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Mighty Gunvolt (Gal*Gunvolt on PlayStation) is a series of retro-styled Run-and-Gun platformer games by Inti Creates.

Initially created as a side game for Azure Striker Gunvolt for the Nintendo 3DS, the first game's story primarily focused on facing off against the Sumeragi agents Mega Man-style. The game can be completed in five levels, though Inti created more to play through as DLC which became implemented in the PC, PlayStation 4, and Vita releases. Like its titles would imply, this mini throwback brought together the protagonists of the past three games Inti Creates worked on at the time: Azure Striker Gunvolt's Gunvolt, Mighty No. 9's Beck, and Ekoro from Gal*Gun: Double Peace.

Three years later, and a sequel, Mighty Gunvolt Burst, would be playable as its own standalone title. This installment decidedly went the "Mighty" route; taking place after the events of Mighty No. 9, the game starts off as Beck finishes training inside Professor White's simulation program only to find himself unable to leave the program, but eventually crosses path with a mysterious entity that resembles Gunvolt who claims to be the program's "Game Master", challenging Beck to a duel against him and his septimal powers. Similarly, while on a mission one day, Gunvolt finds himself suddenly pulled into the training simulation when a strange glimmer of light from his universe appeared, and later runs into a mysterious robot boy claiming to be Beck who challenges Gunvolt to a tournament versus him and his Mighty Number family. With seemingly no way out, it's up to them to venture through the simulation and put an end to whoever is trapping them inside the virtual world.

The game also features various other characters from Inti Creates' other titles as downloadable content, each with their own storyline. While Ekoro was initially absent from the game, she was released as the first DLC character (even being made a save bonus if you downloaded the demo), though she isn't as important to the plot as she was the first go-around; she later got more spotlight along with Beck and Gunvolt in the PlayStation 4 version and was bundled in that version for free. Joule and Call were the next two to be added, followed by a "Rival Pack" of Copen, RAY, and Kurona to round out the playable roster. The last character added was Tenzou from the first Gal*Gun, who ended up packaged with Joule and Call for the PlayStation 4 version's "Heroine Pack".

Mighty Gunvolt Burst was released on June 15, 2017 for the Nintendo Switch, followed by a 3DS version two weeks afterwards; a PlayStation 4 version, re-using the Gal*Gunvolt title, was released on March 15, 2018. A PC version of the game was announced during Anime Expo 2019 and was released on July 31st, 2019 through Steam along with every DLC character available for purchase. On August 24, 2020, Limited Run Games announced a physical edition run of Mighty Gunvolt Burst for Switch and PlayStation as well as a collector's edition thereof. The physical editions of the game also comes bundled with all of the game's DLCs on the cartridge/disc.


    open/close all folders 
    Tropes In Mighty Gunvolt/Gal*Gunvolt 
  • Achievement System: Like Gunvolt, this was integrated with the Updated Re-release on Steam.
  • Adaptation Expansion: Zonda has a much larger moveset than most other bosses since their abilities never had a chance to be shown off in any of the source material.
  • Awesome, yet Impractical: Beck's dash attack. It's cool and allows Beck to dash across gaps, but due to how Collision Damage works, using it as an attack without killing the target actually hurts Beck as well. It also doesn't do much extra damage over the normal shot.
  • Bait-and-Switch Boss: The MIRROR stage opens with the Player Character facing down Copen. The moment "GO" appears, Zonda jumps out of nowhere and knocks out Copen, revealing that they are the Final Boss.
  • Boring, but Practical:
    • Gunvolt's lightning beam. It takes a second or two to fully extend, but once it does, it rips boss health apart like a wet sheet of paper.
    • Ekoro's hover is also useful for spamming shots on an enemy taller than you.
  • Boss-Only Level: The MIRROR stage consists of a single boss battle against Zonda.
  • Canon Discontinuity: Due to Burst being a retake on the concept of this game to be a "true" crossover, the events of this game aren't acknowledged.
  • Charged Attack: Each character has a unique charge shot that has different properties based on character.
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!: While similar to Mega Man (Classic), Mighty Gunvolt's Mercy Invincibility is far shorter, making the "deliberately taking damage for invincibility" tactic significantly less viable. Players unaccustomed to this may find themselves biting off more than they can chew when attempting to charge through a pack of enemies or a hazard.
  • Difficulty Levels: With the multiple characters' abilities.
    • Ekoro: The average character. Can hover by pressing and holding the jump button after jumping into the air. Possesses a charged attack that fires a large heart at enemies. If the heart kills an enemy, or you kill an enemy after shooting them with the heart, they turn into a flying helper that follows Ekoro and shoots at other enemies. Has a slightly weaker normal shot.
    • Gunvolt: The easiest character. Can double jump by pressing the jump button after jumping into the air. Possesses a charged attack that fires a concentrated, redirectable beam of lightning that deals heavy damage to enemies it comes into contact with.
    • Beck: The hardest character. Can slide underneath low gaps, allowing him to access areas the other two cannot. Possesses a charged attack that causes him to dash forward. Dashing into an enemy damages them, and if it kills the enemy, Beck will continue forward without losing momentum. A tad bit shorter than Ekoro or Gunvolt. Also has a smaller maximum shot capacity than the other two, at three shots.
  • Double Jump: Gunvolt's unique movement ability. Unlike the main game, it's free, due to the lack of a mechanic to pay for it.
  • Downloadable Content: Three rather difficult additional stages were added as DLC post-release for the 3DS version. The later re-releases, however, includes this DLC pack with the game.
  • Dual Boss: Much like in her original game, Elise splits herself into two copies when you fight her in the LAB stage.
  • Dual Wielding: Mighty No. 7 wields twin scissor blades.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: This game debuted the Mighty Numbers, as it was released while Mighty No. 9 was still in development, and Zonda's female form, which would later make her first canon appearance in Gunvolt 2.
  • Energy Weapons: Elise's Gorgon's Gaze attack is replaced with a gigantic laser due to the lack of a Petrify status.
