Shooters

Shoot-’em-ups from the arcade and the consoles: ships, bullets and bosses that fill the screen.

100 shooters to play in your browser with a controller. Free every day; log in with Discord to play.

• DoDonPachi (Arcade, 1997, Atlus): Weave through walls of bullets and chain kills for huge scores in this bullet-hell legend.
• Strikers 1945 (Arcade, 1995, Psikyo): WWII fighter planes battle a secret army of transforming war machines.
• Strikers 1945 II (Arcade, 1997, Psikyo): More planes, bigger bosses and charge shots in Psikyo's fast vertical shooter.
• Raiden (Arcade, 1990, Seibu Kaihatsu): The classic vertical shooter: power up the Raiden fighter and wipe out the Cranassian invasion.
• Raiden II (Arcade, 1993, Fabtek): The Cranassians are back, and so is the famous purple plasma laser.
• DonPachi (Arcade, 1995, Atlus): Cave's first shooter: pick a ship, chain kills and dive through dense bullet patterns.
• ESP Ra.De. (Arcade, 1998, Atlus): Psychic teens blast through a future Tokyo with guard barriers and score-chaining.
• Progear (Arcade, 2001, Capcom): A steampunk shooter where enemy bullets turn into gems you can grab.
• Giga Wing (Arcade, 1999, Capcom): Reflect enemy bullets back at them and rack up scores in the billions.
• Mars Matrix (Arcade, 2000, Capcom): Absorb enemy fire and blast it back out in this dense, high-scoring shooter.
• Battle Garegga (Arcade, 1996, Eighting): A cult-classic shooter with medals to collect and hidden ships to unlock.
• Gunbird (Arcade, 1994, Psikyo): A witch, a jetpack hero and friends race to collect the pieces of a magic mirror.
• Gunbird 2 (Arcade, 1998, Psikyo): Psikyo's colorful cast returns with melee attacks and a hunt for the Potion of Life.
• Aero Fighters 2 (Arcade, 1994, Video System): A team of quirky pilots flies to defend the world from a mysterious invasion.
• Aero Fighters 3 (Arcade, 1995, Video System): More planes, more pilots and branching routes in the third Aero Fighters.
• Blazing Star (Arcade, 1998, SNK): A slick side-scrolling shooter with charge shots and a different ship for every style.
• Pulstar (Arcade, 1995, SNK): A gorgeous side-scrolling shooter in the style of R-Type, with charge beams.
• Gradius (Arcade, 1985, Konami): Pick your power-ups from the famous bar and fly the Vic Viper against the Bacterion empire.
• Gradius III (Arcade, 1989, Konami): The toughest Gradius, with a weapon edit mode and a wild variety of stages.
• Parodius Da! (Arcade, 1990, Konami): Gradius goes silly: an octopus, a penguin and friends fly through candy-colored stages.
• R-Type (Arcade, 1987, Irem): Attach the Force pod and blast through the biomechanical Bydo Empire.
• Galaga (Arcade, 1981, Namco): Blast swooping alien formations, and let one capture your ship to win it back as a dual fighter.
• Galaxy Force II (Arcade, 1988, Sega): Fly into the screen through planets, caverns and enemy fortresses in Sega's super-scaling space shooter.
• Fantasy Zone (Arcade, 1986, Sega): Opa-Opa flies through pastel worlds, collecting coins to buy weapons in the shop.
• Centipede (Arcade, 1980, Atari): Clear the mushroom field and blast the centipede before it reaches the bottom.
• Sonic Wings (Super Nintendo, 1993, Video System): The first Aero Fighters (Sonic Wings in Japan): pick a pilot and plane and blast through a fast vertical shooter.
• GoldenEye 007 (Nintendo 64, 1997, Nintendo): As James Bond, sneak and shoot through missions from the film, then fight it out with friends in its famous split-screen multiplayer.
• Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (Nintendo 64, 1998, LucasArts): Fly X-wings, A-wings and snowspeeders with Luke Skywalker's Rogue Squadron through sixteen missions set between the films.
• Star Fox (Super Nintendo, 1993, Nintendo): Fox McCloud and his team fly Arwings through polygon space battles to stop Andross, in 3D made possible by the Super FX chip in the cartridge.
• Lightening Force: Quest for the Darkstar (Sega Genesis, 1992, Sega): The fourth Thunder Force: a fast side-scrolling shooter with switchable weapons, levels taller than the screen and a heavy metal soundtrack.
