25 Blood-Soaked Run & Gun Games (From Classic to Modern Titles)
The origin of a genre tends to be among its greatest sources of debate, and Run and Guns (sometimes abbreviated Run ‘n’ gun) is no exception. For the uninitiated, it should be noted that it is a branch of Shoot ’em up, shooting games with a thousand variants linked to the medium since its infancy, when classics like Space Invaders, Galaga or Defender dominated the arcade cabinets.
With the 80s came the rise of action stars like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, something that soon influenced developers and pronounced the turn towards guerrilla Run and Gun. Months after the release of the Rambo film saga, Front Line (Taito, 1982) offered both vertical scrolling shootouts and the possibility of riding tanks. And Capcom’s Commando (1985), although not directly related to the movie of the same name – and the same year – pushed this subgenre even further onto the arcade front, spurring numerous imitators. Perhaps the most successful was Ikari Warriors (1986), created by a novice SNK that took the second part of Rambo as a reference and stood out thanks to the introduction of co-op and the return of tanks.
Movies seduced and it seemed that the appearance of a hunk on the cover generated a lot of money, so several video game companies began to exploit the genre by changing the point of view and taking it to the vertical scrolling plane. Platoon, Predator, Alien and other movie hits had their playable versions in the arcade and computers of the time, all sharing horizontal scroll, finite ammunition and a devilish difficulty.
From this revision of the horizontal run’n’gun we can highlight Sunset Raiders (Konami 1991), Alien Storm (Sega 1990), which interspersed sections of gallery shooter, the fast-paced Gunstar Heroes (Treasure 1993), Rolling Thunder (Namco 1986) and of course Contra (Probotector, Konami 1987). Later, the one that would take the genre to the most popular recognition in 1996: Metal Slug, by the hand of SNK.
While Contra created a new genre within the genre, giving solutions that would lead games like Ninja Gaiden in other directions, Metal Slug included a good handful of elements that made a huge genre great: A huge arsenal of weapons, tremendous enemies, amazing graphics, a thousand effects, black humor, hostages and, when everything seemed perfect, vehicles galore that left the machine gun nests and the poor little MERCS gadgets in nothing.
The genre is so timeless that it continues to persist and evolve to this day. Alien Hominid started off as a Newgrounds flash game, before coming to consoles. The indie sphere has seen titles like Guns, Gore, and Canoli, Blazing Chrome, and Cuphead, among many others.
That all said, going through the entire history of run and gun games, it’s funny that, despite being very violent video games, they are not explicit with the gore. A radical departure from the action movies on which many of these games are based.
But that does not mean that there are exceptions that confirm the rule… you will know them with this video.
In this video you will find:
• Some of the most brutal arcade run and gun ever created
• Information related to each game such as release date, developer company, game genre and system it was released on.
• Official game box arts with a 3D presentation.
• Educative and/or critical comments on the importance of the video game and why you should play it
• Average Lenght of every game
Intro and Outro Music
Aries Beats “Synthwave Dreams 2020” is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license …
Source:
0:00 Intro
0:14 1987 Alien Syndrome (Arcade)
0:39 1988 Bloody Wolf (Arcade)
1:05 1988 NARC (Arcade)
1:30 1989 Last Alert (NEC TurboGrafx-CD)
1:57 1989 SAR: Search and Rescue (Arcade)
2:22 1990 Aliens (Arcade)
2:47 1991 Total Carnage (Arcade)
3:12 1993 Robocop vs Terminator (Sega Genesis)
3:37 1994 True Lies (Super Nintendo)
4:02 1994 TH Strikes Back (Arcade)
4:27 1995 Doom Troopers: Mutant Chronicles (Sega Genesis)
4:52 1995 King of Demons (Super Nintendo)
5:17 1997 Shock Troopers (Arcade)
5:42 1998 Millenium Soldier: Expendable (Dreamcast)
6:07 2000 Metal Slug 3 (Arcade)
6:32 2002 Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project (PC)
6:57 2002 Contra: Shattered Soldier (Playstation 2)
7:22 2012 Shank 2 (PC)
7:47 2015 BroForce (PC)
8:12 2015 Guns, Gore & Cannoli (PC)
8:37 2016 Butcher (PC)
9:03 2017 Redemeer (PC)
9:29 2017 Ruiner (PC)
9:54 2019 Blazing Chrome (PC)
10:20 2019 Valfaris (PC)
10:46 2020 Huntdown (PC)
11:11 Outro
#BITSANDBEATS #runandgun #shootemup