  • Excuse Plot: Sumeragi starts hunting for a new idol to replace Lumen. They're evil, so Gunvolt gets his pals Ekoro and Beck and they go beat up Sumeragi.
  • Expy: Beck is a blatant copy-paste of the Blue Bomber himself; he's blue, short, can only have three bullets onscreen at a time, and can slide under gaps. The only thing that sets him apart is his Charged Attack.
  • Flunky Boss: Elise can summon snakes when her kunai hit the ground.
  • Graphics-Induced Super-Deformed: Justified as the character artwork for the game are presented in a Super-Deformed fashion.
  • Intentional Engrish for Funny: All of the text is written in broken English, as a parody of the poorly translated Japanese games of the NES era.
  • Long Song, Short Scene: The boss intro theme. It is an 8-bit rendition of the pre-boss battle dialogue theme from Azure Striker Gunvolt that's about over a minute and a half, but the boss intro sequences themselves are less about 5 seconds long, leaving rest of the song unheard unless you're listening to the game's original soundtrack.
  • Market-Based Title: The game is known as Mighty Gunvolt to 3DS and Steam players, while it's known as Gal*Gunvolt to PlayStation players.
  • Not Quite Flight: Ekoro can hover using her tiny wings. It only lasts for a brief moment, however.
  • Playing with Fire: Viper, a fire-wielding Adapt from the Gunvolt universe, and Mighty No. 1 Pyrogen, a robot from the Might No. 9 universe who cloaks himself in flames and has a number of fire-based attacks.
  • Retraux: Mighty Gunvolt is done in the style of an 8- or 16-bit side-scroller, similar to later Mega Man (Classic) games and early Mega Man X games. All of the music is also this.
  • Score Multiplier: Doing anything that earns points, like collecting pickups and killing enemies, increases the multiplier by 0.01x, slowly increasing the number of points earned from doing those things. If you go without doing either for ten seconds, the multiplier resets.
  • Scoring Points: Defeating enemies rewards points that adds to your score, and defeating enemies in succession steadily builds a multiplier bonus. Picking up food items also gives bonus points.
  • Shielded Core Boss: The boss of the SCHOOL level is a giant plant that hides its core in its mouth. When it extends its roots and tries to shoot you, shooting the roots back into the ground causes the boss to open its mouth.
  • Spiritual Successor: To the Mega Man-inspired mini-game from Mega Man ZX Advent, both of which were developed by Inti Creates as short and simple throwbacks to the 8-bit era Mega Man games.
  • Spotlight-Stealing Crossover: Gunvolt has more representation than the other two featured titles; while there are four Gunvolt levels and bosses, there are only two Gal*Gun and Mighty No. 9 levels and bosses. Gunvolt is also the strongest playable character.
  • Timed Mission: Of sorts. While not strictly timed per se, taking too long in a stage will cause your Score Multiplier to drop to 0.00x, preventing you from gaining any more points.

    Tropes in Mighty Gunvolt Burst/Gal*Gunvolt Burst 
  • 100% Completion: Your completion percentage is tracked on your save file. Getting 100% requires collecting every Rare Item (not including random Pixel Stickers) and S Rank on every stage.
  • Action Bomb: The Boom Hoppers from Mighty No. 9 return here, where shooting them causes their fuse to ignite and self-destruct afterwards.
  • Ambidextrous Sprite: RAY's character design has asymmetrical features, such as the right portion of her face eroding away and revealing her endoskeleton, the large right horn of her helmet being missing, three fin-like blades protruding from her left arm with a sharp nails at the ends of her fingers where as her right arm features an arm cannon with extendable claw blades, and a "mouth" on the right side of her torso, which is shown in her home game and art works. However, in Mighty Gunvolt Burst, these asymmetrical features are ignored on her in-game sprite as RAY's helmet, face, and eyes appear normal on both sides, has identical bladed arms, and is missing the "mouth" on her torso. Some of the asymmetrical aspects can be spotted if you pause at the correct time, though (with the second swing of the Chaos Claws exposing RAY's red eye and broken helmet).
  • Achievement System: The game features 30 Challenges similar to the ones found in the Azure Striker Gunvolt games, where performing certain feats rewards the player with a Pixel Sticker. These range from clearing a game with a particular character, earning an S rank, and loading your character with high amounts of CP when possible.
  • Adaptational Attractiveness: Downplayed. RAY's design is largely the same as in Mighty No. 9, but likely for the purposes of keeping the design simple for her sprites, removes some of the more grotesque features (the mouth on the right side of RAY's torso), and downplays the effect the Xel Decay has on her body outside of cutscenes.
  • Adaptational Badass: Some of the characters are much more powerful than in their source material.
    • Call's gameplay design is much less stealth-oriented, meaning she can take on enemies much more directly, and gets the ability to use Patches as a weapon.
    • Joule has a wide variety of pre-established attacks, and can go up against the Mighty Numbers. Her Anthem also allows her to ignore the CP limits established by the other playable characters, making her one of the most powerful characters in the game.
    • For the simple price of 400 CP, you can completely disable RAY's Xel Decay mechanic. Now, what was it that made RAY a Glass Cannon again?
    • Despite just being a regular high school student in the real world, Tenzou is pretty capable in the virtual world, with his Blaster Goggles serving as his personal weapon, shooting laser blasts a la Cyclops. He only needs Patako and Ekoro for the Doki Doki mode and to descend after jumping, respectively, while he's the one fighting.
  • All for Nothing: Kurona's prank of robbing the game's user of the satisfaction of beating it wasn't worth it. He deletes her file to be able to start anew.
  • All There in the Manual: The Steam cards give the names of Beck, Gunvolt, and Ekoro's Evil Doppelgangers, which are straightforward; DarkBeck, DarkGunvolt, and DarkEkoro.
  • Amusing Injuries: Most of the characters have a normal reaction to pain when they take damage; however, Joule's reaction to taking damage is much more comical, with wide, blank teary eyes and a small smile.
  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: Call can unlock three alternate outfits (based upon three of her designs in Mighty No. 9's character design poll phase) to use in her game mode.
