It pays to be a part of this war.
- Dispatch orders:
Tom, your mission is now clear.
You must infiltrate the enemy airstrip and find safe passage to the Embassey.
The hostages are in great danger, they must be taken out alive!The game's opening credits which sums up an Excuse Plot in a single frame
- Bay Route is the Contra game Konami never made.
... so let's talk Bay Route, shall we?
Bay Route is a 1989 Run-and-Gun action game made by Sega and Sunsoft, played from a side-scrolling perspective, one of the many, many Contra clones made in the late 80s and early 90s.
Instead of battling aliens, you're battling human mooks in a setting after what appears to be a nuclear apocalypse; a terrorist group have made the city's ruins into their hideout, and captured a number of hostages, one of them your girlfriend. And it's your mission to fight your way through hordes and hordes of enemy mooks to save everybody.
Bay Route contain examples of:
- After the End: The game takes place after some unspecified cataclysm turned most of the world's surface into an endless wasteland filled with ruined buildings and destroyed vehicles, with a powerful terrorist organization taking control of society.
- Airborne Mooks: Enemies on JetPacks will hover above you trying to take potshots randomly.
- Attack Drone: The factory and underground facility levels have small, mechanized drones resembling a red mechanical eye with twin turrets as minor enemies.
- Bait-and-Switch Boss: The terrorist mastermind main villain you confront at the final stage is... a short, overweight man armed with a dinky little pistol, whose attacks consist of sending his bodyguard - a Scary Black Man thug armed with a heavy machine-gun - at you as he took cover behind a crate ad attempt taking potshots at you. But after you killed his bodyguard and confront him, the mastermind instead summons a giant hovering robot and controls that to fight you.
- Big Fancy House: After spending most of the game fighting enemies in the desert, ruined city, factories and assorted locations, the game's final stage inexplicably takes you into the interiors of a manor owned by the terrorist mastermind. Though the manor does have an elevator leading to their true hideout underground.
- Damsel in Distress: Your girlfriend is one of the many civilians captured by the villains, and you're out to rescue her. At the end of the second-to-last stage prior to the boss fight, you see her on a video screen subjected to Unwilling Suspension via the wrists, and in the final area you retrieve her from the mastermind after a difficult Final Boss fight.
- Death from Above: The factory level have gigantic, descending metal claws that damages you should you happen be underneath. Though they can be destroyed if shot several times before they're dropped.
- Fire-Breathing Weapon: You can collect a flamethrower as one of the many power-ups in your arsenal. It's far shorter in range than the other weapons, but is useful for taking out groups of enemies together and even roasts vehicular enemies with ease.
- Hover Bike: A stage halfway through have you riding on one as you speed across the desert. And an Auto-Scrolling Level to boot, with you shooting everything in the way as the bike keeps going forward.
- Law of Chromatic Superiority: Enemy sergeants are the guys in red (unlike mooks which are in white) and when killed they'll drop an item - either a weapon upgrade or an extra life.
- Living Statue: The final mansion stage inexplicably have animated statues (resembling Greek gods) coming to life and attacking you alongside the mooks. And they're somehow invincible, pulling back into a statue form after you shot them into rubble. However they're among the slowest enemies, fights unarmed and can easily be outrun (like jumping over them before they reform).
- Robotic Reveal: The game's second-to-last boss, before you battle the main villain, is a Scary Black Man thug taller and far more muscular than you, armed with a belt-fed heavy machine-gun and can take quite some punishment before going down. The moment you defeat him, he sheds his skin revealing himself to be a robot before blowing up.
- Segmented Serpent: The first stage ends with a boss fight against a robotic serpent whose body is in multiple segments.
- Sentry Gun: Turrets are a recurring hazard the terrorists installs in their hideouts.
- SkeleBot 9000: One that serves as the Final Boss. After you defeat all the mooks working under the terrorist mastermind, including his huge bodyguard, the mastermind then calls for a floating robot resembling half a skeleton to fight you.
- Spread Shot: One of the early, obtainable weapons, that splits your fired projectiles to three shots in an arc. And can be upgraded to six or nine per spread, if you can collect enough of the same power-ups without dying.
- The Squadette: On two-player mode, the second player is a lady soldier. Gameplay-wise though they don't really have any differences, save for cosmetic appearance.
