In keeping on with our Dreamcast love, we take a look at four shooters that made the system an arcade shooting powerhouse.

You don’t become an awesome home arcade machine without some awesome shooters and the Dreamcast definitely had some awesome shooters. From the highly popular Ikaruga to the mildly popular Giga Wing right down to the almost missed Triggerheart Exelica, masochistic shooter fans fell in love with the Dreamcast and still feel the love today.

Thanks to the production of VGA boxes, the Dreamcast gave home shooting fans the ability to turn their CRT monitors sideways to experience TATE mode or full screen, no black sidebar view. If I accomplish my goal, by the end of this article you’ll be reaching for your arcade sticks and putting on some manic shooting action, because that’s exactly the way us shooting fans like it – manic, masochistic, and all out frantic. 

Giga Wing 1 and 2 | Capcom | 2000 and 2001

I went ahead and lumped these two games as one since they are both pretty much the same game with minor differences (story, ships, and enemies are different). The premise follows the band of Giga Wing mercenaries, a group of highly skilled pilots that try and save the world from total destruction. The games are set in high flying steam punk fantasies and use a lot of bright colors. The gameplay is your basic arcade shooter with normal shots and bombs, but the series also has a bit of its own flavor in the “reflect force”.

Reflect force can consist of either a barrier or lasers that will reflect enemy shots create greater valued medals. Medals act as score multipliers and this is where Giga Wing gets ridiculous. The amount of score multipliers you can get plus the amount of stuff you can destroy allows for a score that I am almost positive could complete the numerical value of PI. It’s truly some insanity to have scores like that especially if you are a truly skilled player that can last for a long time. Medals also help create the manic experience of the game in that they often times fill up the screen blinding you to enemy fire allowing for cheap kills. Couple that with up to four players on screen and I’d say you have one hell of a party game.