keeping a picture of a beautiful dark-haired woman alongside him. Shario Vissen: Pilot of the Type B (P2) ship. An attractive young adult girl from the 32nd century attempting to fulfill the last wishes of her recently deceased sister by destroying Huge Boss, travelling with her cat-like pet. Orsa and Mayoru: Pilot of the Type C (P2) ship. Two young elf pilots and nature lovers, possibly from the 32nd century, who vowed to overthrow Huge Boss after his attack against humans obliterated Earth's nature and nearly extinguished all animal life. Development and release Gekirindan was created by ex-Toaplan members at Taito after the former company declared bankruptcy in 1994. Snow Bros. and Twin Hawk composer Osamu Ōta acted as producer under the alias "Lee", while Hidetomo Ogino was the project's sole designer. Masaki Yagi and Takahito Naoi served as one of the game's programmers and system engineers respectively. Artists Miyabi Tashiro, Ryota Sasaki, Saori Hiratsuka and Yasunobu Kousokabe designed the characters, in addition of K. Kinoshita and Tomonobu Kagawa designing the computer graphics and first boss respectively. The soundtrack was co-written by Zuntata members Kazuko Umino and Koji Sakurai. In a 2007 forum post at French website SHMUP, unused sprites from the unreleased Toaplan arcade game Dynamic Trial 7 were discovered to be hidden in Gekirindans code by a community member. Gekirindan was released in arcades in September 1995, using the Taito F3 System board. On 17 November 1995, an album featuring music from the game was co-published exclusively in Japan by Scitron and Pony Canyon. After its launch, the game was showcased at the JAMMA 95 along with Dangerous Curves and Puzzle Bobble 2. The title was later ported by Japan Media Programming to the Sega Saturn and published exclusively in Japan by Virgin Interactive Entertainment in April 1997, featuring various changes compared to the original version. In 2006, it was included in the compilation Taito Legends 2 for PlayStation 2, Windows and Xbox. Reception In Japan, Game Machine listed Gekirindan on their December 15, 1995 issue as being the ninth most-successful arcade game of the month, outperforming titles such as Tekken 2 and Marvel Super Heroes. Retro Gamers Phil Abel stated that "Gekirindan will probably never reach classic status. Even so, it still holds its own against many of its contemporaries. Out of all the arcade shooters released in 1995 Gekirindan is definitely above average; it’s no DonPachi