Gunslinger Stratos 3: The Guns Combine!

A game that lets you blow away the screen is something you need to pick up and play the next time you're in any of the Round 1 locations in one of the surrounding dark cities spaced out of the main LA area. You may see someone wielding two guns in the streets of one of the cities, but inside Round 1, you'll only be playing this game. Oh, and the guns can combine for different attacks.

Sadly, Gunslinger Stratos 3 isn't an on the  rails shooter. You can move and jump around with a tiny attached joystick and jump button on your right gun. While your left gun has another joystick for switching enemies. It's far too much when you just want to shoot people in the face on a nice big screen.

Gameplay suffers from being team battle based. I'm unsure how you can do this, the game part on connectivity is in Japanese, but you are suppose to be able to play with up to four players on per team with four on four battles. You have to grab a card or create an account and the arcade machine itself could not explain it to me.

What's amazing is the two guns connected to the machine can combine in different orders in the real world and it changes how you play in the game. Connect the the weapons horizontally and your weapon can fire like an AK-47 with fast heavy fire. Combine them vertically and your weapon becomes a missile launcher/bazooka depending on your character. Ingenious!

These babies magnetically lock into place. We've never seen an arcade machine put that much effort into its gun hardware.

If only the game played better, but you have to try the experience and wonder if only the gameplay was better how the game might have been the best thing to play at the arcade.

Gunslinger Stratos 3 played for this post was at the Puente Hills Mall location of Round 1, but they are suppose to be in each in the surround LA nightmare cities.

Other games at the 'Puente' location include Elevator Action Death Parade; another arcade shooter that has real closing doors that interfere with firing your guns. It had TTDILA staffers so entranced they played through the entire game and it's from 2009 and based and on a game from 1983. Neon FM; a rhythm game that has you jamming out beats on colorful pads; match the colors to the beats or lose your song. Groove Coaster; Taito can't drop the idea of a rythm game so they made it multiplayer and a race to grab the beats. Darius Burst; old school shoot-em up action for four players.

For Round 1 Locations closes to you, check here.