow louder as your score climbs; Stingy Mode limits you to a single life and two levels; No Mercy cranks the difficulty up to eleven; Slow Mode drags the action into a horror‑themed crawl while flooding the screen with enemy fire; Ancient Mode tints everything yellow and adds cracked‑screen overlays; and the classic Gekioh (Arcade) mode returns the core experience.

The ship’s arsenal is surprisingly varied for a vertical shooter: a rapid Vulcan cannon, electric lightning bursts, and homing missiles that can wipe out both ground tanks and aerial squadrons. Power‑ups shift the primary weapon’s color—red for cannon, blue for lightning, yellow for missiles—and also grant speed boosts, shields, extra bombs, and point bonuses.

Three difficulty tiers—Easy, Geki (normal), and Hard—adjust enemy fire rates and collision tolerance, while the six bonus modes are available from the start, requiring no unlocking. Each mode tweaks visuals and audio: slower sprites in Slow Mode, a yellowed monochrome screen in Ancient, and a stripped‑down soundtrack in the standard Gekioh mode.

Unlike its Saturn predecessor, the PlayStation version drops the transparency effects, the second‑loop boss, and any save‑game functionality, leaving you to finish the game in a single run after the final boss is destroyed.

Storyline

Gekioh: Shooting King (often just called Shooting King) is set far in the future when humanity has begun scouting distant worlds for new colonies. The Earth‑run Caravans venture deep into space, and Caravan 7861 finally discovers a fourth planet orbiting an alien sun, a world no other fleet has followed. After 93 years of building a thriving Mother Planet, explorers uncover a grim truth: earlier Caravans were overrun by a ruthless alien‑human regime led by the enigmatic Shienryu, whose space fleet now occupies the planet, erecting fortresses and erasing human presence. In response, the elite defense unit "Burn Dragoon" is assembled, recruiting the galaxy’s top pilots and navigators to repel the invaders and protect the fledgling civilization.