12.03. Tube Shooter

Tube Shooters take the fundamentals of Fixed Shooters and wrap the movement around the screen to provide a pseudo-3D effect.

This is a pretty small subgenre. If you've heard of any Tube Shooter, it's probably Tempest (Atari, 1981). The subgenre does still serve as an interesting relic of history due to its attempt to take Fixed Shooters 3D before the advancements from V-SHMUPs or Rail Shooters came about.

These games are often associated with psychedelic or trance-like visuals. Perhaps this is Jeff Minter's lasting mark on the subgenre, as best seen in Llamasoft's Tempest 2000 (1994) or Polybius (2017), but the gameplay does seem conducive to that aesthetic regardless. Some others worth checking out, both on the PS1, are N2O: Nitrous Oxide (Gremlin Interactive, 1998), and iS: internal section (Positron, 1999).

Oh, and there is a game with a Modifier! Aaero (Mad Fellows, 2017) brings a Rhythm component to the mix. Hooray!