Top Down Shooters |
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Alien Breed 2 |
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2 Player |
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Stand out version - Amiga |
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The Alien Breed games were always brilliant just for the level of tension and unease they brought to the genre, getting stuck in a corner with low ammo and masses of aliens coming towards you is never a good feeling! |
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Alien Breed Tower Assault |
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2 Player |
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Stand out version - Amiga |
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An improvement over it's earlier incarnations Tower Assault added much more set-piece orientated design as well as the more impressive graphics, all the best elements still remained such as the rpg style shops for upgrading weaponry and the great 2-player co-op mode. |
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Alien Syndrome |
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2 Player |
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Stand out version - Amiga |
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Nice save the hostages style shmup from Sega. Alien Syndrome was quite an influential arcade game for the time, I always thought the bosses were pretty excellently designed and gruesome when I was younger, and they still don't disappoint, they're quite iconic in a way. |
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Chaos Engine, The/Soldiers of Fortune |
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2 Player |
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Stand out versions - Amiga, Mega Drive |
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Adding some well implemented RPG elements into the mix was a great idea for the Chaos Engine, you really feel as though your character is making progress and getting stronger as the levels go by, compulsive fun in 2-player. |
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Commando |
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1 Player |
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Stand out versions - Atari ST, NES |
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Commando was the game that pretty much kicked off and popularised the whole genre, it's a bit simple in concept compared to later games but has undeniably timeless gameplay with it's uncomplicated frenetic action. |
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Crack down |
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2 Player |
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Stand out versions - Mega Drive |
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Disarm the bombs game from Sega, the split screen was a great idea, and unlike most games from the genre 2 players could actually go their own ways to explore and cover more ground faster. |
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Firemen, The |
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1 Player |
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Stand out Version - SNES |
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Take your general shooter and replace all the enemies with spreading fire and malfunctioning robots, add loads of style and great gameplay and you've pretty much got The Firemen, a true classic of the genre. |
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Gain Ground |
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2 Player |
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Stand out version - Mega Drive |
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Gain Ground is an underappreciated game that fuses the more basic top down shooting action with strategy elements, giving you access to many characters with differing strengths and weaknesses as the game progresses, it even manages to have a pokemon style collecting element to it as you feel the need to find and rescue as many of the characters as you can to see what they can do. |
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Gauntlet |
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4 Players (ST) 2 Players (MS) |
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Stand out version - Atari ST, Master System |
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Another oldie that along with Commando really started off the genre, Gauntlet is at it's heart a compulsive maze game, and it's real strength was always with it brilliant multiplayer options. |
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Granada |
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1 Player |
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Stand Out Version - Mega Drive |
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Great controls, nice set-piece levels and great weapons (such as the powerful cannon that pushes you back everytime you use it) and power-ups (you can collect option like little machines that follow you and fire at the enemy) all help to raise Granada above many of the other shmups out there. |
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Gremlins 2 |
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1 Player |
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Stand out version - NES |
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Everyone who's spent any time on the site probably knows that I love this game, it's a brilliant fusing of Shmup with more general platforming elements such as jumping over spikes and getting from one moving platform to another, add the simplified RPG style shops into the mix and you have what I feel is a classic NES game. |
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Guerilla War |
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2 Player |
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Stand out version - NES |
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Probably the best classic style top down shooter on the NES, its got a bit of everything really fast and fluid controls, controllable vehicles, great action and 2 player co-op. |
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