Gal*Gun is a Rail Shooter series developed by Inti Creates. The premise is different from most other rail shooters out there — instead of shooting zombies or enemy troops with guns, here you have to stop a mob of lovestruck girls with a Pheromone Shot.
The Excuse Plot of both the original and Double Peace are fairly similar. The Featureless Protagonist (Tenzou Motesugi in the original, Houdai Kudoki in Double Peace) is scouted out by a cupid-in-training, who is tasked with helping him find love. Unfortunately, the protagonist is accidentally shot (for one reason or another) by an overcharged love arrow, which causes him to become a super Chick Magnet who is making nearly every single female on campus incredibly horny. The cure? Find true love by sunset, or else he will lose his chance at love — forever.
Gal Gun 2 changes things up, as this time the protagonist was randomly selected to become a demon-fighting hero and given equipment that lets him see and fight them. And also makes him irresistible to girls. Instead of having one day to find his true love, the protagonist has 20 days to rack up enough Demon Buster points to help an angel meet her monthly quota. Missions are divided up into Main, Side, and Free missions — main being about the main story, side being interactions with important female characters, and free missions being given out by the various other female characters. Two missions can be performed each day.
The first game, Gal*Gun, was released for the Xbox 360 in 2011 and PlayStation 3 in 2012 only in Japan, but thanks to Ekoro's unexpected popularity as a playable character in Mighty Gunvolt, Gal*Gun made the jump overseas with its first international game, Gal*Gun Double Peace for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and PC in 2015. A VR spinoff title was also released for PCs known as Gal*Gun VR, whose style and mechanics would later become the basis for the third main series title, Gal*Gun 2 (yes, the third game is officially labelled "2") for the Nintendo Switch, PS4 and PC in 2018. A remastered version of the first game, titled Gal*Gun Returns, released in 2021 for the Switch and PC via Steam to celebrate the franchise's 10th anniversary.
A spinoff under the title Gal Guardians: Demon Purge was released in 2023. The game stars Shinobu and Maya Kamizono in a Gothic Horror 2D Run-and-Gun setting not unlike the Castlevania and Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon series.
Has a character page here.
The Gal*Gun games provide examples of:
- Air-Vent Passageway: Several levels in Double Peace will have both Houdai and random girls using the school's air vents as convenient crawlspaces.
- Alliterative Title
- All Women Are Lustful: Thanks to at least sixteen normal cupid arrows in the first game, that overcharged cupid arrow in Double Peace, and the Pheromone Goggles in 2. Though the bios of some of the various girls around the school state that they've got reputations for being flirtatious and boy-crazy already.
- Anti-Frustration Feature:
- In the True Love route of Double Peace, you're given the option to skip straight to the end once you've got a girl's affection maxed out.
- Completing the True Love route once in Double Peace unlocks an item in the store that increases the rate girls gain affection for you.
- You don't need to get every single student journal on one playthrough. The student records are saved to the system file, not the individual saves.
- Once you've met the prerequisites for an ending in Gal*Gun 2, you can choose to skip straight to the final day. You can then continue from the point you skipped, allowing you to see multiple endings in one playthrough.
- Attack Its Weak Point: Most bosses work that way.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: During the first boss fight on the "Angel and Demon" route and the Final Boss of "Shinobu's Route" in Double Peace, the player-character repeatedly gets distracted by a pornographic magazine on the floor, allowing the boss to get a jump on the player.
- Bittersweet Ending: Despite it sounding like it's a Downer Ending, the Blue Balls ending of Double Peace (which you get by completing the Unseen Destiny route with 0% affection) is actually this. Houdai doesn't find a girlfriend by day's end, and, by extension, Ekoro, having failed in her duties, is Brought Down to Normal. That said, she shacks up with Houdai, becomes his housewife (except for the fact that they're not married), and they live Happily Ever After.
- Bland-Name Product: The school is full of Zepsi Cola vending machines.
- Boss Bonanza: Engaging Kurona's route in Double Peace involves the player fighting through a total of five bosses in their playthrough, as opposed to the usual 2 in most other routes.
- Boy Meets Ghoul: You're able to hit ghosts with the Pheromone Shot in Double Peace, and they're just as taken with Houdai (the protagonist of that game) as everyone else is.
- Brought Down to Normal: The bad ending you get if you complete the Unseen Destiny route with 0% affection has Ekoro fail her test, and her makeup exam, and be sentenced to becoming human. She proceeds to shack up with Houdai, and act as his house girlfriend.
- Canon Immigrant: The Demon Sweeper from VR is introduced into the main series in 2.
- Charged Attack: In Double Peace, holding down the attack button will cause a heart-shaped aura to appear. Release the button to fire a powerful Pheromone Shot that has a radius effect, useful for striking multiple girls at once.
