Space Gun

Released: 1990

Pitch: Shoot hordes of aliens infesting a ship and save the human survivors.

Space Gun is a light gun arcade game that initially looks to be Generic Sci-Fi but has a few things going for it. First of all, the aliens don't look like xenomorphs, so that's good. The environment visuals—rudimentary 3D polygons viewed from first person—reminded me of Doom before I remembered that this game predates Doom by a couple years. The enemies are fairly detailed sprites but aren't very memorable in design. This is basic sci-fi horror stuff. That said, it does that basic stuff pretty well. For instance, the human survivors can take a couple shots before dying, which is good because it's easy to accidentally hit them. There's also a reverse button for the on-foot base levels that really helps when the bad guys crowd you. And in regards to the aliens, I was actually reminded of Dead Space. A lot of the bad guys have multiple arms, which you can shoot off if you target them. Heads too! Also, there is one instance where you see a human morph into an alien.

At the end of the day, this is still an arcade game and you will take a lot of cheap shots. But with free continues this is a fun way to spend a few minutes blasting aliens.