Video Game / Gaia Crusaders

The Gaia Crystal is finally complete!

20XX, Peaceful Earth conquered by Evil Satan, Heir of Lost Kingdom, all Nature Evilized by Dark Power...
Wars Start Everywhere and the World is at the Edge of Destruction.
Nothing can save the world! Only the power from the Tear of Gaia can make it, but it was broken into 7 Pieces.
Guardians of the Tear of Gaia Chose 5 Warriors to find the Tear and Fight for the World, the Fate of the Last Warrior will be..
YOU ARE BORN TO BE A GREAT WARRIOR!
LETS FIGHT FOR YOUR DESTINY... DEAD OR ALIVE... YOUR CHOICE!

The Game's Opening Info Dump. "Blind Idiot" Translation intentional.

Gaia Crusaders is a 1999 Beat 'em Up arcade action game produced by Noise Factory.

Set in the year 20XX, the harmony of nature is controlled by a powerful artifact called the Crystal Orb of Gaia, until the Devil King's awakening shattered the crystal into seven shards. Without the crystal's power, the Devil King reigns over humanity as his minions roams the earth, and it's up to the Gaia Crusaders - five chosen heroes with powers of elemental manipulation - to seek the seven shards, reform the crystal, and fight the Devil King in a final battle to decide the fate of earth.

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The Gaia Crusaders

Ready to crusade for gaia! ^note L - R: Koufu, Fred, Kohen, Jimi, M-985

• Jimi Isaak, a Jack of All Stats-character that is easy to use, good for kicking ass, and fights with his fists who can generate gusts of wind when he starts moving real fast.
• Fred Sathal, a fast-moving capoeirista specializing in kick-based attacks. The Big Guy character among the crusaders.
• Kohen, The Heroine and a Miko who fights with her magic, carrying a Magic Wand as her default weapon and her runes capable of inflicting deadly damage, including incinerating her foes. A Glass Cannon with powerful attacks, but low in defense.
• Koufu, a Magic Knight and Barrier Warrior who can alternate between punches and creating a protective force-field around him for flinging enemies aside.
• M-985, the Token Robot of the crusaders, being a sentient robot armed to the teeth with state-of-the-art weaponry. What M-985 has in attacks, she lacks severely in speed, making her a Mighty Glacier character.

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Destiny on Earth Counts on you:

