Gaiares

• Title — Gaiares • Developer — Telenet Japan • Platforms — Genesis • Genre — Scrolling shooter • Modes — Single-player • Designer — Kōji Yokota Masayasu Yamamoto Takaki Iwata • Composer — Shinobu Ogawa Minoru Yuasa

In the year 3008 Earth has become a toxic dump ravaged by careless humans, leaving an uninhabitable, polluted wasteland. The powerful alien space pirates Gulfer, led by the evil Queen ZZ Badnusty, plan to harvest the pollution to create weapons of mass destruction. The United Star Cluster of Leezaluth sent a warning to Earth about their plans, stating that if they could not stop them, Leezaluth would be forced to supernova Earth's sun to avoid war with Gulfer; but if humans succeeded, Leezaluth would use their technology to restore Earth to its former beauty. Legendary space hero Dan Dare (Diaz in the Japanese original), a young but brave and very skilled ace pilot from Earth was chosen to be the pilot of a new starfighter to combat Gulfer. The ship is armed with a powerful experimental weapon from Leezaluth called the TOZ System, which would be operated by Alexis, an alien princess from Leezaluth and Dan's lover.

Most horizontal shooters require the player's ship to come in contact with a capsule to gain weapons. In Gaiares the TOZ System device can be fired out like the R-Types Force, except each time it comes in contact with an enemy, it would inherit and learn its weapon; the player can steal from the same enemy repeatedly until the weapon's strength is maxed out. There are 18 weapons in total to be captured, and the appearance of each weapon varies depending on the strength meter.

The 'professional gamer' who featured in magazine adverts for the US release was Jamie Bunker, who worked as a game tester at Renovation Products at the time of the original release. When Retro-Bit re-released the game in 2022, Jamie Bunker returned to recreate the original magazine advert to promote the re-release.