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Castle Crashers

Born out the popular Flash website Newgrounds, indie developer The Behemoth released Alien Hominid, an homage to arcade run-and-guns like Metal Slug. While finding modest success, their next game would take on a different classic genre: the beat-em-up. Initially titled “Ye Olde Sidescroller”, it was eventually re-titled Castle Crashers, and released in 2008 for Xbox Live Arcade to great acclaim.

Dolphin Blue

Dolphin Blue is a bit of an oddity. Developed and published by Sammy for their Atomiswave hardware, it's a run-n-gun arcade game released in 2003, at a time when run-n-guns were mostly out of the mainstream. It's also very obviously inspired by Metal Slug, which was, not coincidentally, the only other run-and-gun series that was still on the marketplace at this point.

King & Balloon

Released by Namco in the summer of 1980, King & Balloon is a shoot em up in the vein of Galaxian, but trades the outer space theme for pseudo-medieval setting. In the game, the player controls two green men who carry a cannon, as they defend the king below them from getting abducted by the balloons above, which keep invading the lower part of the screen while also shooting projectiles. Once all the balloons are shot down, the game moves on to the next level.

Seicross

There are three common perspectives used by traditional shoot-em-ups: horizontal (the side of the ship), vertical (the top of the ship), and rail (the back of the ship). However, oblique shooters are surprisingly uncommon. Slipheed did an oblique take on the vertical shooter, and Nichibutsu did their own take from a different perspective with their 1984 game Seicross. Because of it being a sidescrolling game, its perspective is actually similar to that of belt-scrolling beat-em-ups. The game was actually developed by a company called Alice, and published by Nichibutsu. It was designed by Yosuke Yamashita, who also worked a few other games for Nichibutsu like Chouji Meikyuu Legion and Mighty Guy.

Tail ‘Gator

Developed and published by Natsume, Tail 'Gator is a likeable sidescrolling action-platformer for the Game Boy. As the story goes, a dragon warlord known as Basso Gila teleported his castle and armies to the peaceful kingdom of Moberry, which is populated by anthropomorphic beings. Basso Gila intends to destroy Moberry and extend his power, but the council of elders of Moberry send a highland alligator named Charly in order to stop Gila and his forces.

One Piece Mansion

After the PlayStation 2 reached the world in 2000, the library of the original PlayStation began to fill with shovelware, but also some quirky Japanese niche titles with less development costs that wouldn't fare well on Sony's newest system. One Piece Mansion falls into the latter category. Unrelated to the best-selling manga about pirates, One Piece Mansion puts you in the shoes (even though he doesn't really wear shoes) of a child landlord named Polpo. In the story mode, his little sister is kidnapped by a rival mansion owner named Chocola. Polpo must go through seven missions in order to get his little sister back. It's a short story mode, but it does a good job of teaching the player how to play the game. Strangely enough, this game was directed by Hideaki Itsuno, who is best known for directing and planning various Capcom fighting games, as well as the majority of the Devil May Cry series. But with One Piece Mansion Itsuno shows that his directing skills can be applied to an entirely different genre.

Captain Tomaday

On a dark and stormy night, a mad botanist is doing a bit of research in his laboratory, when a tomato plant near some chemicals drops a tomato into a beaker. The beaker explodes, and out comes a tomato with a face and limbs that says "MUTATE!" The scientist, covered in soot and ash, gives the new tomato a tired expression, as if he feels he is getting too old for this stuff. The tomato then runs off to stop the forces of evil eggplant aliens, under the name Captain Tomaday!

Golly! Ghost!

Golly! Ghost! is a lightgun redemption arcade game developed by Namco, a company that is no stranger to games that star ghosts. It takes place entirely within a house, seemingly populated with no humans. However, this house is not technically rendered on the screen. Rather, it's an electric diorama with tiny mechanical doors that open and close. The in-game graphics of the titular ghosts are then laid over the diorama, and come out of the electrical doors. The score and timer are also in a separate LCD display. There are four types of regular ghosts: (from slowest to fastest in movement speed) blue, yellow, green, and red. A fifth ghost will appear which nets more points than a regular ghost, usually taking the form of an everyday object such as a hamburger or a football. Players have to use the guns mounted to the arcade cabinet to shoot as many ghosts as they can before the time runs out. If the player is able to survive long enough, a boss ghost will appear. If this boss ghost is shot enough times, it will split into several smaller ghosts that can also be shot. Once the timer runs out, the players score is added up, and they can move on to the next stage if they have racked up enough points from shooting ghosts.

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