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Night Striker Gear |OT|

John Bilbo

John Bilbo

Member
Sm9Qc1kabYRPJvqY.gif


Night Striker Gear NeoGAF OT​

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Release Date: 22nd of October, 2025
Developed & Published by: M2
Platforms: Steam, Switch 1 & 2
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About the game

Night Striker Gear is a pseudo-3D chase view shooting game. It is a sequel to the 1989 Japanese arcade game Night Striker developed by Taito.

Night Striker Gear was originally released as a digital download code for pre-ordering the limited edition version of Operation Night Strikers, a collection including the original Night Strikers game with three 80s Taito developed arcade light gun games. Operation Night Strikers released on Steam and Nintendo Switch on 6th of October 2025.

Operation Night Strikers collection

About the genre

The pseudo-3D chase view sprite scaling genre is an offshoot of the shoot em up or shooting game genre. This sub-genre was made popular by the 1983 Japanese arcade game Space Harrier.

There seems to be no one established name for the genre so I included all the possible synonyms I could in this genre description. Some people refer to the genre simply as Harrier-likes. Personally I prefer the term chase view shooter.

About the developer

M2 is a Japanese game developer known for its superb Shot Triggers ports of classic Japanese arcade and home console STGs. Every now and then they have dabbled in developing their own sequels to the games they have ported. Such is the case for Night Striker Gear also.

​
Night Striker Gear is directed and planned by the veteran developer Hiroshi Iuchi. His previous works include such games as Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga, Gradius V and Kokuga.

Trailer



Screenshots

ilyrJY8nmO0CArG4.jpg
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Story

A.D. 2059. Somewhere in the Middle East...

"Unsurpassed thrills! Non-stop action! The immortal hero – that's YOU!" is the slogan for the soon-to-be-opened theme park, Lotus Layer. Full of robots and AI enhanced attractions, the park promised its guests the experience of becoming action movie protagonists.

Celebrities and dignitaries from around the world gather to mark its first preview. The invitees even include certain heads of state. But behind all the eve's merriment and mirth, the park is struggling with technical problems of unknown cause–– Calamity strikes on the day of the preview. The park's AI, LOTUS CORE, goes rogue, confining the guests to the premises. There are even reports of the robots attacking whoever approaches the park.

Knowing the importance of this matter, UNSG Noah Eisenberg turns to Dick Dagras, the head of the Special Service Agency, who is commanding a special task force to rescue the dignitaries and to stop the rogue AI. This elite troop, which is made up of experienced brave soldiers who control special armored motorcars and are experienced in difficult tactics, are––

A special service agency of the United Nations, alias Night Striker.​
Click to expand...

Soundtrack

​

Mechanical overlook


  • The player has the vehicle form and the mecha styled GEAR form. You transfer into the GEAR form via a button press. The inputs can be somewhat configured within the menu but are not fully rebindable.​
  • As opposed to the picture on the right not all normal shots fire in a straight line. About every fifth shot or so goes to the left and after that similarly one shot goes to the right.​
  • The GEAR form has homing shots. They might also do more damage but I cannot confirm this yet.​
  • I'd recommend using the GEAR form in short bursts.​
  • The transformation to GEAR form and out is instantenious.​
zz5PQ5evNPqknNyY.png
  • In the stages you find two types of portals to pass through. The yellow ones score extra points and the blue ones add power to your GEAR meter.​
  • You gain the GEAR meter also by damaging or destroying enemies.​
TAABrq23M9YUv6aX.png
  • Destroying an red enemy will destroy the whole pack of enemies associated.​
  • Destroying the red leader enemy first will grand you a bonus in your score. This is an incentive to aim carefully and only aim for the red leaders as they destroy all the rest enemies of the group.​
ns4SeQo2V5UVy3uH.png
  • You can gain an extra shield by shooting this funny looking fellow.
  • You also gain one extra shield at the end of each stage after beating the boss.
21ovtrKgbs4kRb6q.png

The shields are basically your lives or health. Once they go down to zero taking damage will kill you. You can use a continue but true to the arcade origins using a continue will reset your score.
6fhqesUbPbRYjiz6.png

Further mechanical findings

  • The player ship is the cross hair: Your basic shots will fire straight in front of your ship. You can try this by staying somewhere in vehicle mode and firing with the basic shot.
    • This means you should situate your ship on top of the enemy you want to kill or hit.
    • Only when running on the ground will you see the shots clearly as they don't collide with the ground but travel ON the ground.
  • Obscuring enemy with your own ship will prevent the enemy from firing at you!
    • You just have to be sure your ship is situated on top of the enemy's OR boss's weapon before the enemy fires!
    • You can impact the amount of projectiles during boss fights or tough spots severely this way.
    • Might not work for homing missiles! Need confirmation on this.
  • In several levels there are enemies spawning in a ring like fashion. It seems if you destroy these enemy groups fast (maybe with shooting the red leader of the group?) you will spawn more and more of these groups after the first one. This is a way to boost your score.

