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Video Game / Tunnel B1

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Tunnel B1 (also known as 3D Mission Shooting: Finalist in some releases) is a 1996 First-Person Shooter / Vehicular Combat game developed by NEON Software for the original PlayStation and the Sega Saturn.

Plot-wise, you're in a futuristic city, and in control of a high-tech, heavily armed hovercraft transport inside the titular tunnel. Having no idea how you got in here (no explainations were given in-game at any point), and realizing the tunnel's security measures have activated and targeting you, it's time to blast your way out and find an exit.

The game's soundtrack was notably composed by Chris Huelsbeck of Turrican fame.


Tunnel B1 contain examples of:

  • Airborne Mooks: Helicopters, airborne drones and hover-transports fulfills this purpose throughout the game.
  • Car Fu: Your heavily-armored, high-tech weaponized hovercraft can pull off some impressive stunts in the tunnel as you send it crashing into barricades and assorted obstacles, a stunt you'll repeat constantly throughout the game.
  • Car Chase Shoot-Out: When police vehicles and helicopters appears in the tunnel to chase you down, it's your hovercraft's turrets against theirs.
  • Excuse Plot: You're in a tunnel, and you need to shoot your way out. Absolutely no further story is elaborated upon the game, and even the game's conclusion doesn't explain why you're thrown into this predicament.
  • Exploding Barrels: You'll quite often come across barrels - many of them marked with a "Radioactive" logo - all over the tunnel. Shooting at them blows up enemies as well as clearing exits for you.
  • Fake-Out Opening: The opening FMV (before the title screen) depicts a massive space battle, where a battleship in the cosmos flanked by smaller ships gets ambushed from all sides and blown up. The actual gameplay have zilch to do with said FMV, or space battles in general.
  • Featureless Protagonist: Despite having what was presumably your character's face on the cover art, at no point in-game is your face actually depicted (cutscene or otherwise). Heck, that guy on the home release cover might not even be you.
  • Gratuitous Greek: The game's stages, objectives and programs are named after figures in Greek myths, in order, Aristaeus, Eurydice, Persephone, Cerberus, Oceanus, Styx, Athena, Artemis, Charon, Aphrodite, Demeter, Tartarus, Hestia, Ares and the like.
  • Homing Projectile: Missiles with green contrails can target and explode the nearest onscreen enemy.
  • Level-Map Display: One can be accessed by pressing "Select", depicting a digitalized display of the titular tunnel.
  • Mooks, but no Bosses: The entire game doesn't have a single boss; your goal is to find an exit while blasting apart tunnel security, the game ends the moment you do so.
  • More Dakka: The default weapons attached to your hovercraft are three automatic turrets than runs on Bottomless Magazines. Naturally you'll be shooting at things a lot.
  • Off-into-the-Distance Ending: Complete the game and you'll get a cutscene of your transport exiting the tunnel... which turns out to be located in the middle of a desert. And your hovercraft also have jet thrusters, where you then fly off into the skies and dissappears. Then roll credits.
  • Sentry Gun: Majority of the onscreen obstacles you spend most of the game blowing up are laser turrets installed in the tunnel's corners.
  • Timed Mission: Stages where you escape down a tunnel, which gives you a handful of minutes to complete them, including having a timer display the amount of time you still have.

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