In the Hunt

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In the Hunt (Japanese: Kaitei Daisensou, "Big Sea Battle") is a 1993 horizontal scrolling shooter arcade game by Irem. It was later ported to the Sega Saturn, the Play Station and Windows 95 for the PC.

In the Hunt is particularly unique as the player takes the role of a submarine in underwater environments. There are a total of six levels in the game. Power-ups can be obtained by shooting down supply helicopters and submarines. Unlike most shooters, the screen did not automatically scroll- the player had to move in a certain direction to scroll the screen.

The game's development team would go on to later create Gunforce 2 for Irem. After leaving Irem, they formed their own company Nazca Corporation. With their new company the team created Metal Slug on the Neo Geo. The similarities in both games are clearly seen in the artistic style used.

And for some reason, there is a comic for this game. Yes, really.

Story:

An organization known as the D.A.S. (Dark Anarchy Society) used a doomsday machine called the Yugusukyure on the South Pole, causing the polar ice caps to melt. The entire world was quickly flooded, but a few societies survived to build over the highest structures they could find and continue living. In this post apocalyptic scenario, the D.A.S., who were prepared for this catastrophe, reigns supreme over the survivors with martial law and military weapons of extraordinary power. The remaining survivors who are terrorized by D.A.S. secretly organize a rebellion force using a newly developed submarine known as the Granvia. The Granvia's mission is to dive into D.A.S. enforced waters, territories and eventually the D.A.S. headquarters itself to destroy every single D.A.S. weapon in sight.

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Tropes used for this game:

I have a sinking feeling about this...

