Metal Black is the second chapter to the Gun & Frontier saga. Well... it's not a true new episode... it's defined as "project Gun Frontier 2" but it took nothing from its predecessor! The only common thing is the sad destiny of a planet (in this case of the Earth). But... well let's take a look to the prelude.

Year 2042 (actually not so far away...), a star appears in Jupiter's orbit affecting the asteroids and causing a meteorites rain on planet Earth. At the same time, a flock of nice aliens invades the Earth. Of course they are not friendly and take the population to the edge of the chasm (that's when you say bad luck...). They destroy all the Earth's military force and use a type of weapon called the Newalone by the terrestrial scientists, in order to accomplish their tasks.

At the same time, the Earth's government signs a peace treaty and conceals a new starship called Black Fly, which has the same aliens weaponry as the Newalone. But it's too late and the Earth dies...

So this is what the nice attractive mode shows us. But also a man running down the stairs is shown - this is another odity from Taito... Where do those stairs take? To hell? I've never seen such a long stair... Also, well didn't they have the money for a lift? Oh my...

The remaining part of the quest is in your hands. You steal the Black Fly and cross six levels leading to the truth.

They compose the journey from the ruins of the planet Earth to the core of the evil empire (that's located in a star next to Jupiter). You have to fight a lot of enemies (as in any other quality shoot'em up, heh!) and must destroy a big boss at the end of each level. Then a bonus stage awaits for you, a strange mixture of genres (it makes me think of SEGA's classic, Afterburner...) where you have to lock the rocket launcher placed on an enemy and then shoot! Action is very fast and you see it with a first person perspective.

Your secret weapon, the Newalone, is a powerful one. The only problem is that it needs to be feeded... You'll encounter molecular-like flying objects along the way: those are the powerups for the Newalone and they usually appear in certain zones inside of each level, and during the fight against final level bosses. Collecting powerups could be dangerous because it requires quite a lot of concentration during the fighting phases... and you know that you can't loose it in a shoot'em up videogame, can you?

The Newalone works as a cell - well actually it's more similar to a condenser: each collected powerup makes the overall charge increase. At any time all the collected power can be released with greatly distructive power. Unfortunately the ultimate weapon system is strictly bound to the main one. So it happens that fire power changes according to the overall system charge. This is not a negligible peculiarity: when you're in the middle of an alien wave or when you are face to face with an end level boss, it's better for you to have all the power available.

Final bosses, as it also happened in such classics as R-Type, are a mixture of pseudo-organic aliens and are usually really hard to defeat. They eat powerups too, indeed they use the Newalone technology (uhm... this review is becoming like an advertisement... you might think I'm trying to sell you the Newalone technology!). About bosses, you'll find a huge crayfish with an aircraft-carrier on the back in the middle of first level. I guess that' a little cameo of the fifth level boss of the other Taito shoot'em up, Darius II.

Metal Black is a classic YASEM (Yet Another Shoot'EM up). However, it introduces a little new concept, and that's not easy in the shoot'em up genre! There are no powerups or bombs... just the Newalone energy charger molecules. This means that you don't have to deal with powerup colours and weapon types. Also, there are no speed-up items. If you stop by for a moment and think about it, you'll find that this is not a minor feature: it means that you must use all your skill and intelligence in order to reach the end of a level. The action could seem a little boring (especially in the first level) but from the challenge grows from phase two onwards.

All the action is accompanied by a good soundtrack and nice sound effects made by Zuntata team. The YM-2610 sound processor has been exploited correctly and the overall impression is that the music is adequate to such fast action.