The end of an era: The last game released by Apogee was a good way to go out. This is a side-scrolling shmup that is still fast and fun. It's definitely influenced by the Gradius series, even including a vocal prompt with each new power up. Enemies have varied attack patterns, and will even speed up and slow down as they approach your ship. And speaking of your ship, power ups are plentiful, and there is a fair amount of upgrades available for purchase within the game. The only possible negative might be for its aesthetics: Stargunner features a bright, primary color palette and oversized enemies, while I prefer smaller targets and a darker, grittier feel. The bottom line is this: Just because it's free, doesn't mean it's not worth playing. I'd pay for this. If you're a shmup fan, get it and enjoy! Recommended.

Stargunner is an excellent 1996 shooter developed by Apogee that is free on the store. Running in a DOSBox it recognized my xinput controller right out of the box. Given the number of available orbitals and other weapon / engine selections the ship is very customizable as well. Took 27 years to find, never too late. A review on the store page mentions to modify the game's DOS config file for ultra wide-screen.

EDIT: On a widescreen monitor, you may need to change DOSbox settings (edit STARGUN.CONF in Notepad to change "aspect=false" to "aspect=true" if it isn't already) to fix the aspect ratio. You may also need to disable Steam Overlay then, since the pop-up will get stuck in the margin.

This is a pretty solid side-scrolling shooter from the nineties. Sound and graphics are similar to what you'd expect from a classic Amiga action game, with bouncy MOD format music, pre-rendered 3d art and animation, and parallax scrolling.

The Steam version runs in DOSbox, since this is an old MS-DOS game. It was very stable on my Windows XP system.

I used mouse control for this, and it felt pretty good. Mouse movement response can be adjusted from slow to instant, with or without a visible mouse pointer. Left button fires your main gun and special weapons, right button fires nukes.

Your ship starts with a main gun that can fire either a spread or a stream of bullets, depending on your Plasma or Pulse pickups respectively, and can be upgraded in power during the level by grabbing more pickups. You have two "nukes" you can detonate to unleash a wave of powerful bullets, which spiral outward from your ship and cancel enemy shots.

There are pickups and powerups to collect from destroyed structures and ships, including extra nukes, gun upgrades, shield recharge, credits, lives, and invincibility. Many are hidden, hinted at by a brief "sparkle" around their location.

There's also a shop system accessible between levels, where you can spend credits, from the green crystals collected from destroyed ships, and from grabbing credit pickups. You have two empty weapon slots, top and bottom, and you can buy special weapons to mount in these for extra firepower. These vary from bomb droppers and credit collecting drones, to auto-tracking turrets, homing missile launchers, and a dual laser which can shoot though walls and multiple ships. You can also buy more nukes, extra lives, faster engines, and "satellites" that orbit your ship and absorb shots.

There are three difficulty levels available; the highest can be a real challenge even for experienced shmup players. There is a six level "shareware" mission, plus three full "registered" missions of nine levels each. These are space, surface, and underwater themes. (Your engine and weapons all work exactly the same in each environment, even if you have a flamethrower installed.) Waves of ships firing a wide variety of projectiles, hazards like hydraulic doors, and bizarre boss ships await you. The levels are well-designed with lots of hidden pickups, destructible structures, ambushes, and traps.

You can save in different slots during the game, or between levels at the shop. Finishing each of the full missions plays an ending cutscene, and there's a high score table. The options menu includes adjustments for amount of debris from destroyed ships, male or female announcer ("shields low!") voice clips, mouse response speed, and a music jukebox.

Minor gripes section: There was supposed to be support for SNES and Sega Genesis (really) gamepads, and it's in the options menu, but it doesn't do anything since the adapter that was supposed to allow this was vaporware. The ending cutscenes can randomly crash the game. Starting gear you can afford kind of sucks, in particular the very slow engine you start with, so the first couple of levels of each mission will be off to a rough start, until you can afford better gear.

Overall this is an excellent piece of work, and a cool blast from the past. Pure arcade joy and still just as much fun today.

I can't believe how long it took me to find this game, being born in 1990 was great I grew up playing games like this a Duke Nukem -- for the longest time I couldn't remember the name Stargunner was one of my favorite games growing and Im glad I finally found it and the best part is it was free flying through space in a side-scrolling shooter has never been so much fun again with the ability to upgrade your ship with protection and different types of plasma guns and turrets really does make the experience quite joyful, gathering crystals from killing enemies to earn credits in order to attain these upgrades. Even though the game can be challenging at times these are the reasons you continue to come back for more. Stargunner was great in the 90's and continues to be so today if you haven't played yet your childhood was dull make up for it now, it wont cost you a dime!

One of the best games of the nineties you must have! Classic never dies :))

Really good shoot 'em up so far. Tried playing on a Mac Track Pad the first go (bad idea), so I am gonna try hooking up a SNES controller to it next.

I've loved this game since the first time I played it. 22 years later, I'm still playing it.

1st moment story screen displayed after downloading from Steam, I was hooked,... *must of been the laugh from story text scoller fading similarly alike to all Star Wars franchise stuff.

Aiming for funny (from the tongue in cheek introduction) but gameplay blazes much in genre; inc. from arcade coin-op + app/gamer imitations more recently.......

Fantastic drawn enemies
Fast
strategic (pwr ups)
Underwater stage (not just in stars)
Responsive under lots of keypresses(button mashing)
Reflex gamer appeal

...Better than a broken printer for sure

A solid side-scrolling SHMUP where everything looks like it's made out of clay. It runs fine on DOSBox, but the Steam overlay caused some issues for me.
It's kind of archaic in some ways, but that's fine by me, not every game in this genre needs to have anime girls and colorful bullet patterns. Also, it's free.

Game of my childhood.

After a few days of trying, I've managed to beat the first campagn on the first difficulty. It was awesome!