A Brief(ish) History Of Horror Themed Light Gun Games

You’ve probably noticed this, Lunies, but I like Light Gun games. A lot. Hell, I’d say that the genre is one of my favourites in all of videogamedom, which is a surprising thing to say given how basic the core gameplay of the genre is; ya point ‘n ya shoot. There are subtleties across many games in the genre that deepen the experience, yeah, but they’re still virtual shooting galleries at heart.

This is probably the bit where you expect me to go “but then, maybe that simplicity is the blah blah etc. etc.” nope, nada, I ain’t here to theorise shit, I’m here to talk about the games themselves. Specifically, a subset of the genre that became heavily focused on horror and the macabre. For whatever reason, the type of game and the thematic elements became intrinsically linked with one another incredibly early on- practically from the beginning- although the mid 90s through to the early 2000s were arguably the Golden Years of the subgenre, wherein some of the most prestigious titles under the banner saw their debut and the genre flourished with release after release. This article will not be definitive by any definition (because even I haven’t played or know of EVERY horror themed rail shooter) and for the most part I won’t be writing a thesis for each and every title covered here; you can consider this, as per the title, a primer on the subject. A springboard for you to go and find out more about the games should you find them interesting.

It’ll still be a long read, though. So, uh... You, eh, might wanna grab a pot of coffee and clear your schedule.

It all started with Chiller, a title released by Exidy in 1986. There had been other electronic shooting gallery games before- in fact, Exidy themselves released a title under the name Crossbow three years prior- but so far as I’ve been able to discern, Chiller is where the genre met Horror for the very first time. Being an arcade game from the 80s, the plot is basically nonexistant, boiling down to “you’re a guy, things be booky, dispense lead based justice”. Likewise, the core gameplay is as basic as it gets; your aim is to take out the set number of targets indicated by your Monster Meter before the timer runs out, and almost all the targets are either static or follow incredibly simple pattern. As the pre-stage splash screen shows off, there are special targets/items that can be bagged for a shot at a bizarre slot machine bonus game that doles out little rewards, but that’s about as deep as the gameplay gets. Honestly, the most interesting thing about Chiller is the overall presentation. Specifically, the fact that even with utilitarian graphics that are just there to visualise and not to Wow, it gets away with things that would make the people balking at Manhunt faint. Though everything in the game supposedly has some basis in the supernatural (according to the fluff text anyway), the first two stages have you gunning down what really do just look like innocent people strapped to torture devices- hell, if you’re particularly sadistic, some of the aforementioned special shots can actually activate them. It’s only from the third stage onwards where the cliche spooky things like Mummies, Ghosts, Disembodied Heads and the like enter the mix at all, but they’ve all quietly gone away in time for the fourth stage to bust out heartwarming things like a woman buried in (and chained to?) the ground that you are encouraged to de-robe for some 8bit titillation, and then reduce to a bloody stump with a naval. How the hell Exidy got in hot shit over Death Race yet Chiller passed by without a stink is one of those eternal mysteries.

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A lot of early Light Gun games fell into that “barely distinguishable from an animatronic shooting gallery” mould, but then Taito’s Operation Wolf happened and suddenly the genre was revolutionised with the innovation of movement! Strictly along the X and Y axis’, but still, it did help deepen the experience ever so slightly. Arguably, this is where the genre as we know it today really got it’s start, as other companies soon picked up on and helped refine the experience (some even making cute attempts at rendering Z axis movement) alongside Taito. SNK was one such company, taking the basic gameplay and injecting one part Dawn Of The Dead and two parts pardon me but what in God's name just happened to produce Beast Busters. The basic setup is three schmucks with the most bullshit alliterative names ever decide to enter a town we are told in no uncertain terms is “DOOMED!”, explicitly to solve the mystery of why it’s “DOOMED!” because I ‘unno. What they find within is that most of the citizens in the town have succumbed to some sort of zombie virus. Some of them have turned into zombies that can THEN turn into dogs. Owls have also turned incredibly genocidal, some dead bodies have fused together to become Legion, and there’s also a truck that the more you shoot it turns out to actually be some sort of biological monster and oh my god what in the fuck is this game. To be fair, for as much as I poke fun, it’s this kind of unbridled creativity and willingness to try weird and quirky ideas that drew me to video games in the first place, and to say the game has a lot of personality as a result of it’s quirks is an understatement. Sadly, it’s also an understatement to say that the game is flawed in execution; the genre had yet to introduce the concept of Reloading to circumvent unlimited ammunition, so Beast Busters follows it’s other contemporaries by having limited ammo stocks that must be replenished. Add that to the fact that tons of enemies will be on the screen going for your jugular, and that a LOT of enemies register their attacks via hitscan or poorly telegraphed tells, and you have a game that’s forces you to chose shooting at necessary pickups and getting wailed on more then you might need, or going for broke and praying you don’t wind up literally unable to fight back- which you will, because it’s an 80s arcade game. It makes for a game that’s a lot more fun to watch then it is to play.

