As mentioned, I'm currently playing Gynoug for mega drive. In the US it was released as Wings of Wor, but my copy is PAL. It's a horizontal shmup whose gameplay so far seems pretty standard for the genre - you fly around, shoot a lot of enemies, pick up various powerups, die in one hit, and so on. There are two basic power-ups, red and blue orbs. The blue ones increase the number of shots you fire, the red ones increase the spread of the shots. When you die your power level goes down one notch in each of these. Then there are a set of fancier orbs which change the direction of fire - spreading forwards in a cone, split between forwards and backwards, or a group of parallel shots above and below your character going straight forwards. In addition you get magic scrolls, of which you can stock three. These are activated with one button and then used (if applicable) with another, which took me a little while to figure out. Some of them are more passive, like a temporary shield that comes up when you activate it and eventually fades away, and others are extra shots, like lightning bolts that come forwards or balls that shoot out diagonally in four directions. Those are equipped when you activate them and fired when you hit the other button.
The game seems pretty doable for an incompetent shmupper like me - I've reached stage three of six on a single credit so far after only a few play sessions, there's an option in the menu to increase the number of lives, and I think there's an infinite continues cheat, so perhaps I'll see the end someday. If I can't, there's the option of the upcoming switch (and other current consoles) port, due for release in a week or so. Presumably it will be similar to the recent Gley Lancer port, which featured save states, rewind, and a heap of graphical filters.
The thing that seems most notable about Gynoug is the theme and graphical style - instead of a spaceship you play a little winged man. The enemies, according to the manual, are mutants. Some of them are pretty odd, like the floating faces in the screenshot above. Is that supposed to be a Star of David? (Edit: I’m realising now it’s a guy with a beard and pointy hat lying on his front facing out of the screen. The upper left and right points of the star are his legs and the lower ones his arms, and the pink bit by his chin are the hands).
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