  • Another Side, Another Story: Call's campaign takes place around the same time as Beck's, featuring her going in to save him. Joule's campaign takes place just before Teseo nearly succeeds in plunging Gunvolt into the virtual abyss after being defeated by Gunvolt.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • Your combo is only reset if you don't manage to kill an enemy at close range or die. You're not timed and being damaged doesn't impact it.
    • You keep the treasures and CP upgrades you've found in the stages if you decide to quit. With this in mind, this allows you to pace yourself, upgrade your CP, and let you figure out an ideal loadout with a decent budget.
    • v1.1 adds a visual cue where, if you hit a boss with their weakness, the impact will be green instead and have a different sound effect.
    • v1.2 streamlines the Customization menu by making going through each category and subsection much quicker to navigate through.
    • If you don't care much for RAY's Xel Decay, you can turn it off at a 400 CP cost. Her campaign also has much more heart pickups, to make up for the difference in her Xel Decay playstyle (although these grant the side effect of making RAY's campaign much easier once you get used to her playstyle; the heart pickups are around even if Xel Decay is turned off, letting her fight the boss at full health).
  • Artificial Brilliance: If you attempt to cheat the Mirror Boss into using a deliberately bad weapon, they'll almost always immediately try to scan the one you're actually using after using one of their own attacks.
  • Art Evolution: The sprites are much more detailed and colored without losing the 8-bit flavor, with Gunvolt's eyes even being a very noticeable shade of blue, along with the animations being smoother. The Switch and PlayStation 4 versions also features new lighting and subtle bloom effects that also affects sprites, which are unfortunately removed from the 3DS port due to hardware limitations.
  • Ascended Extra:
    • Teseo is an Adept in the same power class as The Azure Striker and The Muse, but is only a minor antagonist in his home series. In this game, he uses powers to their fullest and becomes the main antagonist.
    • Supporting characters Call and Joule were added as DLC characters, the latter becoming Promoted to Playable for the first time.note 
  • Assist Character:
    • During the Final Boss battle with Teseo, depleting his health and stunning him during the second phase will cue the other Player Character to appear and fire a few extra shots to inflict additional damage.
    • Call can find Patches throughout the stages, and they'll attack enemies so long as the "fire" button is pressed. She can grab up to 4 throughout the stage.
  • Auto-Revive: If Gunvolt's or Copen's HP reaches very low, there's a slight chance that their respective supporting character will perform an Anthem for them and recover some of their HP, accompanied by an aura surrounding Gunvolt and Copen with their supporting character being faintly visible behind them.
  • Awesome, but Impractical:
    • The Spread and Cluster Shot modules can give the heroes the ability to shoot bullets in an adjustable fan-like spread or vertically stacked, but it also diminishes the overall damage output based on the number of bullets allowed on screen and can slow your rate of fire. The Shield module also shares similar penalties to the Spread and Cluster Shots, but it can be used in conjunction with another loadout as a Charged Shot with a small damage-over-time effect at point-blank range for some combinations.
    • RAY's "Collapse Ray" skill is a Wave-Motion Gun that is guaranteed to kill weaker enemies, but doesn't do very much damage to bosses, and requires RAY to sacrifice health to make the ability work. RAY's basic claws will often get the job done better.
  • Big Damn Heroes: At the end of the game, Teseo decides to Rage Quit and defaults the virtual space back to factory settings...which means Beck or GV is going to be trapped in its coding when it resets. However, depending on who you're playing as, either Joule or Call comes to his rescue. This ends on a traditionally bittersweet note for Joule, as she relishes the one time she could hold GV's hand again, the audience knowing it'll be the last, and a hopeful note for Call, as for the first time she displays emotion of her own — namely, a joyful promise to be there for Beck, having been inspired by his determination.
  • Back-to-Back Badasses: During the final battle against Teseo either Beck or Gunvolt will help you fend an attack that comes from both sides by protecting your back. Even more, once you expose Teseo they'll jump down and help you damage the boss too.
  • Boring, but Practical:
    • Damage upgrades. While you can make bullets bigger and make them move in interesting ways, you'll often just get more mileage out of upgrading the damage for bullets to make enemies go down quicker. This is particularly the case when playing Gunvolt, who lacks a lot of the variety in customization options that Beck has.
    • The Charge Shot Module allows you to link a second Shot loadout to another loadout and use it as a Charged Attack, for only what it costs to activate the Module. This lets you cheat the CP system by creating a much more expensive loadout then linking it to a much cheaper loadout, letting you access the much stronger shot for only a fraction of the cost, at the cost of firing speed.
    • Call's Patches. All of them, but especially the blue ones, will home in on every enemy, and as long as Call keeps shooting, they'll keep damaging her opponents, and she can grab up to four of them in one stage. The only drawback to this is that you can't Burst Combo as efficiently with them, however she can use a module to keep them from charging at enemies at no CP cost.
    • Discovering and turning off RAY's specific shot type, Claw Shot, gives her a very boring and simple bullet... which is far cheaper to use than the Claw Shot's 1000 CP base level, can be fired more times, and gives her a viable option to deal damage at long range!
    • The playable characters' Aerial Actions, while they eat quite a bit of CP early on, are invaluable in platforming.
      • Gunvolt's can allow him to do a mid-air jump up to three times, gives a lot of vertical movement, and can allow him to escape otherwise deadly drops.
      • Beck's aerial action is a simple air-dash, which, like Gunvolt, he can do up to three times and gives him a good boost in speed.
      • Ekoro can gain the ability to hover just like in the previous Mighty Gunvolt for a short time, allowing her to traverse over stage hazards with ease and give her an edge on airborne opponents. There's another variation which simply lets her slow down her descent instead, for a lower CP cost.
      • Call can get a forward dash or a hover that slows her descent.
      • Joule can increase her amount of jumps, but already starts with the Aerial Action, unlike the others.
      • Copen can air-dash similarly to his home game and even change the angle of his dashes.