Sega’s foray into the genre from around the same time, Laser Ghost, is a little bit better about the gameplay balance, removing the arbitrary ammo stocks in favour of a laser weapon as per the title, and was probably the first of this new wave of light gun titles to do so without any other kind of drawback. Well, except the enemy overload, but arcade games are designed to be stacked against your favour to make a profit, so. The strength of the title lies in it’s personality, similar to Beast Busters, although it has the added strength of not only have a much more cohesive theme- Spooks ‘n Spectres- but by pulling inspiration from one of the hottest franchises of the decade. That’s right; Cheers! No, wait, Ghostbusters. I meant Ghostbusters. While there was definitely weirdness abound throughout the title, it still felt interconnected and sensical in it’s nonsensicalness, and it didn’t come at the expense of the creativity as an added bonus- I absolutely love the fact that the first boss is, basically, the entrance to a movie theater.

Interesting little side tangent here by the by; Laser Ghost actually made it to the Master System two years after it’s arcade release, but Sega pulled a Konami on us and gave us a reformulated title with the same name rather then a straight port. One of the smaller details of the arcade Laser Ghost’s narrative was that the three playable characters were also attempting to rescue a little girl from the clutches of the ghosts in addition to Saving The Day™. In the Master System version, they brought that plot point to the forefront, expanding on it considerably (the girl is kidnapped in this version because the denizens of a ghostly city need a soul to nibble on every 13 years, and she just happened to draw the short straw this time around), but also made it a central gameplay element. Instead of just finding her at the end of the game, you rescue the girl- named Katherine- at the very start of the game, with your aim being to serve as her active protector on her way to get her soul back. You follow her throughout the various levels of the game, shooting at the various Goblins and Ghosts that would bring her harm, and in more then a few cases actually have to solve minor puzzles or uncover items and engage in a little backtracking to clear the stage. It’s a much slower and less frenetic title then almost every other title of its ilk, but it actually holds up as a fairly interesting experience with pretty slick gameplay, and some equally memorable and bizarre enemies as it’s arcade brethren. In some ways, it could be considered to be the better game of the two, and there’s really nothing else quite like it out there. The only other title I can think of that comes close is Namco’s Rescue Shot.

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Although they never really “went away”, Taito returned to the scene not long after with Space Gun, another title heavily borrowing from an 80s franchise- this time, the Alien films (moreso in terms of tone then visual design). The biggest innovations Space Gun brought to the table where the addition of a stable of weapons you could cycle through instead of the “One Gun One Bomb” setup, and a “directional pedal” that would allow the player to reverse their movement regardless of the axis they were moving down. It is, to an extent, a fairly superfluous addition, especially when coupled with the expanded armoury you have at your disposal seeming the like the bigger draw, but it does offer some strategic advantage within the gameplay. Sometimes. Mostly in the sense that you can avoid attacks with it when moving on the Z axis. Incidentally, that is one of the other areas that the game really shines; the movement, especially along the Z axis, is incredibly smooth given the technology. It’s a surface detail, but it helps the game feel like a tremendous step above almost everything that came before it- little touches like an honest to goodness attempt at a filmscore-type soundtrack also help towards that “cutting edge” aspect the game has going for it. So far as I can tell, it also helped popularise the idea of hostages in games of this kind, creating a staple for it in the years to come- y’know, shoot them and you’re penalised, save them and you’re rewarded.

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A lot of you probably know that Full Motion Video was a minor craze in the early 90s video game scene. Not many genres really fit the bill for the technology, but Light Run/Shooting Gallery affairs absolutely did, and that’s how we ended up with fare like Mad Dog McCree, that shit awful Demolition Man game for the 3DO, and Corpse Killer. Now, let’s not beat around the bush; Corpse Killer is not a particularly good title. Whilst the integration of the supposedly revolutionary technology is a lot smoother in practise then other games of it’s kind, it does nothing for the gameplay that can’t be found in titles that don’t make use of it, and even if it did it wouldn’t change the fact that the core game is strangely boring. Oh, don’t get me wrong, the campy charm of the Z-Grade Movie plot and cutscenes is, well, charming, with performances and characters like WINSTON CRUMB, RASTAFARIAN ZOMBIE SLAYER brightening things considerably, but the playable bits are extremely dour. I’d be inclined to call them “lifeless” but that’s far too twee a statement. Historically speaking, it’s little more then a footnote of what could of been; a glimpse into the evolutionary dead end of titles like Lethal Enforcers.

