Videos/Episodes

The chase-view rail shooter is one of my favorite genres of all time, but it is actually kind of rare! Usually made as tech demos for 16-bit hardware, once polygons became established and “Free Roaming” became a buzzword, the genre seemed to almost vanish! It didn’t help that it was so poorly defined. Few games openly CALL themselves “Rail Shooters”.

In my desperate quest to find more games in this genre, I stumbled upon numerous threads on various messageboards asking for the same. People wanted more Star Fox-esque games! Every time though, they’d just be recommended the usual suspects (Star Fox, Panzer Dragoon, Sin & Punishment, After Burner, and Panorama Cotton if you’re lucky) before the threads were dragged of-topic with light gun games, first person gunnery games, and off-rail shooters no one realized were off-rails.

So, with a growing number of obscure rail shooters under my belt, I decided to create a WordPress blog about it! This site contains place holder entries for every single rail shooter I have ever heard of, sorted by system, with sections for “Classics” (i.e. the ones you should already know) and “Hidden Gems” (Good stuff few people know about…I hope the term isn’t copyrighted!) as well as “Videos”. The eventual goal is to do short 5 minute videos for as many rail shooters on this blog as I can.

Wanna talk about these games or suggest some more? Feel free to leave comments on the entries! Keep in mind I’m ONLY talking about Chase-View Rail Shooters (i.e. Star Fox, After Burner, Space Harrier. Things where you see the back of your character). I do not have the investment to do Light Gun games. Though if someone ELSE wants to try and celebrate every light gun game ever, be my guest! I love ’em, I just don’t have the commitment and knowledge to do that genre justice. Also keep in mind that this genre is ill-defined so what I consider to be a rail shooter and what you consider to be one may differ (I’m still a bit iffy on a few entries myself).

If you’d like me to go into greater detail…