Gain Ground, which abbreviates as gg because it's always gg around here, is a top-down slow-paced action game with strategy elements, that was released on arcades in 1988, made by Sega of Japan. By the way, it was called simply as "strategy" genre-wise back then but the gaming industry was young and thus we didn't have much of rules of what defines the expected pure strategy game back then. It was then ported onto Sega Mega Drive in 1991, with changes and a whole new round. Also, it supports for up to 2 player cooperatively, ported by Sega of Japan, 4 Megabit ROM.
Also had SMS port.
If you wonder what Renovation had to do with it they simply published game in the West while Sega did it in the Japan.
The game that you have here is nothing more than emulation of Sega Genesis version.
Now, technical part about Sega's emulation here:
The Sega Classic games that you purchase on Steam count as DLCs for "Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics" game that should appear in your library.
It has Bedroom HUB which is the one with many features yet lags for many and Simply Launcher which lacks Workshop and Online but at least it works just fine for everybody.
However, Simple Launcher has it's fair share of glitches as well. It can crash. And it does the second time you go to main menu, so always quit after saving there so it doesn't crash when you want to save next time!
Emulation itself, mostly sound, isn't that good but it does it's job. Also, yes, emulator supports quick saves.
As alternative, you can use external emulator to run games that you purchased. Sega kindly placed in all games that you purchased in "uncompressed ROMs" folder that program itself doesn't use, just change file extension to ".bin" or so. The file for this one being "GAING_UE.68K".
I also demand you to read digital manual of this game first. You can find it here on store page or go to "manuals" folder of game root and open "GG_PC_MG_EFIGS_US.pdf".
Has online (in Bedroom HUB only) and local multiplayer.
The plot of this game is that it's 3000 AD, people had no war for long time and thus made a Gain Ground system that simulates war to train themselves. But it went berserk and captured everybody who was in, so you have to go and disable it from inside otherwise they will have to destroy whole system with all the captured personal.
They do go through five epoch, so there was hoping that it involved time travel before I read manual. But nope, that viking archer is just Dutch, LARPing, with his natural dutch face hair.
Gain Ground is quite an unique game for it's time. You are given an arena level where the enemies are already placed, spread around corners, waiting behind walls, being on high places. Sometimes not being placed, running in when script tells them so. You are given a selection of character, where you select one then control character directly. They all vary in range of their attacks, strenght (protip: knights do double damage) and their speed. They also have various special attacks, which differ in height reach, range, what it does or even if they can use it in all direction or only in one. Mind it, having special where character shoots only in north is good too as you can just strafe while doing so. Oh yea, and they all die in one shot, so better watch out for those arrows and fireballs.
There is even difference in which hand they hold gun, which you can judge by their portrait. Too bad that for non-vertical direction the sprites are simply mirrored so it's harder to guess there.
There is two ways to win the arena: either kill all the enemies or move every character into exit zone, one by one. While killing enemies is actually the easiest, if you have all the right character, and takes less time. But the catch is that a lot of stages have little figures of characters that you can rescue by tagging them and then going through the exit. You can tag and rescue only one with one char. Even more, if your character dies he will leave a small figure of himself behind that you can also tag and bring to exit. But there can be only one figure of a defeated character laying on a battlefield, so you better not screw up rescue mission. Yes, you have to keep at least one enemy alive to be able to pass them through the exit, which isn't always an easy choice. And yep, you keep the character you rescued through the game.
As you see, the game has potential to create interesting situations. You may try to go with slow char with great range, die, try to rescue him with fast character. Maybe fail and decide to just go in safe route, only to find out that you just made one of the later stages more difficult due to lacking the needed character who can comfortably shoot rockets at all ranges onto high places.
But then again, the problem that I have with this game is that some characters are worse than others, being mostly a backup. While there is one viking archer with who you can steamroll through half of a game, with his awesome speed, awesome reach and ability to shoot at higher ground. Seriously, he is too good, it gets kinda boring to play through half of hour of the first part of a game. It's not until Round 4, which is exclusive to Mega Drive version, Present Age, when the game finally shows the teeths. And then it gets brutal in Round 5, with enemies that even shoot futher than any non-slow character and where you can't continue anymore and you are likely to get Game Over from time running out. Which is totally a thing so you should pause the game while planning as it time runs out even when you are selecting a character.
And yep, Genesis version had changes from Arcade. New Round 4, as said. Arcade had up to 3 players support, this one has only up to 2. And enemies placement and behavior was changes at times too.
Game also has options menu. It only has sound test and difficulty levels. Easy gives you 8 continues, Normal gives 4, Hard has none. I think that enemies reaction speed varies slightly too. Easy skips Round 4, AFAIK. Most importantly however the Hard is almost like an alternative game mode, where you start with all 20 characters but there is no preplaced ones to rescue.
Now where the game shines the most is 2 player cooperative mode. There is no friendly fire, but you can collide with each other, blocking path. Each player keeps their own rescued chars, yes. Many people say that this is most fun here, as they would have to often communicate with another player, planning out the tactics. You can even use distraction tactics with two players, one player rescues somebody while another acts as a target for enemies.
Though, the game doesn't give a good first impression. It's very slow-paced, your characters move slowly and Round 1 has no interesting situations yet, not as much. Graphics are also unimpressive, small sprites and there is no special effects, pretty much. Actually, it barely has any sounds either. Silent bomb explosions aren't impressive, you know. But hey, at least there is no sprites flickering or slowdowns. Also, females have cute face and busty body when they face down so it's still nice. Especially when they jiggle grenade while walking. In hand.
On other hand the music rocks. Drums samples quality may not be too hot, but boy, are those compositions long and awesome. Worthy of remixes and listening outside of a game, fits to pacing. Aside from Round 5 which sounds about as lame as average Star Wars track, just something something with occasional main theme notes.
But yea, I wish that this game had sequel to iron out all the issues and add more mechanics. But it still is pretty nice unique game.
