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The Cool Ship needs an equally cool weapon. If it's a sufficiently humongous Cool Ship, it will be equipped with a Laser Beam on steroids: the Wave Motion Gun — an enormous Ray Gun that fires a massive energy beam capable of blowing away an enemy ship (in the "blow a battleship in half" sense), sometimes an entire fleet, with one shot, and maybe even blowing up an entire planet. Sometimes, it doesn't necessarily have to hit. If you're too close, the sheer energy bleeding off from the beam can be deadly.
Frequently, the Wave Motion Gun is made of Lost Technology, or is an experimental prototype, but sometimes they're a dime a dozen. It also explains how a small fleet can win consistently against enemies that grossly outnumber them: the defense units just have to hold their ground until the Gun(s) is ready to fire. Invariably, just before firing, The Captain has to order the attack.
This sort of weapon could also qualify as a Kill Sat, or a BFG if it is held or installed in a Humongous Mecha. If the bad guys have one, it's a Death Ray. Wave Motion Guns usually require a significant charging period before and after firing. (Occasionally depicted by Sucking In Lines.)
See also Wave Motion Sword, Kamehame Hadoken, There Is No Kill Like Overkill.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- The eponymous main weapon of the Uchuu Senkan Yamato. Notably, the original Wave Motion Gun itself wasn't just a heroes-only weapon. By season 2 most ships in the Earth Defence Force carried one.
- Also, once exposed to the Wave Motion Gun, everyone else tried to copy or modify one. Desslok/Dessler had his Desslok Cannon, said to be weaker than the Wave Motion Gun, but no so much that you'd really notice, and the Comet Empire had their weaker (only one ship at a time), but longer ranged 'Magna-Flame Cannon'.
- Blue Noah the expy/ripoff of Yamato by the same producer (The Nish) has the Anti-Proton Gun.
- The Macross Cannon, AKA Superdimensonal Converging Beam Weapon, as well as the Grand Cannon, in Super Dimension Fortress Macross and its sequels. Originally found on most Zentradi ships of the line, by the time of Macross Frontier the concept is increasingly common in the U.N. Spacy fleet, finding itself as the Heavy Quantum Convergence Cannon of the smaller carrier Macross Quarter.
- Frontier really takes a cake here. They managed to pack a fully functional (if smallish) Macross Cannon into a fighter! It doesn't have as much oomph as does battleship version, but stil has enough power to punch out the Deflector Shields of a capital ship.
- Notably, the original Macross Cannon provided the impetus of the plot: the Supervision Army gunship that later became the Macross had been rigged to fire upon Zentradi reconnaissance ships, which it did, prompting the arrival of a full combat fleet. Also, activation of the ship's Fold Engines left the Cannon bereft of power conduits for a while, prompting the iconic transformation (which allowed the Cannon to reconnect with its power source due to the new configuration.)
- Also, while the original Cannon was an integral part of the Macross' design, posterior models of similar (and superior) classes modified it into a detachable gunpod.
- The Zentradi Mobile Fortresses (Fulbtzs Berrentzs class) were each equipped with a Wave Motion Gun so powerful that any direct fleet engagement essentially boiled down to the question "who will be the first to fire?" This is vividly demonstrated in the original movie where Bodolza is so adamant about opening up on Lapramiz' MF that he willingly sacrifices thousands of his own screening force ships which just happen to be in the line of fire.
- Synchro Cannons in Robotech The Shadow Chronicles.
- The Nadesico, from Martian Successor Nadesico, had the Gravity Cannon. When that got old and stopped working against the enemy, they upgraded to the Phase Transition Cannon.
- Mobile Suit Gundam and its sequels, spinoffs, and Alternate Universes have a number of these, starting with the Solar Ray, an entire space colony converted into a laser cannon (That's no space station...)
- The Gundam Wing anime has a veritable collection of these:
- In the early episodes, the role was filled by the Noventa Cannon, which barely had a chance to fire once before it was dismantled piecemeal by no more than two mobile suits manned by secondary character pilots.
- Next came the cannon mounted to the Fortress Barge space battle station. In keeping with wave cannon tradition, it required a lengthly charging time and room of technicians to fire properly.
- Finally, the weapon mounted to Battleship Libra was the series' crowning achievement in high-velocity destruction. Along with wiping out any number of generic mobile suits, it destroyed not one, but two of the titular Gundams. Also, it's lengthly recharge time was justified due to the fact that the engineers who designed it built a flaw into the design so that it could not be fired in rapid succession.
- Wing Gundam's signature Buster Rifle happened to be a handheld one of these, and its successor Wing Gundam Zero wielded a Twin Buster Rifle that not only packed twice the firepower, but could be split into a pair of Buster Rifles! The Twin Buster Rifle is so powerful, that the recoil from firing it 3 times in a row is one of the primary causes of the destruction of the Wing Zero Custom
- In Endless Waltz, there is the Tallgeese III's Mega Cannon, which Zechs uses to destroy the Mariemaia Army's base at asteroid MO-3.
- Though not as devastating or as iconic as the Wing or Wing Zero's Buster Rifle, the Vayeate mobile suit carried around a large rifle very similar to its counterpart on the Gundams. Considering the Vayeate's purpose was to focus entirely on offensive capability and that it was designed by the Gundam Scientists, saying this laser was big may be something of an understatement.
