Gyruss (1988)

Gyruss (ジャイラス, Jairasu) is a fixed shooter arcade game designed by Yoshiki Okamoto and released by Konami in 1983. Gyruss was initially licensed to Centuri in the United States for dedicated machines, before Konami released their own self-distributed conversion kits for the game. Parker Brothers released contemporary ports for the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit family, ColecoVision, and Commodore 64. An enhanced version for the Family Computer Disk System was released in 1988, which was released to the North American Nintendo Entertainment System in early 1989.

The gameplay is similar to that of Galaga and Tempest, presented in a forced 3D perspective, with the player's ship facing into the screen and able to move around the perimeter of an implicit circle. Stars come into view at the centre of the screen and fly outward, giving the impression of the player's ship moving through space.

Gyruss is the second and last game Yoshiki Okamoto designed for Konami, after Time Pilot. Due to pay disputes, he was fired after the release of this game, and soon joined Capcom, where he would write 1942 and produce Street Fighter II.

The game's background music is an electronic, uptempo arrangement of J. S. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565; this particular track is similar to "Toccata," a rock arrangement by the UK-based instrumentalist group Sky. Gyruss is notable for using stereo sound, which according to the bonus material for Konami Arcade Classics, was achieved by utilizing discrete audio circuits.

Gyruss was released in both upright and cocktail cabinets.