Dangan GB2019

In this vertical scrolling spaceship shooter, you control a ship that can change its polarity at will. As blue/white, the ship can easily destroy red/black enemies, and vice versa. Bullets of your polarity can be collected to fuel your energy gauge, but those opposite will kill you. Destroying an enemy ship causes them to fire revenge bullets which can be absorbed and fired back by the player. Different difficulties exist to change exactly how you interact with polarized points, or how they appear. It is the spiritual successor to Radiant Silvergun, featuring similar level and boss design, as well as it's buddhism inspired themes and aesthetics. Both are directed by Hiroshi Iuchi, who also composed Ikaruga's soundtrack.

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.

DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou is a vertical scrolling shoot 'em up arcade game released by Cave in 2012. It's the sixth chapter in CAVE's DonPachi series. A Japanese region-free release was released on May 30, 2013.

The year is 2120, Earth has been attacked by an evil AI - GENESIS. One single fighter has broken through the ferocious siege, fight your way through hordes of enemies to reach the main processor of Genesis and destroy it. The future of mankind depends on you... Test your agility to dodge enemy fire and collect shield energy and power-ups from enemy remains. Make your way through 4 action packed levels and beat each boss to reach the main processor.

The object of Bosconian is to score as many points as possible by destroying enemy bases and ships. The player controls a small fighter ship that can move in eight directions and can fire both forward and backward. Each level consists of a number of green space stations that must all be destroyed to advance to the next level (a semi-transparent mini-map helps identify their location). Each station consists of six cannons arranged in a hexagon, surrounding a central core. The player must either destroy all six cannons or shoot the core to destroy a station, and in later levels the core is capable of defending itself. Additionally, the player must avoid or destroy asteroids, mines, and a variety of enemy missiles and ships that attempt to collide with the player's ship. Enemies occasionally launch formation attacks — destroying the leader causes all remaining enemies to disperse, but destroying all enemies in a formation scores extra bonus points. A spy ship (worth a random bonus value) also appears occasionally, which must be destroyed or the enemies will go berserk.

The lost city of Atlantis is under attack! Wave after wave of Gorgon vessels are approaching, each armed with weapons capable of destroying a part of the city. You are in charge of the command posts at the edges of the city and need to defend it from the invaders. The various gorgon craft will keep flying by on the screen in varying numbers and in different flight patterns. At first they fly high in the sky but then progressively lower. If an enemy makes it low enough before you destroy it, it will use it's weapons and destroy one of the buildings in Atlantis. As you progress in the game, the enemy craft will keep increasing in speed. The game ends when all remaining buildings in the city have been destroyed.

The gameplay in Galaga '88 is built on the same premise as that of the original Galaga game, but is in many ways more complex and more difficult. The game is divided into a series of 29 Stages distributed through eight Worlds. The starship Galaga accelerates between Stages and Worlds and even to higher dimensions (go to the section on Dimensional Travel below to find out more). With the exception of the third and eighth, each World culminates in a Challenging Stage. There are six such stages to engage in any full game, and each begins with the on-screen announcement "That's Galactic Dancin'!" and has its own YM2151-generated song to which the enemy formations dance. In any given Challenging Stage, both the design of the enemies and their dancing formations shall vary according to the player's current Dimension. As in Galaga, the objective is to destroy all forty enemies before they fly away off the screen. However, refraining completely from touching any controls for the duration of a Challenging Stage awards a "secret bonus" ranging in value from 10000 to 25000 points, and equal to the "special bonus" which would have been awarded for destroying all forty enemy aliens instead. Galaga '88 introduces a variety of new enemies and behaviors. Most of these special enemies are worth varying amounts of bonus points when destroyed. Some enemies can combine into larger enemies which take multiple hits to destroy, while others arrive in eggs, explode in a shower of fireworks, grow with multiple hits, or sport armor which makes them invincible while in formation. Certain enemies drop small formations of tiny creatures that wiggle their way down the screen, and still others can act as escorts to incoming groups of enemies and then quickly dive at the player before leaving the game. Most stages also include various obstacles which appear once the enemy formation has been assembled. These can be destroyed with either one or several shots, and the first one on each stage will leave a "Warp Capsule". At the start of the game, the player can select how many Galaga starships to start with (one or two), affecting their number of remaining lives. The game ends after the final boss is defeated (or when the player's last ship is destroyed or captured) - in the latter case, the player can continue the game for an additional credit. The Game Over screen shows the player's hit-miss ratio and a visual representation of their progress. If the player reaches Stage 27, the game also shows a picture of the final boss (damaged if defeated, but silhouetted if not). If the arcade operator has set the "continue" option to "on", the player also cannot continue if he is defeated on Stages 27-29.

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.