- Gundam SEED and Gundam SEED Destiny have a few of 'em:
- Gundam SEED spacecraft of the Archangel (Earth Alliance vessels; specifically, the Archangel and the Dominion) and Izumo (Orb vessels; the Kusanagi) class have a weapon known as the Lohengrin, which is quite close to being a Wave Motion Gun. It shoots a beam of ANTIMATTER at the target, although it's somewhat based in fact: It is a positron beam cannon, and positrons are a form of antimatter that have been proven to exist (they're electrons, but with a positive charge instead of the requisite negative charge). They have to be charged before use, which involves Sucking In Lines.
- Positron guns in SEED and Destiny are clearly based on aforementioned Blue Noah version, up to the placement of the gun and charging animations. A long tradition, there!
- The GENESIS (from Gundam SEED) is a Wave Motion Gun powered by freakin' NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS! (Technically it fires a laser made of gamma radiation instead of light)
- Gundam SEED Destiny has the Archangel and Kusanagi, which still have their Lohengrins. There are more Izumo-class Orb vessels, as well, meaning there are even more ships with the weapons, as well as artillery versions used by ground forces. ZAFT even gets in on the action with the Minerva, which has the Tannhauser, a positron cannon (essentially a positron beam cannon without the word "beam" in its name).
- Remember the GENESIS from Gundam SEED? Well, Gundam SEED Destiny has the Neo GENESIS. It's a smaller, faster-charging version of the original GENESIS, which was destroyed at the end of Gundam SEED. Destiny also has the Requiem, which is a giant beam cannon fired from the far side of the moon (its beam can be redirected with magnetic fields, allowing it to be aimed at virtually anything).
- And don't forget GENESIS Alpha in Gundam SEED Astray.
- The Satellite Cannons of Gundam X, which had the power required to fire it beamed to it from a base on the moon.
- Gundam 00 has Virtue's and Seravee's GN Bazookas, as well as Memento Mori in the second season.
- Don't forget the Gadessa's GN Mega Launcher, or the GN Particle Cannon on Big Bad's mothership with the power to take out an entire fleet.
- It's actually kinda of a custom in Gundam now that every series must a huge Wave Motion Gun, sometime even two in one series. It usually involved in the final battle or close to the end. It is usually destroyed by the heros blowing up its weak point and causing the whole thing to go kaboom.
- The Gryps 2 Colony Laser apparently figured prominently in Zeta Gundam.
- G Gundam goes Beyond The Impossible with Crazy Awesome with Neo-America's secret weapon- the Statue Of Liberty Cannon! It shoots from the torch.
- The Iron Ri Maajon (and a number of other Ri Maajon patterns) from Simoun.
- They aren't guns, they're Wave Motion Prayers.
- The Positron Rifle from Neon Genesis Evangelion. The rifle can manage just two shots in the available time and needs to be slowly charged with all the electrical power of Japan.
- The angel said Positron Rifle is employed against (Ramiel) produces a beam that goes through several buildings. Then it applies more power and fires right through a custom heat shield many meters thick. Next comes a series of blasts that seriously disfigure the surrounding countryside, vaporizing elements of Tokyo 3's point defense system. Finally (when hit by a beam from the Positron Rifle mentioned above), it gets really pissed off and charges a blast that melts away a fairly large mountain.
- They also had a Positron Cannon, a combat version of the Rifle(the rifle was a prototype and wasn't supposed to be used at all). Too bad it didn't really help Asuka when facing of against the 15th.
- From Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, the title character has two attacks that are basically a magical Wave Motion Gun, the first being "Divine Buster," and the second being the even more powerful "Starlight Breaker." The Cool Ship, the Arthra, also has the "Arc-en-ciel".
- Several of Nanoha's other characters have Wave Motion Guns of their own; Fate and Hayate in particular have their respective attacks "Plasma Zamber Breaker" and "Ragnarok", and the original Reinforce had a virtual arsenal of these attacks, many of them copied from the heroines.
- Arika's "Bolt From The Blue" in Mai-Otome. Unfortunately, her equal and opposite number Nina has a similarly-powerful attack as well in both her robes. Natsuki also has her Howling Silverwolf attack, debuting near the end of the series in a massive Beam O War with Nagi's siege cannon.
- Similarly, in Mai-HiME, Mai's CHILD Kagutsuchi can take out an entire aerial fleet.
- The super weapon in Black Heaven falls under this trope as well as being rather hard to activate.
- The rifles carried by the gigantic Nobuseri leaders almost qualify, but more properly, the main guns of the Imperial Capital Samurai 7.
- One of the most powerful ones is the Ideon Gun from Space Runaway Ideon, which can devastate a good portion of a star system. It's particularly fun to use in the Super Robot Wars series, as it can oftentimes wipe out the entire enemy force(and maybe some friendlies) in a single shot if you line it up right.
- Both the OVA and TV incarnations of Ifurita from El Hazard wield a wave motion gun in the form of her "Power Key Staff." How she wields it is probably the crucial difference between the two worlds: OVA-Ifurita is a tragic figure, struggling to balance her nascent emotions with her nature as a living weapon of mass destruction; TV-Ifurita is a massive ditz with a really big gun.
- The manga series Blame! features the Gravitational Beam Emitter, a wave motion pistol. It's power is so great, that if it were to be used in a regular atmospheric environment (like, you know, ours...) it would have irreversible environmental side effects. Or so we've been told...
- In the Digimon franchise, a few machine-based Mons have these, most notably Imperialdramon (his type isn't Machine if you wanna get technical, but his design is based on Transforming Mecha.) He's got three, ranging from "standard finishing attack" to "frag the whole area" to "Spirit Bomb as strong as a small nuke."
