

Amiga / Amiga CD32 / DOS
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.
Your mission - take control of the Apache helicopter and fly into enemy territory. Take out the designated targets and return to home base. Your missions will be varied. Some may involve rescue attempts. They should all be completed with surgical precision. There is no margin for error and the slightest hesitation will prove fatal. I don't need to remind you that each mission briefing is highly classified and top secret. Now get to it!

Shooter / Arcade / Action / Fantasy
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.

Shooter / Arcade / Action / Fantasy
Time Pilot is a multi-directional scrolling shooter and free-roaming aerial combat arcade game designed by Yoshiki Okamoto, released by Konami in 1982, and distributed in the United States by Centuri. Debuting in the golden age of video arcade games, it is a time travel themed game that allowed the player's plane to freely move across open air space that can scroll indefinitely in all directions. The Killer List of Videogames included Time Pilot in its list of top 100 arcade games of all time. The player assumes the role of a pilot of a futuristic fighter jet, trying to rescue fellow pilots trapped in different time eras. The player must fight off hordes of enemy craft and defeat the mother ship (or "boss") present in every level. The background moves in the opposite direction to the player's plane, rather than the other way around; the player's plane always remains in the center.

Shooter / Arcade / Action / Warfare
Rambo III is a shooting game developed and published by Sega for the Sega Master System, making use of the Light Phaser peripheral. It is based upon the film Rambo III. John Rambo, America's favorite soldier, makes a daring rescue attempt on a Russian military base deep in war-torn Afghanistan. A fast-shooting Light Phaser game that tests your fighting skills to the limit.

Shooter / Arcade / Action / Warfare
Originating in the arcades, Cabal is a shooter where the protagonist runs back and forth along the bottom of the screen, ducking and dodging bullets and grenades from the enemy. The roll maneuver from the arcade was not implemented in the PC version. The player returns fire by moving a target around the screen which also moves the player character and may expose him to enemy fire.