If you are a fan of horizontal shooters, then Gaiares is the game for you. It was released by Renovation for the Sega Genesis in 1990. It was one of the first 8Mb cartridges for the Genesis and was probably the best shooter for the Genesis at that time.
The title Gaiares is a combination of "Gaia" meaning Earth and "res" which is short for rescue. The game is set in the year 3000 and most of Earth has become a toxic dump. Some bad guys are trying to harvest some of the toxic pollution to create WMDs. A third party warns Earth about these guys and tells them that if Earth can stop them then they will help clean the place up. If not, they're just going to blow up the planet to stop the bad guys themselves.
Gaiares has a few features that are quite unique. For instance, instead of collecting weapons as power ups, your ship learns the weapons of enemies it shoots. There are 18 different weapons in the game that can be captured and these each have various strengths. While many of the levels show obvious influences from other games like Gradius, there are unique visual elements as well, including many of the bosses.
If there is a downside to Gaiares, it is that it is a relatively difficult game. This is not for the neophyte shooter fan and you will have to spend some pretty long hours to beat it, some of them no doubt frustrating. Having said that, veteran shooter fans may look forward to the challenge.
There have been no sequels or re-releases of this game that I am aware of. You will have to either hunt down an original cartridge which isn't cheap (currently loose carts start at around $50) or play it on an emulator. For shooter fans, this game is well worth it though.
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