- Odd as it might seem, Excalibur from Fate Stay Night and Fate Zero is essentially a Wave Motion Sword. When it is charged, it can fire off waves of destructive light. Using it one-handed reduces it to mere concrete-rending level; using with both hands can raze cities.
- Bizarrely enough, One Piece. How often do you see a pirate sloop armed with one of these things?
- The Big O has the Final Stage attack, which, in something of a twist, misses.
- Considering how often it's mentioned on the show's own page, it's a wonder Code Geass hasn't been mentioned yet. Season 2 ends up positively inundated with them, and they're all as ridiculously powerful as one would expect. Interestingly, though, the series seems to use them as stand-ins for nuclear weapons, which were not developed in its timeline. Until they were.
- Guchuko from Potemayo has two "horns" on the sides of her head that function like this.
- In Zoids, a few Zoid types are equipped with Charged Particle Cannons, usually piloted by Dragons or the Big Bad. Of particular note is the Berserk Fury, which has three charged particle cannons.
- Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind, anyone? The God Warrior's primary weapon is essentially a WMG. Which is of the same design, origin, and firepower as the Eye of the Crypt of Shuwa. The God Warrior and the Crypt even fire their respective beams at one another during the manga's climax.
- While we're on Miyazaki, we forgot Castle In The Sky! Sodom and Gomorrah were but two places destroyed by it, according to Muska.
- In the original Getter Robo, the Eagle Unit (one of the three machines that forms the titular Combining Mecha) was a small jet that could fire puny laser beams. By Shin Getter Robo it had upgraded itself to a beyond planet sized star-ship, and its laser appropriately became a fleet/planet busting Wave Motion Gun with an energy output high enough to potentially cause a Big Bang.
- Vash the Stampede's Angel Arm is a proper, honest-to-goodness wave motion gun. If it gets shot at medium power, it annihilates entire cities. If it's shot at full blast, it carves gigantic craters in other planets. The best part is that it basically consists of a tiny cylinder of Applied Phlebotinum in his revolver. Talk about miniaturization...
- In the Naruto manga series, Pain, the Big Bad leader of the Akatsuki, uses a gravity-based version of this to flatten Konoha.
- Flatten's an understatement.
- Or the Technique Madara is making with the Bijuu, capable of destroying entire COUNTRIES in an instant.
- Possibly a lampshade on this in Excel Saga, where Excel calls the weapon on the Puchuu starship a Wave Motion Gun.
- Parodied in Sora Wo Kakeru Shoujo. When Leopard asks Akiha to fire his antimatter cannon — and he's a living space colony, so this is a huge cannon — he prepares for it with bravado. It's a dud. Then played straight when the right components are obtained. The show being what it is, though...
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann 's Big Bang Storm is a borderline version; How many times do you see someone being attacked with the Everlasting Hellfire of The Universe's Creation?
- What's more important about this one is the fact that the main characters not only block it, but through sheer awesome absorb it and turn its power against its wielder.
- In El Hazard The Magnificent World Ifurita's full power gun blast is basically a "nuclear bomb ray." She destroys an entire city with in in the anime, and a mountain in the manga. It takes some time to recharge, but not much.
- Evangeline from Mahou Sensei Negima uses one to blow up the Demon God in the Kyoto arc.
- One of Asuna's Flash Backs reveals during magical war, among (slightly smaller than the above mentioned demon) god solders, ancient war dragons, and Magic Knights, battle whale ships that wielded one of these called the divine/spirit cannon. Presumably the strongest artillery weapon in the Magic World, Asuna's Magic Cancel completely eliminated it.
- Detonator Orgun has a solar-powered, chest-mounted WMG.
Film
- The best-known example of all is the Death Stars planet-destroying cannon in Star Wars.
- The "Death Blossom" that was installed in The Last Starfighter, although that's more of a Macross Missile Massacre combined with a bit of Beam Spam rather than a Wave Motion Gun, but has the same energy-draining drawback.
- The Zeus Cannon from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.
- Gamera's Mana Cannon and any variant of Godzilla's Breath Weapon, be it Red, Golden or Spiraling Red all count as such. When things are hit with them, they die almost universally and they often re-aranges the landscape. Godzilla's usually occur after a brief chargeup period. Gamera's does as well, but also has other nasty side effects—like cutting him off from humanity and draining the health of the earth itself.
- The surprisingly good Roger Corman B-Movie Battle Beyond The Stars (Seven Samurai IN SPACE) features a weapon called the "Stellar Converter". It appears to be exactly what it says on the tin, in that when the villian uses it, the weapon appears to ignite an inhabited planet into a small white dwarf star.
Literature
- The Dr. Device/Little Doctor in Ender's Game, so named because it was developed as the Molecular Disruptor Device. Somewhat different in that it has a short-range area effect rather than being a projectile or beam, but this field can start a chain reaction of apparently unlimited size - it obliterates everything in its area of effect, everything next to its area of effect, everything next to that, and so on until it hits an area without enough mass to continue the chain-reaction. Ender asks if the device could be used on a planet; the response is a horrified shudder. And then he tries it on the Bugger homeworld, annihilating it in a single shot.
- In E.E. "Doc" Smith's novel Grey Lensmen, we are introduced to the sunbeam, a weapon which concentrates into a single beam the entire radiant energy output of a star.
- Also, throwing planets at things (or crushing them between two planets). Later, because even that isn't quite powerful enough, we get planets from an alternative universe with a velocity greater than that of light thrown at enemy-held planets.
- In one of John Campbell's Arcot, Wade and Morley novels, the titular heroes come up with the molecular motion gun, which turns the random molecular motion of an object (heat) into motion in a single direction. The ray is catalytic in nature, so basically any object it is used on, from a city to (in one chapter) an entire star, is a) frozen to absolute zero, and b) hurled off in any direction desired.
