Scrolling shooters are a type of video game, a subgenre of shoot 'em up. Such games feature backgrounds that appear to 'scroll' as the protagonist moves through them. Scrolling shooters feature 'top-down' or 'side-on' perspectives. A scrolling shooter is, as the name suggests, a shoot 'em up that takes place against a scrolling background. There are several subclasses of this genre. For example: Horizontal and vertical scrollers are the most common. Almost all horizontal scrollers view the player's avatar from the side, and present the level in cross-section, such that the player appears to be flying 'through' something, such as a landscape or a mothership. An early horizontal scroller was Defender, released in 1980, although it shares few features with other horizontal scrollers. Typically, the scrolling in these games is continuous, such that the player is led through a level by the game. There is also sometimes a degree of vertical freedom, in which the player can move up or down on a playing area which is taller than the screen itself. (Thunder Force IV and Dragon Breed are two games which take this to extremes). As well as battling enemies, some of the challenge in [ - ]

Scrolling shooters are a type of video game, a subgenre of shoot 'em up. Such games feature... [ + ]