Horizontal and Vertical Scrolling Shooters!

I haven't peered very hard into the genre, but R-Type III and Thunder Force 4 are great games for me. Also the freeware Warning Forever is a very fun and addictive scroller, one of the best freeware games on the PC.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Megalith Beast

Ah I haven't heard of these japanese shooters you are mentioning NoMaD! Yeah why don't they release them outside Japan?? How rude! Well as I said before, outside japan I don't think there's much of a market for these games. Everyones still obsessing over 'superb graphics' instead of wanting some hardcore intensive action!
I really hope that we get another scrolling shooter as revolutionary as Ikaruga again sometime soon, so people might start paying more attention to the genre!
I'll mention a few more classic shooters now just for the hell of it! -

Axelay (SNES) - brilliant graphics, music and gameplay! It was cool because the player had all the weapons at the start of the stage, so there were no powerups. You just had to hang on to your weapons! It featured horizontal AND vertical scrolling levels. Loads of fun!!

Gynoug (Megadrive) - I'm not sure if this is a well known one or not. You take on the role of an angel guy, who shot the crap out of reeeally strange enemies. Some of the bosses were VERY disturbing! I'd like to see this game with a graphical update, it would be truely scary I think! Yeah, well, cool style, but the gameplay is kind of mediocre.

Zero Wing (megadrive) - Hah, well this game is pretty dam mediocre! Fun for the first level, then it just gets sooo boring! But it's just legendary because of the 'engrish' on the intro screen, I'm pretty sure I don't need to explain what I'm talking about!

Xenon 2 (megadrive) - This one is probably below average I think! First of all, it featured one pretty lame music track that repeated over and over, which was incredibly annoying. Secondly, the rate at which you fire is just, horribly slow, you end up missing half the enemys. It was just a pretty dull game! But...there were some cool powerups, you could get bullets and lasers firing everywhere!

Bio-Hazard Battle (megadrive) - This is an AWESOME horizontal shooter! You play as bio-ships (look like bugs), that shoot at organic things, including bees, eyeballs, big worms, bats, and err plenty of bugs really! Graphically its stunning for a megadrive game! Plus, you have these reeeally cool charge up shots. Did I mention it's simultaneous 2-player too?

Speaking of Japanese games, is there any place where I can find a list of great (or good) Japanese PC games that never made it to the U.S.? I'm rather curious to see if the far east does PC games better than we do.

There's nowhere I can't reach.