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Most of the fundamentals of this game work in a similar way to Desert Strike. You pilot a helicopter or a three-barreled tank through 14 increasingly tough multi-phase missions, each of which is preceded by a full briefing and a shopping phase. Before each phase you can enter the shop and upgrade your weaponry, paying with golden medals gathered during previous phases. Your starting weapons are the chain gun and rockets/tank shells. Every weapon has three upgrade levels. After that, you can decide how much ammunition for each weapon you want to load into your vehicle's weapon bays, switch between the tank and the chopper (which can only be done between phases, and some of them don't give you the choice), choose one of the three special weapons and adjust the fuel/armor/speed characteristics. All these preparations are surprisingly complex for a shooter like this, and a bad configuration can make the game really hard (no fuel in the middle of the desert, or a paper-thin armor are just two examples). Missions are set in the desert and jungle as well as over the sea and in snowy regions. Most often your objectives are, obviously, to seek and destroy, while performing some rescue operations and gathering as much powerups as you can. The powerups consist of ammunition, fuel, medals, and others. A scanner is installed into the vehicle to guide you, as is a mapping system and a limited shield. Unusually, the game only scrolls vertically even though you have full directional movement. When you rotate the direction the ground moves underneath you, ensuring a more realistic effect and smartly mimicking motion effects.

You play a bi-plane pilot on missions to bomb enemy targets. The game has a left-to-right scrolling screen where you shoot at enemy planes and trucks. Fly down and pick up the bomb as you go along.

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.

Deathsmiles is CAVE's bullet-hell shoot-'em-up where you take the role of one of five Angels to defend the magical land of Gilverado from an invasion by Hell itself! Eradicate this devilish assault!

Vulcan Venture (also known as Gradius II: Gofer no Yabo) is a side-scrolling shoot ’em up developed by Konami and released in arcades in 1988. Players control the Vic Viper spacecraft as it battles the Bacterion Empire, now led by Gofer. The game builds on the original Gradius by retaining the power-up bar system while introducing selectable weapon configurations and expanded abilities such as different missiles, double, and laser options. It also incorporates elements from Salamander (Life Force) and introduces a stage focused entirely on consecutive boss encounters.

Castle of Shikigami is a dark, supernatural shoot-'em-up classic. Choose one of six characters and utilize their unique abilities to defeat the demons infesting modern-day Tokyo in this vertically scrolling shooting game. Use each character's shot, special Shikigami attack and bomb to conquer each stage and it's boss to ultimately discover who or what is behind "The Castle of Shikigami Incident".

On a fateful day in 20XX, the Earth's moon exploded into four large fragments and a multitude of meteors. Aliens from afar had succeeded in destroying the West's moon base. One after another, mankind's other military industrial space complexes were being lost. What mankind dreaded had come to pass. Scores of unidentified fighters were in the area. In addition, the moon's main computer, still intact after the explosion, had a strange vegetation coiled around it. Their trademark evil exploits being a dead giveaway, invaders from the Boondoggle Galaxy had arrived to take over the Earth. To counter these evil forces, leading scientists from all over the globe created the "OF-1" Fightership. Combat pilots depart the Earth to fend off the invaders and earn everlasting glory.