- Chick Magnet: The result of Tenzou and Houdai having been struck with too many Love Arrows (normally only one arrow is needed). This will wear off at sunset, though. However, it's more than likely they'll never find a girlfriend if they don't by then.
- Childhood Friends: Shinobu and Maya have known Houdai since they were kids.
- Combat Tentacles: As expected, in both games, you face off against a boss who fights using tentacles.
- Covert Pervert:
- In Double Peace, Shinobu takes your decision to "play a drum solo on her butt" surprisingly well (saying it's not her type of thing).
- Also in Double Peace, some of the side requests you'll get include things like "what kinds of panties are first year girls wearing" or "how big are the student president's breasts?" The girls who ask you are very happy to get answers.
- Curtains Match the Window: From Double Peace:
- Critical Hit: Shooting a girl in a "weak spot" (that is different for each one) such as the breasts or their privates will result in an "Ecstasy Shot" that incapacitates them in a single shot.
- Cute Ghost Girl: Found in several levels of Double Peace. You earn bonus points if you can find and shoot her. If you can find her all ten times during the True Love route, she can become your girlfriend.
- Cutting Off the Branches:
- Aoi is present in Double Peace, which suggests that she did not become Tenzou's girlfriend. Her ending in Double Peace has her take Houdai as her new manager, with her immunity to the Pheromone Shot meaning he never gets to find out if she's his girlfriend in time.
- Early in Double Peace, you also meet Patako, from the first game, who clearly was punished for what happened in the first game...
- Damage Sponge: Though you won't notice in normal gameplay because of Ecstasy Shots, the student council members and teachers are able to take a massive amount of hits, regardless of your damage output level. This becomes a problem if you want any of the bad endings, since you need to avoid hitting their weak points to keep either the route of the girl you're on or the character themselves' affection down.
- Damsel in Distress: On at least one route in both games, the girl that you're romancing will be kidnapped and you'll have to use the Pheromone Shot to rescue her.
- Demonic Possession: Double Peace introduces Kuromi, Super-Deformed avatars of Kurona that possess girls and cause them to be abusive to the person that they love, which would be you. In order to turn them back to normal, you must shoot the Kuromi off the girls. VR adds a Demon Sweeper device that can be used to suck up the Kuromi instead without having to shoot them; however, it runs on a limited battery supply that can only be restored by shooting girls, so shooting Kuromi is still an option if you're low on power.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: In Double Peace, you have to free Shinobu and Maya from a predicament. When you go to help push or pull them free, the way the camera is positioned makes it look like much more is going on.
- Downloadable Content: There's a lot of it, typically alternate outfits for the girls. Exaggerated with Double Peace, which has $90 DLC that allows you to see through the girls' clothes (notably not available to European console gamers).
- Earn Your Bad Ending: Double Peace has an ending for if you complete the Unseen Destiny route with 0% affection, which is, apparently, much harder to do than it sounds. That said, it isn't really much of a bad ending, since the devs decided to throw you a bone for going through the effort
.- Similarly, getting the Ekoro or Kurona bad endings are very difficult without actively trying to get them and are still somewhat difficult even if you are, since it requires you to play very poorly. Unlike with the Unseen Destiny route, they are bad ends, and have CGs locked behind them if you want the platinum trophy.
- Fanservice: This game's primary selling point is this.
- Featureless Protagonist: Tenzou and Houdai are pretty generic in personality, and their faces aren't shown.
- Final Boss: With a couple of exceptions, the general rule of thumb is that the girl you're romancing is the final boss of their respective route.
- The Glomp: One of the "attacks" that girls at close range can perform is to tackle you off your feet, then kiss you until you shake them off.
- Goggles Do Something Unusual: In Gal Gun 2, your Pheromone Goggles gives you the ability to use Pheromone Shots and see demons. And make you irresistible to girls.
- Gotta Catch Them All: If you can find the ghost girl all ten times during the True Love route of Double Peace, she becomes an option for you as a girlfriend.
- Groin Attack: Groin stomps are the Signature Move of those who have been hit by the Demon Spear.
- Guide Dang It!: Finishing Chiru's side quest in 2 causes her to disappear until the final day. Since she's the one responsible for upgrading your gear, this means you're SOL if you haven't gotten any of the upgrades yet.
- 2 has a lot of these in general, since there's quite a few mechanics (like how the Rendezvous sections work) the game never bothers to explain, and when they do, you'd better pay attention since there's no way to see a tutorial again.
- Harem Ending:
- In Double Peace, you don't have to just go with one girl; sometimes, you can pick multiple girls.
