Flyers of both games.
- The destiny of earth hangs in the balance as an international fighting force gears up for the ultimate high-tech battle.
GunForce (alternatively titled GunForce: Battle Fire Engulfed Terror Island) is a 1992 Run-and-Gun action game produced by Irem.
In 2000, the country "R" established a base controlled by a high-tech computer, using the computer's capabilities to shut down the defense network of neighboring countries. Assuming the role of a commando, you battle your way through hordes and hordes of enemy soldiers only to discover a hidden threat literally out of this world.
A sequel, GunForce II (alternatively titled GeoStorm in Japan, not to be confused with the disaster film), was released in 1994. The plot has the D.A.S (of In the Hunt and other post-apocalyptic Irem games' fame) undertake a super-soldier program designed to create a superior species of humans capable of surviving in the vacuum of space, using the XX chromosomes harvested from female prisoners. This time players assume the role of Max and Lei, two "GunForce" operatives, taking part in "Operation: Girl Hunt" to destroy the D.A.S once and for all.
It's worth noting that the crew behind the second game would later work on the Metal Slug series after jumping ship to SNK, with the games sharing visual similarities and gameplay. In fact, there are arcade ports that re-releases GunForce II as Metal Slug Zero.
The GunForce duology contain examples of:
- Advancing Boss of Doom: The third boss of 2 is a gigantic robot centipede which chases you down a tunnel, with you fleeing on a motorcycle and shooting at it before it gets you.
- Airborne Mooks: Enemy soldiers on Jetpacks, hovering Attack Drones, helicopters, airborne enemies show up aplenty in both games.
- Car Fu: Capturing an unoccupied tank, armored truck, motorbike or any vehicle in general allows you to run over mooks.
- Cool Bike: Both games allows you to hop on weaponized motorcycles (equipped with rocket launchers!) and use them to blow up massive amunt of enemies. Including battling an Advancing Boss of Doom in the second game on your new ride.
- Cores-and-Turrets Boss: Most of the bosses in the first game are these, including the command outpost in the first stage (a stationary building covered in turrets whose sole weak spot is on its toe - helpfully labelled "CORE"), a weaponized outpost where mooks throw grenades at you from behind windows while you hit a single weak spot of said structure, and a descending tower which you destroy one level at a time while taking out each section's turrets before exploding the biggest, orb-shaped one on the very tip.
- Crate Expectations: You regularly destroy crates, which can yield bullets, bombs, or bonus points.
- Drone Deployer: The second game has a tank unit in the first level that deploys drones, which rains bullets on nearby targets. Once depleted of ammo, the drone then falls and blows up, dealing additional damage via explosion.
- Giant Mook:
- The huge Chicken Walker robots in the second game that absolutely towers over Max and Lei, who can take more damage than their smaller brethren, but are ridiculously slow with their easy-to-dodge projectiles.
- Another area contains giant robotic caterpillars that can trample over you if you're not careful.
- Gotta Rescue Them All: The second game has numerous captives - all of them women - held prisoner in the terrorist bases, which you can rescue and tag - the number of prisoners tagged will be represented as extra points at the end of the mission. This feature was notably incorporated into the Metal Slug series later on.
- Guns Akimbo: Max and Lei of the second game kick ass with two automatic weapons simultaneously, and can even use two different weapons if available.
- Half-Human Hybrid: The reason all of the captives are women? This is because DAS needed them to breed their own hybrid super soldiers that can survive in the vacuums of space. And the mooks with an alien head are presumably their products born from less fortunate women.
- Hover Bike: Used by enemy forces in both games, and are among the stronger variety of airborne mooks. Expectedly you can hijack one of these bikes to kick ass, notably in a Levels Take Flight area shooting down enemy drones in the skies.
- Humongous Mecha: In the second game, now that the terrorist army have mass-produced robots in their arsenal, with a few gigantic robots occupying half of the screen as bosses.
- Island Base: The setting of the first game. It's subtitled “Battle Fire Engulfed Terror Island” for a reason.
- Locomotive Level: The second game starts off its first stage with one of this, where you board a train owned by enemy forces on it's way to their hideout, and proceeds to fight your way from the back to the front.
- Mecha-Mooks: Robots are recurring enemies, especially in the sequel when the action leads to a robot factory.
- Mook Maker:
- The Final Boss of the first game. After fighting your way into the terrorist stronghold, you find out their secret project - a recovered alien experiment being converted into a superweapon for mass-producing their own alien army, in an incubation chamber containing multiple spawners. The experiment itself couldn’t move about like every previous bosses, but it can regularly spawn lesser alien soldiers as backup.
- The second game has you destroying three barracks in one area, which repeatedly unload low-level terrorist mooks until you blow those up.
- The robot centipede in the sequel can break apart its segments into smaller robotic enemies as backup.
- More Dakka: Whenever you commandeer a mounted heavy machine-gun, which holds unlimited ammunition and allows you to shoot, shoot, and shoot until there's nothing to shoot at.
- Organic Technology: In the sequel, it turns out the larger robots you fought throughout the game are powered by integrating recovered alien technology into machines. The Final Boss notably has a mechanical body supported on a centipede-like tail, until it reveals its face - which is a humanoid living skull powered by some unknown alien tech.
- Ray Gun: Lasers can be collected in both games, with the one from the sequel capable of sweeping around in an arc around the player and incinerating every enemy in its way.
- Shared Universe: With In the Hunt and Undercover Cops, as the premise is about the Dark Anarchy Society taking over the world and serve as the villains.
- Stationary Boss: All of them in the first game. None of those bosses can move around, instead relying on turrets or by summoning mooks.
- Unwilling Suspension: In the second game, all captives that are restrained are suspended by their wrists bound behind their backs on balconies, awnings, or simply a few feet above ground level, which you release by shooting their bounds.
- Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Mostly averted, the flamethrower can be collected in both games and can deal absurd amount of damage on humans, robots and vehicles alike. It works exceptionally well when dealing with large numbers of enemies.
- Walking Tank: The enemy forces in the sequel have these in their arsenal, but you can capture a few for yourself to trample everything in sight.
- Weak Turret Gun: The interior of enemy facilities in both games contains numerous small turrets, which you destroy with as much ease as common enemy mooks.
- Xenomorph Xerox: While the aliens in the first game avert this, the sequel reveals that the terrorists have harvested a different alien species for mass-production in the final area, one which is distinctively xenomorph-like with rounded, phallic-shaped heads, the ability to Wall Crawl as it attacks you from above and below, Nested Mouths as a ranged attack, and an area which is practically lifted from Aliens (in which you find yourself in a chamber loaded with alien eggs, which you must destroy before they hatch and cling on you).
