Johnny Nero Action Hero

Johnny Nero Action Hero is an arcade light gun shooter with a comic book theme released by Innovative Concepts in Entertainment (ICE) for the arcades in 2004.

Plot
In the game, the player takes the role of Jonathon Nero, who is a comic book character. In "Space Wars" humanity is in war with an alien empire. In "Curse of The Mummy King" Johnny is an archeologist and seeks for a gemstone in a cursed dungeon. "Ghost Town" is about a village in the Wild West which is attacked by zombies and ghosts. As a mercenary Johnny fights the leader of the attacks who is a demon sheriff.

Gameplay
The game has two modes. The Standard Mode allows one or two players to each fire a lightgun and the Guns And Fury Mode which allows one player to fire both lightguns simultaneously. The player must shoot as many enemies on the screen in fast succession. A circle indicator shows enemies that on the verge of making a shot that will damage Nero.

There are health pick-ups to restore lost vitality as well as additional weapons with temporary but better firepower. Shooting the lightgun off screen reloads the ammunition. There are friendly NPCs that the player must avoid shooting. The player will have to face sub-bosses and end-bosses throughout the stages, which must be damaged quickly before they charge up their attacks. In between stages, the player will have bonus rounds requiring a number of targets to be shot in a limited time.

Good Qualities

 * 1) Fast-paced gunplay.
 * 2) It considered to be a spiritual successor to CarnEvil and Invasion: The Abductors due to the same team (Scott Pikulski, George Petro, Jack Haegar).
 * 3) The "Guns of Fury" mode gives you both guns on one player at once!
 * 4) It features the "Andrealin' Rush" meter, which filled gives you unlimited rockets for 15 seconds.
 * 5) It is a throwback to many popular light gun games at the time, including Time Crisis, Virtua Cop, The House of the Dead, Area 51 (1995), and of course CarnEvil.
 * 6) Awesome soundtrack by pinball music composer Chris Granner as the music is fairly simple but never fails to match the tone of a scene.
 * 7) Awesome boss battles.
 * 8) Great cast of characters, especially the optional final boss Demon Sheriff from Ghost Town comic.
 * 9) Hilarious quotes, like a space marine that says "They called them aliens!.. Game over, sir!" and a Egyptian worker that says "The curses upon us!.. This is not good!"
 * 10) It had really nice comic book-like cutscenes with voice-acting that makes you feel like a comic book comes to life as well as the visuals morph between three-dimensional animations and drawn comic cutscenes quite effortlessly.
 * 11) It even had similar game titled Friction (2011), which is also a throwback to many light gun games but with better graphics with real-time dynamic lighting effects (on par with Doom 3 and F.E.A.R.) and features optional gore effects and of course transforming robots as bosses.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The graphics looks quite bland and outdated, which is unacceptable by 2004 standards, looking more like a game from the Nintendo 64 days (with low-ploy models and 320x420 resolution).
 * 2) *Heck, even Friction (a 2011 indie light gun game), Half-Life 2, Halo 2, and Doom 3 (three First-Person Shooter games which came out the same year as this) looked better than this!
 * 3) While it was a sleeper-hit when it came out and receiving mixed-to-average reception, it was only released as a kit and dedicated cabinets were only at Chuck E. Cheese (for a limited-time) and the Galloping Ghost Arcade.
 * 4) The game's board had a suicide battery in it, which kills the game's data when the battery dies.
 * 5) Despite the game is aimed towards children, as the game labelled "Life Like Violence - Mild" on the game's marquee, it contains gory elements, as enemies are often dismembered especially the zombies and mummies take severe damage.
 * 6) While the visuals looks good, it having few errors such as Johnny having no beard in Ghost Town cutscenes in comic form than in gameplay and cutscenes in 3D form.
 * 7) Unlike CarnEvil, Invasion: The Abductors, and Big Buck Hunter that emulated on MAME, the game wasn't emulated in MAME (mainly because of the suicide battery protection), causing to track down a real arcade machine.

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