      • RAY can regain her ability to charge into enemies mid-air with her spinning tackle. This is also very good when dealing with much weaker enemies, particularly airborne ones, because she can more or less plow through them.
      • Kurona can gain the ability to hover similarly to Ekoro, but she glides through the air faster. She also has the ability to slow down her descent.
    • Tenzou instead gets the ability to crouch by default and has a slide maneuver as a unique mobility upgrade. This allows him to hit low and evade attacks that would be more difficult to dodge as other characters. Instead of having an aerial action, he gets Angelic Guidance, which calls Ekoro to lift him into the air for a brief period of time, giving him limited flight.
  • Boss Rush: Par for the course of a Mega Man-esque, the final stage features one against the eight Mighty Numbers.
  • Bragging Rights Reward: Joule's story sticks you with 8 prefixed bullet types, but you can unlock one that allows you to customize your weaponry, and it's the only one without any restrictions put on how you can create bullets in the entire game, but you can only grab it after having beat her story in the first place.
  • Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Battalion's Desperation Attack is a mashup of Asrock's Amuse Bouche from Gunvolt 2 and his original Desperation Attack from Mighty No. 9, whereupon he splits into individual pieces that attack you, then reforms at the side of the screen and fires a powerful explosive shell.
  • Character Customization: Burst introduces a CP system in which the player character can slot in various abilities and customize their shots to adapt to foes, CP allowing.
  • Charged Attack:
    • You can unlock a function that enables charge shots, which allows you to link a second Shot loadout to the first one and fire the alternate shot type via this method. Interestingly, the game features both types of charging; "Hold" charge is the default (and cheaper) variant, while you can swap to "Auto" charge, which will cause your charge shot to build up automatically, but swapping over to this comes at a hefty 1000 CP cost.
    • RAY possess a unique charge attack, the Collapse Ray, where she fires a massive beam from her mouth similarly to the finishing move from her home. It's attack power depends on how long the player charges the beam and Burst combo count.
  • Close-Range Combatant: RAY's close-ranged specialty from her home game carries into this one, as she starts out with short-ranged shot type and her Chaos Claws allows her to deal with enemies up close and personal.
  • Combinatorial Explosion: The Shot Edit function is incredibly robust. It is possible to make literally hundreds of unique bullet and power combinations based only on what's given to you. Do you want to make giant, exploding, high-frequency, low wavelength Wave spread shot missile bullets that can travel through terrain and have a charge shot that shoots giant bouncing drills that reflect off walls and go through enemies? Sure!
  • Combos: The main mechanic of the game revolves around Bursts. By defeating enemies at point-blank range, this will trigger a Burst and start a Burst Combo. The more enemies you defeat in a row with Bursts, the higher your combo count rises, which translates into a score multiplier. You can even defeat bosses with Bursts.
  • Composite Character:
    • All of the Mighty Numbers have one or two attacks added to their arsenal that is a near-copy of an attack used by a Gunvolt boss. For example, Battalion can use his own version of Galette Krone's Amuse Bouche, Cryosphere can use a variant of Milas' Brown Note attack, Countershade uses portals to ambush players similarly to Merak, Dynatron takes cues from Gibril, and so forth.
    • Tenzou combines elements across the entire Gal*Gun series. While being the protagonist from the first game, he is equipped with the Pheromone Goggles from Gal*Gun 2 that obscure his face, and has both Ekoro (from Double Peace) and Patako (from the original game) at his side.
  • Crossover: Like the first game, but unlike the original, which was more or less "Gunvolt ft. Beck and Ekoro", Burst is more like "Mighty No. 9 with Gunvolt elements".
  • Deflector Shields:
    • Call's unique ability is the power to generate a Barrier. The Barrier will last until its energy meter empties out, at which point it must fully recharge before it can be deployed again. While active, the Barrier deflects any bullet from any angle, but will not stop Collision Damage or melee attacks.
    • Copen can gain the Phalanx formation module for Lola which allows him to create a barrier around him that can damage enemies next to him.
  • Denser and Wackier: Ekoro, Kurona, Tenzou, and surprisingly Copen's, stories are barebones to justify their inclusion in the game, and fairly funny as a result: Ekoro decided to play Mighty Gunvolt Burst per an upperclassman's recommendation (and comically takes out her guns upon seeing the game again in her ending), Kurona's playing Mighty Gunvolt Burst specifically to rob the person playing it the satisfaction of beating it, Tenzou is simply trying to play the game (with Patako and Ekoro joining him) and Copen's annoyed that his sister, Mytyl, is playing a game with an Adept protagonist, so he literally creates his own version of the game for her to play.
  • Derivative Differentiation: While the game is much more explicitly based on the structure of the Mega Man franchise (8 bosses with abilities you can take that you can fight in any order, four "fortress" stages) over the more linear structure of the first game, this one gives the player a very expansive gun customization system, with which you can create your own weapons over using an established one.
  • Desperation Attack: All of the Mighty Numbers (and Plasma Legion) can use one when they reach half health or lower. When they hit half health, they will always use this attack, after which the attack can recur randomly.
  • Difficult, but Awesome:
    • Ekoro as a character in general; she has half the hit points as Beck and Gunvolt, and her shots do less damage, but is armed with a Super Mode that gives her invincibility with the ability to always get Bursts, and has some of the best mobility options in the game (a jump about as high as Gunvolt's second, and the ability to briefly fly/glide).
    • Joule has much more limited customization options than any of the other playable characters, and what options she has are mostly fixed. But she also starts with a double jump, and her special ability, Anthem, allows her to ignore CP limits for a short amount of time, allowing you to throw whatever overpowered attacks you've got at enemies for the duration of the ability and/or do infinite mid-air jumps.
    • RAY starts out with very mediocre stats, having a projectile that can only fire once, her Xel Decay leaving the player constantly having to kill enemies, and her close range attacks being a bit more risky to use. Once you change up her starting weapon, get used to her close range attacks, and obtain her aerial action, however, she is an incredibly powerful, mobile character regardless of whether or not Xel Decay is active.
  • Double Jump:
    • One of the Modules unique to Gunvolt is a mobility Module that enables him to jump twice.