- Stephen Baxter's Xeelee stories are nothing but greater and greater Wave Motion Guns. Wormhole weapons are used to conquer Earth. Humanity escapes this after accidentally using some old Xelee tech to hasten the life of a sun. We rebuild and conquer everything in the Galaxy except the Xeelee at the center. Weapons include neutron stars being used as bullets. This gets worse. The Xeelee had a greater foe. The photino birds are a form of exotic matter lifeform going around blowing up every sun in the universe that's not already a red dwarf in order to make the universe more palatable (for them). In response the Xeelee manipulate the entire history of the Universe to escape, sending fortresses in every galaxy in the universe to the Big Bang and spending all 15 billion years of history building a portal to other universes.
- The most powerful weapon in the Antares novels is probably the antimatter projector, which fires a continuous stream of antimatter. Not only is it pretty much unbeatable, but it's standard armament for both human and alien blastships.
- Stanislaw Lem's Invincible, while having a crew that was at best Mildly Military, certainly didn't lack in firepower. Even its recon planes packed an antimatter gun, and the starship herself could, quoting from the novel itself, "boil a medium-sized sea".
- This, however, takes a backseat to a couple of Space Opera examples. Ed Hamilton's "The Star Kings" featured a Destructor — the gun that destroyed the space itself. It ate up a good part of a starship's energy balance, but where it hit, nothing remained.
- On the other hand, in Sergey Snegov's "The Men like Gods" people used similar device as an engine. While not initially being all that warlike, they found the side effects of their favourite space drive quite useful later, when rather unfriendly aliens appeared.
- The heroes went on with befriending the crap out of said aliens, in the best Nanoha-style, and then teaming with them, when the next bunch of the enemies arrived. THREE TIMES. Interesting folk, Space Opera writers...
- In Larry Niven's Known Space stories, there exists several of these:
- In "Ringworld's Children", human starships are armed with a weapon called simply "The Anti-Matter Bullet"; guess what it fires.
- In "Protector", the Brennan-Monster destroys an entire fleet of Pak warships with something he calls the Finnagle Gun. It fires bowling-ball-sized pellets of pure neutronium.
- In "The Man-Kzin Wars", the Terran system is defended from invaders by the Mercury Laser; its a laser the size of the equator of the planet Mercury, and is capable of destroying ships as far out as the orbit of Neptune. It turns out that while a purpose-engineered Wave Motion Gun is fun in itself, lasers powerful enough to drive solar sails are just as grand.
- In Jack L. Chalker's "Well World" series the entire universe is actually a simulation running on a gigantic computer called the Well of Souls. Humanity figures out how to hack it to a minor degree and builds "Zinder Nullifiers" for use in a major intergalactic war, weapons that basically reformat a large region of space into a default empty vacuum state. The war gets a bit heated, the Nullifiers are overused, and the Well World starts suffering a progressive memory fault that will eventually destroy the entire universe unless our intrepid heroes are able to get into the Well of Souls' control center to fix it.
- Colin Kapp's The Chaos Weapon was powered by pulling a star into its ammunition feed; it used a ring of black holes to focus the resulting beam. What this beam did was manipulate entropy: if something bad would ever happen in the target area, the Chaos Weapon could make it happen NOW. Lightning strikes, dams giving way, earthquakes.... You say that star's not due to go nova for another twelve million years? Guess what.
- The various Precursor races in Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth series developed a number of these, especially the Tar-Aiym and Hur'rikku who fought a galaxy-spanning war 500,000 years in the past. One weapon (the Krang) requires a planet-sized power source and creates miniature artificial black holes, while another (the anticollapsar weapon) creates reversed black holes made out of pure antimatter. The latter's unique power source has a charging time on the order of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years, quite possibly a record in fiction.
- It gets better in the Grand Finale, Flinx Transcendent. Flinx finds a roaming Tar-Aiym weapons platform that has hundreds of Krangs, which when fired simultaneously can cross the intergalactic void and destroy entire star systems from the backlash alone. Even that isn't enough to affect the Ultimate Evil, though, so he goes and locates a Xunca superweapon that extends across multiple dimensions and pulls in several million galaxies' worth of energy.
- The 'Hell-class' weapons from Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space. Some can blast big holes in a planet's crust. Others can destroy stars (or so we're told). The Inhibitors get some as well; how does a stellar flamethrower sound?
Live Action TV
- The main weapon of the Excalibur in Crusade.
- The primary weapon of Lexx. (In fact, the only weapon of The Lexx.) Being a living ship and the most powerful weapon in two universes, it's not like the Lexx needs additional firepower. As an added bonus, the CGI effect of the Lexx firing even looks like a wave front.
- Also, in the very first episode in the very first minute, there's a rather hellish weapon that erradicates the surface of a planet in about 5 shots.
- That would be the Foreshadow, the flagship of His Divine Shadow.
- In Star Trek TOS, the episode The Doomsday Machine features a giant space carrot that goes around mindlessly destroying planets. The episode makes a very un-subtle allusion to the H-bomb.
- In a stroke of Irony, it is then stopped by essentially a real H-Bomb - impulse engines overload.
