Gun Frontier (video game)

Gun Frontier is a 1991 vertically scrolling shooter video game developed and published by Taito for Japanese arcades. It is set on the fictional planet of Gloria in the 22nd century, where an alien race of space pirates known as the Wild Lizards have invaded the planet and enslaved its inhabitants for gold extraction. Players assume the role of settlers who were part of the planet's colonization team, taking control of revolver-shaped fighter aircraft in an attempt to overthrow the invaders and free their surviving civilization from slavery.

Gun Frontier was conceived by Takatsuna Senba, and served as his first original work under the role of both designer and producer. The game was one of several created to promote the then-newly released Taito F2 System hardware. It had a turbulent development cycle, undergoing through various changes before its eventual launch for arcades. The game was later ported to the Sega Saturn in 1997 as part of Xing Entertainment's Arcade Gear series of releases for the console. It has since been re-released through compilations such as Taito Legends 2 in 2006, with each one featuring several changes compared to the original version. The game is dedicated to F2 System hardware engineer Katsujiro Fujimoto, who died during development in an accident.

Gun Frontier has been met with mixed critical reception from video game magazines and dedicated outlets since its initial launch in arcades and later on the Saturn. Despite its mixed response, Senba and some of the members in the development team would go on to create Metal Black for Taito after its release, which was produced under the internal working title Project Gun Frontier 2, although its actual connection to the original entry is loose. Battle Garegga and Recca programmer Shinobu Yagawa has since referred to Gun Frontier as one of his favorite titles.