Gunforce II (Arcade) Review
Irem’s Last Hurrah
~by tankMage (September 2026)
Score: 88/100 (Good)
It’s probably impossible to talk about Gunforce II without mentioning the demise of the company that created it. Irem was a notable player in both the world of arcade gaming and that of home consoles. R-Type probably comes to mind when the name of this company is mentioned, but they made a lot of other titles over the course of their career as developers. In 1994, they shut the doors on their video game development branch. After exiting the video game biz, Irem focused on producing pachinko machines. Arcades would die out in the 2000s, so I guess it wasn’t a terrible move from a business perspective. At any rate, Irem was resurrected a few years later as a home video game developer, which makes the story of the company somewhat confusing since you’ll see titles made well after 1994 bearing the Irem logo.
Irem’s demise is relevant to Gunforce II for two reasons. First off, you can tell the devs tried to make the best game they could with what little time they had, so this Run and Gun turned out really well considering the circumstances. Secondly, remnants of the team who created Gunforce II would form Nazca, who created Metal Slug. Yes, THAT Metal Slug. So you can see a lot of Metal Slug’s concepts in their primordial form when playing Gunforce II. Incidentally, I remember noticing similarities between In the Hunt and Metal Slug ten years ago when I reviewed the former.
Digression aside, Gunforce II turned out a lot better than one would expect from a failing company. Of course, Irem had a really talented crop of devs, so maybe their hat trick shouldn’t be so surprising.
We don’t need no stinkin’ story!
Gunforce II is a throwback to the dawn of arcades in many ways, most notably its complete lack of story exposition. There is no opening cutscene, no ending, and nothing to tell you why you are blowing away hordes of bad guys. All we have to go on is the acronym D.A.S. that appears on a few tanks in one of the stages. D.A.S. were the antagonists in several Irem titles, so it’s not difficult to guess what they are up to based on their history.
Gunforce II’s lack of narrative should work against it because it was obviously designed to have at least one or two cutscenes, yet this isn’t the case. The mysteries surrounding why the player is fighting, the cast’s background, and even what happens once the last boss is defeated make Gunforce more alluring as far as I’m concerned.
At the same time, I have to wonder what kept them from displaying a few paragraphs in plain text for the beginning and end. We know the game was rushed, but was it really that time consuming to implement such a thing? Guess we’ll never know, though it would be interesting if even a rough draft of its story were to surface.
Metal Slug, is that you?
Gunforce II looks like it could be a prototype of Metal Slug, which is no surprise seeing as how the people who made this game went on to form their own development company. In fact, Gunforce II is sometimes called Metal Slug Zero, though that’s stretching things a bit. Also would the first Gunforce be Metal Slug -1?
Anyway, this game looks really good. The world is really detailed, plus every character and enemy has a sort of early 90s amine style to it. The bosses also look awesome, though a few of them (like the one fans call the Cyber T-Rex) feel a little half-baked.
This is also the game to play if you like explosions. Everything seems to explode when shot, filling the screen with shrapnel and flame. All the carnage makes the action very satisfying. Also, this attention to detail shows how much the devs cared even though this was the last thing Irem was going to release. At the same time, all the fireworks and burning wreckage can make it difficult to track important stuff, like the small bullet headed for your character’s crotch or a random missile that slipped past your firing arc. Dying to something you can’t see is pretty annoying in an arcade game where every life costs actual money. Luckily, your eyes will adjust after a while.
Run, Gun, Run Some More
Non-stop action is what makes this Gunforce II so enjoyable. The entire game has players dodging bullets and blasting baddies with only a brief intermission between stages. Every stage features a grand boss battle as a finale and the action loops after the final stage, which is a nice callback to old school arcades.
The heroes start with fairly basic guns that can be aimed in all directions. Power ups can be found that give players things like flamethrowers and lasers, but you always keep one of your basic guns. Most of the special weapons are along the lines of what you would expect from a Contra-esque Run and Gun. There’s a flamethrower and a laser as well as a slightly upgraded version of the standard rifle. Spread, which is basically a small rocket launcher, stands out the most with its impressive explosions.