Campaigns

The game includes two campaigns or modes when you start the game. A third campaign can be unlocked via gameplay. All campaigns include three difficulties. I recommend starting with the easy difficulty and working your way upwards. Extra credits can also be unlocked by playing the game.

The game includes a stage select similar to the arcade racing game OutRun. After each boss fight at the end of stage you enter a forking tunnel. You select the next stage by driving or flying either left or right depending the stage you want to choose.

Based on my limited experience it is advisable to select the right most stages as a beginner.

F3G67awrhDI0FYbq.jpg

Normal Mode

The main mode of the game.

Pacifist Mode

In this mode you cannot shoot. This mode can be very useful to get to understand the routing of the stages and learning how to dodge different kinds of projectiles or boss attacks thrown at you.

B-mode

Unlockable mode. I haven't tried it yet but it seems this mode is the ultimate challenge! In this mode you play all the stages after one another.

Things to consider

  • If you experience micro stuttering while playing on PC use RivaTuner or similar software to limit the frame rate to 60.
  • Currently there is no VSync options in the game
  • Maximum resolution is 1080p
  • You can disable or enable bilinear filtering. I prefer to play without it.
  • In the Steam release version of the game there were controller issues which have been mostly solved via patches but not yet fully. Though playing with the most common controllers should be fine.
  • There are several hidden scoring mechanics in the game. An example of this is gaining more passive points by driving on the ground. I'd say especially in pacifist mode this is essential to score high.
  • The game includes online leader boards for each difficulty and each mode.
iWHgZUmHtW9CqFcH.gif
 
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I have been playing the game for a couple hours now on Switch. Pretty tough indeed, I have not been able to see the ending yet.

Surprisingly, Pacifist Mode is easier since you are not trying to destroy the enemies. Destroying them implies moving in front of them to aim which leads to getting hit more. I was able to see what I believe is the last form of the final boss on my first try in Pacifist Mode. Haven't been able to finish the game yet in Normal Mode, but getting close enough. I only play in Normal difficulty.

By the way I am a huge fan of the MEGA-CD port, which is a game I play very regularly (as well as Ninja Warriors). This brand new game is pretty cool to have and I am glad it exists. My main disappointment is with the soundtrack that goes for an orchestral score while I was waiting for something that slaps hard. Otherwise the game is good, and M2 tried to give more depths to the gameplay loop. So it does change a bit the overall feel, but I think it ultimately makes the game more interesting, so that's okay.

I hope we will get ports of Aleste Senjin and Aleste Branch.
 
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Space Harrier-likes are the best super scaler shooters. Never liked After Burner or Galaxy Force and such nearly as much even though Space Harrier was the more primitive precursor technically. It's just infinitely more playable and fun to me.
 
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Alexios said:
Space Harrier-likes are the best super scaler shooters. Never liked After Burner or Galaxy Force and such nearly as much even though Space Harrier was the more primitive precursor technically. It's just infinitely more playable and fun to me.
Click to expand...

Based on the Japanese Twitter this original controller which I think is made for Night Striker works with this sequel as well.

I'm not sure but they might have also made a reissue of this controller for the sequel.

This game seems a bigger thing in Japan than in the West.
 
Idk if it was made just for that game, I've seen the design for various stuff the last few years, classic mini devices like Mega Drive Mini 2 and the Taito Egret II Mini, and PC of course, it's based on Sharp's Cyber Stick for the X68000, Mega Drive, FM Towns, PC Engine, etc.
 
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Instabuy.

I need to figure out how to fool all the "algorithms" into thinking I'm in my 20's…I NEVER GET quality recommendation's through ads and Steam has completely failed me in terms of pushing stuff I would like to buy to my front page.
 
