Except for Sin & Punishment.
Putting that exception to the observation aside, though, the concept really was infrequently employed through the past few decades of game design -- and Natsume's Wild Guns is one of the few great examples to look back on. Originally released on the SNES exactly 15 years ago this month and just re-released through the Virtual Console a few weeks back, the game is something of a cult classic -- and it's all about the bullets.
Bullets rain across the screen from the background to the foreground, where Western cowboy Clint or lady outlaw Annie stand with their backs to you and their guns facing "into" the screen -- ready to retaliate against the endless onslaught of hombres with their own fast-firing bullets, too. The incoming fire is intense, and Wild Guns forces you to juggle between your two main tasks of dodging it and dishing it back out -- your character can't move while shooting, so you have to holster your weapon to sidestep shots or jump up and out of the way.
Alternatively, you can target the incoming bullets themselves and often blast them right out of the air -- earning extra points and upgraded guns, like machine guns or grenade launchers.
You can also clear the entire screen with a blast-everything smart bomb attack, usable a handful of times.
You can also pick up dynamite sticks the enemy throws at you and toss it back at them.
You can also bring along a partner, joining up with some human-controlled assistance in the included two-player co-op mode.
So there's a lot you can do in Wild Guns, and the depth to explore within the game's shooting mechanics is satisfyingly paired with a great visual presentation that packs in a lot of detail -- while you're shooting up everything in sight, real-time bullet damage will appear on many of the background elements of each environment. Taken all together, it's easy to see why this game's managed to maintain a devout fan following over the past decade and a half.
But it's not quite perfect. Since the third-person shooter genre is still so unexplored, it certainly feels fresh to dive back into this one -- especially as compared to everything else on offer in the Wii Shop, where only one or two other games available for download there are anything like this at all. But it's not quite perfect, because, I think, it's a bit too hard.
Even on Easy difficulty, this one's brutal. You can tell Wild Arms got its start as an arcade design, as it's one-hit kills all around and you've only got three lives to lose before you're sent to the Game Over screen. The game is occasionally helpful with warning icons and dialogue bubbles telling you to "Look Out!," a good visual cue that assists in learning the timing of how to dodge -- but some enemies' attack patterns are still a bit too tough to handle, and it'll take a lot of practice and patience to be able to consistently advance very far into the game's campaign.