- Gal*Gun 2 offers something similar. But while Double Peace had at least one serious ending option with multiple girls, Gal*Gun 2 presents its equivalent ending inconclusively and as a joke.
- Hospital Hottie: The school nurse in Double Peace is noted for being both attractive and for constantly dropping innuendo which results in her having a constant stream of boys who fake illness to get sent to her office.
- The Immodest Orgasm: Essentially, this is how you are "subduing" the girls that are trying to confess their love to you, since you are literally filling them with ecstasy. Special note goes to Doki Doki mode, however, where you can cause girls to explode with ecstasy and taking out everyone else around them.
- Improbably Female Cast: The player-character is the only male character who appears in the game.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Shinobu and Maya both like Houdai, but believe that the other should be the one to go out with him. By the end, whichever one he chooses, the other is fine with it. The fact that they each want the other to be happy with Houdai is one of the main reasons they agree to the harem ending.
- Jump Scare: Sometimes enemies appear suddenly in front of you. Not that scary because they are all cute schoolgirls wanting to make love to you, but otherwise it's the standard application of this trope.
- Legendary in the Sequel: Tenzou becomes part of a "Super Popular Legend" talked about around the school.
- Multiple Endings: Each game has several endings depending on who you pursue.
- In Double Peace, you have endings for Shinobu and Maya, plus both of them, plus endings where you either court the angel who shot you in the first place or the demon who distracted her, or even an ending with Patako, the angel from the previous game!
- In 2, love interests Chiru and Nanako each have two routes. There's also an ending with angel partner Risu, and a Harem Ending.
- New Game Plus: In 2. You start over with everything you unlocked in the previous playthrough — weapon upgrades, sweets, room decorations, even your score transfers to the new game.
- Non-Standard Game Over: Complete all the donations to LoveHeart in Double Peace. Aoi will give you the option to come with them to America as the band's manager, at the cost of losing your shot at romance forever. Accepting the offer is required for 100% Completion, since it's the only way to unlock Aoi's ending.
- Offscreen Teleportation: Girls frequently appear in places where they couldn't have gotten so quickly. It happens quite frequent that the player clears a room, looks away just for a few seconds, and suddenly it's full of girls again.
- One-Hit Kill: Every girl has a weak spot which takes her down in one hit.
- Panty Thief: A Double Peace side mission is to find a girl's panties after they were stolen by a kitten. You become one yourself in one route.
- Playable Epilogue: Doki Doki Carnival in the first game serves as one for the original story as it ties between it and Double Peace as well as explaing how Patako got turned into a human.
- The Power of Love: The Pheromone Shot, which incapacitates the girls hit by it with love.
- Proper Tights with a Skirt: Some girls in both games have these. It's most evident on Kaoruko Sakurazaki, the resident Ojou of the academy.
- Refuge in Audacity: The entire series. In what other game that isn't explicitly a hentai game can you defeat girls by using a special gun to sexually overstimulate them into unconsciousness and use a vacuum to "accidentally" suck their clothes off?
- School Swimsuit: This is a given since one of the levels is the Sakurazaki Academy Pool.
- Sequel Number Snarl: Gal*Gun 2 is the third main game, coming after Double Peace (and not counting VR). Probably because DP was primarily aimed at the VITA handheld system, VR for well- virtual reality; making Gal*Gun 2 only the second primarily console release.
- Stealth Pun:
- The premise of the game's gameplay is that you shoot girls with pheromones to pacify them (i.e., you're running around the school banging girls).
- Or, alternately, shooting them down.
- Double Peace. As in, "double peace signs". Guess what those are associated with?
- Also, the initials "DP" known more widely for referencing Double... something else.
- The premise of the game's gameplay is that you shoot girls with pheromones to pacify them (i.e., you're running around the school banging girls).
- Sticky Situation: In Double Peace, Maya becomes stuck on a demon-catching trap when Houdai accidentally knocks her into it.
- Unsettling Gender-Reveal: One of the side missions in Double Peace is to find a "girl" on the track field who's got an unsettling bulge in her shorts. Turns out it really was a girl, she was just carrying a banana there for some reason.
- Updated Re-release: Gal*Gun Returns, a remake of the original game that includes full voice acting, new CGs, an expanded selection of undergarments, and the DLC packed in from the get go. Also unlike the original, the game was officially localized.
- Weapons That Suck: The Demon Sweeper in VR/2. Initially, it just sucks up the Mini-Kurona demons, but once upgraded, it gains the power to also suck girls' clothes right off them.
- Year Outside, Hour Inside: When you pay into the donation box in the School Store, Aoi begins discussing with you the band's tribulations. However, the way they're framed, like discussing a concert in the gym, this is a rapport occurring over several WEEKS, and Houdai leaving with her is a Relationship Upgrade.