• Advancing Boss of Doom: The boss of the Seabed Ruins stage, a gigantic living statue, chases your character up to the surface, where you can finally damage it.
• After the End: The game takes place after a Doomsday Device submerges most of the world.
• Airborne Mook: Several, the first of which you will face are the irritating missile-dropping helicopters. You'll face a much more dangerous threat in the form of bombers shortly.
• Animal Motifs: The first thre bosses, all of them Humongous Mecha, are actually based off animals.
  • The boss of the South Pole is based off a giant mechanical fish
  • The bosses of the Sunken Town are based off cowrie snails.
  • The boss of the Channel seems to be some weird stationary robot hanging on the ceiling... until it extends its laser tendrils into the water, giving it the impression of a jellyfish.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Many of the Giant Mooks can be defeated quickly by attacking their underside.
• Auto Scrolling Level: Averted in non-boss sections. Unusually for a Shoot'Em Up, levels don't scroll automatically. The only thing keeping you moving other than enemy fire is the time limit.
• Awesome but Impractical: The blue Power-Up gives your submarine a missile that generates a horizontal vortex that sucks nearby enemies in, as well as damaging them. Unfortunately, it has a slow rate of fire, the missile itself isn't too strong, and for it to be effective it must not be blocked by enemies.
  • However, if used properly, it is the most damaging weapon in the game.
• Awesome Yet Practical: The green Power-Up gives your submarine the ability to fire a torpedo that splits into 2-4 exploding shrapnel upon contact or after it travels a certain distance. Like the Spread Shot in Contra, it is able to take out multiple groups of weak enemies easily. Enemies in contact with the exploding shrapnel are damaged by it as well.
• Bolivian Army Ending: The special ending you get if you beat the game with one credit may be an aftermath of this. It shows a whole load of enemy subs/ships wrecked up on the floor of the still-collapsing D.A.S HQ, followed by your submarine wreck in the middle of them. Most likely, your sub tried to confront all of them, and well, it didn't survive.
• Boring but Practical: The red Power-Up just makes you ship shoot larger, more damaging versions of the standard weapon. Fortunately, it has the best rate of fire out of the three primary weapons.
• Boss Arena Idiocy: The living statue boss would be undefeatable if not for the floating blocks of stone at the top of the arena, as it was immune to all your attacks until its head was partially destroyed.
• Bottomless Magazines: All your attacks have infinite ammunition, so you can just keep spamming without having to worry.
• Collision Damage: Only happens when you collide with enemies. Colliding with the terrain will not destroy your character, thankfully.
• Combat Tentacles: The first boss uses grappling hooks to try to kill the player's submarine.
• Deadly Walls: Averted, thankfully.
• Death Course: Two points in the game, in the sunken town as well as the enemy HQ. Your character has to pass over a series of rocket hatches that fire out large, long, indestructible missiles with rocket boosters near the top and bottom. Attacking the top rocket booster slows the rocket down, and attacking the bottom speeds it up. The problem lies in the fact that there is not enough space to squeeze in the area between two rocket hatches. You will have to use depth charges to slow down any rockets coming from below you, and regular torpedoes to speed up those in front of you, navigating across about 8-15 hatches or so of these at one go.
• Difficulty By Console: The Playstation version takes you through all the levels in a slightly different order as compared to the arcade version, leaving the Deep Dark Sea as the fifth stage (instead of fourth), the Sunken Town as the fourth (instead of second), and the Ruins as the third (instead of fifth).
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: If you managed to reach the final form of the Final Boss in one credit, you would get the special ending. It's not a happy one. Beating the game on more than one credit gave you the happy ending. Apparently, the boss has a "furious explosion" that destroys your sub should you get the bad ending.
• Downer Ending: Three of them. In the first when you beat the game as one player without using any continues, you are destroyed along with the enemy base. The second and third occur when you beat the game with two players, and are forced to fight your friend. If you succeed in destroying in the other player, you become the new leader of the D.A.S. If the time runs out before any of the players are destroyed, both characters sink to the bottom of the ocean.
• Dual Boss: The boss fight of the Ruined City stage has you fighting two... robots.
• The Empire: The Dark Anarchy Society.
• Eye Scream: When low on health, the statue boss's face explodes, revealing a organic interior with eyes dangling out of their sockets. It then gains an attack when he spits out eyeballs which home in on the player.
• Face Heel Turn: You pull this off if you destroy your friend after beating the Final Boss with two players
• Four Is Death: The fourth stage in the arcade version was the Deep Dark Sea. Which had a lava vent Death Course, waves of silver submarines, and the three headed dragon-whelk as the That One Boss.
• Freeze Ray: Stage 1 has these attached to the sides of icebergs. While they cannot kill you, they immobilize your character in a block of ice for a short period of time, allowing other enemies to finish the job.
