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Night Striker Gear |OT|

John Bilbo · 2025-11-04T17:59:29+00:00

Night Striker Gear NeoGAF OT ■ Release Date: 22nd of October, 2025 Developed & Published by: M2 Platforms: Steam, Switch 1 & 2 ■ About the game Night Striker Gear is a pseudo-3D chase view shooting game. It is a sequel to the 1989 Japanese arcade game Night Striker developed by Taito. Night Striker Gear was originally released as a digital download code for pre-ordering the limited edition version of Operation Night Strikers, a collection including the original Night Strikers game with three 80s Taito developed arcade light gun games. Operation Night Strikers released on Steam and Nintendo Switch on 6th of October 2025. About the genre The pseudo-3D chase view sprite scaling genre is an offshoot of the shoot em up or shooting game genre. This sub-genre was made popular by the 1983 Japanese arcade game Space Harrier. There seems to be no one established name for the genre so I included all the possible synonyms I could in this genre description. Some people refer to the genre simply as Harrier-likes. Personally I prefer the term chase view shooter. About the developer M2 is a Japanese game developer known for its superb Shot Triggers ports of classic Japanese arcade and home console STGs. Every now and then they have dabbled in developing their own sequels to the games they have ported. Such is the case for Night Striker Gear also. Night Striker Gear is directed and planned by the veteran developer Hiroshi Iuchi. His previous works include such games as Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga, Gradius V and Kokuga. Trailer Screenshots Story A.D. 2059. Somewhere in the Middle East... "Unsurpassed thrills! Non-stop action! The immortal hero – that's YOU!" is the slogan for the soon-to-be-opened theme park, Lotus Layer. Full of robots and AI enhanced attractions, the park promised its guests the experience of becoming action movie protagonists. Celebrities and dignitaries from around the world gather to mark its first preview. The invitees even include certain heads of state. But behind all the eve's merriment and mirth, the park is struggling with technical problems of unknown cause–– Calamity strikes on the day of the preview. The park's AI, LOTUS CORE, goes rogue, confining the guests to the premises. There are even reports of the robots attacking whoever approaches the park. Knowing the importance of this matter, UNSG Noah Eisenberg turns to Dick Dagras, the head of the Special Service Agency, who is commanding a special task force to rescue the dignitaries and to stop the rogue AI. This elite troop, which is made up of experienced brave soldiers who control special armored motorcars and are experienced in difficult tactics, are–– A special service agency of the United Nations, alias Night Striker. Soundtrack Mechanical overlook The player has the vehicle form and the mecha styled GEAR form. You transfer into the GEAR form via a button press. The inputs can be somewhat configured within the menu but are not fully rebindable. As opposed to the picture on the right not all normal shots fire in a straight line. About every fifth shot or so goes to the left and after that similarly one shot goes to the right. The GEAR form has homing shots. They might also do more damage but I cannot confirm this yet. I'd recommend using the GEAR form in short bursts. The transformation to GEAR form and out is instantenious. In the stages you find two types of portals to pass through. The yellow ones score extra points and the blue ones add power to your GEAR meter. You gain the GEAR meter also by damaging or destroying enemies. Destroying an red enemy will destroy the whole pack of enemies associated. You can gain an extra shield by shooting this funny looking fellow. You also gain one extra shield at the end of each stage after beating the boss. The shields are basically your lives or health. Once they go down to zero taking damage will kill you. You can use a continue but true to the arcade origins using a continue will reset your score. Campaigns The game includes two campaigns or modes when you start the game. A third campaign can be unlocked via gameplay. All campaigns include three difficulties. I recommend starting with the easy difficulty and working your way upwards. Extra credits can also be unlocked by playing the game. The game includes a stage select similar to the arcade racing game OutRun. After each boss fight at the end of stage you enter a forking tunnel. You select the next stage by driving or flying either left or right depending the stage you want to choose. Based on my limited experience it is advisable to select the right most stages as a beginner. Normal Mode The main mode of the game. Pacifist Mode In this mode you cannot shoot. This mode can be very useful to get to understand the routing of the stages and learning how to dodge different kinds of projectiles or boss attacks thrown at you. B-mode Unlockable mode. I haven't tried it yet but it seems this mode is the ultimate challenge! In this mode you play all the stages after one another. Things to consider If you experience micro stuttering while playing on PC use RivaTuner or similar software to limit the frame rate to 60. Currently there is no VSync options in the game Maximum resolution is 1080p You can disable or enable bilinear filtering. I prefer to play without it. In the Steam release version of the game there were controller issues which have been mostly solved via patches but not yet fully. Though playing with the most common controllers should be fine. There are several hidden scoring mechanics in the game. An example of this is The game includes online leaderboards for each difficulty and each mode.

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