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Zombie Raid was Sammy’s take on the genre and is pure Gothic Horror through and through, from the miserable detective who reluctantly takes the job given to him right down to the Peter Lorre impersonator voiced bad guy vying for immortality by way of a magic meets science combo, sticking extremely close to the conventions set by it’s forerunners- perhaps a bit too close, given it was 1995 when Zombie Raid came out. It was likely out of budgetary restrictions, but still, the game does suffer for it to an extent, and it’s almost entirely down to the exact same shortcomings Beast Busters and Laser Ghost had to deal with; it can get too overwhelming too quickly, and some enemy attacks register as hitscans and/or have very subtle tells, making the game far more difficult then is fair. Some of the pre-rendered graphics also look a little muddy, but that’s an artefact of the times that can be overlooked. A lot of love and care went into the title, from the grim and gritty visual design that perfectly capture the tone and feel of gothic horror, the earnest attempts to score the game with almost-CD quality music that doesn’t loop pathetically quickly (as previously seen with Chiller way back at the beginning), and early attempts at voice acting within the narrative itself in addition to the cries of rescuable hostages- though only some of the lines are voiced, mind. Hell, it even has more then one ending! Granted, you need to collect easily missable whatsits to see it, but the effort is appreciated. That just makes it more of a shame that it falls apart in the area that matters most; the gameplay.

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As alluded to above, Zombie Raid came out at a time when titles like Time Crisis and Virtua Cop had completely revised the genre conventions in the wake of the jump to 3D. Sure, games had experimented with movement on the Z axis before, but fully 3D worlds not only allowed for directional movement along the planes to feel much smoother, but they were no longer binary movements in four directions. You could, for all intents and purposes, move the in game camera in any direction you chose, which when combined with the literal depth a 3D environment offers suddenly allowed game designers to craft worlds that felt more alive then ever before. You guys know this already, and the effect was felt far beyond the scope of shooters of course, but it was one of the genres that really felt blessed by the advent of 3D gaming, and the success of titles like Time Crisis and Virtua Cop proved that it was the direction to go in. But those titles were merely the Ur Example.

No, if any game can be given the credit of both codifying the concept of the 3D Light Gun game and popularising the idea of a horror themed Light Gun game, it’s The House Of The Dead.

I could write a novel worth of things about The House Of The Dead’s personal connection to me and my history with/love for it, but I’m gonna save that for next year. What I would like to cover about it, in brief, is how much of a game changer it must have seemed at the time- and I mean that in comparison to even Time Crisis and Virtua Cop. Whilst the two are different in many ways, both of them have gameplay that, whilst not slow, can’t really be called frenetic either. Time Crisis’ core gameplay revolves around it’s cover gimmick, which keeps the movement through it’s set piece almost entirely to moving from static scene to static scene, and Virtua Cop’s gameplay is centred around the fact that every enemy is tied to a big bright timer that literally ticks down to when they go from standing around doing nothing to unloading hell upon you. The House Of The Dead, comparatively, keeps you constantly moving throughout it’s set piece, employing dynamic camera movements and trickery all throughout to really immerse you in the game experience. Ok, you still stop dead in your tracks when you have to shoot things and some of the things that are ostensibly happening in “your POV” can only be explained as it’s a video game, stupid, but it feels less overtly game-y as a result. Hell, I bet you didn’t even notice that besieged by groups of enemies, they attack individually rather then zerg rushing you? That’s a little touch that completely re-balances the game in favour of the player, on top of every attack being clearly telegraphed and having a long enough wind up time to be deflected, yet is integrated so seamlessly you don’t consciously realise it. The game is still balls hard, but it’s a much fairer hard that, though still dependant mostly on reflexes and aim, at least grants you a realistic learning curve to overcome the more you play it. You get lucky with Beast Busters; you can get better at The House Of The Dead. And then there’s the attention to detail- the multiple paths dependant on player actions, the three different endings, the visual aesthetics being so gorgeous, the music being so catchy and well composed, and the- Ok I’m gonna stop myself there or we are never seeing this thing through to the end.

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Fact of the matter is, The House Of The Dead was a big deal. Like, a real big deal. Big enough to spawn the most sequels and spinoffs out of any Light Gun game franchise, and big enough that horror themed games where you shoot stuff became a pie multiple dev’s wanted a slice of. In The House Of The Dead’s case, it can be argued that being a contemporary of Resident Evil in a time when Zombie media was sorely lacking helped, but the core reason is mostly just that it was damn good. And y’know what? Most of the games it helped inspire were good to!