• Fridge Logic: The boss of the Deep Dark Sea spews deadly fire in a flamethrower fashion. How the fire doesn't die out while underwater is beyond me.
• Giant Mook: Not to mention that they can also spawn smaller mooks...
• Gimmick Level: The Channel, a river running through a city overrun with the D.A.S' death machines. The water is dreadfully shallow, severely limiting your movement. Almost all of the enemies here will attack you from above the water, including the Humongous Mecha boss. You will have to use your Superior Firepower Surface to Air Missiles extensively here.
• Glass Cannon: Your submarine has a TON of firepower and can make short work of almost everything by itself. However, it goes down in one hit...
• Golden Ending: CRUELLY subverted. If you do a perfect run thinking that you would get a satisfying ending, you're in for a big mistake...
• Harmless Freezing: The Freeze Rays in the first stage couldn't destroy your submarine, but would immobilize it for a short while.
• Hitbox Dissonance: Sorta. While the length of your sub's hitbox is the same as the sprite's, the height is a lot smaller. You're going to utilize it well during the Final Boss' "lots of red mines attack", by the way.
• Hot Sub-On-Sub Action: You play a submarine, and a few of the enemy types you shoot down are submarines. Yep.
• Humongous Mecha:
  • The boss of the South Pole is a giant robotic fish that fires LOADS of torpedoes from its mouth.
  • The bosses for the Sunken Town are two large cowrie robots that fire missiles and generate whirlpools in a bid to wreck your sub via Collision Damage.
  • The boss of the Channel stage is a large, stationary robot that hangs from the ceiling.
• Improbable Weapon User: The anti-aircraft weapon, when used in the water allows you to fire out balloons that float up to the surface and explode on contact. More useful than you'd think, as they can be rapid-fired into an enemy (as long as not many balloons are on screen), and the floating balloons will protect you from Death From Above.
• Load-Bearing Boss: The enemy HQ gets destroyed when Final Boss blows up. If you're playing in the one-player mode, you either get destroyed along with the base or escape in time.
• Living Statue: The boss of the fourth level.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Some of the enemies just love to spam missiles, like the boss of stage 1 pictured at the top of the page.
• Made of Explodium: Justified, as all the enemies (bar three of them) are mechanical.
• Mecha-Mooks: ALL the enemies except for the three-headed dragon snail, the living statue, and a lava fish Mini Boss are entirely mechanical.
• Mercy Invincibility: Like many other arcade Shoot Em Ups, this game has it.
• Mini Boss:
  • The Channel: A gigantic bulldozer tank that fires napalm missiles that rain from above. No kidding.
  • Deep Dark Sea: A rather long, segmented fish that has a appetite for submarines. Aim for the head.
  • D.A.S Headquarters: Some hi-tech looking submarine that LOVES to spam missiles.
• Mirror Match: You have to fight against the other player in a one-on-one duel if you beat the Final Boss with both players
• Mook Maker: One of the Giant Mooks does this. Also, the Final Boss does this in a few of its phases.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Once the statue boss's health has been lowered to a certain extent, it reveals it hideous organic face, as well as an extra organic arm that will try to Megaton Punch the player.
• Multiple Head Case: The three-headed dragon-snail.
• Multiple Endings: Three of which are Downer Endings, only one is a good ending.
• Mutually Exclusive Powerups: Your regular attack had three powerups to choose from while your Secondary Fire had two.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: The boss of the Deep Dark Sea is a three-headed, fire-breathing dragon-whelk.
• Nintendo Hard: You submarine, besides being a One-Hit-Point Wonder, has quite a large hitbox and is really slow. This makes dodging attacks a pain in the rear. Thankfully, most enemy projectiles can be destroyed, but the ones that cannot...
• No Casualties Run: Doing a one credit run will give you the special ending. It's no Golden Ending, unfortunately...
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: Played completely straight. The fact that your sub's collision box is large doesn't help at all...
• One-Man Army: Your Submarine in one-player mode. A Two Man Army if player 2 is playing along.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The boss of the Deep Dark Sea stage is a three-headed, fire-breathing cross between a dragon and a shellfish.
• Painfully-Slow Projectile: Played straight with the non-destructible ones.
• Puzzle Boss: One of the bosses is an gigantic ancient statue that's chasing you throughout the entire level. In order to damage it, you must attack the stone blocks floating on the top of the water so that they will drop on the statue's head to damage it.
• Ramming Always Works:
  • The first boss tries to ram into your character as one of its attacks.
  • The boss of the Channel also tries to do the same, hope you stayed low in the water!
• Rewarding Vandalism: In the Channel stage, you are able to destroy the houses as well as skyscrapers. This not only nets you points, but the fallen wreckage also prevents the yellow robots from spawning underwater via tunnels.
• Rise to the Challenge: The living statue in the seabed ruins stage.
• Secondary Fire: You sub's secondary fire was to both drop depth charges, AND use anti-surface/anti-air (depending on whether it was at the surface) attacks.
