I love 3rd person shooters of all kinds, but sadly there aren’t that many. Are people able to recommend a few others? They can be of any region on any games console.
Ones I’ve played:
Omega Boost
Sin & Punishment 1 & 2
Starfox 64/ Lylat Wars (both 3DS and N64 version) along with most others in the series.
Rez
Gunners Heart
Are there any that I’ve missed out on?
If you like Rez, don’t pass up Child of Eden.
^ditto
Omega Boost was my first thought anyway, it’s so close to the level of PD Zwei it’s almost scary. No coincidence really…
Afterburner Climax is quite good, more of a pure shooting gallery though. My fave old-school classic is still Galaxy Force 2, I believe there’s a PS2 SEGA Ages version?
Actually, I didn’t like Rez at all. It was far too limited, I didn’t like the visuals or sound… no, I don’t like that game at all.
I do actually own Child of Eden, but I haven’t bought the Kinect yet. I was preparing too, specifically to play Crimson Dragon, but I was wise enough to wait for Crimson to be released first before jumping in.
Whilst I haven’t been able to play CoE the way it’s supposed to be, I can already tell it’s the superior game to Rez.
Regarding Omega Boost, my understanding is that at least one member/ ex-member of Team Andromeda worked on the title, hence the similarities.
Thanks for the Afterburner Climax and Galaxy Force 2 recommendations. I’m more interested in the PS2 GF2 game actually.
I’ve realised I’ve played a few more like Tital Wars/ Solar Eclipse, Sky Target, Space Harrier and Cotton for the Dreamcast. However, none of these seem to give the freedom or variety that Panzer Dragoon or Star Fox has.
There’s a rail shooter called Star Wars Arcade which came out on the 32X. I wouldn’t recommend the game myself, but it’s something you could try out.
So this is a random tangent inspired by the games mentioned here:
Panzer Dragoon has been called a Starfox clone by the ignorant, and of course that game is an acknowledged influence. If you’re going to pick a single precedent for the overal sensibility of Starfox it has to be Galaxy Force II, hands down. And of course SEGA / Namco / Taito have many earlier sprite based 3D-ish shooters with varying degrees of similarity.
Few people even remember that the original Starfox was developed by Argonaut Games, not Nintendo internally. And it truly is like an almost even hybrid of Galaxy Force II and Argonaut’s own seminal classic Starglider, which was originally released about 8 years earlier. And Starglider is basically like a free-flight take on Atari’s own Star Wars arcade game, which of course SEGA paid direct tribute to with their later Model 1 game. That Star Wars game is quite possibly the first game ever that could fit the classification of a 3D rail shooter, in the contemporary concept.
It’s a relatively sparse genre overall - not counting all the light gun games. (or Call of Doody? 
) And the influences are very tightly bound together, crossing any East and West boundaries.
Sin and Punishment (N64) and Sin and Punishment: Star Successor (Wii) are pretty close to PD.
Great read, Ancient. Indeed, the number of games in this field is limited, especially nowadays where freeroaming games are all the rage. I did download the demo of Yar’s Revenge on the XBLA, but it wasn’t a particularly good game.
It’s a real shame. 3rd person rail shooters give me the perfect level of variety I want from an arcade style shooter. On the rails, but without enough challenge and ideas to think of the best suitable tactics. Also, they usually don’t take long to complete. I’m not a big fan of overly drawn out games.
I completely forgot Arguanaut games were indeed the original creators of Star Fox. It’s interesting that Nintendo invested in a number of British developers for games on the Snes, in an era where most of Europe’s games industry was dominated by Sega.
I never did play this one, always vaguely wanted to try it out sometime…
Probably the most blatant (and rather bizarre) clone of Panzer Dragoon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPeMiVzPaeM
I always thought Starfox 2 took at least as much influence form PDZ as Panzer Dragoon took from Starfox. Along with Sin and Punishment and a couple others I can’t quite remember, both the other consoles that gen tried pretty hard to have their own answer to these games. 
Aha, I saw a video of this game sometime ago, but I escaped my memory. I shall have to look into this one further methinks.