    • Joule starts with the ability to double jump. She can pick up a unique mobility module that costs a large chunk of CP, but gives her unlimited mid-air jumps.
  • Downer Ending: RAY's campaign. After escaping the VR world, she loses whatever sanity she had left, and her normal personality is overwritten by her Berserker form.
  • Downloadable Content: The base game only comes with two characters (Beck and Gunvolt on the Nintendo platforms), but also features Ekoro (included by default in the PlayStation 4 and Steam versions), Joule, Call, RAY, Copen, Kurona, and Tenzou (for non-3DS versions) as DLC.
  • Early Game Hell:
    • You don't start out with a lot of CP, which doesn't give you much room to slot in shot enhancements and powers. This makes a lot of early-game extremely tough, especially by way of bosses. Once you start picking up CP expansions and Modules, the difficulty relaxes significantly.
    • Ekoro is even more pronounced in this department; she has half the maximum health compared to Beck and Gunvolt, which makes the first few stages that much more difficult due to her inability to take a lot of hits and weaker shot power.
    • RAY's default weapons loadout will almost kill her as fast as the enemies, since the Xel Decay mechanic almost requires you to be constantly fighting, and there's only one 'bullet' on screen for her only ranged strike.
  • Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: The levels themselves aren't particularly difficult, outside of some particularly annoying Eden mooks. The game's bosses, on the other hand, can be somewhat brutal at times, with most of them being a Damage-Sponge Boss to some degree and having particularly rapid and hard-to-avoid attacks (especially if you're doing the challenge that requires you to use the Custom Slot 1 (which cannot be customized whatsoever).
  • Easy-Mode Mockery: Of a sort. At the end of a stage, you're additionally awarded a Clear Bonus based on the CP cost of your loadout. The more CP your loadout consumes, the lower the bonus, and if it's too high, you won't get any Clear Bonus at all, which can make S Ranking a little tricky if you're armed to the teeth.
  • Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Each of the Mighty Numbers has a specific Element that they're weak to. You can acquire Element Modules as completion rewards for the Mighty Number stages, but it's up to you to figure out who's weak to what. It additionally doesn't help that some of the Elements are a little... obtuse.
  • Evil Is Petty:
    • So, what was the ultimate objective of Teseo for taking control of Professor White's virtual reality and trapping Beck and GV inside so he could defeat them? Hosting it on an epic livestream for the Eden site, of course.
    • Kurona's M.O. in Mighty Gunvolt Burst? To beat a video game she found while sneaking into the P.E. storage room before the owner does as a prank.
    • This is entire reason as to why Copen is playable. He hates Adepts to the point that he is annoyed that the video game Mytyl is playing has an Adept protagonist in it. His solution? Make a game that features Copen as the protagonist and have her play that game instead.
  • Evil Doppelgänger: Beck and Gunvolt encounter evil clones of themselves created by Teseo to fool the heroes into being the enemy responsible for trapping them in the virtual world. They however see through Teseo's scheme and eventually team up to take him down. Ekoro's clone also show up in the key art of Gal*Gunvolt Burst along with Beck's and Gunvolt's evil clones looming behind them.
  • Excuse Plot:
    • The plot is more fleshed out than in the original, but still leans on this. Ekoro's "story", however, falls straight into this. Tenzou's story is pretty much similar to Ekoro's, except he drags both her and Patako in the game alongside him.
    • Copen's plot in this game starts where he discovers his sister Mytyl asleep with a handheld system she likely got from Nori in her hands, which turns out she was playing Mighty Gunvolt Burst and as an Adept character. Annoyed by this, Copen to head into his lab and develop a game for her featuring a non-Adept protagonist.
  • The Faceless: Tenzou's eyes are obscured by a pair of Blaster Goggles at all times.
  • Fairy Companion: Joule and Lola for Gunvolt and Copen, respectively. Patako, while an human-sized Angel instead of being fairy-like, still serves this role to Tenzou.
  • Flip-Screen Scrolling: Mimicking video games from the 8- and 16-bit era, parts of the level flip between sections whenever the player reaches a boundary.
  • Flying Firepower: The whole shtick of the "Explosion" customization in the game is "Flying Firepower in the form of explosive fireballs".
  • Foregone Conclusion: Since the game takes place somewhere during Azure Striker Gunvolt 2, Teseo will survive the events of the game and go on to menace Gunvolt later.
  • Foreshadowing: If you played Gunvolt 2, Grounddigger's spawn animation in the first stage should look very familiar...
  • Fragile Speedster: Ekoro has less HP than the rest of the cast and weaker attack power, but she can jump higher than the others. Kurona doesn't suffer from the same HP problem as Ekoro but she has faster running speed in place of Ekoro's higher jump height.
  • Gameplay Grading: Unlike the previous game, Mighty Gunvolt Burst grades players on a multitude of ways based on their performance. Players are graded and given bonus points based on how quickly the stage was cleared, times defeated (if at all), Burst combos gained, remaining food items picked up, and how much CP is used on their loadout. If they player can clear the stage quickly enough and not take any damage, they'll be rewarded with a Sprinter and No Damage bonus respectively as well. A letter rank is then given based on the overall score.
  • Game-Breaking Bug:
    • The 3DS port is unfortunately prone to random crashes that leads to system reboots, however the last patch seemed to have mitigated the issue.
    • Certain PC players, namely AMD graphics card users, experienced issues with the Steam version such as the dynamic lighting effects gone missing (similarly to the 3DS port), and in some cases, the Fullscreen mode causes the game to crop the image to a 4:3 aspect-ratio instead of widescreen like in the console releases.
  • Glass Cannon: RAY has incredibly powerful close range attacks, but even when her Xel Decay is disabled, she still takes quite a bit of damage in spite of her having a health bar the same length as Beck and Gunvolt.
  • Hand Wave: The game explains the protagonists being unable to access their unique abilities as the virtual world is suppressing their powers (Beck's AcXeleration and ReXelection forms from the Mighty Numbers, Gunvolt's Azure Striker septimal powers plus most of his skills, Ekoro's popularity-inducing powers).
