Video Game / Ginga Force

Ginga Force is a vertically-scrolling Shoot 'Em Up developed by Qute and released for the Xbox 360 in 2013. It is the Spiritual Successor to 2011's Eschatos.

Set in the distant future, mankind has successfully expanded to the far reaches of the solar system. Six planets have been previously explored in the past and people had already emigrated there. Beyond the sixth planet lies a seventh Earth-like planet, Seventia. Seventia was considered a suitable planet for humans to live, and in the process, the planet also had a large amount of energy called "Septonium". The energy company called the "Magnificence Energy Corporation", or the Magni company, turned its eyes toward the Septonium. Soon after, Magni was successful in terraforming the planet, and people began to immigrate to the planet. A Space Police agency dubbed "Mitsurugi Security Service", or MSS for short, was formed for the sole purpose of protecting Seventia and its people. Alex Heatburn and his partner Margaret Whitetail are both pilots for the organization, flying the FV-G27 Enforcer in their missions under the callsign "Hound 1".

A spin-off, Natsuki Chronicles, was eventually released on Christmas 2019 for the Xbox One after several delays.

A PlayStation 4 and Steam port was announced for a Western release in 2020 alongside Natsuki Chronicles. The ports in question were released on September 24, 2020. The Steam release can be purchased here.

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Ginga Force provides examples of:

