Horizontal Scrolling Shooter

Once a staple of the gaming industry, Horizontal Scrolling Shooter games are rather rare since the latter half of the 1990s.

As the name suggests, the game's playfield constantly scrolls horizontally over the course of a level. The view can either be side-on or top-down, depending on the developer's choice. The most common use of such an engine has been for games with some kind of spacecraft either flying over a landscape or through an installation, with unbreakable obstacles that would kill the player either on contact, or by blocking the craft.

Most such games had the player collect health, lives and weapons as powerups in the levels, although some allowed the player to make purchases with their points between levels.

Complexity varies by having different numbers of layers of parallax and in some cases, transparency effects, such as translucent explosions.

Compare Vertical Scrolling Shooter.


 * Air Zonk
 * Akai Katana
 * Altitude
 * Area 88, also known as U.N. Squadron in the US. One of the few Licensed Games to not suck
 * Assault Suits Valken
 * Bio-Hazard Battle
 * BIOMETAL
 * Blast Works/TUKIMI Fighters
 * Blazing Star
 * Boogie Wings (The Great Ragtime Show in Japan)
 * Border Down
 * Chimera Beast (unreleased)
 * Cobalt
 * Cotton
 * The Darius series.
 * Death Smiles series
 * "Dr. Phlogiston Saves the Earth" from Fun Orb
 * Einhander
 * Eliminate Down
 * Gaiares
 * Gradius series
 * Gundemonium, Gundeadligne and Gundemonium Recollection from the Gundemonium Series
 * Heavy Weapon
 * Hydorah
 * In the Hunt
 * Iwanaga
 * Jets N Guns
 * Metal Black
 * Otomedius
 * Parasite Strike
 * Parodius series
 * Parsec
 * Phalanx
 * Prehistoric Isle
 * Progear
 * Pulstar
 * Really Big Sky
 * Revenge Of The Mutant Camels (yes, really)
 * RPG Shooter Starwish
 * R-Type series
 * Scramble
 * Super Cobra (which uses the same engine)
 * Shark Attack
 * Söldner-X
 * Stargunner
 * Steel Empire
 * Steel Saviour
 * Submarine Attack
 * SUGURI
 * Sora
 * Thunder Cross and sequel
 * Thunder Force (early games include top down multi-direction level)
 * Trouble Witches series
 * Vacant Ark
 * Vanguard (which also had some vertical and diagonal scrolling)
 * Wings of Ge.ne.sis
 * Xexyz (only one in three levels)
 * Zero Wing