- In Star Trek The Next Generation, the navigational deflector dish of the Enterprise-D is modified into one of these on two separate occasions, most notably during "The Best of Both Worlds", where it was used against a Borg cube. It didn't work. It also didn't work the only other time it was used, to try to free the ship from a subspace anomaly. Other than its complete failure in field testing, the deflector "cannon" featured all of the drawbacks of the Wave Motion Gun trope, including long charge times, potential damage to the ship from the firing process, and even the necessity of clearing all the decks surrounding the dish to avoid irradiating the crew. This editor wonders whether the weapon would have fared better if tested on the Enterprise's sister ship... the USS Yamato.
- In the Expanded Universe novel Vendetta, the USS Repulse uses the deflector dish weapon to blow another Borg ship to bits. To be fair, though, that cube had already been heavily damaged in a battle with a spaceborne version of The Juggernaut.
- Conversely, the future Enterprise in "All Good Things" features an enormous phaser cannon on the bottom of its saucer section which can destroy powerful Klingon warships with a single shot; it does not appear to cause significant power drain or require a long reloading time.
- In Star Trek Voyager, the Doctor uses a weapon called the "Photonic Cannon" during one of his daydreams. Obviously the Voyager has no such weapon, but they later pretend to in order to scare off a superior foe.
- Species 8472 can combine the output of nine ships into one single wave of destruction—which even looks like a wave.
- In Power Rangers, the heavier Humongous Mecha tend to have these. The drawbacks usually aren't mentioned... however, such an attack is usually only used as a finisher or after conventional weapons have already been tried. Rangers themselves can often combine their weapons for a smaller one of these.
- The Ori beam weapon in Stargate SG-1, and subsequently the Asgard beam weapon mounted on Earth ships.
- The Vorlon planet destroyer ship in Babylon 5.
- A better example would be the Excalibur's main weapon in Crusade.
- In Gene Roddenbery's Andromeda, the big bad has ships equipped with Point Singularity Projectors. Essentially capable of firing off black holes which measure several dozen meters across and can blow holes in anything, from spaceships to planets, to a sun.
Real Life
Tabletop Games
- Nova Cannons in Warhammer 40000.
- Not to mention the Blackstone Fortresses' combined-shot star-killing trick, or the aptly named Planet Killer.
- Planetside, the Shadowsword's Volcano cannon probably counts, as it is immensely powerful - it is a Titan gun, after all - but drains the capacitators, rendering it unable to move or fire again until they have recharged.
- Spinal mount particle accelerators and meson guns in Traveller.
- Maulers in Star Fleet Battles, a ship built around a Wave Motion Gun and its associated power systems. Very effective in the hands of a skilled player with a grasp of the right tactics to employ them to their best, less so otherwise.
- The Godspear of the Five-Metal Shrike from Exalted. It does, effectively, infinite damage at ground zero. If you have the right charms, though...you can block it.
- Yu Gi Oh has a couple of these, such as the much-loved/loathed/feared/dreaded Wave Motion Cannon, which charges up as the turns go by and able to be removed from the field to blast the enemy for 1000 damage per turn it had charged, Sattelite Cannon, a monster that cannot be killed by anything below a certain level and possessing a similar charge-up ability (1000 ATK per turn, loses it after it attacks), and more than one of Seto Kaiba's signature monsters — XYZ Dragon Cannon uses this whenever he discards, and Blue-Eyes White Dragon happens to have this as an attack. Which was later made into a card,
 namely a Raigeki Expy.
- Although Aberrant characters are generally played at a much lower level of power, akin to your average Marvel Comics character, the game has Quantum powers at levels 4, 5, and 6 (which could only be acquired after a very long campaign if you play by the standard rules.) One of the level 6 powers is Quantum Inferno which allows the character to fire a Quantum Bolt capable of punching a hole, hundreds of kilometers wide, clean through the planet (which needless to say is the immediate predecessor to the planet's destruction.)
Video Games
- Just about every fighter in the R-Type series has one, complete with charge up! It's even CALLED a Wave Cannon!
- The giant warship in stage 3 of R-Type Final has a giant version of this, capable of destroying entire planets.
- Super-powerful Wave Cannons a common phenomenon in the R-Type universe (the boss of stage 1 in Delta, Moritz-G, has one, the 'boss' of stage 3 in Delta has two even larger ones, the boss of stage 1 in Final also has one... and so on). A few that're worth noting would be the Utgarda Loki in Tactics, and the Giga Wave Cannon in Final, that can be charged for 7 loops, and instantly destroys any enemy that can die in any difficulty, and it goes through physical obstacles like, say, meteors. In fact, the 'Final' Wave Cannon used to destroy the Bydo Core in stage F-A basically looks and acts like a fully charged Giga Wave Cannon.
- The "Phase Transit Cannon" from Wing Commander 2, and the Nephilim-derived fleet killing plasma cannon equipped on the mothership of Wing Commander Prophecy.
- The main gun of the Behemoth from Wing Commander III fits this trope perfectly—the Behemoth being a huge honkin' cannon with a ship wrapped around it.
- The siege cannon in the Real Time Strategy game Homeworld Cataclysm. It takes several real-time minutes to charge, and even when the fire button is hit, the shot takes an extra few seconds to charge up.
- Another weapon seen in Cataclysm, the Repulsor Cannon that can be fitted to Archangel Dreadnoughts and forms the primary weapon of the Nomad Moon in the final single-player mission might be considered one of these, for all that it's actually not all that useful.
- Also, the Dreadnought and Sajuuk from Homeworld 2.
- In Super Robot Wars: Original Generation, the capital ship "Hagane" wields a massive, energy-guzzling Tronium Cannon. However, it can be fired with no real recharge time for the ship, and is in fact used often with the 'gravity brake' off so the ship can use the massive inertia in a fancy escape maneuver. The "Hiryu Custom"'s Gravity Cannon and the SRX's Hyper
Titanic Blasting Tronium Buster Cannon also count. Its full name, according to Ryusei, is the Tenjo Tenga Ichigeki Hissatsu ho or Heaven and Earth One-Hit Sure-Kill Cannon.
