Uploaded September 2020 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago

---

Full run/playthrough of Gun Nac (ガンナック), aka Gun-Nac, aka Gun*Nac for the NES/Famicom, made by Compile. This is actually the first time I've played the game and ended up clearing it on the Intermediate (default) difficulty on my first attempt. Played with the real cart on a real NES.

Stage Listing:
00:00 - Start
01:36 - Area 1
08:34 - Area 2
15:18 - Area 3
22:13 - Area 4
27:02 - Area 5
32:40 - Area 6
38:23 - Area 7
43:44 - Area 8
49:37 - Final Boss + Ending

Gun-Nac was the final shmup that Compile created for the NES, and it brings together everything they are known for into one crazy experience with bizarre levels and enemies. It's essentially a parody work of all of their previous games, similar to what Konami did with Gradius and Parodius.

The game's powerup system is fairly straightforward, there are 5 different weapons, and 4 different types of bombs, and also ship armor upgrades. You basically need to collect powerups of the same type in order to increase your firepower or bomb power. The armor upgrades allow for you to take an additional hit and also allow for even more powerful weapons. Your ship also has 4 different levels of speed that can be changed at any time.

Unfortunately when you get hit and do not have the armor, you die and lose all of your powerups, and your ship then becomes extremely underpowered. IF you do have the armor, you don't die but still lose a lot of your firepower.To make up for this, Gun Nac is extremely generous with both bombs and extra lives, so you should always be able to continue on even after taking multiple hits or deaths.

One unique aspect of the game is the shop that you get to access between levels. You can use money that you collected in the last stage to either upgrade your ship or give you more bombs for use in later stages. It's a neat idea but unfortunately when you die you lose 1/2 of all the money you collected, so it's very easy to come into the shop with no money if you died once or twice on a boss. The money also does not carry over between stages as far as I can tell (or maybe it does if you don't die?).

The difficulty of the game is not very high on the default setting (Intermediate) and in fact I was able to clear the whole game on my first attempt. So this is a good, exciting shmup for beginners, especially if you want to see what Compile games are all about.

On the higher difficulty settings, the game becomes a nasty, extreme experience of trying your best to not die while spamming bombs over and over again. If you turn the "Ricochet or bullets" setting on, every enemy will release suicide bullets and the difficulty ramps up to extreme levels. So this game is both very easy and very, very hard depending on the settings you are running, a good game for both novices and pros.


Stay tuned for I plan to play the harder difficulties in the future.