  • Hard Mode Perks: Enemies are faster and have more aggressive attacks, but players gain a higher Clear Bonus than they would on Normal. There are also Pixel Stickers available exclusively on Hard Mode as a rare enemy drop.
  • Holy Halo: One of Goddess' Blessing's visual effects is to give Ekoro a bright, glowing halo over her head.
  • Humongous Mecha: The final fight with Teseo involves Teseo docking into his own giant robot to do battle.
  • Hyperactive Metabolism: You can pick up food items and use them from the Pause Menu to instantly restore hit points, but doing so means losing bonus score.
  • In a Single Bound: Ekoro can jump higher than Beck and Gunvolt with the help of her angelic wings.
  • Interface Spoiler: As Gunvolt, the Mighty Numbers' stages feature a Pixel Sticker reward representing a boss from the former's home series, which also clue players on what kind of possible attacks whom they are borrowing from.
  • Interquel: Joule's campaign takes place after Gunvolt's but before the ending, as his data is scattered across the Virtual Reality, which she has to retrieve.note 
  • Invincibility Power-Up: Present in three stages: the City, the Mines, and the Subspace. In the second instance, it's practically required to pass through a section that consists of nothing but Spikes of Doom.
  • Invocation: When Ekoro's Goddess' Blessing is activated, it's accompanied by a message reading "Witness a true miracle!"
  • Jack of All Stats:
    • Beck's got the most versatile equipment and is one of the only characters with multiple bullet types, but unlike the others, he has no unique abilities aside from his (unlockable) Aerial Action, making him the most basic character in the game, especially compared to Gunvolt, who starts the game being able to use at least one of his septimal powers.
    • Copen and Joule, and also RAY have their own versions of Beck's multiple bullet types, using their in-universe versions of Power Copying.
    • Every character has the ability to add the elements of the 8 Mighty Numbers to their weapons, which means that Gunvolt, Call, Joule, Ekoro, Kurona and Tenzou can use Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors, despite their in-universe movesets lacking any ability.
  • Joke Weapon:
    • Select "Bouncing" as a trajectory type, then select any Piercing type that causes the shot to go through terrain.
    • The "Mine" weapon type Beck can get has very little utility, being locked to one trajectory (Stationary), being a bit of a CP hog if you want it at an acceptable damage level, and only being unlockable very late in the game, likely after the player has already created their ideal loadouts.
  • The Last Of These Is Not Like The Others: Joule's Parallel World shot. It's the only one that isn't unlocked by default, but unlike Joule's other shot types, which have effectively fixed shot types and performance, it's also the only shot type available to Joule and the only one in the game that can use every possible customization option.
  • Life Drain: RAY retains her diminishing heath mechanic from Mighty No. 9 where her HP drops over time but in this game she recovers HP by simply dealing damage to her enemies rather than finishing them off. Players however can turn the Xel Decay mechanic off with a custom loadout at the expense of 400 CP and losing the ability to drain enemies' HP.
  • Limit Break: Gunvolt's tradeoff for Beck's shot type versatility is that he has access to Skills, which function as they do in the Gunvolt series.
  • Loose Canon: This game is not a sequel to the original Mighty Gunvolt, but a retake on it that's regarded as a "true" crossover between the two series. Most notably, Inti created the simplistic story in such a way that it fits in neatly to both continuities without causing frictionnote , so it currently appears to be a "take it or leave it" situation in consideration towards canonicity.
  • Mechanically Unusual Fighter:
    • Joule's gameplay style gives her a number of bullet types to use like Beck, but with the exception of the unlockable Parallel World, can use almost none of the Custom Shot Modules aside from ones pertaining to duration, speed, attack power, or elements, with only physical modules being fair game. But the aforementioned Parallel World allows her access to all of the Custom Shot Modules and their options, with none of the restrictions of Beck's bullet types. Her Anthem also allows her to temporarily bypass CP limits within levels, an ability none of the other playable characters can use.
    • While RAY has projectiles, her skill button is devoted to a three-hit melee combo, she has an unlockable offensive dash, and a fairly mediocre starting projectile, making her the only melee-oriented character in the game. Like in her home game, she also has to absorb the health of enemies through killing them, lest she lose her own, with whatever damage she does to bosses transferring to her own health (this mechanic can be disabled at the cost of 400 CP). She also has another skill that allows her to, at the cost of health, fire an incredibly powerful Wave-Motion Gun.
    • Copen has an Assist Character, Lola, who can provide backup fire with the use of the skill button, can access the elements Copen collects, and has a more traditional charge attack that doesn't require linking with another slot. Copen also has a very different air dash, which allows him to move slightly upward and downward.
  • Mercy Invincibility: Present when you get hit, and it's a bit longer than in the first game. You can also extend the time you're invincible after getting hit via a certain Module, by up to double the invincibility time.
  • Mini-Game Credits: During the credits, you play as a support character coming to the rescue of Beck or Gunvolt, falling down a pit. Diamonds are scattered about, and you can collect them as you fall; scoring 1000 Points in the mini-game will net you a Mytyl sticker. However, you can only play the mini-game after finishing the game with Beck/Gunvolt for the first time on that file.
  • Mirror Boss: The penultimate fight in the game is a mini-boss fight against the evil copy of the character you're playing as. At the start of the fight, it clones your normal shot, and will update the copy periodically just in case you change it. It does have its own attacks, however, so it isn't totally helpless if you let it copy a completely useless shot.
  • Moveset Clone:
    • The other playable character and Mirror Boss all use the same attacks, even though some of them can use an attack that that can't be used when you're playing that character (such as Gunvolt shooting a dart with a Return trajectory. It's impossible to recreate this loadout as Gunvolt, as he can't even unlock that trajectory option).
    • Kurona has many movement options similar to Ekoro, having the exact same hover ability and has a Super Mode like Ekoro does (which even lets her get bursts without getting close to enemies). The main differences are that Kurona moves much faster, can't jump as high as Ekoro, has more health, can penetrate shields with said super mode, and can bounce off enemies with her spear.