- Super Robot Wars W adds the Valstork's Double Proton Cannon, which can even link with the Valhawk to utilize it's Chest Blaster for even more power. The Dimension Breaker, the Chest Blaster of the Valzacard, by comparison, is it's least powerful attack, which, by comparison again, is apparently the Valstork's Double Proton Cannon redirected.
- Terran capital ships in the Star Craft universe are equipped with a Yamato Gun (naturally, named after Uchuu Senkan Yamato), which fires a massive bolt of energy in exchange for a large chunk of the unit's energy meter. This is easily acceptable, though, given the fact that the Yamato Gun is the only use for said energy.
- The original Galaxy Angel games (see Galaxy Angel Gameverse) have the Chrono Break Cannon.
- The Eclipse Cannon that first appeared in Sonic Adventure 2.
- Also, the Power Laser for Tails' and Eggman's mechs (battle mode and second enemy boss battle only).
- "Moonstone Cannon.... Fire!" from Skies Of Arcadia.
- Final Fantasy VII features a Mako Cannon (inexplicably named "Sister Ray") built by the Shinra Electric Power Company for the sake of taking out the impenetrable barrier around Sephiroth. It is fired only once; Diamond Weapon stands in its way and is is cut through, but returns fire, destroying a fair chunk of Shinra headquarters and apparently killing the president. Despite the interference, the weapon succeeds in destroying said barrier.
- On top of that, the player can acquire a summon that calls a being known as Bahamut ZERO, a gigantic flying dragon that bombards its targets from space with a giant beam of destruction.
- If used in the Final Boss battle, which takes place deep underground, this summon ought to cause even more damage to the planet than the BigBad's evil plot would have...but Gameplay And Story Segregation to the rescue!
- Crisis Core brings us Bahamut Fury, which destroys (or at least melts) a good portion of the MOON to fire a giant laser at enemies.
- This actually pales in comparison to an even more over the top attack used by the Guardian Force Eden in Final Fantasy VIII, in which Eden uses the enemy as ammunition for a beam that is fired into another galaxy, which then explodes. It's also powerful enough to break the 9999 HP Damage Cap, which applies to nearly every other attack in the game.
- And then there's Final Fantasy X 2's Vegnagun, which Shuyin tries to use to destroy Spira. It was originally designed to bring down Sin, but it was sealed beneath Bevelle when it failed to distinguish friend from foe.
- On the subject of Final Fantasy, Sin itself (from FFX) should count, given the damage its Tera Gravitation attack causes to the planet when it is fired.
- Final Fantasy XII brings us the Mist Cannon, which is deployed at the end of the game against the Rebel fleet, to devastating effect, as it is capable of destroying ANY SHIP IN ONE SHOT.
- A common staple of Command And Conquer games:
- GDI's Ion Cannon in the Tiberium series.
- Which was exported to Command And Conquer Generals as USA's Particle Cannon. In the Zero Hour Expansion Pack, General Alexis Alexander's Particle Cannons were cheaper, stronger, and pink.
- Red Alert 2 has the Allied Prism Tower and Prism Tank. The former can be charged up by other Prism Towers in range, while the latter's attack bounces between enemy units.
- The Empire of the Rising Sun in Red Alert 3 has an interesting version in the Wave-Force Artillery. Besides the usual full power blast, it can be turned down to fire more often.
- Possibly Dan Smith's Collateral Shot from Killer 7. It's the only thing that can kill the Heaven Smile hives and it uses all the bullets in his gun and three vials of blood.
- In Rogue Galaxy, the Dorgenark carries a double-barreled Wave Motion Gun on the front—called, simply, 'The Big Guns'. According to an NPC, they can take out a small planet, and the one time they're used in-game, they live up to the hype.
- You do battle against a Wave Motion Gun in Super Mario RPG, controlled by the evil Power Rangers spoofing Axem Rangers on top of their blade shaped Cool Ship (if you can call it that) called Blade. It takes 3 turns to charge it up but it has the potential to annihilate your entire party in one turn. Unfortunately, a boss later on in the game has the potential to use this attack every turn.
- Super Mario Bros Z shows what happens when this is connected to a Chaos Emerald from the Sonic games. Even the Axem Rangers themselves are shocked. They don't get to use it again though, because Mecha Sonic, the Big Bad of the series, shows up, takes the emerald in question, and singlehandedly destroys them and Blade.
- For the record, what happens is that IT DESTROYS THE ENTIRE MOUNTAIN RANGE OF YOSHI'S ISLAND.
- The ship-mounted railguns in the Halo universe definitely qualify, as they require a large chunk of the ship's power supply to operate, and the humans build entire space stations around extra large models.
- The Scarab is equipped with a WMG as well.
- The Titular Halos appear to be weapons of this type as well, given Halo 3's last mission.
- In EVE Online, Titan motherships are equipped with doomsday devices, enormous missiles capable of destroying entire fleets of (player) opponents. Even though it's in the hand of a player, this is a last-resort weapon that can only be used once an hour, prevents the Titan from jumping (effectively escaping) for 10 minutes and a single shot is more expensive than some smaller combat vessels. It's also subject to friendly fire (which limits its use to defensive purposes).
