Welcome to my Classic Game Review!
This is the first of what I hope to be a series of game reviews, so please forgive me if I don't crank them out as fast as IGN or XPlay, k?

This review is about Gyruss - that wonderful spin around the solar system, while at the same time, blowing the crap out of aliens.

Okay.....I know what you're thinking.  Big deal...another person doing a game review, right?  Well, no.........this is ME doing an online game review.

I do have a really huge soft spot for this game, as I spent many an afternoon in the classic "gamer's stance" beating the heck out of the fire button, and yanking so hard on the joystick that I was surprised it didn't break off.  This is one FUN game!  The story is all about you making your way from the edge of the solar system to the middle, figthing all the ships that come along your way.  The first stage starts deceptively easy, as no ships fire at you while they're getting into formation.  Once they're IN formation though, then it's open season on your little fighter.  The stages after the first one do not afford you this luxury, however.........they take pot-shots at you from the time they swoop in on-screen.

Along the way, you do get the chance to upgrade your weapons from a single blaster to a dual-blaster......you just have to get the middle target of the 3 that come in and sway back and forth in front of you......while trying to blast you. If you already have the dual-blaster though, then you just get 3 bogeys to pop off - no triple-blaster here, guys.  After each set of 3 waves (2 in the first set), then you reach the next planet in the series.  During this time, you get a bonus stage, where you get to pick off ships that DON'T fire at you.  You get a bonus based on the number of ships you hit - hit them all, and it's 10000 bonus points!  Then off you go to the next stage.  It gets more and more difficult on each stage, as you might expect, but it keeps you going.

I think the biggest draw for me has got to be the music on this game!  Keeping in mind that this came out in 1983, this game had some AMAZING sound to it!  This game features some nice classic riffs that keep your toes tapping while you're otherwise occupied on the ever-increasing number of ships that you need to pick off on your way to the middle of the solar system.

This game was ported to home systems, as were many good games of those days.  I remember playing the NES version, which included a SUN STAGE at the end of the planets, where it was not in the arcade.  Once you got to the sun and passed that bonus round, then it was back to the outer planets for you to start all over again, but the difficulty did NOT back down, as much as you might have hoped it would.

In the end, I find this game very satisfying, even to this day, and would welcome a chance to play the arcade version in an arcade again - just to assume the stance and rock out to it.  This game is available on MAME as a rom file, as are thousands and thousands of others, but if you don't have this in your collection......you should!

Overall rating for this game (out of 5):