• Segmented Serpent: The Mini Boss of the Deep Dark Sea is a long, serpent-like fish that tries to eat the player. Aim for the head.
• Sequential Boss: The Final Boss. Strangely, to get the happy ending, you need to use up at least one continue before facing the final phase. If you did a One Credit Run, you will get the Downer Ending instead.
• Shoot the Bullet: Most of the enemy projectiles can be destroyed using your shots.
• Shoot Out the Lock: In the Channel Stage, you will come across a bridge pillar blocking your way into the factory where the boss resides. You will have to destroy the bridge while a never-ending train carrying bombs (that drop on you) comes out of the factory.
• Shout-Out: The game's name bears more than a passing resemblance to The Hunt for Red October which also involves submarines.
  • And more Shout Outs to Submarine Attack, another Horizontal Scrolling Shooter involving a submarine. Submarine Attack also had a Living Statue boss in the ruins level. There are also bomb-dropping ships and helicopters that attack in the exact same manner as Submarine Attack.
• Shows Damage: The Giant Mooks, as well as the bosses of The Channel and the Seabed Ruins. Doesn't apply to you for obvious reasons.
  • If you manage to destroy the first boss' grappling hooks, part of its body will detach, showing a mechanized fishbone interior.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The first stage takes place in Antarctica. Thankfully, you don't have to slip on the ice, and crashing into icebergs doesn't destroy you via Collision Damage. You do, however, have to fend off loads of submarines, turrets, helicopters, and annoying Freeze Rays.
• Spiritual Sequel: In The Hunt is probably a spiritual sequel to the submarine Shoot'Em Up Sqoon. Both are made by Irem and involve submarines, as well as taking place after the world gets flooded by the sea.
• Spread Shot: The green powerup, of the exploding shot variety. You submarine shoots out a torpedo that explodes into armor-piercing shrapnel after a short distance. Unsurprisingly, it's the best weapon of the three.
• Stationary Boss: The boss of The Channel Stage is a large prototype robot hanging from the ceiling. In its first phase, it cannot move, however, it has cannons on it that fire lasers which cause a laser-like spark to appear on the surface of the water.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Almost all your enemies are mechanical (in fact, only three of them are organic) and explode when destroyed. Furthermore, as all your attacks and most enemy attacks are explosives of some sort, you'd definitely be sure to see a lot of explosions in this game.
• Sub Story: Duh.
• Superior Firepower Missile Submarines: Your character. Also, the Mini Boss in the final stage who loves to spam missiles might be considered one too.
• Superior Firepower Surface to Air Missiles: Your anti-air attack, only usable when your submarine is surfaced. You WILL NEED THIS to damage enemies above the water (remember to surface first!), especially in the Gimmick Level, The Channel.
• Timed Mission: Like Metal Slug, there is a timer at the bottom of the screen that resets if you lose a life. If it runs out, you lose a life.
• Turns Red:
  • The Dual Boss of the sunken town stage also exhibits this: once one of the two machines is destroyed, the other will spam its missiles constantly instead of just trying to suck the player towards it.
  • The Stationary Boss of the Channel drops down into the water and floats about once it has taken enough damage. It then tries to destroy the player via Collision Damage as well as periodically throwing out bombs.
  • Happens literally for the three-headed dragon snail- it gets redder when it is near death. Its attacks don't get any faster or deadlier, though.
  • The living statue's head gets partially destroyed once you damage it enough, revealing its organic face. It then gains access to an attack where it spits out eyeballs as homing projectiles.
• Under the Sea: Naturally bound to happen as the player character was a submarine.
• Underwater Boss Battle: Naturally, all of them, as your character is a freaking SUBMARINE!!! The only one that isn't a Type 1 is the boss in "The Channel" stage (it's a Type 4, where the boss hangs above the water).
• Underwater Ruins: Complete with a giant living statue trying to chase your character to the surface.
• Villain Based Franchise: The Dark Anarchy Society are also the bad guys in the otherwise unrelated shooters Gunforce 2, Air Duel, Fire Barrel and the beat-'em-up Undercover Cops.
• Violation of Common Sense: You'd expect that beating the game on one credit will get you a Golden Ending that's even better than the Good Ending, but no. Doing a perfect run will net you one of the Downer Endings instead. If you want to get the good ending, you must use up more than one credit (read: see the Continue? screen at least once) before you tackle the Final Boss' final form.
• Warmup Boss: The first boss, a giant mechanical fish. It's torpedo spam, while not easy to destroy, is very easy to avoid. It's next attack where it tries to kill you with Combat Tentacles is slightly harder to avoid- use your depth charges to push them away and avoid getting killed.
• What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: You play a FREAKING SUBMARINE in a Shoot'Em Up fashion. What's not to like?
• Wreaking Havok: The Channel has tons of destructible environment, due to it taking place in a city.
• Your Head Asplode: This is what happens to the living statue boss when you defeat it.