Everyone remembers going to arcades as a kid and in my generation there were a couple easy fan favorites depending on where you went. Casual arcades usually had a variant of Gauntlet while hardcore arcades usually drew crowds with Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and Die Hard Arcade.
But if there was one genre of arcade game that held universal appeal, it was the light gun rail shooter.
A light gun game was any game that gave the player a gun to point at the screen and used infrared light to calculate where on the screen the bullet would hit. These games were always on fixed paths (rails), stopping periodically to throw enemies at you.
They’re a quickly dying breed, with most new light gun games being budget releases for consoles.
So I’m going to recap some of the games that truly made our childhood along with a few gems you probably didn’t know about. A couple conditions:
– The game must use a light gun. Fixed path combat opens the category up to games like Star Fox 64 which we can agree is NOT the type of game we are focusing on.
– The game must be an original arcade release, not a console game. This unfortunately eliminates solid entries such as Umbrella Chronicles.
8) Silent Scope 2 – Dark Silhouette
Silent Scope is an absolute classic but its the sequel that took the game to new heights and I’m sure there are people who are surprised that its not in the top 3. My beef with it is that it was kind of unwieldy at best and as far as I can tell the cabinets tended to burn out fast.
That being said, holy crap was this game cool.
The ability to look through a sniper scope to take out enemies that appeared minuscule on the screen was SO COOL! They could afford to reward precision shooting when they allowed you to zoom in, making head shots and chest shots causes to celebrate.
7) Crisis Zone
Let me be clear; Crisis Zone is very much a Time Crisis clone (made by the same developer as well).
It uses the “deadly eye” in which a red ring appears around bullets that will actually harm you as well as the pedal mechanic which allows you to reload as well as duck out of trouble.
But if you want to copy a light gun game, Time Crisis is about as good as it gets.
So where does Crisis Zone shine on its own? Well,the pistol of Time Crisis is replaced with an SMG and enemies usually take more than one shot to kill. Now that you have a machine gun, the bosses get way more epic like unloading clip after clip into a freaking assault chopper.
It was only experimented with briefly and never got a co op mode in the arcade but it still remains the only proper Time Crisis spin off to date.
6) Area 51
Graphically speaking, Area 51 was only a few steps ahead of the Live-Action games such as Space Pirates.
But the pacing . . . MAN it was fun.
I get that “fun” is a very subjective adjective to use, but I think we can universally apply it to Area 51. The best way to describe it is that it is a more deliberately paced, more colorful version of LA Machineguns that plays better. There’s something charming about the flat 2D sprites that have more detail than low budget 3D ones. Despite the more advanced light gun games out, THIS was the game that had lines to the back wall at the local arcade.
5) Warzaid
This game is almost impossible to find in my area, and considering how little footage exists of it on YouTube I suspect it doesn’t exist stateside (I may be wrong).
Warzaid is a war game where the enemy are skeletons in military uniforms. You fight them on the beaches in a weird sort of D-Day reenactment, you fight them in modern assault helicopters, and you fight them in office buildings.
It sounds derivative, but it’s actually really cool. The enemies themselves wield a variety of weapons from standard guns to flamethrowers and explosives. Plus the “light gun” is anything but light; it’s actually a scale assault rifle with noticeable weight behind it.
Besides the amazing choreography of the battles, the game is best played co-op. When I was in Singapore, the arcade cabinet could support up to 4 players playing simultaneously and it was AMAZING. At the end of each level, depending on your performance, you would gain rank (based on real military rank) depending on your performance (kills, accuracy, etc).
Out of every arcade game on this list, THIS is the game I put money on that no one’s played and it’s a travesty.
4) Lucky & Wild
Now we’re getting into the meat of things.
This is another game that was very hard to find stateside. I’m sure that more dedicated arcades on the East and West coast had a cabinet but as far as I know none in my area had any (whereas six of these games were common). That’s a shame because this game is amazing.
It’s a buddy cop shooter with one player as the gunman and the other player driving the car as they fight henchmen in their own vehicles. It may seem like the driver gets the raw end of the deal but they play a very important role. By driving to avoid obstacles and/or explosives, they can prevent unnecessary damage which means a greater chance of your car being repaired to full health at the end of the level. It’s actually quite engaging.
It’s the fact that they recreate the manic energy of the ridiculous car chases you see in 80’s movies that absolutely puts this game on another level.
3) House of the Dead 2
House of the Dead is a landmark franchise for light gun games. The first one started it all and the fourth one was probably the strongest console showing, but it is the second game which ascended into the arcade hall of fame.
Zombies take over, kill zombies, find out what is happening. The end.
The zombies take multiple hits as well unless you scored a headshot (duh) meaning that many sequences in the game required accuracy to get through unscathed. Sure some of the zombies had battle axes (what the hell?) and other weapons but in the end it portrayed the feeling of being swarmed by a zombie hoard perfectly.
If there’s one thing that sets this game apart from most light gun games it’s the bosses. The bosses were gigantic, gory, and had great variety. At any time you could be fighting an ax wielding behemoth, a hydra, an aquatic predator, or something else from your nightmares.
You have no idea how much I agonized over putting this game as low as number 3.
2) The Lost World: Jurassic Park
I know this is probably a bold statement to make, but The Lost World: Jurassic Park is absolutely the best usage of the Jurassic Park trademark (outside of the films) ever.
While the setting isn’t exactly as shown in the film, you can tell that the developers put effort into making the players feel like they were in the movie. The creature designs and movements emulate the film to a fantastic level and the fact that it actually has a plot (help Ian and Sarah get that T-rex baby off the island!) definitely adds to that.
And the gameplay, my god the gameplay.
Unlike most light gun games, The Lost World: Jurassic Park gave players only 5 shots per clip. It balanced this however by giving ample time between when the dinosaurs appear and when they actually attack. This meant that gameplay (while frantic) emphasized precision shooting over trigger happy spraying every time.
The bosses had to be defeated by shooting “sites” (specific highlighted targets usually in the mouth) in order to do damage AND stop them from taking away health.
If you’re good at The Lost World: Jurassic Park, most other light gun games won’t pose a challenge for you.
1) Time Crisis 2
Any of the top three games could be justified in the #1 slot. House of the Dead 2 is arguably the most iconic and The Lost World: Jurassic Park combined unique gameplay with responsible license usage.
But in the end . . . could there be any other game to top this list than Time Crisis 2?
Its pacing, setting, and enemy placement is peerless. It gave adequate time to avoid losing a life but still tested your reactions. Its co-op mode allowed you to not only take different routes, but to help your teammate out by thinning out their numbers as well. It had GREAT bosses despite being in a semi-realistic modern setting. It balanced out a large clip size with a large amount of on screen enemies.
Time Crisis started the pedal mechanic but 2 perfected it. From 3 onward the games became a parody of themselves but most fans choose not to acknowledge the sequels.
As far as I am concerned, Time Crisis 2 is the best light gun shooter if not one of the best arcade games of all time.
