Chronology of Gun Shooting

[icycalm]

http://insomnia.ac/archive/genres/gun_shooting/

Only doing arcade titles for now, but I'll be adding ports and original home titles soon.

I think I got at least half the arcade titles off the top of my head. Perhaps even more than half. I'll be doing some research soon, or else I'll just email Macaw and see if he's willing to help me out.

[ronan]

Typo:

2009
??/?? [AC] RaZing Storm

[icycalm]

Fixed. I really need to look for info on that game and start a thread about it. It sounds really cool.

Also added a few more games I remembered, and a few more I found on Wikipedia's Japanese gun shooting page.

Some interesting details I learned:

-I found three games that actually came before Operation Wolf, all three of them by Taito, two of which were released in the two years immediately prior to Operation Wolf, in '85 and '86, whilst the other was released a long time before that, in '78. So basically the genre seems to have got its start in '78 (the year of my birth, coincidentally), then went into hibernation until '85, and only really exploded in popularity in '87 with Operation Wolf, which was ported to every system under the sun and made headlines everywhere.

-Namco's Gun Barl, the second title in the Gun Bullet series, seems to have been the only gun shooting game ported TO the arcades (from the PlayStation). The third game in the series was again made for the arcades first though.

-Michael Jackson had a Beast Busters machine and used to take it on tour with him via cargo plane, lol.

-The Golgo 13 series (three games) were made by Razing/Eighting!

[icycalm]

Also, for some strange reason, the Japanese Wikipedia page includes Namco's StarBlade, although if you go to StarBlade's page they call it a shooting game -- not a gun shooting game. Weird.

[HeavyElectricity]

New arcade releases for this year. Not sure which are out and which are upcoming, but they have all been available to play at trade shows:

Deadstorm Pirates, a fixed-gun shooter from Namco which seems to share a lot with Let's Go Jungle!

Let's Go Island!, the inevitable sequel.

Terminator Salvation, by American companies Play Mechanix and Raw Thrills.

Also, for 2009 there's Panic Museum by Taito.

In 2008, Raw Thrills gave us the dreadful Big Buck Safari. It is popular with rednecks.

[icycalm]

Thanks for the update, I had lost track of things since Rambo came out. I will look into release dates and update the list accordingly.

Pretty amazed that they'd make a sequel to Let's Go Jungle.

[icycalm]

I am pleased to see that Play-Asia also uses the name Gun Shooting for this genre:

http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-178 ... -2zrp.html

Very impressive.

[ActiveAero]

I just wanted to bring awareness to the early 70's electro mechanical disc imaging gun shooters produced by Sega. The game images were produced by shining a light at a spinning translucent disc. On this disc would be several paintings of the game's target. By focusing the back light on a single area of the disc an animation sequence would appear to the player... who could then shoot the target.

I believe the first of these games was released in 1972 as "Sea Devil" and then later a clone titled "Killer Shark".

Here is a crude video of Killer Shark in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW_GmkG5QrQ