Shooter
19 games
Computer Space
Built by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney and sold through Nutting Associates, it was the first commercially sold coin oper...
Space Invaders
Tomohiro Nishikado alien march introduced the persistent high score and pulled billions of quarters worldwide, spreading...
Asteroids
Vector line asteroids and Ed Logg physics drift turned a simple premise hypnotic. It became the best selling Atari coin ...
Galaga
The sequel to Galaxian added tractor beam captures, challenging stages and the dual fighter risk reward play. It became ...
Wolfenstein 3D
id Software recast the 1981 stealth game Castle Wolfenstein as a fast first person shooter spread through shareware epis...
Doom
The shareware phenomenon of 1993 put lightning fast first person carnage on millions of PCs. Deathmatch coined a word, i...
Quake
True polygonal 3D, colored lightmaps and internet native play made Quake the ancestor of the modern 3D engine. QuakeWorl...
GoldenEye 007
The licensed game that proved consoles belonged in first person. Four player split screen deathmatch defined late 90s li...
Half-Life
A tram ride into Black Mesa introduced seamless scripted storytelling where the scientist Gordon Freeman never speaks. T...
Counter-Strike
Born as a Half-Life mod by Minh Le and Jess Cliffe, its bomb sites, buy menus and round economy created the modern tacti...
Halo: Combat Evolved
The Xbox launch seller made console shooters feel natural with recharging shields, two weapon loadouts and vehicle fille...
Half-Life 2
The gravity gun and Source engine physics made it the technical and narrative benchmark of 2004, sold through the launch...
BioShock
A lighthouse descends into Rapture, a sunken objectivist utopia in ruins, wrapping a shooter in philosophy and audio dia...
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Infinity Ward left World War II for a fictional modern conflict and wrote the multiplayer rulebook: XP ranks, killstreak...
Gears of War
Cliff Bleszinski and Epic standardized the cover shooter: roadie run, blindfire, active reload rhythm and chainsaw bayon...
Defender
Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar built a side scrolling shooter with a radar map and a then daunting five button control la...
Centipede
Dona Bailey and Ed Logg designed a trackball shooter set in a mushroom field, with pastel colors that stood out in dark ...
Tempest
Dave Theurer used a color vector display to place the player on the rim of geometric tubes, spinning a rotary knob to bl...
Star Fox
Built with Argonaut Software, it used the Super FX chip inside the cartridge to render polygon 3D graphics on the Super ...