Shoot 'em ups have a rich, long history, perhaps one of the longest in all of gaming. While Pong and Pac-Man were the first for many, Galaga was right in the mix as well, and with the advent of easy to manage digital marketplaces we're seeing a resurgence of some of those classic games right here in the mobile space. Cave pretty much opened the shmup floodgates after some stragglers at the start of the Android and iOS movement, but there's plenty of other competitors vying for attention as well. That includes Psikyo, who developed the Gunbird series way back in 1998 on arcades (and eventually the Dreamcast). And here we are 18 years later with a mobile edition. Flaws and all, it's a pretty fantastic series of events.
As a hardcore game that skews towards throwing tons of bullets on-screen at once (though not nearly as much as a true danmaku, or, bullet hell title, like many of Cave's works), this isn't something you can merely pick up and expect to master. In fact, there's far more packed in to alienate you beyond that stage. This is as wacky of an anime game as you're going to get, as the cast is comprised of characters like the son of Dracula, a young witch who wished to reverse her aging process, and a self-conscious magic carpet rider. It's all old school but I like it that way. Backdrops have cheering civilians populating them (think Street Fighter stages), it's easy to tell the difference between friendly and enemy fire, and the controls (which are drag and touch, wit...