A variant of either first person or third person shooter in which the majority of the player's movements are 'on rails'; the computer controls most of your perspective and you control the shots. May or may not be a Light Gun Game. Will score very low on the Sliding Scale of Linearity vs. Openness; if there is any player choice at all as to where to go, it will only be in the form of branching paths initiated by specific "fork in the road" situations.
Often considered a sibling genre to the Shoot 'Em Up, as both genres set you on a fixed path and involve shooting things. The primary difference is that while shoot-em-ups have two-dimensional gameplay, rail shooters have you shooting things in three dimensions. Most often you can't control your movement at all, unlike in shoot-em-ups where you are allowed to freely move within the confines of the screen. However, a few rail shooters allow free movement within a 2D rectangle parallel with the screen, while still railroading the player forward "into the screen" along the depth axis.
In a large number of these cases, you cannot dodge enemy shots by simply moving them off of your screen, so you must shoot immediate threats before they have a chance to fire. In rare cases, you may be able to Shoot the Bullet.
Rail Shooters were a very popular arcade format in the late 1980s and early 1990s, mainly because they were able to use the arcade systems' powerful graphics to great effect; some even used Roto Scoping or Motion Capture to make characters which were more detailed and life-like than was feasible on home systems of the day. They were never particularly common on home consoles or computers, and the genre fell out of favor with the rise of more flexible First-Person Shooter games such as Doom and Quake.
Compare/Contrast No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom (where you control your own movement but are given only one route to follow).
Has nothing to do with railguns. That's in Magnetic Weapons.
First Person Rail Shooters
- Area 51
- Assault City
- Battleshark - you're a submarine blowing up stuff from a first-person perspective
- Blood & Truth
- Blue Estate
- CarnEvil
- Chaos Control
- Child of Eden, the Spiritual Successor to Rez.
- Combat Instinct
- Creature Shock have segments that plays out like these; the rest of the game are either a FPS or a spaceship Shoot 'Em Up
- Deadly Tide
- Dead Man's Hand is an FPS for most parts, but two levels (a horseback chase and a Minecart Madness part) is a rail-shooter
- Dino Strike Wii
- Gal*Gun
- Galaxian 3 for the PlayStation
- GunBuster
- The Hive Wars
- Invasion: The Abductors
- Knife Edge Nose Gunner
- Loadstar
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Final Shooting
- Takamaru's Ninja Castle in Nintendo Land.
- Pistol Whip
- Pokémon Snap, though it and its sequel have a camera and not a gun you're shooting.
- Smash Hit
- Space Gun, which included the very unusual feature of a backpedal, controlled by, wait for it, a "back" pedal.
- Starblade
- Star Wars: The Arcade Game (and at least one level in the Lego prequel games)
- Super Space 3D
- Surgical Strike
- Teraburst
- Touch The Dead
- The Wonderful 101 has multiple rail shooter segments.
- Until Dawn: Rush of Blood
- Switchback VR
Third Person Rail Shooters
- Aces Of The Galaxy
- Angry Birds: Transformers
- After Burner series
- Aqua Jack
- Asura's Wrath switches to this during Random points in the game, certain bosses included.
- Charge'N Blast
- Devastators
- Dead Eye Jim
- Ex Zeus
- G.I.Joenote
- Galaxy Force II
- Gamera 2000
- G-Loc (a spinoff of Afterburner)
- Kid Icarus: Uprising (half this and normal Third-Person Shooter)
- Lethal Enforcers 3
- Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ
- LocoCycle
- Lost Land Adventure
- Lucky & Wild
- Metal Gear Solid Touch
- Monster Eye
- Night Striker
- Novastorm
- Omega Boost
- Panzer Dragoon
- Paperboy
- Pirates (NIX)
- The Punisher
- Rez
- Say No! More, an endless rail shooter where the only thing the player has to fire is the word "No!"
- Sin and Punishment, a rail shooter with light platforming elements.
- Sin and Punishment: Star Successor, a follow-up with a shoot 'em up-esque play-style.
- Solar Assault
- Solar Eclipse
- Space Harrier
- Space Run is a Tower Defense style game, except you're on a ship that is barreling forward through Asteroid Thickets and waves of Space Pirates, building defenses to blow them up, so it has a rail shooter feel.
- Star Fox series
- Star Fox
- Star Fox 64, though averted this for some boss fights and a few levels.
- Tetra Star: The Fighter
- Thunder Blade and Super Thunder Blade (alternate with vertical Shoot 'Em Up levels)
- Blue Lightning
- Some minigames in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks.
- The climactic end-boss battle in Devil May Cry.
- Red Faction: Guerrilla has Rail Shooter missions; popping rockets off at EDF assets from the back of Jenkins' game-controlled trike-car.
- For a very brief moment at the end of Dirge of Cerberus.
- Tin Star, though it has some First-Person sequences.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic Uses a 3rd Person Rail shooter for its space combat system. Fan opinion on the decision not to use a free roaming system is... divided, to say the least.
- Transformers: Cybertron Adventures, with a first-person mode when using the sniper rifle.
- Wild Guns, a Space Western-theme shooter where you play as bounty hunters shooting outlaws.
- X-Men: The Official Game: The Iceman sections are third-person rail shooters.
- Yar's Revenge (2011)
- Alien 3: The Gun
- Aliens: Extermination
- Aliens: Armageddon
- Area 51
- CarnEvil
- Confidential Mission
- Crisis Zone (1999)
- Crypt Killer
- Dark Escape 4D
- Dead Space: Extraction
- Deadstorm Pirates
- Dream Raiders
- Elevator Action: Death Parade
- Elemental Gearbolt
- Enforce
- Evil Night
- Ghost Squad (2004)
- Gunblade NY & L.A. Machineguns
- Gunfighter: The Legend of Jesse James
- Halo: Fireteam Raven
- House of the Dead
- The Typing of the Dead is a typing game that swaps out the light gun with a keyboard, turns up the ridiculousness, but keeps the zombies and gore.
- Jurassic Park (Arcade)
- Let's Go Jungle
- Maximum Force
- The Maze of the Kings
- Ninja Assault
- The Ocean Hunter
- Operation Thunder Hurricane - Rail Chase, in the air
- Operation Wolf
- Project: Horned Owl
- Rail Chase
- Rambo Arcade and Rambo: The Video Game
- Razing Storm
- A number of Resident Evil side games:
- Revolution X
- Sewer Shark
- Silent Scope
- Steel Gunner
- Steel Gunner 2
- Target Terror
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day (which is the spiritual predecessor of Revolution X)
- Terminator Salvation: The Arcade Game - a true successor to Terminator 2: The Arcade Game
- Time Crisis
- Total Vice
- Ripper has a few of these sprinkled throughout the game.
- The Gummi Ship segments in the Kingdom Hearts games are a minigame version of this, as well as part of the final boss sequence of the first Devil May Cry.
- Yoshi's Safari
- Virtua Cop
- BIT.TRIP FATE is a literal execution of the gameplay concept — the game takes place on the Side View, you control your character on a "fate line" (a rail, in other words), and you aim with a cursor.