Gekioh: Shooting King (1999). Play online

Summary

Gekioh: Shooting King feels like a love letter to the original Shienryu, with enough tweaks to keep a retro‑shooter binge fresh. The game drops you into a vertical, mech‑filled battlefield where a Vulcan cannon, lightning bolts or homing missiles change on the fly depending on the red, blue or yellow power‑up you collect. What really grabs me are the extra modes: Pocket Mode re‑creates crude PocketStation graphics with blocky heart‑shaped enemies, while Comical Mode swaps the soundtrack for laughter and applause whenever you rack up points.

Stingy Mode strips everything down to a single life and two levels, No Mercy cranks the difficulty up to relentless, and Slow Mode drags the action into a horror‑tinted crawl—sprites move slower but enemy fire swarms dramatically, with every ship shrieking on destruction. Ancient Mode paints the screen yellowed and cracked for an antiquated vibe. The PlayStation port also loses the Saturn’s transparency effects, the original soundtrack’s polish and the ability to save high scores or access a second loop, but the nine core arcade‑style stages still deliver nonstop, bomb‑filled mayhem.