Halley Wars1989

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.

R-Types is a compilation of R-Type and R-Type II ported pixel-for-pixel from the coin-op to the PlayStation. A couple of handy features have been added to lower the original difficulty level. First, your progress through the game is saved at the start of each level, so you don't have to start from scratch every time. Second, you now have unlimited continues. R-Types also contains a small library section which describes some of the story behind the R-Type universe, and lets you browse some of the in-game graphics. Other bonuses include an FMV intro movie and ending movies.

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.

Lightning Fighters, released in Japan as Trigon, is a 1990 scrolling shooter arcade game by Konami. It is commonly compared to Raiden, though the two games were released very close to each other, and they were both meant to compete with the works of Toaplan. Though Lightning Fighters has become an obscure arcade-only title, Konami has referenced it multiple times over the years. Gradius Gaiden features a boss modeled after the ship and weapons from the game, and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards such as "Trigon", "Delta Tri" (based on the mentioned Gradius Gaiden boss), and "Dragon Laser" also represent the game.

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.

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.

High-speed action-packed game play returns with the addition of exciting head-to-head battle modes, a challenging new time attack mode, and expanded game play progression that goes beyond Fever Time to SUPER FEVER TIME! Space Invaders Extreme 2 - faster and more exhilarating than ever before!

R-Type Leo is a horizontally scrolling shooter arcade game. It is a spin-off of the R-Type series and the last entry to be released in Arcades. R-Type Leo was initially an original shoot 'em up game in development by Nanao before Irem retooled it into an R-Type project instead. It is also the first R-Type game to feature simultaneous two player gameplay.