Stargunner: every ship you down becomes a new weapon over Zile

A treat for anyone after pure arcade, a letdown for anyone who wanted a story.

Apogee's last ship turns war into a marketplace

One pilot climbed into Stargunner's cockpit on its opening day, September 13, 2013, and walked away calling it the end of an era — as that reviewer saw it, this was the last title Apogee would ever ship. True or not, the game carries that weight of a farewell: a side-scrolling shooter that Apogee Entertainment both made and published.

The journey runs through open vacuum, drops to the hostile surface of a planet called Zile, and ends in the flooded depths of the wreckage the enemy left behind. That's three settings with a climate of their own — not the same corridor repainted three times — spread across 34 stages.

Every enemy ship you destroy pays out in credits, and you spend that change on new weapons and engines before the next stage even begins — the ship that crosses the finish line is rarely the one you rolled out of the hangar in stage one. It's this trade in war, more than your aim, that carries the whole trip.

The shine one reviewer loves and the one next door can't stand

If you grew up on the chime that marked every bonus you scooped up in Gradius, you'll know the trick here. Reviewers who name-drop Raiden and R-Type praise the brisk pace and the secrets tucked into every stage. It would be easy to file Stargunner away as one more clone in the queue — if not for the trade built into it: the in-game shop doesn't just push you toward the priciest item, noted one writer on opening day, September 13, 2013, likening the game's three worlds — space, surface, and depths — to a childhood memory. Beside that voice, another player who came in on November 5, 2016 with no nostalgia to lean on — had never laid eyes on the game before — walked away sold on the very first mission.

That same launch also opened a rift within the fanbase itself. The one-star review from September 13, 2013 complains of overkill: a palette of primary colors turned up too bright and enemies bigger than they ought to be, from someone who prefers smaller targets and a darker mood. A review posted on September 14, 2013 describes that very mix of color and smoothness as the best it has seen in the genre, ranks Stargunner above R-Type for its extra layers of play, and credits Apogee with more genuine talent than most of today's headline productions. The shine one review calls overkill is, to the reviewer next door, the finest thing about the game — and neither of them is wrong.

From the gripe about the plot to the fight with the emulator

The harshest review, posted on February 13, 2017, gives no quarter: there's no plot to hold your attention, the look is called ugly, the ships too big for the scene — the controls work, the writer grants, but the game won't save your progress. Sparing nothing, that same review measures Stargunner against two free contemporaries: it loses to Tyrian, itself handed out at no cost in the open OpenTyrian build, with prettier graphics and a satirical story that mocks the media and the corporate world; and not even Wing Commander IV, older than it, escapes the list of reasons to skip it.

The more recent complaints are no longer about the game itself but about getting it to run. A French-language review from April 13, 2025 calls the demand to set up the emulation layer too heavy a burden on today's Windows. Another, from September 7, 2025, gives up for good: you press the button on the controller and nothing answers.

The bill Stargunner hands anyone who shows up short on patience

Stargunner asks a double dose of patience from anyone arriving now: patience with an arcade look that the fans themselves argue over, and patience with a machine that wasn't built for today's Windows and demands some tinkering before the first shot. If your pleasure is watching the ship grow stage by stage, from Zile to the flooded floor of the wreckage, on money it steals from the enemy itself, you already have the main thing going for you — even the newcomer who had never seen the game before found that out the hard way, with no nostalgia to help. But anyone after a story to hold on to, or who just wants to plug in the controller and play without configuring a thing first, gives up before the first stage — and that's the harshest voice of the bunch, the same one that likens the empty plot to what Tyrian was giving away at the same time.