• After the End: The game is set some years after an unspecified cataclysm wiped out most of all life on Earth and turned all nature hostile, and it's up to the heroes who calls themselves the Gaia Crusaders to seek the crystal shards of the Tear of Gaia to restore the earth.
• Amazon Brigade: There are a lot of female mooks in the game, showing up as early as the first stage. The level in China have the erhu-playing ladies whose instruments can blast fireballs.
• Animate Inanimate Object: The second stage have the Gaia Crusaders crossing a graveyard on what used to be New York, with the gravestones somehow gaining a life on their own and trying to smash and pummel the players.
• BFS: One of the first power-ups obtainable is a massive broadsword the Gaia Crusaders can wield and swing single-handedly.
• Big Bad: The Demon King who destroyed the Gaia Crystal and caused the apocalypse, with the intentions of enslaving the world.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation : The game's opening infodump, which was transcripted wholesale at the top of this page. Yes, really, "Guardians of the Tear of Gaia Chose 5 Warriors to find the Tear and Fight for the World"... and NO, the end credits isn't any better.
• Boss Rush: Before facing the Demon King and the Final Boss, the last stage will throw the four previous bosses that are actually evil at the Gaia Crusaders.
• Combat Hand Fan: Getuki, the boss at the end of the China stage, uses folding fans as her preferred weapons. Every now and then she can even launch them as ranged, homing projectiles to rough up the Gaia Crusaders.
• Creepy Centipedes: Giant centipedes that stood up to the Gaia Crusaders' waistlines infests various underground levels. They are however ridiculously weak, dying after one hit (except their purple versions that appear very late into the game), but beware of their Rolling Attack!
• Crystal Ball: The various power-ups the Gaia Crusaders can collect are depicted as colorful crystal orbs, each of them with their own unique Elemental Powers. And upon being activated, will unleash a devastating Smart Bomb attack on enemies, disabling or defeating most of them:
  • Red Crystal Ball: Rains fireballs from above the screen, incinerating onscreen foes.
  • Blue Crystal Ball: Plunges the arena underwater for a few moments, crushing most enemies under a tidal wave.
  • Brown Crystal Ball: Creates a powerful earthquake that knocks opponents off their feet.
  • Orange Crystal Ball: Covers the screen in man-sized tornadoes.
  • Green Crystal Ball: Heals you.
• Defeat Means Playable: Seiyan and R.O.B. are playable after their defeat.
• Degraded Boss: The masked Shaolin monk Mini-Boss confronts you halfway in the China level, and puts up quite a fight before he goes down. Later on, you fight identical monks who looks like exact duplicates of the one you defeated, but much weaker with only one health bar this time.
• Flunky Boss: All of them save for the final boss are perpetually surrounded by a cadre of mooks to run interference against you, with new ones immediately appearing to replace any you take out. This doesn't mean fighting the mooks is completely pointless, as they can sometimes drop health and spell crystals.
• Foul Flower: The stage in China has a giant mutated tree, which spawns sentient roses with skulls in them to attack the Gaia Crusaders. They move by floating around and dies in only one hit, but the tree will keep spawning these roses continuously.
• Gotta Catch Them All: There are 7 shards from the broken Crystal of Gaia, which the player heroes, the Gaia Crusaders, must collect to save the world. Each shard inhabits a single boss, and can only be reclaimed by defeating said boss at the end of the level.
• Hulking Out: The boss of the Cyberpunk stage is initially encountered as a Mini-Boss; a human in biker punk-esque gear, swinging a chain to attack the Gaia Crusaders. He goes down with ease and flees after his health is entirely spent, and the stage goes on with several mooks in the way... at the end of the level, said boss re-appears, but this time he rapidly grows and mutates into a muscular, green-skinned monstrosity (ripping his leather jacket into shreds in the process) and fights the Gaia Crusaders to a rematch.
• Killer Yoyo: One of the enemy mook varieties attacks the Gaia Crusaders by Dual Wielding deadly yo-yos.
• Kirin: At the end of the final stage, the Demon King arrives on his steed, a kirin, to fight you. Despite looking absolutely ferocious, you don't get to fight the kirin itself, as it simply leaves after depositing its master.
• Kneel Before Frodo: After the Devil King Final Boss is defeated, all the previous bosses suddenly appear in the arena, revealed to be alive after their respective defeats... and kneel in unison at the victorious Gaia Crusaders.
• Living Statue: Every now and then, the Gaia Crusaders will come across statues of wolf-headed humanoids in the background while they're fighting mooks. And then those statues will come to life and leap into the foreground — if defeated, they petrify back to statue form before crumbling.
• Mecha-Mooks: Robotic enemies are all over the abandoned, industrial zone stage, having been prematurely activated and attacking all intruders on sight. The skeletal gynoid-like robots who crawl on all fours are the most recurring of the bunch, whilst after entering an abandoned factory the Gaia Crusaders will fight humanoid robots equipped with Chest Blasters.
• Monumental Damage: In the ruins of New York, the Statue of Liberty can be seen partially destroyed in the background, in a still practically lifted from Planet of the Apes (1968).
• The Morlocks: As this game is set after the apocalypse, deformed, Morlocks-like midgets are a recurring enemy in various stages, firstly appearing in the ruins of New York city and later showing up en masse in the caverns.
• Musical Assassin: The stage in China have ladies playing an erhu capable of releasing fireballs. Their projectiles can be stopped by attacking them before they play, but they will retaliate by revealing the strings of the erhu to be Razor Floss and using it to slice up the Gaia Crusaders.
• Pyramid Power: The boss of the Egypt stage is a sorceror who's introduced meditating inside a magical pyramid to recharge his powers; the moment you step into the boss arena, the boss then dispels his pyramid for a fight.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Giant lizards are another recurring enemy, crawling on all fours trying to slash the Gaia Crusaders with their claws, besides having a Rolling Attack (the only other mook enemy with this ability, besides centipedes) to knock down the heroes. Near the end of the final stages the game will throw magenta-skinned versions of common giant lizard mooks which are predictably a lot tougher.
• Sequential Boss: The Devil King is first fought as a human, who is already a difficult battle thanks to his Doppelgänger Attack (that he keeps on spamming). But after getting defeated, the Devil King sheds his human form and unveils his true One-Winged Angel nature...
• Shield-Bearing Mook: The lowest-level, goomba-type enemies are tortoise-men who use their shells as improvised shields. There are yellow versions of the low-ranked tortoise men whose shells are slightly stronger, but they still go down easily.
• Stationary Boss: The second stage's boss, a giant monster who appears as half a body above the floor with the rest hidden underneath, that you confront in an underground cavern below the ruins of what used to be New York. Said boss couldn't move about, and attacks by either summoning Morlocks or pounding its fists on the ground so rocks and stalagmites will fall on you.
• Steam Vent Obstacle: The factory stage has vents on the floor, which can periodically discharge boiling-hot steam capable of hurting the Gaia Crusaders. It doesn't affect mooks, however.
• Wuxia: The stage in China is heavily inspired by classic wuxia cinema, with the entire stage looking like some place lifted from some ancient Chinese dynasty despite the game being set after the apocalypse. There's a Shaolin monk Mini-Boss, ladies in qipao, an oriental-style mansion over the ruins of a Chinese garden, the boss arena is accessible a Cave Mouth shaped like a Chinese Dragon's head and the boss fight at the end looks like something Shaw Brothers would film in their heydays. All the while the action is accompanied by classical, oriental-style background music played by Chinese instruments.

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You did a great job!
Now you are benefitted from the mysterious power of the Tear of Gaia.
Use it in the right way!
Let's lead us to the Brightful Future!

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The World back to Peace and all the Nature Becomes Normal Again, The Warriors, Crowned as "Gaia Crusader".
To Keep the World in Peace, No one else... only them!