What can I say? From the first time I heard the soaring strains of The Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach, assaulting my ear drums at an obscene level in my local video arcade I became hooked on Gyruss. The game itself seemed to be a hybrid of two of my favorite games Tempest and Galaga, but it turned out that it was so much more. The 360 degree control as you circle around the screen attacking the enemy ships from any angle seemed so much more satisfying than being stuck in the linear horizontal plane at the bottom of the screen.
In my opinion, this was the game's biggest advantage.
The gameplay is actually quite simple like Galaga. Attack the enemy ships as they form in the centre of the screen and after 3 levels you get a chance level. Take out the three ships with the circle in the middle and you increase your fire power and avoid a few other obstacles like asteroids and a laser beam connecting two ships. So why did this game take up so much more of my time and money? Part of the reason was the extremely loud music. I don't ever remember this machine not drowning out every other noise in the place no matter how loud the jukebox or how big the fight in the place. The absorbing
control of going round and round the screen avoiding everything in sight and shooting objects at a quicker rate than anything previously seen was super addictive. Lastly but by no means least, is the schoolboy pure delight of the "3 warps to Uranus" message. For some reason this would dissolve our group for many years to come even as adults.
Some things never change. I could recommend some strategy you can use like knowing where the ships come out at each stage and putting as much fire power into them as you can, getting the twin firing ship as quickly and often as possible to increase your fire power and knowing the challenge stages intimately to assure you get all 40 ships and the associated bonus. More importantly though ignore this advice and just play the joystick off this game with the volume turned all the way up and revel in the first game that I found that fused music and gameplay into a single entity. Don't believe me? Play it with the volume off, nowhere near the addictive thrill. Play it with the screen turned off and it doesn't quite work as well either.
