Progear

Progear (プロギアの嵐) is an arcade video game developed by CAVE and published by Capcom on the CPS-2 arcade system board in 2001. This was Cave's only horizontal scrolling shooter until DeathSmiles in 2007. The game features a steampunk-like style and art design. This game is the second of two CAVE shoot 'em ups to be released in America with the third CAVE NTSC-U/C release being Princess Debut, and in limited print; and as a result, the US version is somewhat rare.

English versions
English versions were released in Asia and US regions. There are following changes:
 * Voice samples are removed.
 * The line at the intro was removed.

Story
Sometime in the past, the people of the country of Parts had found a way to become immortal, but only with elderly nobles. Five of these elders—Ballossum Pench, Gabriel Hammer, Jimchuck Spanner, Olsorro Slasher, and Leonard Drill—obtained immortality, and became known as the Motoruin sages. Eventually, they attempted to take over the Parts kingdom and start a new world order, collapsing the government and destroying parts of the country in the process. As their plans unfold, five children of one of these villages decide to battle the Motoruin using another new invention: the semi-automatic propelling engine, known as "Progear".

Gameplay
At the start of the game, you select a pilot/plane and a gunner, which determines the effectiveness of their respective modes.

Fighter

 * TYPE-A Fighter Gambler: Wide shot type, slower speed.
 * TYPE-B Fighter Militant: Focused shot type, faster speed.

Gunner
When selecting the gunner pilot, the formation of the gunners can be changed to following:
 * Type Alpha: Focused missile strikes, medium damage.
 * Type Beta: Spread cannon balls, high damage.
 * Type Gamma: Homing missile strikes, low damage.
 * 2 gunners below (Type-A) or behind (Type-B) fighter: Press A or B.
 * 1 gunner above and 1 gunner below fighter: Press A and B.
 * 2 gunners in front of fighter: Press Start button of the other player's controller, A and B button of own player's controller.

Characters
Character's costume can be changed by holding start button at selection screen.
 * Ring Reed: 14 years old. Gambler's pilot.
 * Bolt Voiyer: 15 years old. Militant's pilot.
 * Chain: 14 years old. Alpha's gunner.
 * Nail: 12 years old. Beta's gunner.
 * Rivet: 17 years old. Gamma's gunner.



Weapons

 * Pilot Mode: This is the default shot mode when no button is pressed. When tapping A or pressing C button, pilot fires stronger attacks, while gunner fires without locking on a target.


 * Gunner Mode: By holding down the A button, your characters assume Gunner Mode. Pilot's attacks become weaker and moves slower, while the gunner automatically locks on and fires at enemies with increased fire power.


 * Bomb: Pressing B activates a bomb. The bomb will move forward towards the right side of the screen, slowing down when it hits something and inflicting minor damage. Once a certain amount of time has passed or the bomb reaches the right side of the screen, it will explode into a much larger blast that heavily damages any enemy caught in it.

Items

 * P: Increase shot power by 1. If player gets it when shot power is full, 500 jewel points are awarded.
 * B: Increase bomb stock by 1. Player can carry up to 3 bombs. If player gets a bomb where there are already 3 bombs, following things happen for the duration of current life:
 * Jewel counter is increased by 10000 in first loop of stages (20000 in 2nd loop of stages).
 * Base jewel class is increased for every overstocked bomb, up to Large Emerald
 * Score for inflicting enemy damage and clear bonus are doubled.


 * MAX: Increase shot power to maximum. Appears when a player loses all lives.
 * 1UP: Increases life stock by 1 (max 9).

Jeweling
When (a portion of) an enemy is destroyed, the resulting explosions turn nearby bullets into rings or gems, depending on the player's weapon mode when destruction occurs. In flyer mode, bullets become rings. In gunner mode, bullets become gems. The bullets being converted also depends on weapon mode. In fighter mode, only bullets nearby enemy unit is converted; in gunner mode, enemy bullets that are close to the enemy bullets being converted into jewels are also affected. In boss battles, all enemy bullets are always converted into rings when the life point of the critical portion of boss's body is below a predefined value. A bullet is converted to jewel of at least base jewel class.

Jewels can be collected automatically by switching firing mode.

The current jewel class can be seen at the lower left of the screen. Jewels are ranked in amethyst, ruby, emerald, diamond. Except diamond, all jewel types come in 3 intermediate classes, in following fashion:

Jewel class can be increased by collecting ring with higher class than current jewel class. Higher class rings can be found by destroying a large amount of bullets at once. However, when weapon is in gunner mode, bullets only become gems of current jewel class regardless of the amount of bullets are converted at once.

Jewel class is decreased to basic level when:
 * Switching back from gunner mode to flyer mode when there is a gem on screen
 * Switching back from gunner mode to flyer mode after collecting at least 1 gem
 * Use a bomb
 * Player loses a life

Furthermore, if player dies, jewel class is reduced to Small Amethyst, and the current jewel counter is reduced by 25%; when player uses a bomb, the jewel counter is decreased. Base jewel class can be increased by repeatedly collecting bombs after having 3 in stock, up to Large Emerald.

For every 10000 jewel counter points, player gets 10 extra score points for inflicting enemy damage.

Gunner relationship
At the end of each stage, gunner's relationship with pilot is evaluated based on player's performance. The relationship is defined by:


 * Active: It increases when gunner mode is used more often.
 * Safe: It increases when no life is lost, and decreases when player dies more often.
 * Lovely: It is the average of Active and Safe. The final value is ranked in 6 levels, with 1 the lowest and 6 the highest.

The ratings are accumulated between stages. Higher Lovely levels increases bomb's penetration level, which can increase score. Furthermore, Lovely level affects the attacks of enemy units in upcoming stage, and the game's ending between Pilot and Gunner.

Stages
The difficulty of a given stage depends on the score of previous stage, with increased difficulty for higher score.

The game has 5 stages. After completing all stages, different ending occurs after the generic pilot escape ending, depending on Lovely level. However, player can enter second loop if at the end of stage 5, only at most 1 life is lost and 2 bombs are used. When that occurs, the ending only shows Stage 5 boss is alive before the game enters second loop.

The second loop has following changes:
 * Jewel counter bonus is doubled.
 * Jewels fall at faster speed.
 * Enemy patterns are changed, usually firing more bullets, in denser patterns, and travel in faster speeds.
 * Enemy fires circular bullets when dying, unless player is close to the dying spot at the time of firing.
 * When player loses a life, player resumes at a predefined checkpoint of a given stage, except in boss battle.
 * Player cannot earn extra life based on score.
 * Boss's dying speech is different. In case of stage 5, a different picture is shown.
 * In Stage 1 and 5 boss battles, each boss has an extra attack phase after the loop 1 counterpart's final attack phase was ended by life point depletion.
 * Ending includes staff credit section.

After completing all stages, player receives clear bonus, which equals to 10 score points for every jewel counter point.

Mobile versions
i-mode and EzWeb versions are split into 2 separate games.

Progear DX was released for 256K Yahoo mobile models.

Soundtrack
The game's soundtrack was published by Suleputer.