Time to fight the Earth
Gaia Seed: Project Trap is a 1996 Horizontal Scrolling Shooter made by Techno Soleil for the PlayStation.
Set in a future after an unspecified apocalyptic event wiped out all vegetation on earth, the surviving humans make their escape to their space stations. Developing the Earth-reconstruction project, Gaia Seed: Project Trap, mankind tries seeking a way to restore the world to normal.
But the Earth herself isn't willing to accept humans again, after the damages they've done to her ecosystems. En route back to the surface, a mysterious alien force starts manipulating the remnants of the technology on Earth's surface to intercept the humans, wiping them out one by one. It's as if a supernatural force doesn't want humans to step foot back on the planet...
You're a pilot spearheading the Gaia Seed project, and it's up to you to discover the truth.
Gaia Seed: Project: Begin:
- Actually Four Mooks: One of the drone enemy types (red and white, with chevron markings) will appear seemingly as a single mook until you're close enough, at which point it unveils itself into five in a column. You can try shooting at it beforehand, but they'll split into several regardless.
- After the End: The game takes place some centuries after a cataclysm wiped out the world's environment, and revolves around a project trying to rebuild it.
- Artificial Outdoors Display: One of the stages when you (seemingly) made it back to earth have you fighting the boss with what appears to be New York in the background. Alas, once the boss is destroyed, the explosion somehow affects the background, revealing everything to be dozens and dozens of fake images projected on screens, and you're actually in the bowels of an abandoned space station (hence, still far away from earth).
- Asteroid Thicket: In the aftermath of the apocalypse, an asteroid field has developed around Earth, and you're required to fly through it in several stages. There's also the second stage above Saturn where you fly through her destroyed moons with plenty of debris.
- Attack Its Weak Point: For all the bosses, with the game throwing a helpful visual indicator in red blinking words:SHOOT
WEAK POINT - Beehive Barrier: All the bosses have hexagonal forcefields to deflect your attacks. They need to unfold them when attack you, however, giving you some free room to shoot back.
- Bullet Hell: The bullet density can get quite intense in later levels, either from bosses spamming their attacks everywhere or from the mooks firing away even before showing up onscreen.
- Earth That Was: The game's premise have you trying to travel to the earth's surface after a major cataclysm, in order to restore the world. Unfortunately, earth doesn't want humans to be back and will do anything to purge us away.
- Gaia's Vengeance: The supernatural force trying to prevent humans from returning to earth is none other than earth herself, in retaliation to what humans have done to the environment.
- Multiple Endings:
- The most common ending have you defeating the turtle Final Boss in the end - which brings you back to a now-destroyed Earth, unable to rebuild. With the final screen announcing "Gaia Seed: Uncomplete".
- The Downer Ending, with the timer running out and unlocking the Giant Angel boss, before defeating her. Her destruction also leads to Earth being wiped out of existance. Whoops!
- The best, Golden Ending, have you running out of time for both the giant turtle and the Angel boss, which leads to the world being reset; Earth, once a wasteland, is back to a flourishing green world as humanity receives a second chance.
- Organic Technology: As the game progresses to later stages, expect to see plenty of enemies which were supposedly spaceships, drones or mechas having flesh-like coatings on their bodies. They could be surmised as evolution of what remains on earth after humans had left.
- Our Angels Are Different: The True Final Boss is none other than the embodiment of Earth herself, appearing as a gigantic angelic being far larger than your ship.
- Sheathe Your Sword: The way to the Golden Ending is to not destroy either Final Boss and instead let the timer run out.
- Space Mines: Shows up in every stage, and you'll need to shoot them down before they can reach you.
- Spread Shot: An available classic power-up turns your shots into spreads of five.
- Violation of Common Sense: Yes, somehow in order to get the best ending, you must NOT kill the Final Bosses, allowing the timer to run out in both instances, so that the Earth can be somehow reset. Because why not?
- Walking Tank: The game's Post-Final Boss is a gigantic turtle-tank based directly on an AT-ST.
- We are with earth. We've liberated people from Gaia.
Gaia was destroyed and she became one body with the Earth.
Can we become one with the Earth?