• MUSHA: Metallic Uniframe Super Hybrid Armor (Sega Genesis, 1990, Seismic Software): A samurai-styled mecha blasts through a vertical shooter full of feudal war machines, with options you can set to guard or attack, to a rock soundtrack.
• Star Fox 64 (Nintendo 64, 1997, Nintendo): Fox McCloud's team flies Arwings, a Landmaster tank and a submarine along branching routes to Andross, with four-player dogfights.
• Perfect Dark (Nintendo 64, 2000, Rare): Agent Joanna Dark uncovers an alien conspiracy in GoldenEye's spiritual follow-up, with a huge multiplayer mode and computer-controlled Simulants.
• River Raid (Atari 2600, 1982, Activision): Fly a fighter jet up an endless river, shooting ships, helicopters and bridges, and refuel over fuel depots before you run dry.
• Yars' Revenge (Atari 2600, 1982, Atari): Yar, a mutated fly, nibbles through the Qotile's shield and fires the Zorlon Cannon to destroy it, in Atari's best-selling original 2600 game.
• Seaquest (Atari 2600, 1983, Activision): Pilot a submarine, shooting sharks and enemy subs while picking up divers, and surface for oxygen before it runs out.
• Demon Attack (Atari 2600, 1982, Imagic): Blast waves of flapping demons over an icy planet as they split, dive and fire lasers back at your cannon.
• Beamrider (Atari 2600, 1984, Activision): Ride the beams of a space shield and blast fifteen enemy saucers in each sector before taking on its sentinel ship.
• Solaris (Atari 2600, 1986, Atari): Warp between the sectors of the galaxy defending planets from the Zylons, on a search for the lost planet Solaris.
• The Guardian Legend (NES, 1989, Brøderbund): Compile's hybrid: the Guardian explores the planetoid Naju on foot, then transforms into a starfighter for vertical shooting stages in its corridors.
• Life Force (NES, 1988, Konami): Salamander on the NES: two ships fly side by side through an alien's innards, switching between horizontal and vertical stages, with power-ups to collect.
• R-Type III: The Third Lightning (Super Nintendo, 1994, Jaleco): The R-9 gets three Force pods to choose from, a Hyper Drive and the Bydo Empire's biggest set pieces yet, in the only R-Type made for the SNES.
• Space Megaforce (Super Nintendo, 1992, Toho): Super Aleste in the US: Compile's vertical shooter with eight weapons, giant bosses and Mode 7 stages that fly through tunnels and over cities.
• U.N. Squadron (Super Nintendo, 1991, Capcom): Area 88's mercenary pilots pick missions off a map, buy planes and weapons with their earnings and fight Project 4's bosses in Capcom's side-scrolling shooter.
• Wild Guns (Super Nintendo, 1995, Natsume): Clint and Annie shoot gallery-style through a steampunk Wild West, dodging, lassoing and firing the Vulcan gun, two at once.
• Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf (Sega Genesis, 1992, Electronic Arts): Fly an Apache over an isometric Gulf, picking targets off a mission map, rescuing hostages and managing fuel and armor, to bring down the dictator Kilbaba.
• Jungle Strike (Sega Genesis, 1993, Electronic Arts): The Desert Strike sequel adds a hovercraft, a motorcycle and a stealth bomber to the Comanche's missions, from Washington to a jungle drug lord's fortress.
• Thunder Force III (Sega Genesis, 1990, Sega): The Styx fighter picks its stages across five planets, swapping weapons on the fly, in Technosoft's standout shooter with a famously fast soundtrack.
• Atlantis (Atari 2600, 1982, Imagic): Defend the undersea city with three gun posts as Gorgon ships dive faster and faster; when the last building falls, Atlantis sinks.
• Battlezone (Atari 2600, 1983, Atari): A first-person tank fight from the arcade, reworked for the 2600 with a radar and a view from behind your tank.
• Centipede (Atari 2600) (Atari 2600, 1982, Atari): Shoot the centipede as it winds down through the mushrooms, with the spider, flea and scorpion making trouble, in the 2600's own take.
• Chopper Command (Atari 2600, 1982, Activision): Fly a helicopter over the desert to guard a truck convoy from enemy planes and choppers, Activision's answer to Defender.
• Cosmic Ark (Atari 2600, 1982, Imagic): Shoot meteors from the ark, then beam creatures up from planets with a lander, in Imagic's two-part follow-up to Atlantis.