  • Musical Spoiler: "The Mocking Cyber Labyrinth" from Gunvolt 2 plays in the final stages. It's Teseo's theme, and he's the Big Bad.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • DarkGunvolt wears a mask, a reference to a scrapped concept for Gunvolt 2 that involved an evil, masked Gunvolt working for Sumeragi. Likewise, the DarkBeck uses his C. Visor, something that was in the character's concept art, but never actually used prior.
    • DarkBeck's coloration gives him a resemblance to Beck's concept coloration that was darker, rather than the final design's bright white with blue highlights.
    • Call has three alternate costumes she can use to change herself to one of her three designs Mighty No. 9 backers could vote for.
    • All of Joule's weapons are named after songs featured in Gunvolt 2 except for her final bullet type, Parallel World, which is named after a song featured on a special 3DS Gunvolt theme that came bundled with the Striker Pack.
    • When playing as Gunvolt, changing the Shot Size to "Large" has the additional effect of changing the graphic of his bullet to match the Dullahan from Gunvolt.
    • A quirk with the Statunes from Mighty No. 9 is the bust on top of their body falls off when defeated. In this game, they can be shot off them which causes them to run away from the player instead of charge at them.
    • One of the gimmicks for Gateway, the first of the four final stages, is that the background changes colors, and platforms of that corresponding color disappear until the background changes. Gunvolt had appeared in Runbow, another crossover title, which had this same mechanic.
    • RAY's Aerial Action, which resembles a pinwhell, resembles Capcom's Yashichi, a recurring symbol in their games, which has shown up in various Mega Man entries, generally as an item that fully heals Mega Man.
  • Not-Actually-Cosmetic Award: The Pixel Stickers can obtained as enemy drops, completing challenges, or choosing them as an end-stage reward, and they feature various portraits of characters from each heroes' respective series to various other symbols (relating to their own games and in simple shapes and symbols). However, these Pixel Stickers can be used as a custom icon for a weapon loadout or the player's avatar during gameplay.
  • Not Quite Flight: Ekoro's unique mobility module allows her to choose from both gliding and momentary aerial movement. Kurona can also gain the former.
  • Old Save Bonus: Similarly to the first Azure Striker Gunvolt, if players completes the challenges featured in the demo version of the game, players can unlock Ekoro for free with a few extra rewards in the full game upon transferring the demo version's save file.
    • Notably, the demo was added as of v1.3, before which Ekoro could only have been got free by buying her in the first week of her release.
  • One-Way Visor: Due to being a Featureless Protagonist in Gal*Gun and having no distinct features, Tenzou is given an incredibly generic male protagonist appearance except for a glowing pink visor on his face that he uses to fire the Pheromone Shot.
  • Out of Focus: Ekoro of Gal*Gun didn't show up in marketing materials nor the story at launch. Downplayed later on, as she was the subject of the v1.1 update for the game, which makes her a playable character with her own story, although she doesn't get any dialogue with Gunvolt, Beck, or even Big Bad Teseo. Her home franchise also gets the least amount of focus in the game (Ekoro, Kurona, and Tenzou's stories are even more Excuse Plot than the other characters). The PlayStation 4 and later Steam versions however eventually include Ekoro as one of the playable characters from the get-go and the trailer and key art for the game included her with Beck and Gunvolt.
  • Palette Swap:
    • Beck lacks his ReXelection abilities that allow him to shape-shift his body to match the Mighty Numbers' abilities he's borrowing while trapped in the virtual world, so in its place, the blue-accented parts on his body (e.g. the C. Visor, ear covers, toes) change color according to the shot type he's using à la his spiritual predecessor.
    • Ekoro's, Call's, Joule's, RAY's, Copen's, and Tenzou's Mirror Boss are just their normal sprite with a more sinister re-color (and in Kurona's case, a more sinister re-color).
  • Pickup Hierarchy:
    • Primary: None.
    • Secondary: Rare Items in Burst.
    • Tertiary: Hearts and food items.
    • Extra: Points and Pixel Stickers in Burst.
  • Poke the Poodle: Kurona's reason for playing Mighty Gunvolt Burst? To rob the person who wanted to play it the joy of playing the game.
  • Power Gives You Wings: While in Goddess' Blessing, Ekoro is backed by up to six translucent wings (depending on how much MP she has), with each wing slowly vanishing over time. Likewise, Kurona gets a set of demon wings when she invokes her demonic powers.
  • Power-Up: A Power-Up item can be found in some stages, which not only grants a temporary boost in attack power similarly to the AcXel Shoot effect from Mighty No. 9, but also allows players to get Burst combos regardless of distance between the player and the enemy.
  • Production Foreshadowing: RAY and Copen both have Pixel Stickers you can unlock, which featured almost exactly the same poses that they'd have when they became playable characters.
  • Promoted to Playable: Call and Joule, Beck and Gunvolt's support who show up to save them in the credits of their campaigns are both playable DLC characters in the campaign with the Version 1.2 update. This also marks the first time Joule is playable at all.
  • Puni Plush: Unlike the first game, which went for a regular chibified look, the playable cast is downright squishable.
  • Randomly Drops: Defeated enemies can occasionally drop Pixel Stickers of assorted variety or small CP upgrades.
  • Rank Inflation: Your score at the end of a stage translates into a Rank, which scales from D to S. If you want 100% Completion, you need an S Rank on every stage in the game.
  • Real-Time Weapon Change: Introduced in the v1.1 update, which allows players to use the shoulder buttons by default to switch between their custom loadouts during gameplay instead of going into the Customize menu to change loadouts for the situation. Players can also toggle which loadouts can be allowed for them to be cycled with the Quick Select buttons.
  • Recycled Soundtrack: A number of music tracks in the game are recycled from 8-bit renditions of Mighty No. 9's soundtrack, with some subtle differences.
  • Restraining Bolt: Dr. White designed the entire virtual space to be one for Beck, so he would be made to train purely his own physical prowess as well as test the prototype weapons system. Teseo retools it to work on GV as well, dampening his septimal powers.