I discovered this on while reading about SamSho and checking out what else they have on that site. It looks potentially decent. It’s called Gunners Heart.
hardcoregaming101.net/gunner … sheart.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= he fights a robotic Panzer Dragoon Zwei boss, lol.
It seems like they had a solid base but not enough talent or money to make it great.
I think you’ve sadly already seen all of the truly great ones, and some lesser ones, here.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERm6GUF4-8I5:25 mark
I remember next to nothing about Gunner’s Heart as it’s been years since I played. What I do remember is that I wasn’t impressed by the controls. Also, I think my then-ancient computer couldn’t handle it well.
I can’t seem to find a working torrent to play the game again, which is frustrating.
But, wow, Vanark looks promising.
Since people suggested older stuff like Galaxy Force 2 here’s something even older. I really liked Blood Bros in the arcades back in the day. Despite being newer it’s not advanced like Space Harrier in that you aren’t moving through a level in high speed, instead you’re in a single screen shooting gallery, but the gameplay is quite similar to those games. Controlling a character, avoiding shots and shooting enemy patterns.
It’s not a deep engrossing experience but it probably still holds up in short sessions with the destructible levels and cool power ups. The controls are quite good. If I remember correctly, if you move left/right without firing then you control the character to avoid enemy fire and get behind cover, while if you’re mashing the fire button then you’re controlling the crosshair all around the screen with the character remaining in place. So to dodge you have to stop shooting. There’s a roll button as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVxR024HkGI)
There’s a similar newer game on SNES called Wild Guns, graphically it’s better but I never played that. It seems to have done away with the one shot deaths and destructible cover. It also has a melee strike for enemies up close, kind of like Sin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8qzXWP-t9Y)
Edit: and I only just discovered the Blood Bros developers made another of my favorites, Toki (that’s a platform game, off topic, but so awesome). But sadly not much else though their last game seems to be kind of like a Shock Troopers (which I love as much as Metal Slug) with forced and mostly side rather than top or all over scrolling. Their first game was Cabal which looks a lot like Blood Bros so it may be worth trying as well. SNK also made an answer to that game called Nam-1975. Here’s a video of the last.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G7s1FPBUPo)
It seems to retain the same control scheme and style but the levels can be scrolling. However not in a way that makes it closer to a rail shooter but rather side to side.
And I just remembered of the GI Joe arcade game which is more like Space Harrier on foot. I remember disliking that one but perhaps I just wasn’t any good at it back then. Or I didn’t like the visuals being glitchy and more obviously faked 3D than Space Harrier, possibly due to the much lower scrolling speed (of at least the first levels). It kind of looks cool in this video I found, with all that mindless destruction, more over the top.
Many thanks for that. Completely forgot about this title. And it’s made by Core Design too! They made some awesome games for the Mega CD. I think they were THE developer to pull the most potential out of the Mega CD.
Tis’ a pity the 3DO version never materialised.
you have also the Rail-Shooter-FMV Shoot’em up like :
You have also Shadow squadron (32X) which you can drive your spaceship as you want or choose to put on the automatic pilot and the game becom a rail shooter 
I’m surprised that this game wasn’t mentioned earlier. Genre-wise it was more of a shooting gallery style game I guess, but in terms of the overall thematic concept, look and feel it’s very similar to Panzer Dragoon and it has fantastic music.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elemental_Gearbolt
Stage 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpiEs4zlMMQ)
Stage 4:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfG_2tBI4dk)
-Thomas
I didn’t forget that game. But it’s a 1st person rail shooter.
[quote=“PXL”]you have also the Rail-Shooter-FMV Shoot’em up like :
You have also Shadow squadron (32X) which you can drive your spaceship as you want or choose to put on the automatic pilot and the game becom a rail shooter :-)[/quote]
Microcosm - KILL IT WITH FIRE!
Novastorm - played before. Very average. How the heck were you to know where your bullets were going though?
Shadow Squadron/ Stellar Assault - Never played but this game looks good. Not a rail shooter really, but still a game I’d love to play.
Just found another rail shooter on the Saturn - G Vector.