Gekirindan a.k.a "Time Travel shooting" review for the
Sega Saturn

This game has a "vertical arcade mode" called "Tate", a term that seems to be used in other Saturn shooters as well.
Check the How to.. section of this site for instructions on how to succesfully rotate your monitor.

It's made by Taito. This F3-System arcade game was released in 1995. The Saturn port was probably released in 1996. As far as I can tell this game is arcade perfect! Huge sprites, big blasts, impressive weapons, this game has it all!
You can see some influences of other games in this game like the blimp from the "Flying Shark/Fire Shark"-series. This time the blimp is much larger in size and acts as a boss. Other familiar aspects are the homing-lasers found in "Ray Force" and later in it's sequels "Ray Storm" and "Ray Crisis".

As the sub-title points out you will travel through time and the 5 Stages will cover different time era's including 1945 and 1999.
Even if there are only 5 stages in all they are big/long levels (for shooters standards that is), so that makes up for the amount of levels, which may seem on the small side.
Unlimited continues won't help this game's lastability at all.You can play through this game in one go.
So I ask the makers: "what good are difficulty settings if anyone can complete this game in one go?".
This game has realy realy realy great music, decent effects.
There are three different aircraft to choose from.


The fighters speeds

All fighters have the same speed in Gekirindan.


The sprites seem somewhat squary (blocky). Nothing wrong with the resolution or anything but you can sometimes really see how the sprite-designers drew the sprites starting from a square. Some bosses have this squary look too.
There are some great weapons that you can power up to in this game.
Puzzle your way through different bullet patterns. And I noticed the variety of bullets and other projectiles being thrown at me in this game.


The Verdict:

There's nothing badly wrong with with this game, but....
With only five levels of play and no extra's this adventure seems a rather small one.
But what really ruins this otherwise great game is unlimited credits/continues.

Gameplay: 10
Graphics: 8
Music/sound: 9
Lastability: 5

Total: 7,5

8 blown up screenshots (from the arcade version):










Above you can see the
"Layer Section"-style lasers
coming out of the sides of
the aircraft!