  • Retraux: Once again, although the graphics have received a slight upgrade to use elements from 16-bit graphics.
  • Rise to the Challenge: One room in Cyberspace involves outrunning drills armed with Spikes of Doom rising from the floor.
  • The Rival:
    • Beck and Gunvolt initially think the other is causing their suffering, but ultimately they team up to defeat Teseo.
    • The second DLC set is themed after rivals from the three franchises represented in the game: RAY of Mighty No. 9, Copen of Azure Striker Gunvolt, and Kurona of Gal*Gun.
  • Save-Game Limits: The game originally had only 8 save slots, which was just enough for the base and DLC characters introduced through v1.1-1.3 for one difficulty or the other. Since the release of the v1.4 patch for the Switch and PlayStation 4 versions, which was also carried over for the Steam re-release, the number of available save slots has been increased to 40, allowing plenty of room for characters between Normal and Hard difficulties without having to delete an older save for Tenzou.
  • Score Multiplier: The Burst Combo system, which steadily increases a score multiplier whenever a player finishes an enemy at point-blank range. The multiplier and combo counters reset if the player finishes an enemy when further away.
  • Scoring Points: Returns from the previous game but the scoring system is more advanced this time around.
  • Secret A.I. Moves: When Beck battles with the real and copy Gunvolt in his story, Gunvolt will sometimes fire a dart that will have the Return trajectory effect, however the Return module is not obtainable for Gunvolt when players play as him.
  • Self-Imposed Challenge: Invoked by the game's mechanics that allow for this.
    • Several modules have functions (or exist purely for the function) that make the game more difficult, such as increasing damage taken, increasing knockback, and hard-capping your firing rate. Equipping these also incurs a negative CP cost, in that it actually reduces the amount of CP you've consumed. This can be handy if you're in desperate need of extra enhancements and are willing to put up with the downsides. Characters with a unique special skill (e.g. Gunvolt's Astrasphere) can also disable said skill they came initially with.
    • RAY's entire campaign, similar to Mighty No. 9 itself, is one, with her Xel Decay ability generously giving you 400 additional CP on your loadout limit... but also making her health drop much faster than normal, and require you to keep killing enemies to keep your health up.
  • Sequel Escalation: The first game was a very basic game, with a bare bones plot and linear progression system. This game gives you 8 bosses to fight in any order you please, a very powerful weapon customization system, a slightly more developed plot, and up to nine playable characters.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story: Kurona's campaign. Her prank to beat Mighty Gunvolt Burst before the owner does almost succeeded, except she never found out that the student can easily reset his save file to how he had it when he first bought the game by simply using the "Delete System Data" option in the game to undo all of Kurona's progress, which he gleefully did.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Spikes of Doom: Scattered about, and they will One-Hit Kill you if you touch them without the proper Module activated.
  • Spotlight-Stealing Crossover: In reverse of Mighty Gunvolt: Mighty No. 9 is given the lions share of focus, with almost all of the stages and bosses being re-imaginings of ones from that game. Justified, due to the game's environment being designed as a training program for Beck. That being said, the antagonist and cause of the game's events is Teseo, a Gunvolt boss. The Gal*Gun characters are also sidelined, being relegated to DLC, with the exception of Ekoro if you either played and done the challenges in the demo and then transferred her into the full version (Switch and 3DS) or she's included for free (PS4 and Steam).
  • Spread Shot: Available as a module, either in a fan-like burst or clustered together in a stack, and can be adjustable, however it weakens your overall damage output based on how many bullets you fire at once and slows your rate of fire.
  • Super Mode:
    • If Ekoro's Heart Gauge is at least 50% full, she can invoke her Goddess' Blessing ability, which temporarily grants her invincibility with a boost in attack power and the ability to get Burst combos regardless of distance between her and her enemies. Kurona possesses a similar ability, but she also gains the ability to bypass shields with her shots as well.
    • If Joule can raise her SP Gauge to at least 50%, she can perform an Anthem which allows her to temporary use any customization set-ups regardless of CP limitations, meaning she can use CP demanding modules such Attack Power x3.0 or Damage Resistance x0.25 without restrictions.
    • When Tenzou has at least 50% Heart Gauge, he can activate Doki Doki Mode, which allows him to snipe enemies directly by using an onscreen cursor to shoot them from range, and he has perma-Burst while this is active. This is also used to locate a hidden Mr. Happiness located somewhere in each stage, which gives a bunch of bonus points if shot with Doki Doki Mode.
  • Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: When playing as RAY, there is always a health pickup prior to the boss room that restores your health to full.
  • The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Countershade's Desperation Attack causes him to take aim at the screen, then fire a bullet at you, "breaking" the screen. This leaves a large bullet hole (three in Hard Mode) in the center of the screen that partially obstructs your vision.
  • There's No Kill like Overkill: The 16 shots/sec. option for the Auto-Fire Module, which replaces the regular description of the module's function with "You're a killin' machine!".
  • Video Game Dashing: Beck's unique mobility module gives him an air-dash, which resembles his Dash Attack from Mighty No. 9. It doesn't deal damage, however. Call can also gain this ability as well but she's limited to one air-dash versus Beck's three. RAY can also get a similar module but functions like in her home game as she performs a rolling tackle and can be done up to three times. Copen's module can also allow him to not only dash straight forward, but angle them up or downwards like in his appearance in Azure Striker Gunvolt 2.
  • Villain Protagonist: Downplayed. Kurona is the only outright evil playable character in the game, but her definition of causing mayhem is to rob someone the satisfaction of beating Mighty Gunvolt Burst.
  • Warm-Up Boss: The first boss fought is Round Digger, the same rogue construction robot seen in Mighty No. 9.
  • When All You Have Is a Hammer…: One of the challenges of the game requires you to use Custom Slot 1 only, meaning you cannot modify your character's pre-defined moveset or alter their attacks whatsoever.

Alternative Title(s): Mighty Gunvolt Burst, Gal Gunvolt

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