Alexios said:
Idk if it was made just for that game, I've seen the design for various stuff the last few years, classic mini devices like Mega Drive Mini 2 and the Taito Egret II Mini, and PC of course, it's based on Sharp's Cyber Stick for the X68000, Mega Drive, FM Towns, PC Engine, etc.
Click to expand...

Yeah true you are correct! My association to it being developed for Night Striker was based on this promotional image M2 used to promote the game on Twitter:

ma90p5IAWq43cOnV.jpg


It is a competition also which is still on going! I think you can win the Cyber Stick by participating.
 
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Is it even possible to kill the last boss ? It looks like you can only wait for the end of the timer, nothing seems to actually really hit him significantly.

Edit : ok, I was trying to shot at the 5 circles but actually you have to shoot the samurai guy.
 
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John Bilbo said:
Have you tried following some active curators who posts stuff you like on Steam?

If you seek shmups check out Shoot em up Database on Steam.
Click to expand...
Went down a stupid Reddit rabbit hole that said Steam's curation system fails users with "lots of content across too many genera's" which sounds completely stupid.

Thanks for the link to the DB…I didn't know if these things were curated by Steam or by the users so I never really looked for them.
 
Any plans for this to be on ps5?

How's switch resolution and performance compared to pc?
 
Game looks awesome but the PC version doesn't really seem up to par for me.

Anyone try it on Switch/Switch 2? Reading it runs at 60 FPS. How does it look on a 4K display?
 
Sold. Just saw the director of Ikaruga is on this. We in there.

Going with switch version since it's 60fps.
 
Looks great! But I think they need to reduce the size of the shield bar and make it at least x2 times smaller - it takes too much space on the screen.
 
A tip for those grinding for score: You can restart the game without the need of going back to the main menu even after death: you can press Start and select "Restart" even after selecting "No" in the "Use a credit?" menu prompt.

This will save you the time of going back to the main menu.
 
Katatonic said:
Anyone try on PC with a HOTAS?
Click to expand...
Not seeing any options for controller settings so probably need to manually remap stuff so your stick overrides gamepad. Unless you already have a stick that acts in xinput mode and it picks that up as first controller I guess. I wanted to try it with my flight stick since by default it's like the original Space Harrier arcade where letting go of the stick recenters the character as well (with standard gamepad I find it more convenient for movement to stop when letting go of the stick rather than recenter, there's an option for that thankfully) but there's no way out of the box/in game settings.
 
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The game has several hidden mechanics I've found out by playing and reading Japanese Twitter. I'll update the OT later after more research.
 
So, anybody have a way to use flight sticks on PC? I thought I'd try to remap it with Steam input (which I never dabbled in, seemed unwieldy) but for some reason Steam is not showing my stick, it only shows my Retro-bit Saturn USB pad, Dual Shock 4 and TWCS throttle but not the T16000 stick 🤷‍♂️
 
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Beat it on easy mode for one run on switch. Ran at 60fps on switch 2 as far as I can tell and looks good.

Lots of good stuff for this title!!!
 
The latest update (or a previous one I missed) lets my flight stick work.

Now I need to figure out how to change buttons because the trigger transforms and another button fires (yet in menus the trigger acts as A and the other button as B/cancel so it should be the reverse, I tried switching the Xbox buttons to reverse too but it did not change anything for the stick).
 
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Added to original post:

Further mechanical findings

  • The player ship is the cross hair: Your basic shots will fire straight in front of your ship. You can try this by staying somewhere in vehicle mode and firing with the basic shot.
    • This means you should situate your ship on top of the enemy you want to kill or hit.
    • Only when running on the ground will you see the shots clearly as they don't collide with the ground but travel ON the ground.
  • Obscuring enemy with your own ship will prevent the enemy from firing at you!
    • You just have to be sure your ship is situated on top of the enemy's OR boss's weapon before the enemy fires!
    • You can impact the amount of projectiles during boss fights or tough spots severely this way.
    • Might not work for homing missiles! Need confirmation on this.
 
Added to the original post:
  • Destroying the red leader enemy first will grand you a bonus in your score. This is an incentive to aim carefully and only aim for the red leaders as they destroy all the rest enemies of the group.​
  • In several levels there are enemies spawning in a ring like fashion. It seems if you destroy these enemy groups fast (maybe with shooting the red leader of the group?) you will spawn more and more of these groups after the first one. This is a way to boost your score.
 
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