Round-37 is a rotund protagonist ship which was built by Earth defenses and controlled by the single player in horizontal arcade shooter game, Gigandes.
History[]
Takes place in a future setting, a wicked entity that is the source of all evils named Gigandes has suddenly awakened. With its ability to warp across dimensions Gigandes corrupts, commands sentient beings all over other galaxies to the Milky Way into its fanatical worshippers and becomes their demonic king. Gigandes deployed its worshippers in its quest to add mankind to its subjugated collection. Earth's brilliant minds band together to construct a craft called Round-37, a single-seated and small but powerful and versatile spacecraft with the intention of destroying Gigandes and reclaim the 'light of universe' from the tyrant's clutches. Launching from a submarine, Round-37 flies towards Gigandes' forces with the fate of humanity resting on its wing.
Despite being stacked against heavy odd, Round-37 battled through various environments including escaping from a colossal squid, travelling in and out of space, freeing a city and a human colony, clearing ancient ruin of Gigandes' forces, Round-37 ultimately reaches deep below the Earth where Gigandes resides. Braving through fierce resistance from enemies and vicious traps, Round-37 engages Gigandes in a deadly duel to the death and after tough battle, destroys the monster as Gigandes plunges down to abyss in a fiery explosion emitting death agony. After the death of Gidandes, the fate of Round-37 is unknown.
Items[]
Throughout its campaign, Round-37 is to be equipped with 4 offensive items and 2 supplemental items. When Round-37 perishes, it still gets to keep its weapons and power-ups but at the beginning of each stage all power-ups Round-37 possessed previously are lost. So, with the beginning of each stages the fighter must recollect everything from the scratch. Weapon items are present in every stage: sometimes stages are pelted with items, and sometimes there will be only a very few items in stages. This requires some strategic forethought to obtain the most suitable and correct weapons to negotiate stages.
Offense[]
Normal shot. The 300mm main cannon. When obtained one more main cannon will be attached to wherever part Round-37 got its N with. When upgraded with P it will shoot from single row bullets to dual row parallel bullets. When obtain item W its shots will travel up and down like a wave.
Missile shot. Launches a missile that travels straight. When upgraded missiles expand to a wide but weak triple stream of missiles. If missile is equipped with W, missile will snake around in a sine wave (as well as cosine wave when upgraded with P).
Ray beam that shoots a long stream of beam. Powerful but requires precision. When upgraded Round-37 unleashes dual beams. When laser is equipped with W, it goes blue and travel in a serpentine manner.
Crusher. A very unique weapon shaped like a round ball which once launches off, clings to/rolls about and sweeps the scenery a bit before returning like a boomerang. This makes Crusher ideal for cramped stages. When upgraded Crusher becomes a quicker and more powerful ball.
Supplement[]
Power that upgrades weapons, making them stronger. Unlike other typical shoot'em up games, obtaining a same item of a particular weapon will not automatically upgrade firepower of that particular weapon.
Wave. This renders Round-37's shots travel in an up-and-down fashion, which makes shots more erratic and wider in scope.
Mechanism[]
Round-37 is a small, spherical and even unimpressive-looking flyer: in fact, it resembles more of an escape pod than a spacecraft. But Round-37 is actually a powerful silver space fighter equipped with a special weapons system gimmick. Round-37's weapon system operates by manipulating B buttons of the joystick.
By tapping B button, Round-37's main gun rotates clockwise in a 90-degree angle. By tapping B button more the main cannon will rotate in 4-way direction clockwise, granting Round-37 all four directions of coverage instead of the standard paradigm of typical shoot'em up games which only have protagonist crafts shoot their main weapons forward.
By pushing down and holding B button, the main cannon can diagonally change (45-degree angle) to shoot. This, along the ability to turn weapons in a 90-degree angle renders the fighter to snipe and target enemies anywhere on the screen.
Depending on which side of Round-37 it runs into an item icon, will attach the item to that side of Round-37. as shown in above images, if the fighter picks up a missile on the top of Round-37 the missile will be attached to the fighter's top and shoot upwards. If Round-37 picks up a N (main cannon) icon on the front of Round-37, an additional main cannon will be attached to the fighter etc. Thus, master players will have their favorite weapon formations arranged for every situation. For example, powerful ray beam in front, wide-range missile behind, and two reflective crusher balls above and below to get past tight spots brimming with indestructible obstacles.
However, there is a restriction: Round-37 cannot have more than two weapons of the same type so if Round-37 already possesses, like two missiles in place, picking up the third M nothing will happen.
Gallery[]
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Trivia[]
- In Gigandes ' arcade flyer, there is a picture of a boy standing in the arcade that seems little related to the plot of the game, indicating that the boy might be the one playing Gigandes and thus actually controlling Round-37, thus potentially making the whole plot of the game fiction within a fiction.