- Every side in Supreme Commander has an enormous, Tier 3 artillery piece which takes a half hour to build and fires about once ever 10 or 15 seconds to a range of around 10-15km, enough to cross the small and medium maps and get almost across the large maps (the extra large maps are up to 81km). They're really only useful when used by UEF, and then in large numbers to try and take out the enemy's commander.
- The UEF also has a Tier 4 version, which is hideously expensive, has an insane build time, but has unlimited range and much better accuracy then the Tier 3 guns.
- The Cybrans have their own Tier 4 artillery, which is cheaper, builds faster, does less damage, and fires fast enough to batter down shields in under 20 seconds, but takes obscene amounts of energy and has much shorter range (though it is mobile, barely).
- The Aeon and Cybrans also have tier 4 units that are expensive and slow, but can vaporize everything in front of them with a giant microwave cannon. In the expansion, the UEF got a Kill Sat with one of these.
- Crysis provides a rather hilariously underwhelming example of this technology when a huge alien space cruiser opens up on a US aircraft carrier, complete with proper "charging" GFX and ominous "buildup" sound. The effect? Several broken bridge windows and some debris on the flight deck. This is made even more ludicrous when the alien behemoth continues the barrage, resulting in no further damage to the ship. One wonders why the aliens didn't just ram the carrier (the cruiser is previously involved in a head-on collision with a destroyer escort, resulting in one sunk destroyer and no apparent damage to the alien vessel).
- The Jehuty gets one in Zone Of The Enders: The Second Runner, called the Vector Cannon. It takes an absurdly long time to fire, but rest assured that whatever's on the receiving end of it will die.
- Bungie's Oni also features the Wave Motion Cannon, an absurdly BFG that was originally a part of a combat vehicle. It can either shoot a long, laser-like energy beam or launch grenades (and yes, each firing of the energy beam requires a few moments of Sucking In Lines)
- To defeat Adam, the final boss of Headhunter, you first need to steal his 'Judgment Cannon', a massive hand-held Wave Motion Gun, charge it up by Sucking In Lines, and blast it in his chest, hoping that he doesn't stomp up and hit you while you're vulnerable.
- In Space Empires V, and its predecessors, a weapon available for ships is a literal Wave Motion Gun, which is a powerful, long-range beam weapon.
- The Savior boss's ultimate attack from Devil May Cry 4 is of this variety.
- Moves like Solar Beam, Skull Bash, Sky Attack or Focus Punch from Pokemon. Focus Punch is a prime example, because it has an appropriate drawback; if the performing Pokémon is hit before it can fire, Focus Punch fails.
- The Hyper Beam-type moves, too, with the charging period afterwards instead of before.
- The #3 ranked assassin Speed Buster in No More Heroes wields a shopping cart... which transforms into an all-annihilating Wave Motion Gun.
- Star Fox 64 has Gorgon (the "Area 6" boss) with its giant rainbow laser.
- And the Saucererer, with its Katina-base-destroying laser that takes a full minute to charge up.
- In Koei's Warship Gunner series, basically Dynasty Warriors with battleships, the most powerful weapons in the game are "Wave Guns," which come in several sizes but all of which fire lasers larger than the player's ship (which cause the player's ship to rocket backward thanks to laser recoil) and can sink fleets of enemy ships, yet will do fairly little against the game's island-sized bosses, who can have multiple wave guns and giant, hull mounted instant death buzz-saws.
- In the space flight simulation FreeSpace 2 most capital ships are equipped with up to a dozen very powerful beam weapons. They have a both visual and audible buildup of 3 seconds and fire beams that can blast straight through other ships. their diameter is large enough to completely engulf smaller fighters, which are instantly vaporized if they happen to be in the beams path at the moment.
- Subverted in Treasure Of The Rudras as the Wave Motion Gun was used to kill the existing races on Earth.
- The TEC's Novalith Cannon in Sins Of A Solar Empire. The best way to describe it is that it does to planets what nuclear bombs do to cities. A single hit will depopulate all the but the most heavily populated planets. For those, you need two missiles. Oh, and there's fallout.
- Also, one of the Advent capital ships has one of these as its "capstone" ability, Cleansing Brilliance.
- When you pilot the Super Dimensional Gear for a single battle in Xenogears, you can opt to fire the Yggdrasil cannon for 9999 damage. The only drawback is that it costs 9000 of your 9990 fuel.
- Xenosaga has several. There's the Phase Transfer Cannon KOS-MOS uses, for starters. Then the Dammerung has a huge version called the Rhine Maiden designed to be fired in conjuction with three other ships.
- Heavy Beam-class weapons in Sword of the Stars, ranging from the Heavy Combat Laser to the (anti-matter) Cutter Beam. Firing one on a planet leaves a large canyon, and Dreadnaughts can carry up to fourteen of them.
- Iji gives us the Phantom Hammer, a ship-mounted energy cannon that, used in numbers, can either render a planet uninhabitable, or destroy it completely. A shot from one of these can pierce through several kilometres of solid rock. The final boss carries a more compact version; it's no less powerful.
- If Iji cracks together the two most powerful pieces of Tasen and Komato nanoweaponry, she gets the Velocithor, a hand-held Wave Motion Gun capable of blasting through enemies and walls alike, and is instrumental in a very specific bit of Dungeon Bypass.
- In the RTS Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends, the Couatl race have practically built their entire society off of Wave Motion Guns. Oh, and machines made of stone. But really the WMGs.
- Marisa Kirisame's Master Spark and Final Spark spellcards certainly count, whether she's using them as your ally◊ or your enemy.◊
- Yuka Kazami counts as well, since she's actually the creator of Master Spark, which Marisa
stole copied and modified.
