Bay-Route

Bay-Route

Arcade - USA - Marquee.

Developer Sunsoft Publisher Sega Published 1989-03-?? Platforms Arcade Genres Action, Platform shooter, Platformer, Shooter Themes War, Science Fiction Multiplayer Simultaneous co-op Distribution Commercial

Bay-Route, stylized as Bay•Route, is a run and gun developed by Sun Electronics and published by Sega in arcades in 1989. It uses the System 16 board. The game is a rather shameless Contra clone with a very similar play style, and even a near identical first boss. The only really unique part is the weapon system. You begin the game with all four of your possible weapons (machine gun, grenade, flame thrower, and four-way laser) and you can select between them at any time. However, the weapons start out under-powered. Killing red soldiers leaves behind power up capsules that will upgrade your currently selected weapon.

The game appears to have done so poorly that it was never ported to a home console or computer system.

Personal

Own?	No.
Won?	No.

I played this game randomly in MAME in 2011 and was thoroughly unimpressed.

Review

3	2	3	2	2

Best Version: Arcade

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• I like the fact that you start out with all four of your different weapons and you can power them up to make them stronger. This is a cool idea, but it's poorly implemented.
• The machine gun upgrades into a spread gun, and even bigger with a second upgrade. Spread guns are always a favorite of mine in a run and gun.

Bad

• The controls leave much to be desired. The players do not respond very smoothly to input.
• Of all the things to copy off Contra, for some reason they mimicked the ugly washed out graphics.
• The second weapon at power level one only functions while ducking, which isn't explained by the game, and even at level two, it's still very difficult to use.
• The game automatically resets your weapon selection back to the machine gun every time you die. This is really annoying if you prefer a different weapon, because choosing a new weapon in the middle of battle isn't very easy.
• The flame thrower's upgrade makes it cover most of the screen after it's first upgrade, but the second upgrade doesn't seem to do anything for it.

Ugly

• You lose all weapon power ups at the end of each level. This is especially annoying.

Media

• 

  A Japanese ad.

• 

  A US ad.

• 

  Screenshot of stage 1.

Videos

Longplay.

Play Online

Arcade

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	The sole woman is a damsel in distress.
Bechdel test?	Fail	There is only one woman, and she never speaks.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	Every character is white.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no queer characters.

Titles

Language	Native	Transliteration	Translation
English	Bay•Route
Japanese	ベイルート	Bei Ruto	Bay Route

Links