Astro Warrior1986

DonPachi is a 1995 vertical manic shoot-'em-up originally in arcades and was the first game from the developer Cave. Settings are mainly woodland and enemies are military vehicles and robots, culminating in the final boss, a huge robotic bee. One of three weapon configurations is chosen at start and then leveled up through dropped power-ups. DonPachi was ported to the Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation in 1996.

Batsugun is a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up video game created by the now-defunct Japanese game developer Toaplan. The title translates to "exceptional" or "extraordinary". It was the final game created before Toaplan's dissolution, and has been regarded as a key title in the development of the modern manic shooter, with elements of the game such as the size of the player's hitbox, the scale of their firepower, and the complexity of enemy bullet patterns all having an influence on future titles in the sub-genre. Members of the development team also went on to work on other successful manic shooters, most notably lead artist Junya Inoue.

The "system" was created by an organic intelligence body many milleniums ago and began attacking the human race. The earth was thrown into turmoil with only one hope for salvation. Fighter model AFX-6502 ZANAC was perfected by the 256th Riot Fleet to ward off the enemy system. It's your job, as ZANAC, to save the human race. Using eight special weapons and secret power forces buried along the way, guide ZANAC through 12 screens of enemy creatures to victory.

Stinger is a shoot-em-up developed by Konami. It is the North American version of the sequel to Twinbee.

Vertically scrolling shooter arcade game developed by Takumi Corporation and published by Capcom on their CPS-2 arcade system board and ported later that year to the Dreamcast console.

On a planet 6000 light-years from earth, there were creatures called Exes, which resemble large insects, that were used for industrial purposes. However, these creatures one day took to revolting against their creators. Two battle machines have been sent to fight against the Exes, known as Colonel and Sargent. The Exes are nearing completion of their secret weapon, Exed Exes, and they must be defeated before this is allowed to happen! Exed Exes is a basic vertical scrolling shooter; the game scrolls forward, and the player can maneuver their ship around the screen to shoot enemies and avoid attack. POW icons sometimes appear that can power up the ship or turn enemies into fruit that are worth extra points. The game can be played either solo or two-player cooperatively.

Play as the Drombones and prove you're the strongest villains in the Time Bokan series. Pilot restored evil mechas from across the series' history and take on legendary heroes in this vertical scrolling shooter. Switch between different mechas between stages, each with unique weapons and abilities, and charge up your devastating Skull Bomb for area-wide destruction.

NOTE: "Darius Plus" is the TurboGrafx-16 PC-Engine port of the original Darius produced by Bits Laboratory and NEC Avenue. This is a different port than the title "Darius+", which was published by The Edge and developed by Softek for the Amiga, Atart ST, and ZX Spectrum. Amidst the clutter of arcade shooters in the late 1980s, companies needed to make their games stand out in some way. Simply flying a ship into outer space simply wasn't going to cut it anymore. Taito had an idea. Yes, there was still a spaceship. And yeah, that "outer space" part was still there too. But instead of the usual aliens, you fought fish. Yes, fish. Not even regular, aquatic fish, but robotic fish with lasers equipped to their fins, giant metal teeth and missiles firing from their gills. And not just fish either. There are squid, snails, and other undersea variations out for your blood as well. The requisite plot is about the people of the planet Darius, who are being terrorized by said intergalatic fish. Only the heroic pilots Proco Jr and Tiat Young can save the day. The constant star of the Darius series is the Silver Hawk. Much like Gradius, it has a primary, forward firing weapon, along with bombs that can be used to attack vertically, and the usual shield. The arcade game Darius games also used a unique system that attached three monitors together to create one massive horizontal playing field (also used in Taito's Ninja Warriors.) Naturally, this couldn't quite be replicated on the console system, so that nifty little gimmick is lost, but emulators can still replicate the dimensions of the screen, even if you end up looking at a tiny picture. Looking to further set itself apart from the crowd, every Darius game has multiple levels, with several branching paths throughout the game. It adds tremendously to the replay value, especially since there are usual multiple endings, depending on which final zone you end up at. Darius is a two-dimensional horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up set in a fictional future. Uniquely among shoot 'em ups, the game's screen was three times wider than conventional size, and the arcade cabinet used an arrangement of three screens to accommodate it. The player controls an ornate fighter spacecraft, named the Silver Hawk, and must navigate through scrolling terrain while battling a variety of fighter craft, ground vehicles, turrets, and other obstacles throughout the game's stages (referred to as zones in the game). The ship's arsenal consists of forward-firing missiles, aerial bombs and a protective force field, all of which can be upgraded by power-ups (in the form of large, colored orbs) that are dropped by specially-colored enemies throughout the game's zones. When the player reaches the end of a zone, a boss appears, which must be defeated to proceed. Once the boss of a zone is destroyed, the player is given a choice of which zone to play next via a branching path. While there are 28 zones in total, only seven can be played in a single run. When various ports of it were made for different consoles, Taito (and others) were forced to shrink the playfield to fit on one screen. The PC Engine saw three releases: - Darius Alpha (1990): A very rare beta release. This is one of the rarest Hu-Cards ever published. You could only get a copy of this hardcore shoot-em-up by buying Darius Plus and Super Darius and then mailing coupons to the publisher. 800 copies were made available, and names were drawn from those who mailed their info in. Some copies of the game were also given away as prizes by PC Engine Gekken and Marakatsu magazines. - Darius Plus (1990): The full game itself, again a PC Engine HuCard. The bosses that were removed in Alpha do not return here. Both Alpha and Plus were actually written for the PC Engine SuperGrafx and playing them on that console results in slightly improved graphics (less flicker and slowdown). - Super Darius (1990): A conversion of Darius for the PC Engine's Super CD-ROM, very close to the original arcade version other than being single-screen. Features new bosses, as well as a "boss rush" mode.