• 1-Up: Extra lives are available in each stage. It extends the amount of lives for each level.
• 2½D: Much like Eschatos, the game is played in a 2D plane, but also uses 3D graphics and includes segments where the the camera changes perspectives.
• All There in the Manual: Expanded background information surrounding the game's setting, characters, ships, mechs, and more can be found in the Gallery.
• Anime Theme Song: "Ginga Force". It has two different singers performing the song between its releases; mikab for the original Xbox 360 version, Narumi Takiguchi for the 2020 PlayStation 4 and Steam versions, but the original version is also preserved in the latter.
• Anti-Frustration Features: If you lose your last life with a 1-Up on the screen, the 1-Up becomes your next life.
• Attack Drone: The Option Bits class of sub-weapons provides the Enforcer with two or four option bits by its sides that shoots rapid-firing energy shots that sway with the ship's movement.
• Battleship Raid: Chapter 4 and 9 involve the player performing a raid with a single space fighter against a huge battleship and later a gigantic warship that fills the screen. Chapter 6 is an inversion, in that you're trying to prevent a transport shuttle from being raided by Faun and his robots.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Chapter 6 has players shooting down a swarm of bug mechs created by Faun who pilots a spider tank as he raids a transport shuttle.
• Bullet Hell: Just like its predecessor, this game will unleash a hailstorm of bullets on-screen. And don't get started on the unlockable Hard mode...
• Bullet Time: The Slow class of special weapons can grant the player the ability to slow time down to either a half or a quarter of the game speed by spending their special weapon energy, but some of them can distort the screen as time is being slowed down.
  • Time Stands Still: The later Stop version of the Slow weapon completely freezes time for as long as the player as special weapon energy for it.
• Boss-Only Level: Chapter 10 simply consists of the final battle with Viridian.
• Brutal Bonus Level: The Combat Training levels pits players in training simulators where they must clear a series of mini-stages within a time limit while using one of three pre-made ships. Upon completion or failure will allow players to take home any extra credits collected during their run, and unlock the one of the Tracking Beam weapons upon clearing the level for the first time.
• Catchphrase: Alex's "YOSHAAA!"
• Character Customization: In this game, players can customize the FV-G27 Enforcer with a variety of main weapons, sub-weapons, special weapons, engines, passive items, and ship colors with parts purchased from the shop.
• Charged Attack:
  • The Charge Bomb class of special weapons is the hold type, which requires charging energy in order to charge the bomb in less time, but fires a devastating explosive shot in front the player's ship that can erase some bullets.
  • The later Shield class special weapons are the collect, which absorbs enemy fire and releases powerful shots upon releasing the shield.
• Critical Existence Failure: Ships and mechs appear fine when they have HP, but they explode into heaps of debris and broken pieces upon destruction. Even the player's Enforcer will blow up into pieces before respawning if the player has any remaining lives.
• Damsel in Distress: Nina is kidnapped by Viridian late in the game, along with Brown.
• Deflector Shield: The Shield class special weapons creates a barrier in front of the Enforcer that can absorb some enemy fire, and in later variants, convert their shots into a counter-attack. The Shell version lacks any offensive capabilities, but completely covers the player's entire ship instead.
• Difficulty Levels: The game features the standard Easy, Normal, and Hard difficulty levels across each Chapter, but the Hard mode must be unlocked first through clearning Normal (and for good reason).
• Distressed Dude: Brown is kidnapped by Viridian late in the game, along with Nina. Both of them are later released, however.
• Don't Celebrate Just Yet: In Chapter 7, after barely managing to escape from the enemies, Alex takes a breath of relief... But then, Margaret warns that something's coming from behind. Enter Natsuki.
  • In Chapter 9, Alex and Margaret successfully disable Viridian's battleship. However, Viridian comes out in his own personal fighter for a final showdown.
• Enemy Scan: The Durability Display part reveals the amount of HP the enemies, bosses, and destructible objects have.
• Essence Drop: Destroyed enemies drop behind blue energy cubes of varying sizes to refuel the player's weapons and CR coins to add to the player's currency.
• Final Boss Preview: Tini's fighter resembles Viridian's fighter, whose fighter featuring the similar design and same attack patterns. However, Viridian's attacks are taken up to eleven and is much harder to fight.
• Gatling Good: The Beam Machine-Gun class of main weapons are a of energy Gatling guns that are fitted on the Enforcer's underside.
• Genki Girl: Tini has a very energetic and playful personality who's also very confident in her hacking skills.
• Green Rocks: Septonium comes from a raw mineral that provides vast amounts of energy that led to the terraformation of Seventia. It was later discovered however by Specia that the Septonium has harmful effects to the human body, which Viridian plans to use to it to wipe out mankind.
• God Mode: If the player clocks in 30 hours of playtime in their Story Mode save file, they unlock the God/Mode item, which makes the player's ship invincible when equipped, but prevents achievements from being obtainable.
• Homing Projectile: The player can unlock certain weapons that have homing capabilities such as the Tracking Beam and Homing Missile class of weapons. Some enemies and bosses can also have attacks that home-in on the player.
• It's a Wonderful Failure: Run out of time during the final battle, Viridian will manage to escape and declare, "You cannot escape your fate!"
• Interface Screw: Most of the Slow and the Stop special weapons causes a temporal distortion effect on the screen of varying degrees as the player slows/freezes time.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Ghana and Serum's attacks consists of this.
• Meaningful Name: The surnames of the main protagonists, with "Heatburn" referring to Alex's Hot-Blooded personality and being a Fiery Redhead, and "Whitetail" referring to Margaret's hair color and ponytail.
• Mission Control: Nina serves as mission control for Alex and Margarette during their missions.
• Multiple Endings: The ending narration depends on which difficulty you're playing.
  • On Easy, the ending is narrated by Margaret.