SNK returned to the fold in 1998 with Beast Busters: Second Nightmare, and man, if the first Beast Busters was like an 80s B-Movie, this one was like a 90s anime OVA. The grim atmosphere permeating throughout the experience, the grisly visual design of the stages and the enemies, and of course the high pressure blood geysers that emanate from the necks or waists of the undead hordes thirsting for your delicious brainmeats, it's all there. It’s just as psychedelic an experience as the first title, too- the first boss is a rampaging hospital bus that sprouts tentacles. It just gets weirder from there, folks, believe me, and it’s awesome. Y’know what else is awesome? That you get to mow down the hordes of the undead with heavy machine guns, an element not readily explored enough by spooky shooters- er, not counting Warzaid anyway. I absolutely love Beast Busters: Second Nightmare- enough to bemoan how much of an obscurity it is- so it deeply saddens me to say that whilst it’s definitely a more rewarding and fun game to play then the first one by light years, it still suffers from easily avoided drawbacks. The most damning is that SOME of the enemies clearly telegraph their attacks, but others bum rush you in the confusion flat out of nowhere in moves you’d only see coming if they caught you the first time, meaning it isn’t as finely balanced as it could be. The fact that it really doesn’t take full advantage of the 3D plane is another major drawback; despite being mostly comprised of textured polygons, the game seems to favour the side-on movement that earlier games in the genre used largely out of a technological necessity, and even the excuse that SNK were struggling with 3D games at the time doesn’t really feel like a decent explanation for this baffling factor. Ultimately it doesn’t hurt the game, but it does feel anachronistic when you notice it.

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Konami had dabbled around with the genre here and there- Crypt Killer somehow being the only one anybody knows about- but with their also 1998 release of Evil Night, they showed they weren’t just willing to enter (well, technically re-enter) the third dimension; they were also willing to enter the third GUNmension! Which is to say, Evil Night’s main gimmick is that it has three guns. Players 1 and 3 get handguns, and player 2 gets a shotgun. No, the special charge shot the handguns get to compensate don’t make up for it, but the fact that it’s the lady PC who wields the heavier artillery is a fact I find endlessly gratifying. In fact, Evil Night has a third instance of threes, in that you’re given the choice of three predetermined courses through the whole game. I have absolutely no idea how different they are from each other, how they impact which of the endings you get (even how many endings there are for that matter), or more or less anything about the game that that playthrough doesn’t show off. Why? Information, footage, anything on or about Evil Night is rarer then hens teeth, and the few times I got to play it were very long ago, plus I never got very far into it anyway. It’s a damn shame, too, because what little the sole playthrough on the net shows is fairly promising. Fairly solid gameplay that seems to follow the House Of The Dead coda very closely, some pretty neat attention to detail in the design and execution- I particularly like how different variations on the zombies have differing death animations- and a resolute weirdness that stops it from feeling generic without going completely off the rails. Not counting the Skeleton Zombie guy, cus, seriously, is it a guy wearing biker pants over a skeleton bodysuit? Or is that actually Konami’s utterly terrible attempt at rendering a skeleton? Seriously, watch that footage and see if you can figure it out, because that question has been eating away at me for years.

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Even Midway, creators of titles like Mortal Kombat and Rampage wanted in on action, and thus dropped CarnEvil on us all also ALSO in 1998, proving that it was going to be "The Year" for this weird subset of video game releases. Ah, but you see, Midway weren’t content to just scare us with their tale of a haunted carnival spawned from the depths of hell itself, ‘cus that’d be too easy. No, they wanted to make us laugh ourselves dumb whilst pissing our skivvies. How funny the end result actually is will no doubt vary with your mileage, given it’s fairly shlocky low brow guffaws that don’t take much thinking to register, but what is obvious is the amount of love and care that went in to the title. I know I’ve said that about a thousand times in the last million paragraphs, but with CarnEvil it really is an understatement. The mixture of high quality 3D models and pre-rendered levels completely blow the competition of the time out of the water, the rouges gallery is lovingly designed for maximum goofs and spooks throughout, and the CD quality audio is not just spectacularly composed, but in more then one instance provides some of the funniest yuks in the game- there is an entire song dedicated to a Paul Bunyan-themed Ferris Wheel that serves as a very minor set piece in the Rickety Town level, and it’s still the funniest thing in the game for me. The sheer density of character and personality loaded into every oozing pore of CarnEvil makes it an endlessly entertaining experience, but the drawback is that the gameplay just isn’t quite as refined as everything else. It’s highly playable and very fun, but the sheer number of times enemies or bosses will just wail on you without pause makes it incredibly frustrating in a few places- the first encounter with Hambone absolutely will have you saying “oh fuck OFF” more then once.

