YMMV / Giga Wing

• Catharsis Factor: One of the appeal points of this series is that you can reflect enemy Bullet Hell back at them for massive damage, and dramatically increase your score and multiplier in the process.
• Fan Nickname - "Giga Wang".
• Heartwarming Moments: From the first game:
  • Many of the Golden Endings (clear the first six stages on one credit, then defeat the True Final Boss in Stage 7), all of which have the heroes come home alive:
    • Ruby: She's surrounded by the children at her orphanage, cheerful as she tells them about how she saved the world.
    • Shinnosuke: Finally having achieved peace for the planet, he allows himself to sleep under a tree with a smile on his face.
    • Stuck: He parks his plane, thankful that he'll never have to use it again, and heads home, knowing that his wife is — not may be, is — waiting for him at home.
  • Not all of the standard endings (use at least one continue before completing Stage 6) are bad, at least in 2-player mode:
    • Shinnosuke and Isha: Shinnosuke falls unconscious after having performed what seemed to be a Heroic Sacrifice to destroy the Medallion. Fortunately for Isha, who's been begging him to wake up, he soon comes to his senses.
    • Ruby and Isha: Ruby chews out Isha for trying to perform a Senseless Sacrifice. Isha explains that she has no family or friends to come home to...until Ruby points out that she can be her friend and offers to introduce her to the children at her orphanage.
    • The ending for Stuck and Isha can hardly be called a bad one: With both of them alive with their mission complete, Stuck declares that he's going to go home and relax, while Isha offers to aid those whose lives were affected by the Medallion's war.
  • The good ending of the second game, which Limi is revealed to be alive and reunites with her sister Romi.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Sinnosuke has the widest spread of the original Giga Wing characters. But that doesn't make him good for scoring: he tends to destroy everything on the screen at once, which makes it harder to collect all of the medals. This is not helped by his slow speed, a common trait amongst spread-type characters in Shoot Em Ups.
• Minimalist Run: It is entirely possible to play Giga Wing 2 in a non-Pacifist Run without getting any points. This is because unlike in the first game, which starts your Score Multiplier off at 1, 2 starts it off at zero. As long as you never pick up a single medal, you can destroy everything and no-continue clear the game with 0 points.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The robotic "OK" sound that signals that your Reflect ability is ready to use again.
  • In the Japanese version of 2, the characters Calling Your Attacks.
• Older Than They Think: Reflection (1998) and Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth (1998) were using bullet-reflecting as means of offense and bonus points two years before Giga Wing did it, although those two games aren't as bombastic about it as Giga Wing is and in the case of Reflection, its status as a Japanese doujin game made it virtually unknown to the West at the time.
• Porting Disaster: Giga Wing Generations uses a vertically-oriented monitor. The porting team neglected to offer a vertical option in the PS2 port. Also, it runs at only 30 frames per second—not a desirable framerate for games demanding precision and reflexes.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Some players try to go for the lowest score possible, or go as far as possible without scoring at all.
• Tear Jerker: All of the single-player bad endings in the first game have the player character commit Heroic Sacrifice in order to pump enough firepower into the Medallion to destroy it; some of the two-player bad endings also have one character sacrifice themselves much to the grief of the other.
  • Shinnosuke: He's completely forgotten from history.
  • Stuck: His last words are to his petrified wife Elise, who he regrets he will never see return to life. Then Elise turns back to flesh, almost as if his sacrifice is what cured her.