Tulpa and I were talking on discord and we realized there are a massive number of games that unexpectedly turn into shooters out out of nowhere! If the vast majority of the game is something else, but becomes a shooter of some kind without warning at some point, especially near the end, it belongs on this list:
Kirby Superstar
Kirby’s Dream Land (in the middle, but it still happens)
Super Mario Land
Devil May Cry
Lost Planet (edge case, but I’m putting it here)
Magic Knight Rayearth
Star Fox Adventures (Also an edge case because you periodically visit these stages but the final boss being Andross pushes this over for me)
Super Smash Bros
Super Smash Bros. Melee
Super Smash Bros Ultimate
Kid Icarus
Loony Tunes (GB)
*Banjo Tooie (edge case, but it does have a rail shooter mini game very different from any part of the game in the middle).
Nier
Nier Automata
Tingle’s Rosy Rupee Land
Dynamite Headdy
Metal Slug 3
Super Frog (Amiga)
Rocket Knight Adventures
Kingdom Hearts
Kingdom Hearts 2
Kingdom Hearts 3
Kirby’s Adventure
Tankz! (PC)
Solar Jetman
Digimon World 4
Knights of the Old Republic (edge case but close enough)
Kirby’s Epic Yarn
Cuphead (kinda goes back and forth formally, edge case but on the list)
Ultima I (!?!) (PC)
Beyond Good and Evil
Gunstar Heroes
Gunstar Superheroes (Goes back and forth)
Megaman 5 (Gameboy)
Megaman 5
Megaman X4 (PSX/Saturn)
Megaman X5 (PSX/Saturn)
Megaman X8
Megaman 8 (PSX/Saturn
Burning Rangers (saturn)
Captain America and the Avengers
Cave Story
Felix the Cat (NES)
I Wanna Be the Guy
Jade Empire (Xbox/PC)
Kirby Super Star Ultra
Kirby and the Amazing Mirror
Kirby robobot (Edge case, recurring motif in the game)
La-Mulana (PC)
Machinarium (Probably doesn’t count, but the fact that there’s a shooting segment in it is wild and deserves to be noted here)
No More Heroes
SeGaGaGa
Shockman (PC Engine)
(The TV tropes article I’m refrencing for a few of these lists Sonic 2: special edition. I can’t exactly put it on the list but I do want to note it’s presence)
Shooting game, AKA, a shmup, shoot-em-up or a shooter. Forced scrolling while being able to fire a protective ahead of you.
Think something like R-Type, Ikaruga, or Star Fox.
And specifically the phenomena of this popping up almost entirely without warning in a way that clashes with the rest of the game design.
Tooie doesn’t really count here since that game constantly switches how it plays entirely as a feature, it really telegraphs it’s shooter segments, and it’s not really the same type of game.
…although it does have a rail shooting segment in the witch theme park completely different from any other mini game, so maybe it should count because of that?
This is absolutely not an edge case and is very emblematic of the Capcom era of “suddenly the last level is a different game” design. I mean, it is more of a 3d vague rail shoooter thing, but I think it should count for that.
This one is great because it does the design change twice, first becoming a Star Fox shooter, then becoming a crappy half-assed flight sim.
The Kirby series always had that sudden ‘shift to STG’ as signature for its games. The first game on the Gameboy has you fighting an air balloon as a level boss, while Kirby’s Adventure on the NES uses the completed Star Rod to fight the big bad at the end in the air/space/other-dimension. They’ve codified the shift as unlocking Kirby’s powers fully, no longer needing to float and puff up but breaking entirely the grip of gravity.
My friend who made I Get This Call Every Day tells me he nearly had a shmup game based on IGTCED ready to go for April Fool’s Day, pitched as a sequel.
mon