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This era was so profitable for the genre that it even lead to collaborations on the part of two otherwise independent developers. Though it seems like the WOW Entertainment R&D team handled the brunt of the development, Sega and Namco teamed up in 2001 to produce Vampire Night, a House Of The Dead title in all but name. And theme. And presentation. ... So it just sort of plays like a House Of The Dead game but otherwise the comparison falls flat. Swapping out mad science and zed heads for Gothic Punk and bloodsuckers, Vampire Night attempts to tell the story of two Damphir’s returning to their birthplace- a castle so extravagant that Castlevania’s complex visages look practically pedestrian by comparison- to settle a grudge 300 years in the making. I say “attempts” because the game is more focused on saying the phrases “light and shadow” and “who shall live and who shall die?” a lot more then it does actually explaining shit about the setup. So, standard arcade shooter fare. Thankfully, the gameplay absolutely shines, expanding on the standard set by THOTD by playing with the hostage mechanic- here, you must shoot hard-to-hit targets off of people to save them, and hitting any other part of them turns them into a vampire- and introduces a visible Break Bar in boss fights that, when depleted, cancels their attack whilst registering damage on their main health bar. Neat touches on their own, but they ultimately lead to WOW Entertainment continuing to play with the hostage mechanics in The House Of The Dead 3 and The House Of The Dead 4 (in the former, you must save your partner from ambushes; in the latter, you must save yourself from ambushes), and carried the Break Bar over as well. The mash up of mysticism and science also informs the aesthetics of the game, leading to some utterly breathtaking level design that still holds up today despite the old technology, and a soundtrack that I’m legitimately a little sore never got an official release in any capacity because holy shit, trance/breakbeat and choral choirs never sounded as good together as they do here. The biggest Namco influence on the product is the extra modes and features packed into the console port of the game, which combined with the fact it runs on more or less the same tech as the arcade machine makes it the definitive version of it. Namco were kinda known for doing their best to add extra replayability to their light gun games when they hit the console market.

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Hell, team ups like that aren’t even the most surprising thng to come out of this popularity boom. No, the most surprising thing is the fact that companies began adapting non-light-gun-game franchises to fit the genre to some capacity. Capcom did it twice with Resident Evil, first by porting the second title in their Resident Evil Survivor series to the arcade (granted it still plays more like an FPS, but in spirit it counts), and then later produced the Umbrella Chronicles and Darkside Chronicles games for the Wii. Konami did the same with their seminal horror franchise by producing Silent Hill: The Arcade, to endless nadir of die hard fans of the series, and then later mining another beloved franchise of theirs to create Castlevania The Arcade, ALSO to the nadir of die hard fans. Christ, there’s even a Luigi’s Mansion Arcade coming sometime soon. Those latter two are also examples of the genre beginning to expand and evolve in directions nobody really expected it to, similarly to Namco’s ancient Japan Sensor Sword 'Em Up title MAZAN: Flash Of The Blade.

Figuring out how this was going to end was a tough one. Do I wax melancholic over the state of the genre in the current market? No, that’s a little glum and likely to conflict with the site's mission statement. Do I talk about how the games of the past still carry a shine in spite of that, make it more upbeat? Nah, that feels a little bit too easy-saccharine; something that doesn’t speak from personal experience. In fact, I admit that to some extent I did sacrifice personal experience within the text; I’ve made my feelings towards them obvious, but in the process of trying my hardest to stay informative and conscience I fear I may have sold short exactly why I wanted to do this article in the first place. And that reason is pretty simple; the endearing charm of each and every one of the games I've listed (and more besides) bypass every cynical synapse in my brain and still manage to wow me. Some of my favourite games of all time involve one or two people arming themselves with a gun and walking right into hell, blasting at all manner of freakish creatures- be they born of Man or of Satan- in the name of good. Well, sometimes personal glory or money, but mostly in the name of good. Why? Because I find it very fun. Because it really captures the spirit of the Samhain Season for me. Because I just find that shit really cool in a cheesy way.

That was one hell of a sappy close out to a shitload of guff about games you need plastic guns to play.

~ Decon (27/10/15)

images sourced from; MobyGames, The Arcade Flyer Archive, snkplaymore.co.jp, emuparadise.me, mugendude26.wix.com, youtube.com, vampire-night.com, silenthillmemories.com, thewebsiteofthedead.com, giantbomb.com, mynintendonews.com, and genkivideogames.com