Heavy Barrel
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| Heavy Barrel | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Data East |
| Publisher(s) | Data East |
| Release date(s) | 1987 |
| Genre(s) | Run and gun |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Platform(s) | Apple II, NES, MS-DOS |
Heavy Barrel is a 1987 run and gun arcade game by Data East.
The story is that terrorists have seized the underground control complex of a nuclear missile site, and it is up to the player to infiltrate the base and kill the enemy leader. The name "Heavy Barrel" comes from a powerful weapon within the game that the player collects pieces of throughout the game. If all of the pieces are collected, the player can wield it for about 30 seconds.
It was ported to the Apple II and DOS in 1989 and the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990.
The players started out with some sort of laser gun that had unlimited ammunition (which occasionally proved necessary) and a limited supply of grenades. Players might find better weapons, grenade powerups, or keys to unlock boxes which themselves might have better weapons, grenade powerups, orbs (if you had 2 players), or one of the 6 pieces of the Heavy Barrel superweapon.
Weapons list
Blaster: the gun you start with, it fired as fast as you could press the button.
Blue gun: a triple shooter gun with bullets that spread from the firing point. This gun was ideal for mowing down unarmored or lightly armored enemy troops, but not so good for heavier opponents, because you couldn't do damage to a single enemy with all three bullets.
Hyper Machine Gun: a flame-thrower that was more powerful, but short-ranged. This gun was useful for more quickly dealing with enemy vehicles that required a lot of damage to destroy, since each shot was twice as powerful as the other two guns.
Grenade: the grenades you started with could do significant damage, but to a limited area.
Smoke Bomb: a cloud of smoke that lingered on screen for a few seconds, damaging anything it touched.
Hyper grenade: a powered up grenade which also could affect a larger area. In some later areas of the game, even the enemies were equipped with these, and if you got killed by one and respawned with just your basic weapons, it made it hard to get past these points.
Hyper Ion Ball: a morningstar-like weapon that extended from the player and circled around him, damaging everything in its path.
Orb: if playing with a buddy, you could occasionally find little orange balls. Whichever player grabbed them, the Orb would float between the two players and fire using the same weapon and in the same direction as the owning player. There could be up to 3 Orbs in total between players.
Heavy Barrel: the superweapon which gave the game its name, it was found in 6 pieces. In a two-player game, whoever collected the 6th piece was equipped with the Heavy Barrel. It was an energy cannon capable of destroying any enemy in the game with a single shot (except the final enemy, and possibly one other boss that may have required 2 shots). The weapon had a wide arc of fire and could be fired as fast as you could hit the button, but you only got to use it for 30 seconds and then you'd be back to whatever you had before. You were not invulnerable while equipped, but if you blazed away enough, it was hard for an enemy to be on the screen long enough to fire a shot at you. The Heavy Barrel was best used to get past tough bosses. The weapon could be built several times in a single game (probably 3 or 4 times).
