Gaiapolis
September 21st, 2023
Out of sheer boredom and a desire to spend every waking moment of my life talking about video games, I used this randomizer to pick a random retro game to write a blog post about. This is what happened next...
I love arcade games because of how batshit insane some of them can be. The arcade industry was a veritable Wild West of gaming where developers tried anything and everything to stand out from the competition, all the while flexing powerful arcade boards that could run circles around the consoles of the time. Gaiapolis (yeah I don't know how to pronounce that either) is one such game, and it's one of those hidden treasures from the arcade that never received a port to any console. It's also made by Konami! Remember when Konami made video games? Those were the days
FIRE WORRIOR
Gaiapolis opens with the evil Zar Harc empire destroying the kingdom of Avalon, prompting the young prince Gerard Himerce, along with his two friends Elaine (the pink-haired lady) and Galahad (the big beefcake dragon man) to set out on a perilous journey to take their revenge and eventually save the world from the King of Darkness. It's not the most original premise in the world, but the plot goes through a bunch of utterly strange twists and turns along the way. Some of the things I encountered while playing Gaiapolis are:
- Zombies that keep walking when chopped in half
- A minotaur with two pairs of arms
- An egg-shaped robot that explains how the world already ended and that everything in the game is taking place post-apocalypse
- A hideous alien creature that looks like it could be a rejected design for Cell
- and an evil knight who transforms into a tank, which transforms into a mech, which transforms into a dragon mech, all in the same goddamn boss fight
The game plays like a vertical, top-down beat-em-up with some minor RPG elements thrown in. You pick one of the three characters mentioned above at the start and proceed to beat the shit out of everything that moves, gaining XP and leveling up along the way (though all you really get from leveling up is a bigger health bar). You have a basic attack combo, a button that sends out a pet to attack enemies (if you have one), and a button that casts a one time use screen-clearing magic spell. In addition, you can double-tap in any of the four cardinal directions to use a dash attack that knocks down any enemies it hits.
...but frankly, the only attack you actually need to use is the spin attack that you can activate by rotating the stick in a full circle. It has a gigantic hitbox, melts boss healthbars, and is very useful when surrounded by enemies (which happens all the time...). I was a little dissapointed at first when I realized that all I really had to do to survive in most situations was spam the spin attack, but I still had fun either way. The moment to moment gameplay is pretty satisfying in this. And make no mistake, the game is still just as hard as you would expect from an arcade game, even with the spin attack! There was no way I would've ever seen the ending without my precious infinite continues
Nothing says "final boss" like sixty fucking healthbars
Visually, the game is a treat. From the title screen all the way to the final boss, Gaiapolis is packed full of absolutely gorgeous pixel art from start to finish. And the music is fantastic too! I recommend checking out the soundtrack for yourself, but here's my favorite song from the game:
I genuinely wonder why this game never got a console port... Wikipedia says it was popular in the arcades, and I feel like if they just reduced the difficulty to a more reasonable level in a console version, Gaiapolis could've been a classic. Oh well
That's all for now. Usually I'd say "this has been my first impressions of Gaiapolis", but I actually went through the whole game this time just because I could. Unfortunately that does mean it took more time than usual to write this article... maybe I should set a time limit for myself of about 30 minutes to an hour? I'll have to think about it
See ya later gamers
