extension to their maximum health. When starting a game, the player can choose either a free or fixed firing stance; the fixed stance immobilizes the character when shooting, while the free stance has the player move in the direction they are firing. The player also has a choice of starting weapon. There are four shot types in the game: a homing shot, lightning blaster, flamethrower, and machine gun. Each weapon has its strengths and weaknesses, and can be swapped with others from item drops in each stage. The weapons can be combined with each other to produce unique shot types. For example, the homing shot can be combined with the machine gun to add a homing effect to the latter, or two lightning shots can be combined to create a more powerful lightning gun. In addition to firing their weapon, the player characters can pull off a series of acrobatic maneuvers including jumping, sliding, and grabbing and throwing enemies. Development In 1991, several Konami employees led by programmer Masato Maegawa began holding planning sessions at coffee shops for an original game. They were establishing early concepts for an action shooting game, a genre they were familiar with. They pitched their idea to Konami, but were told it would not sell and it was rejected. Maegawa and his team were growing frustrated with the industry's reliance on sequels to established franchises and console conversions of arcade games to generate revenue. They felt Konami had fallen into this pattern as a large company, growing reliant on sequels in their Castlevania and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. Maegawa and his team felt consumers wanted original games, and so in 1992, they left Konami and established Treasure to continue development on their original game. Treasure wanted to develop their game for Sega's Genesis. Maegawa was interested in the platform because of its Motorola 68000 microprocessor, which he felt was easier to program for than the Super NES, and more powerful. The team decided to approach Sega for a publishing contract. When they first presented their design documents to Sega, they were not granted approval because they lacked a proven track record. Instead, Sega contracted Treasure to develop McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure (1993). Several months into development, they were finally granted approval to work on their original action game. They originally were using the working title Lunatic Gunstar, thinking "Lunatic" was a good description of