• Galaxian (Atari 2600, 1983, Atari): Galaxians swoop down from formation in Atari's port of Namco's arcade game, with the flagship escorts and the fast two-shot pace.
• Gravitar (Atari 2600, 1983, Atari): Fly your ship against gravity through planets of gun bunkers, refueling with the tractor beam, in the 2600 version of Atari's hardest arcade game.
• Gyruss (Atari 2600, 1984, Parker Brothers): Circle the screen's edge shooting inward at the swarms, warp by warp toward Earth, with Bach's Toccata underneath, from Konami's arcade game.
• MegaMania (Atari 2600, 1982, Activision): A space nightmare of hamburgers, bow ties and dice swooping down in formation, shot from a ship with a dwindling energy bar.
• Millipede (Atari 2600, 1984, Atari): Centipede's sequel: a millipede, mosquitoes, dragonflies and DDT bombs, with the swarm waves between rounds, on the 2600.
• Moon Patrol (Atari 2600, 1983, Atari): Drive the moon buggy over craters and under UFOs, shooting up and ahead, through the course's checkpoints, from Irem's arcade game.
• River Raid II (Atari 2600, 1988, Activision): Take off from a carrier, fly the river's course and land again, with fuel and bridges to manage, in the late-1980s sequel to Carol Shaw's classic.
• Robot Tank (Atari 2600, 1983, Activision): A first-person tank battle through day, night, rain and snow, with damage that knocks out your radar, cannon or treads one by one.
• Solar Fox (Atari 2600, 1983, CBS Electronics): Skim a ship over grids of solar cells to collect them all while sentinels fire across the field, from Bally Midway's arcade game.
• Spider Fighter (Atari 2600, 1982, Activision): Spiders and bugs drop toward your fruit while a fast-firing blaster sweeps the bottom of the screen, in Activision's quick shooter.
• Star Wars: The Arcade Game (Atari 2600, 1983, Parker Brothers): Fly the X-wing against TIE fighters, the Death Star's towers and the trench run in Parker Brothers' port of Atari's vector arcade game.
• Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Atari 2600, 1982, Parker Brothers): Fly a snowspeeder against the AT-AT walkers on Hoth, hitting them 48 times each or using the Force, in the first Star Wars video game.
• StarMaster (Atari 2600, 1982, Activision): Warp between sectors on the galactic map to defend starbases from enemy fighters, with a cockpit view and ship damage to repair at base.
• Stargate (Atari 2600, 1984, Atari): Defender's sequel: protect the humanoids with inviso and smart bombs and use the Stargate to jump across the planet, in Atari's port.
• Turmoil (Atari 2600, 1982, 20th Century Fox): Shoot the ships that fly down seven lanes toward you while grabbing prizes before they turn into tanks, in Mark Turmell's twitchy shooter.
• Gradius: The Interstellar Assault (Game Boy, 1992, Konami): Nemesis II in Japan: the Vic Viper flies five stages with Gradius's power meter, chased by a giant warship between them, in one of the Game Boy's best shooters.
• 007: The World Is Not Enough (Nintendo 64, 2000, Electronic Arts): Bond's gadgets, stealth missions and a four-player deathmatch, in Eurocom's shooter built on GoldenEye's lessons.
• BattleTanx: Global Assault (Nintendo 64, 1999, 3DO Company): Tanks fight through ruined cities in a war over the last women on Earth, with a four-player split-screen battle of capture the flag and king of the hill.
• Body Harvest (Nintendo 64, 1998, Midway): Adam Drake jumps between vehicles across five eras of Earth to stop alien harvesters, in DMA's open-world forerunner of Grand Theft Auto III.
• Doom 64 (Nintendo 64, 1997, Midway): A new Doom with redrawn monsters, darker levels and the Unmaker, built for the N64 by Midway rather than ported.
• Duke Nukem 64 (Nintendo 64, 1997, GT Interactive): Duke Nukem 3D on the N64 with new weapons and a four-player deathmatch, and a few of the jokes cleaned up.
• Jet Force Gemini (Nintendo 64, 1999, Rare): Juno, Vela and the dog Lupus blast Mizar's insect army across planets, rescuing Tribals, in Rare's third-person shooter with a co-op mode.
• Quake II (Nintendo 64, 1999, Activision): Quake II rebuilt for the N64 with new levels, colored lighting and a four-player deathmatch.
• Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (Nintendo 64, 1996, Nintendo): Dash Rendar flies the Battle of Hoth, chases bounty hunters and storms Xizor's palace in the game of the story set between Empire and Jedi.
• Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (Nintendo 64, 1997, Acclaim): Turok hunts raptors and soldiers through fog-shrouded jungles with a bow, a shotgun and the Chronoscepter, in the N64's first big shooter.
• Turok 2: Seeds of Evil (Nintendo 64, 1998, Acclaim): The Cerebral Bore, huge levels and a four-player deathmatch, with an Expansion Pak high-resolution mode, in the Turok sequel.
• Vigilante 8 (Nintendo 64, 1999, Activision): Car combat in a 1975 Southwest: trucks, buses and hot rods with mounted guns and special weapons, for four players in split screen.
• WinBack: Covert Operations (Nintendo 64, 1999, Koei): Jean-Luc Cougar takes cover behind walls and pops out to shoot, inventing the cover shooter, in a mission to retake a laser satellite's control center.
• 1942 (Game Boy Color) (Game Boy Color, 2000, Capcom): Capcom's vertical shooter in color: a P-38 loops and strafes its way through waves of fighters, bombers and battleships across the Pacific.
• Perfect Dark (Game Boy Color) (Game Boy Color, 2000, Rare): Joanna Dark's first mission against dataDyne, before the N64 game: an overhead shooter with stealth, digitized speech and a rumble cartridge.
• R-Type DX (Game Boy Color, 1999, Nintendo): R-Type and R-Type II on one cartridge, in their Game Boy versions and in color, plus a DX mode that runs both as one long mission against the Bydo.
• Bangai-O Spirits (Nintendo DS, 2008, D3 Publisher): Treasure's mech shooter fills the screen with hundreds of missiles at once across puzzle-like stages, plus an editor for making your own.
• Big Bang Mini (Nintendo DS, 2009, SouthPeak Games): Flick fireworks up from the touch screen to burst enemies above, steering your little ship with the stylus to dodge their fire.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Mobilized (Nintendo DS, 2009, Activision): First-person missions as SAS commandos and U.S. Marines, aimed with the stylus, in the DS take on modern warfare.
• Call of Duty: World at War (Nintendo DS, 2008, Activision): World War II in first person on the DS, from Pacific islands to the fall of Berlin, as American, British and Soviet soldiers.
• Dementium: The Ward (Nintendo DS, 2007, Gamecock Media Group): A patient wakes in a monster-filled hospital with no memory and fights his way out with a flashlight and whatever weapons he finds.
• Dementium II (Nintendo DS, 2010, SouthPeak Games): William Redmoor escapes a sanitarium and the hellish world behind it in the first-person horror sequel.
• Geometry Wars: Galaxies (Nintendo DS, 2007, Sierra Entertainment): Blast neon swarms across a galaxy of planets, aiming with the stylus, with a drone at your side and the original Retro Evolved.
• Metroid Prime Hunters (Nintendo DS, 2006, Nintendo): Samus races six rival bounty hunters to the secret of the Alimbic Cluster in a first-person shooter aimed with the stylus.
• Moon (Nintendo DS, 2009, Mastiff): Major Kane discovers alien ruins on the Moon and fights through them in a first-person shooter.
• Nanostray (Nintendo DS, 2005, Majesco Entertainment): A fast vertical shooter over three-dimensional landscapes, switching weapons on the touch screen.
• Nanostray 2 (Nintendo DS, 2008, Majesco Entertainment): Shin'en's shooter returns with new stages, weapons and challenge missions.
• Point Blank DS (Nintendo DS, 2006, Namco Bandai Games): Dozens of quick shooting-gallery challenges, hit with the stylus as fast and as accurately as you can.
• Space Invaders Extreme (Nintendo DS, 2008, Square Enix): Space Invaders remixed with flashing lights, power-ups, combos and a pulsing soundtrack.
• Space Invaders Extreme 2 (Nintendo DS, 2009, Square Enix): The remixed Space Invaders returns with new stages, power-ups and bonus games.
• Star Fox Command (Nintendo DS, 2006, Nintendo): Fox McCloud leads the Star Fox team against the Anglar invasion, drawing flight paths on a strategy map before each dogfight.
• Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron (Nintendo DS, 2009, LucasArts): A clone trooper fights in ground and space battles from the Clone Wars to the Galactic Civil War.

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