- The Dwarf Fortress Lets Play "Boatmurdered" features "Project Fuck The World", a device which redirects a stream of lava onto anyone attacking the fortress.
- Ballistae probably also qualify. A plain wooden ballista bolt will travel in a straight line through virtually anything, likely instakilling anything (friend or foe) that gets caught in its path and traveling forward until it hits a wall or runs off the map. Tipping it with adamantine? Oh jesus.
- Samus Aran's Zero Beam, her Final Smash in Super Smash Brothers Brawl. It consists of an all-consuming, screen-filling beam that will (very likely) instantly KO anyone standing in its path. Unfortunately, it's so powerful it breaks apart her Power Suit.
- While we're on the subject of SSBB, in the story mode, the Subspace army manages to pull what amounts to a huge gun with mounted turrets on its side out of subspace. Its about 10x the size of the Halberd, the annoying ship you chase for most of the game, and that ship is already hundreds of feet long. This floating gun fires a huge energy blast that pushes the entire world into another dimension!. Shortly destroyed by Kirby, riding a tiny Air Ride Machine. Miniature airplane trumps world crushing battleship. Who'da thunk it.
- The Mana Cannon from Tales Of Phantasia and its prequel, Tales Of Symphonia.
- The Capitol Ships from Empire Earth space age epoch has the DBOD or Devastating Beam of Death. It uses the game's Mana Meter so takes a long period of time to recharge. Longer than the duration of most space battles in fact. The prototype of the Capitol Ship was named, appropriately enough, the Yamato.
- Master Of Orion II has a weapon called the Stellar Converter, which can only be mounted on ships of Titan class or larger. It's the most powerful beam weapon in the game, and can indeed be used to destroy entire planets.
- With enough miniaturization, one can fit a Stellar Converter on a Battleship. However, by that point in the game, one would be forgiven for asking "why bother". If the player has survived to that stage in the game, using SC-armed battleships is just demonstrating Video Game Cruelty Potential.
- Note that the Stellar Converter from the second game shares only the name and enveloping damage with the first game's Stellar Converter. In the original Master Of Orion, the Stellar Converter is merely longer-ranged weapon, with no Earth Shattering Kaboom effect on planets.
- You don't get to use one in Gradius, but they certainly get used against you. The idea generally isn't to dodge them (which is fairly easy) but to keep from getting forced into a very bad place by the beams (which isn't).
- The Naval Ops series of games featured the Wave Motion Gun as a naval combat weapon. And is used by several bosses.
- Fraxy gives you the Laser in 3 different sizes and the Sonic Wave, which pushes people away.
- Star Wars: Empire at War and Forces of Corruption expansion: First and foremost: Both Death Star's. Then, there's the plasma cannons of the Zann Consortium space stations, Aggressor-Class battleships, and MZ-8 tanks. Captain Piett's Star Destroyer (the Accusor) also gets a Proton Beam weapon in both games.
- Not a laser, but Ace Combat 6 has the giant railgun, Chandelier as its Final Boss. It normally takes a long time for it to fire one of its shots (about a minute and a half between "Stauros Preparing for launch" and the giant flash of the cannon firing), but when the crew realizes all is lost, failing to take it out then and there leads to the cannon firing 10 shots (and failing your mission) in a row before it collapses.
- And then there's the Excalibur in Ace Combat Zero, which is a laser, the Arkbird's laser cannon in Ace Combat 5, and the Stonehenge railgun array in Ace Combat 4.
- Armored Core 4 and For Answer have the Kojima cannons, massive Phlebotinum shooting beam weapons charged by Sucking In Lines, that if they actually hit are an instant kill. Unfortunately, outside of two missions in for Answer,they're useless.
- And in For Answer there's the Assault Cannon, Lethaldose, a Kojima Cannon of immense power that instead of having the traditional charge time of a Kojima Cannon, it uses your Primal Armor instead, which then takes a long time to recharge.
- G-Darius has the Alpha (player-fired) and Beta (boss-fired) beams. The scary part is that they can absorb each other, and by doing so become larger, more powerful, and longer lasting. The beam up top is a player-fired Alpha Beam that has absorbed no less than four Beta beams. Enemies must be captured and consumed in order to fire your Alpha beam, and certain powerful enemies will make your Alpha beam more powerful.
- Spore if you finish the tribal stage as agressive and the civ stage as economic, or vise versa(cant' remember for sure) you get a the wave motion gun as your super weapon in the space stage. The weapon has a long recharge time and it destroys every city on a planet. Works well for taking out rivals.
Webcomics
Western Animation
- The BFG (binary fusion generator in the show, but we all know what it really means) on the Watchtower in Justice League Unlimited.
- The flagship of the Irken fleet in Invader Zim, The Massive, has one of these as its main weapon. Also seems to be present on their Humongous Mecha.
- Megas XLR pulls out the Wave Motion Gun, Yamato and all, in the first episode of the show. Later, it pulls out the Macross gun, too.
- The Malevolence, General Grievous' flagship from Star Wars The Clone Wars, is equipped with a pair of gigantic ion cannons that each produce a blast so huge that they can hit an entire starfleet. It's a bit different from the standard Wave Motion Gun, though, in that it only disables enemy ships, rather than destroying them; the ship then actually finishes them off with its immense array of turbolaser turrets.
- The titular Iron Giant has one in it's chest.
Web Original
- Ankh Robot Gunchest, naturally, has a pair of guns on his chest. Oh, but they're no ordinary guns, they fire pretty big beams. When he finally makes use of them, it's pretty sweet.
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