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A rail shooter or on-rails shooter is a specific form of game play in an action-based video game. In a rail shooter the player control is limited to directing where to fire a virtual gun; the player does not have direct control over the path their avatar takes from the start to the end, though they may be able to affect the path followed depending on what they shoot. The player's viewpoint moves as dictated by the game. It is commonly viewed as the player being tied to a rail, similar to a roller coaster. Although the strictest definition of rail shooter includes genres such as a scrolling shooter and light gun games such as Operation Wolf, in practice the term is used mostly to describe games that don't fall within those two genres (e.g. Star Fox).
Traditional Rail Shooter Games
As described earlier, the term rail shooter traditionally describes games where the player cannot control their own movement, the gameplay being limited to aiming from a third or first-person perspective. Notable examples of this genre include Panzer Dragoon and Rez. The label is also sometimes used for games played from a third person perspective where their player can move their avatar in a limited way. For example, Starfox, a game where the player can move their ship on a two dimensional plane, but the ship itself is always flying in a straight line. These games have more in common with scrolling shooters than rail shooters. However, this genre does not feature as many enemies or bullets as scrolling shooters because the perspective makes dodging and aiming inherently more difficult. One of the earliest games in this genre was Buck Rogers and the Planet of Zoom, but the seminal game of the genre was Space Harrier.
Light-Gun Games
Most light gun games fall into the rail shooter genre. In light gun games, usually the player's sole defense against enemy attacks in the game is shooting the enemy first. Enemy projectile attacks such as missiles or thrown knives usually move slow enough for the player to destroy or deflect in midair with a shot. Input from the player may come in the form of aiming a toy gun or moving a joystick. The toy gun versions may detect the player's aim by synchronizing to the refresh rate of the screen (light guns), or attaching the gun to a movable base that measures rotation. Modern arcade games are more likely to use specialized guns. Silent Scope, a sniping arcade game, features a small screen in the eyepiece of the toy rifle. The player uses the main screen to locate targets and the magnified view in the eyepiece to line up shots.
Some rail shooters move players along a generally continuous path, others pause the player at a particular location until all enemies are defeated, and some use a combination.
Early rail shooters include Hogan's Alley and Lethal Enforcers. Motion in early rail shooters was often simply left and right. Some rail shooters display enemy targets against prerendered video backgrounds, this includes games like Area 51; others, like the Virtua Cop series, use 3D graphics. Modern rail shooters move the player's viewport in three dimensions; these include shooters such as Panzer Dragoon Orta.
Very early games in the style did not move the viewpoint at all and would typically be described more correctly as shooting gallery games.
Like all game play styles lines are not strict. Many first person shooters feature brief rail shooter scenes in which the player's avatar mans vehicle mounted weaponry while the game controls the vehicle. Some rail shooters allow the player to control a single aspect of motion; for example, the Time Crisis series, which gave players the ability to hide behind a barrier.
"Rail shooter"