Progear

Progear is a steampunk-themed horizontally scrolling bullet hell game where players assume the role of children controlling a plane equipped with the titular propelling engine through five stages in order to overthrow the Metoruin sages and their new world order. At the start, players are given the option to choose between two pilots (planes) and three co-pilots (gunners), each with their own advantages and weaknesses which determines the effectiveness of their respective modes, in addition to changing character's costume and formation of gunners by performing specific button commands at the selection screen.

As with previous shoot 'em up titles from CAVE, players can alternate between two shot modes: "Pilot" mode fires a strong primary attack as the co-pilot shoots unguided projectiles, while "Gunner" mode fires a weaker primary attack and slows the plane's movement, but allows the co-pilot to lock on to enemies with increased firepower. Players are also equipped with a number of bombs capable of inflicting damage against enemies depending on the number of jewels collected, which increases its attack output. Through the stages, players can pick up items along the way by destroying enemy carriers such as "P" icons to increase the plane's attack power, "B" icons to increase the number of bomb stocks, a "MAX" icon that increases the plane's firepower to maximum level after losing a life and 1UPs. By collecting another bomb stock with three bombs in reserve, several gameplay events occur.

The plot summary of Progear is explained through supplementary materials. Sometime in the past, people of the kingdom of Parts found a way to become immortal but only with elderly nobles. Among these elders who obtained immortality were Ballossum Pench, Gabriel Hammer, Jimchuck Spanner, Olsorro Slasher and Leonard Drill. They later became known as the Motoruin sages, eventually attempting to take over the Parts kingdom and began a new world order, collapsing the government and destroying villages of the country in the process. As their plans unfold, five children decided to battle the Motoruin using another new invention: the titular semi-automatic propelling engine.

Ring Reed: 14 years old pilot of the Gambler biplane.

Progear was a collaboration effort with Capcom by most of the same team that worked on previous projects at Cave, a team formed by alumni of Toaplan, serving as their first horizontally scrolling shooter game, in addition to being the six shoot 'em up title from the company and their eight video game overall. Kenichi Takano served as producer with director Junya Inoue. Tsuneki Ikeda served as chief programmer alongside Satoshi Kōyama and Takashi Ichimura. Akira Wakabayashi, Fusayuki Watariguchi, Hiroyuki Tanaka and Kengo Arai acted as designers. The soundtrack was composed by Yukinori Kikuchi, with Ryūichi Yabuki creating the sound effects.

The project originally went under the working title Propeller Wars early in development, before being renamed as Garden of Progear and was first envisioned as a vertical-scrolling shooter but Capcom remarked that the name was "too highbrow" and one of the higher-ups at CAVE told the team during their presentation pitch that the project should be a horizontal-scrolling shooter instead, with Ikeda revealing in a 2010 interview that the project was also intended to be their last release as the company was considering leaving the arcade market due to several factors at the time. The team decided to make bullet dodging and enemy destruction its main focus, while adapting the company's shoot 'em up gameplay style in a horizontal format but the project would go through a problematic development cycle until it was released. Both Ikeda and Inoue stated that working with the CP System II platform, which marked the second time CAVE made use of an external arcade board, proved to be difficult as the hardware was underpowered compared to the previous board used for Guwange, with designers using a limited number of colors to remake drawings created in Photoshop.

In Japan, Game Machine listed Progear on their 1 June 2001 issue as being the fourth most-popular arcade game at the time. Rhizome's Thomas Bey and William Bailey noted its steampunk-style visuals. The game has been met with positive reception from critics since its inclusion on the Capcom Home Arcade plug and play system. Pete Brown of GameSpot noted it to be "a standout side-scrolling shooter with beautiful 2D graphics and a reasonable difficulty curve, the latter of which is somewhat rare for the genre".

Damien McFerran of Nintendo Life gave positive remarks to the graphics and steampunk design. Carlos Leiva of Spanish website Vandal gave positive comments to the game's action, bosses, gameplay and original steampunk setting. David Jenkins of Metro praised its anime-style steampunk artwork design and accessibility, regarding it as "one of CAVE's best". com praised its visuals.