8 Best Saturn Shoot 'Em Ups

Soukyugurentai, also sold as Terra Diver, is a vertical shooter by Raizing. It started in Japanese arcades in 1996 on the ST-V board. Each ship has a standard gun and a bomb. Hold the fire button and your ship releases a lock-on laser-web, and every enemy caught in it is destroyed when you let go. Electronic Arts released the Saturn version in February 1997, five months after the arcade release. Because the arcade hardware was directly based on the Saturn, it is a close conversion.

Neither the Saturn nor the PlayStation port came out outside Japan. A bargain-priced version followed in December 1997 with a demo of the Saturn Battle Garegga on the disc. The Saturn version also has a hidden option menu that lets you zoom in and out at will. It gets compared to Radiant Silvergun a lot, and the two share a similar look.

Darius Gaiden is Taito's third arcade Darius game. It was first called Darius III, but its plot took place between the first two games, and gaiden is the Japanese term for side story. You fly the Silver Hawk, and specially colored enemies drop power-ups for its missiles and bombs. New to the series is the black hole bomb. It makes a large vortex in the center of the screen that sucks in enemies and bullets, then explodes into a ball of lightning.

Every stage has a miniboss with a small ball on it. Shoot the ball loose, collect it, and the miniboss fights on your side for a while before it explodes. There are twenty-seven stages in all, but one run only plays seven of them. Some critics found the music bizarre, and others loved how outlandish it is. The Saturn and PlayStation both got ports, and the home conversions were well received.

Thunder Force V is Technosoft's fifth Thunder Force, and the series' return after a five year break. Production started on the Mega Drive. There are seven levels, and you can play the first three in any order. The big addition is the Over Weapon: you feed the energy of your CRAWs into your gun for a much stronger version of it. That drains them, and a weakened CRAW disappears if it gets hit.

The Free Range weapon is strong enough to make this easier than Thunder Force II and IV. The Saturn version came first and has the edge in graphics. In its third level the ground is transparent and shows a city underneath the rubble, which the PlayStation port lost. It never came out in the United States, even after Electronic Gaming Monthly urged readers to ask Sega of America for it.

Battle Garegga is a vertical shooter set in a dieselpunk version of the 1940s. Brothers Brian and Jason fly against the evil Federation, and you pick from 4 planes. Most shooters color their bullets brightly so they stand out from the scenery. Here the bullets look like actual bullets, which makes them hard to see. Its programmer, Shinobu Yagawa, had made the Famicom shooter Recca.

It is famous for its rank system. Almost anything you do raises the difficulty, and the only way to lower it is to lose a life. Good players get by on as little as possible, because hoarding power-ups makes the late game impossible. Some shooter fans call it one of the best shooters of all time. Others feel the rank system ruins some pretty cool ideas. The Saturn port came out in 1998, and a code unlocks four characters from Mahou Daisakusen.

Galactic Attack is Taito's RayForce. Trademark disputes made Taito rename it Layer Section on the Saturn in Japan, and the American and European release got the rather generic Galactic Attack. You start out in space and fly deeper toward the core of an Earth taken over by Con-Human, an evil computer. The screen never fades to black between levels. You just roll into the next stage after each boss.

Besides your forward gun you have lock-on lasers that shoot below. Hover over up to five targets, or eight with green L power-ups, then let go. Waiting for a full lock-on scores far more points than mashing the button. Two players can play at the same time. The Saturn release is almost arcade perfect, missing only a few minor graphical effects. Raizing took its lock-on idea and built Soukyugurentai around it.

Radiant Silvergun is Treasure's vertical shooter, made by ten people for the ST-V arcade board first. It hit Japanese arcades in May 1998, and the Saturn port followed two months later. Before this, Treasure was mostly known for action and platform games. You carry seven weapons at once, and the scoring system is based on enemy color. The Saturn version adds a story mode with five new bosses, and your weapon upgrades carry over after a game over.

It never came out in the West, but Western critics imported it and gave it critical acclaim. Treasure followed it with Ikaruga in 2001, a spiritual sequel. The game reached the Xbox 360 worldwide in 2011, then the Switch in 2022 and Windows in 2023. Those releases are the easy way to play it today. The Saturn disc is the one collectors chase.

Zwei is a prequel to the first Panzer Dragoon. You follow Lundi and his dragon Lagi as they chase an airship of the Ancient Age. Team Andromeda heard the complaints about the first game, lowered the difficulty and added more story. Levels now split into multiple paths, and your dragon grows stronger over the game based on your score. Enemies come from all directions, and a radar in the upper right corner tracks them.

Yayoi Wachi's soundtrack shaped the music of the later Panzer Dragoon games. Critics loved it, and many called it better than the original. A remake by MegaPixel Studio is in development. Of the shooters on this list, it is the gentlest place to start.

Panzer Dragoon was the first game by Team Andromeda and the directing debut of Yukio Futatsugi, who was 25 at the time. You play Keil Fluge, a hunter who meets a blue dragon and its rider. The rider dies, and Keil picks up his gun and climbs on the dragon to finish his quest. The dragon flies a set track through 3D worlds while you move a reticle over the screen and shoot. The game only pauses for boss battles.

The young team missed Sega's first deadline, the Saturn's Japanese launch in November 1994. It was still one of the few games available at the console's surprise launch. Yoshitaka Azuma, who composed for NHK TV programs, wrote a mix of orchestral and synthesizer tracks. A 2020 remake reached Switch, PS4 and Xbox One, and Panzer Dragoon Orta on Xbox includes the original as a bonus.