One of the earliest in the rare genre of tube shooters has made its way onto Xbox Live Arcade. Konami's 1983 classic Gyruss joins the ranks of cheap arcade ports clogging up the Arcade list. With no graphical improvements, a step backwards sonically, and some decent Live play, Gyruss is another mixed bag retro title that only the hardcore should shell out the points for.
Gyruss is essentially Space Invaders with a clever point-of-view twist. Rather than shooting at your enemies from the bottom of the screen only, the player's ship is set on rails, encircling the enemy territory. The always inward-facing ship shoots into the center of the screen at oncoming swarms of enemy ships. The game provides no barriers to hide behind, leaving gamers to their own twitchy flying skills to avoid the oncoming enemy fire and asteroids floating towards them.
Given the game's age, Gyruss does have a decent 'story'. The object of the game, aside from the usual 'shoot everything that moves', is to make it to Earth. Gamers begin at the end of the solar system and blast their way through levels, or 'warps' as the game calls them, to reach planets. After gamers successfully reach each they get a bonus round where they shoot at swarms of harmless enemies for extra points.
At the very least, Gyruss finally marks an Arcade retro title where the 360's sad excuse for a directional pad cannot be blamed for the game's sub par controls. Gyruss has never controlled well. The circular field your ship moves around never feels quite right when working with nearly any controller; be it a directional pad, thumb-stick, or joystick. The game's awkward control is simply part of the allure for those who fell in love with the game many years ago. The far top, bottom, left, and right edges of the screen must be carefully navigated in order to prevent from jumping slightly backward into an oncoming asteroid or enemy ship.
The game's circular take on the standard space-shooter was not Gyruss' lone achievement. It was also the first arcade game to use stereo sound, blowing gamers away with rock-infused classical music pieces. The Xbox version of the game replaces the original adrenaline-pumping soundtrack with a more muted version that is more likely to put gamers to sleep than get them to crank up their speakers. Destroying one of the game's trademarks may well turn off a good portion of the original game's fans hoping for some sonic nostalgia.
