A thread on 5ch’s “Hello! Project” board looking back at groundbreaking shoot-’em-ups (STGs) took off. It started with a post naming Space Invaders, Xevious, TwinBee, Gradius, Bungeling Bay, Star Soldier, R-Type, and DoDonPachi, and from there posters kept piling on memories of older titles like Galaga, Galaxian, Time Pilot, Bosconian, and Scramble. By the end, opinion split on whether Xevious was truly “groundbreaking” or just the “original” of its kind — some praised the novelty of its ever-shifting vertical-scrolling scenery and the idea of targeting air and ground enemies separately, while others countered that the real achievement was the technical skill needed to actually pull the idea off.
What people said
1AnonymousOct 14, 2026 22:45
Invaders – the original shooter
Xevious – the definitive vertical shooter
TwinBee – 2-player co-op
5AnonymousOct 14, 2026 22:51
Swap out Star Soldier for the original — Star Force.
7AnonymousOct 14, 2026 22:53
Personally I like Galaga, but Galaxian, where your main ship merges into a powered-up form, deserves way more credit than it gets.
The original 360-degree shooter has gotta be Time Pilot.
14AnonymousOct 14, 2026 22:59
Isn't it Bosconian?
25AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:08
Re: #14
I always wondered what "Arai! Arai!" was even supposed to mean. (The English voice sample actually says "Alert! Alert!" — it just sounds like that to Japanese ears.)
45AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:20
Re: #14
Bosconian's 8-directional, though.
15AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:00
I guess whichever game first introduced a bomb weapon would be the ancestor of the whole bullet-hell genre?
18AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:03
Rather than Xevious or TwinBee, which split your fire between air and ground targets, it was the Star Force lineage — where one shot hits both — that really caught on. That frees up a spare button for a bomb (see Tiger-Heli).
23AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:05
Phoenix (it even has a final boss stage)
26AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:08
I still fire up Galaga every now and then — the enemy flight patterns are just beautiful.
27AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:09
Re: #25
I always figured "Arai" meant something like "abunai" (dangerous) — turns out I wasn't far off.
28AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:09
Philosoma was the first to bring diagonal movement into a genre that had only ever been strictly vertical or horizontal.
30AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:10
Moon Cresta, Galaga, Gaplus — I love how each one has its own distinct enemy-death sound.
34AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:12
There's this rundown little cafe in Tsubame, Niigata, run by an old couple — basically a pilgrimage site for retro-cafe fans. They've still got a working Galaga '88 and an Invaders cabinet.
https://imgur.com/dF8ykNs.jpg
https://imgur.com/Gd9qJhl.jpg
https://imgur.com/I30g8Tj.jpg
38AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:14
Sky Kid — forced scrolling to the left.
40AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:15
These days it seems "shooting game" doesn't mean this kind of plane-bombing game anymore — it means shooting strangers online with guns.
48AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:21
Re: #40
That's an FPS, not an STG.
42AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:17
Mr. Heli's Great Adventure — the player's ship is basically a knockoff of Omoroid.
43AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:17
Dezaemon — you could make all the graphics and music yourself.
44AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:19
Otocky — a landmark title that paved the way for later rhythm games.
46AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:20
No Darius or Space Harrier on here? Unacceptable.
47AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:21
I honestly have no idea what's supposed to be so groundbreaking about Xevious.
49AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:23
No Atari's Star Wars?
Start over.
50AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:24
No, the real original 360-degree shooter is Asteroids Belt.
51AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:25
Games with a 3D perspective feel like a different category to me.
52AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:25
Being the "original"
doesn't automatically make it "groundbreaking."
57AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:29
Re: #52
Well, OP's the one who called it the "original" in the first place.
53AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:25
What made Xevious new was its vertically scrolling stages with constantly shifting scenery, plus the concept of targeting air enemies and ground enemies separately.
56AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:29
Re: #53
Was that really groundbreaking, though?
Isn't it more that the technical skill to actually realize the idea was the impressive part??
54AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:27
I was just a kid in the Atari Star Wars and Space Harrier era, but I remember watching wide-eyed, thinking the future had arrived.
55AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:28
> the concept of targeting air enemies and ground enemies separately
Scramble did that first.
58AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:31
Re: #55
Nobody even remembers Scramble these days.
60AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:33
No game has topped Xevious yet.
61AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:35
Isn't Front Line a shooter too?
69AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:45
Re: #61
Same logic as saying Guerrilla War isn't an STG.
64AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:37
R-Type
A groundbreaking horizontal shooter packed with ideas.
The PC Engine port was also a faithful, excellent conversion.
67AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:44
Re: #64
Funny how the arcade version slows down but the PC Engine port doesn't.
74AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:54
Re: #64
You could even credit it with establishing the whole "game ends after two loops" convention.
65AnonymousOct 14, 2026 23:40
Xevious also had fun hidden stuff, like the 1-up flag and those ground objects that would sprout up out of nowhere.
It was also great that if you dropped in a 100-yen coin and immediately kept firing bombs, the word "NAMCO" would appear on screen.
Same with the copier-like enemy, Zevios — keep shooting it and that company's name would show up on screen too.
Background and Key Points of the Discussion
Xevious (1983, Namco) has long been praised as “groundbreaking” for splitting the player’s weapons between dedicated air and ground attacks, and for packing its scrolling backgrounds with hidden items and ruin-like motifs. Scramble (1981, Konami), raised in the thread as a rival contender, actually predates Xevious — it has players manage fuel while bombing ground bases and separately intercepting airborne enemies. Opinions in the thread split over what counts as the “original” versus what counts as “groundbreaking.” The distinction comes down to two different yardsticks — which game existed first, versus which game influenced later titles more — and these “who-did-it-first” debates often end up conflating the two. Not mentioned in the thread: Star Force’s design, which let a single shot hit both air and ground enemies, freed up a spare button for a bomb — a convention later adopted by games like Tiger-Heli. That’s arguably just as important a turning point in how STGs split up their control schemes.
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