  Margaret: With Viridian's plot put to an end, the people of Seventh Tier were saved. His plans would later become evident to the people, Specia returned to her monitoring duties, and peace was restored to Seventh Tier. Seventh Tier had been developed for express purpose of harnessing septonium energy, and the planet could now only wait to see what the future held. Captain Brown and Nina were released safely, and in all of the confusion, Seram and Fuan were apparently able to make it back to their homesteads as well. Tini's genius in handling the situation was recognized, and she began her new life as an engineer. ...Though she would tightly monitored by Specia. And though Alex and I continue to keep working together, that's a story for another day. Anyway, until we meet again...
  • On Normal, the ending is narrated by Alex.
  Alex: With Viridian's plot put to an end, the people of Seventh Tier were saved. His plans would later become evident to the people, Specia returned to her monitoring duties, and peace was restored to Seventh Tier. Seventh Tier had been developed for the express purpose of harnessing septonium energy, and the planet could now only wait to see what the future held. Nina and Captain Brown were released safely, and, once more, in all of the confusion, Seram and Fuam were apparently able to make it out as well. Resourceful, those two! Tini's genius in handling the situation was recognized, and she decided to become an engineer. ...Though she would be strictly monitored by Specia. And though Margaret and I are still working together, that's a story for another day. Well, see ya later!
  • On Hard, the ending is narrated by Nina.
  Nina: With Viridian's plot put to an end, the people of Seventh Tier were saved. His plans would later become evident to the people, Specia returned to her monitoring duties, and peace was restored to Seventh Tier. Seventh Tier had been developed for the express purpose of harnessing septonium energy, and the planet could now only wait to see what the future held. Captain Brown and myself were released without incident. Alex and Margaret do not speak much of the events which recently transpired, but the two of them are no doubt heroes of all of Seventh Tier. Though I plan on continuing down this path, that's a story for another day. Well then, until the day we meet again!
• Mythology Gag:
  • The protagonists work for Mitsurugi Security Service, the name referring to the first and later, final boss of Judgement Silversword.
  • If the player has a save file for Eschatos, they can unlock the main and wide shots plus its color palette from Eschatos to use for their Enforcer, which also modifies its appearance to look like the Arcam, the player ship from Eschatos.
  • Some of the music calls back to other Qute Corp. games — the boss track "Bust A Move" features segments with similar composition and synths to "Point of No Return" from Eschatos.
• Oddly Small Organization: MSS seems to be such. Being a security company you'd expect them to have a little more members, but the only ones shown are Alex, Margaret, Brown, and Nina.
• Old Save Bonus: The main and sub-shot weapons from Eschatos as well as its color palette can be bought and used if a save file of Eschatos is detected. The combo of the two weapons and color scheme even makes the FV-G27 Enforcer◊ look like the FV-30MZ Arkham.
• Palette Swap: Players can purchase alternate color palettes for the Enforcer as they progress through the game.
• Playful Hacker: Tini, who uses her hacking abilities to hack the data center in order to make a copy of Specia, she playfully turns the security systems against Alex and Margarette with a virus she created in case she got caught, which leaves own her little calling card in the form of a smiling rabbit.
• Production Throwback: The 1-Up becoming your next life if you lose your last life with it on the screen is in reference to its second-degree spiritual predecessor Judgement Silversword, which has the exact same feature.
• Rank Inflation: Players are graded from D through S based on their performance at the end of each Chapter.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Alex, the hot-headed and passionate pilot, and Margaret, Alex's more laid back and level headed partner.
• Score Screen: At the end of each Chapter, players are graded based on their performance in the Score Report: Mission Time (how quickly the stage was cleared), Hits Taken (if any lives were lost), and a third criteria based on the stage's objective, which rewards a bonus score in addition to their stage's overall score. There's also a secondary CR Report for how much credits were collected in the stage, a bonus for completing the stage the first time, and a second clear bonus for clearing the stage, which tallies the sum of all CR rewarded before adding it to the player's CR budget.
• Screaming Warrior: Alex and Viridian throughout the final battle.
• Space Elevator: The setting for Chapter 7 as Alex and Margarette begin their pursuit of Viridian through a space elevator after discovering his true intentions with septonium.
• Spider Tank: Fuan pilots one in Chapter 6 to sabotage a transport shuttle, along with smaller autonomous variants.
• Theme Naming:
  • The Tracking Beam class of sub-weapons are named after Scorpio and Gemini from the Western astrology.
  • The engines used by the Enforcer are named after legendary animals or deities from Eastern and Western mythologies
• Tiger Versus Dragon: The Combat Training X and Y levels are named Judgment Force Tiger and Judgment Force Dragon, respectively, and their respective achievements for completing them are represented with a tiger and a blue dragon.
• Timed Mission: Your stage objectives have a time limit, but if you fail to complete the objective in time, you will either get penalized for your run's overall score or face a Game Over.
• Time-Limit Boss: Every Boss Battle is accompanied by a time limit.
• Villainous Breakdown: Once Alex and Margaret disable Viridian's battleship and start foiling his plans, he completely loses it and spends most of the final battle yelling and ranting at the two.
  Viridian: "It's your fault... IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT! YOU'VE DESTROYED MY PLANS!!! I'll send all of you... ALL of you straight to hell!"
• What Happened to the Mouse?: What happened to some of the characters after the events of the game is unclear. In the case of Natsuki, it was unknown what happened to her following her boss battle, but Natsuki Chronicles finally gives an explanation. In the case of Jack, it was at least mentioned in passing that he was to be apprehended by another group.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Margaret seems to have a fear of spiders, as the small mechs that have hijacked the shuttle in Chapter 6 are in the form of spiders.

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