While the weapons themselves may be fairly cliché, the power up system is pretty cool as it allows for super powerful versions of each gun that do unexpected things. My favorite is the powered up laser because the hero spins it around and it’s really fun clearing the screen with a windmill of doom. Fully powered up weapons only last a few seconds, so you have to be strategic about how you use them. This is true even for the regular weapons which come with limited ammo.
Stages are fairly brief or at least they feel that way with all the action going on. Gunforce shows some signs of being rushed in its level design, namely its repetitive hallways, yet it never drags. A more diverse lineup of regular bad guys would have helped too, since you’ll spend much of your time blowing away the same grunts.
Players will also find all sorts of tanks and vehicles to ride, many of which are unique to certain stages. Hopping in a tank and blasting everything in sight without worrying about the insta-death mechanic serves to break the challenge up nicely. Of course, the vehicles also add a lot of fun and variety. And there’s a lot of ‘em, trust me. I was surprised they took the time to create so many vehicles, though it’s likely just another indication that the game was intended to be a bit longer.
Boss fights are the highlight of each stage. While the first, second, and final bosses felt like they were better thought out and designed than the rest, all of the boss fights were climactic and satisfying. However, none of them were all that challenging, though this may be the result of the game allowing players to plow through stages as long as they could pump quarters into the machine.
Everything about Gunforce II is very pat and straight forward. You shoot, you jump, you duck, you die, and you learn the game as you go along. One of the shocking things about this game is that it doesn’t pull the usual cheap arcade tricks. While I did die a few times due to screen clutter, I never felt like the devs were sucker punching me to shake change out of my pockets, which is rare for arcades.
Another virtue of this shooter is that it’s easy play, yet hard to master. I went through it several times and got better with each attempt, but still couldn’t beat it on a single credit. This makes Gunforce II a good game for players who enjoy challenges like 1CC, No-Death, and Speedruns. You can even just see how many loops you can complete if that’s your thing.
Aim high, because you can’t aim straight!
If Gunforce has a major flaw, it’s the controls. They aren’t awful, but they do take a good deal of getting used to. The heroes can fire in all directions, but aiming is linked to the joystick, which is also linked to movement. Consequently, it takes time to focus your weapons on targets and you’re kind of rooted in place while aiming unless you jump or move laterally. Ducking feels really sluggish as does grabbing onto platforms, so there’s a lot of situations where new players are gonna take a bath because they don’t know how to compensate for the controls. Players also have to constantly mash the fire button to keep shooting, which makes controlling the heroes an even more finicky process.
Something tells me the devs probably wanted to use a better button layout, but Irem’s imminent demise made doing so an impossible proposition. Life gets easier as you adjust to the controls, but I often felt like I was fighting them the first two times I played through.
We heard you liked Air Duel, so we reused its sound track!
One of the tragic casualties of the circumstances surrounding Gunforce II’s development is its soundtrack. That’s not to say the music is bad, it’s just remixed from Air Duel and doesn’t fit the game perfectly. They even had to use the same track in some stages, which is pretty crazy since there are only five of them!
There’s also nothing at all special about the sound effects, which were almost certainly stock sounds they had on hand. You’ll hear a lot of generic oofs and shooting sounds. Luckily they work well enough to give the game that visceral punch all action titles rely on.
Final Thoughts
The more I think about Gunforce II and play it, the more I like it. It’s not going to win any awards for ingenuity nor will it satisfy people looking for a side of plot to go with their main course of explosions, but it’s still able to stand on its merits as a solid Run and Gun. It’s short, sweet, and chaotic, which is pretty much what you want from this genre. Gunforce II was also the herald of greater things to come for its creators, who would go on to create the classic Metal Slug.
This is the part where I recommend (or not recommend) the game in question and I gotta say, Gunforce merits a play through or two. It’s certainly not the finest example of its genre, but it’s good enough to be on a top 50 list. It’s also a game Metal Slug fans may appreciate since that series may not have come about if not for this title. Imagine living in a universe where Irem didn’t go under and the Gunforce series slowly evolved into something very much like Metal Slug. Crazy.
Thanks for reading this review of Gunforce II for Arcade!
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