Teraburst is a Light Gun Game / Rail Shooter combo developed by Konami in 1998.
Like every arcade-style shooter of it's time, the game runs on another flimsy-as-hell Excuse Plot: The year is 2017, earth is facing an imminent invasion from hostile extraterrestrial forces who descended upon our cities from their flying saucers. It's up to the Sentinel Angels, mankind's best defense against alien invaders, to fend them off.
It's also worth noting that the game runs on Tarot Motifs when it comes to naming conventions of bosses - likely inspired by the House of the Dead (the first coming out just two years ago) craze of the late 90s.
Prepare for Immediate Departure, Sentinel Angels...
- Alien Blood: The alien mooks bleeds purple. A lot.
- Alien Invasion: What kicked off the game's plot, and you're part of a Special Forces team tasked with defending humanity by slaughtering your way through the invaders in multiple kickass levels.
- Aliens Are Bastards: They invade Earth in the backstory for no given reason beyond wanton destruction of humanity (even promotional materials and the opening FMV declares their "motives are unknown"), and if you defeat their leader the Hanged Man, it even went as far as to blow up itself with the Earth in a last-ditch attempt to wipe out humanity.
- Attack Drone: The aliens will deploy floating probes shaped like circling tops capable of firing shots at you, alongside their common soldiers.
- Battleship Raid: The final stage sees you infiltrating the alien mothership via helicopter, and battling your way to the core housing the Final Boss, The Hanged Man. Defeat it and the mothership blows up, ending the invasion.
- Camera Abuse: Whenever you suffer a hit, a hole cracks on the screen with the words "DANGER!" appearing onscreen.
- Car Chase Shoot-Out: The second boss plays out like this, except it's your high-tech vehicle against a fast-moving, heavily-armed alien walker called "The Tower". It can even leap In a Single Bound over buildings to catch up with you!
- Chicken Walker: Occasionally the aliens will deploy two-legged walking transports with turrets for arms against you. They're not too durable and can be taken down easily with concentrated fire. The second boss, "Tower", is a King Mook version of the regular walkers.
- Damage-Sponge Boss: All the bosses (including the first boss, Chariot) can soak up bullets for several minutes, with their health dwindling slowly while you fire away. Most of them have two or three attacks, save for the Hanged Man.
- Excuse Plot: Aliens are attacking, and you're tasked with killing everything onscreen that isn't a human.
- Exploding Barrels: A recurring outdoor element, which lets out quite a big explosion radius when shot. It helps you clear the screen of aliens rather quickly, too.
- Flying Saucer: How the aliens made their landing, with saucers deploying their troops en masse in the opening scene. Occasionally in the outdoor stages saucers will show up to either drop extra enemies, or attack you.
- Hostage Spirit-Link: Civilains tend to show up in outdoor areas, running in the middle of shootouts, and while they can't be killed you get penalized (by losing points) for shooting them. The beach mission in Polynesia even punishes you for shooting seagulls!
- Multiple Endings: Depending if you managed to deplete all the health on the Final Boss, Hanged Man's second form, or not.
- If you deplete Hanged Man's second health bar in time, the ending cutscene sees the boss collapsing in pieces as you jettison your ride out of the mothership... before your transport's jet thrusters allows you to land safely on the streets. Cue the credits.
- If the Hanged Man still has some health left, then the final cutscene sees you fleeing the mothership... only for the boss to, in it's dying throes, activate the mothership's bio-particle cannon. Which leads to an Earth-Shattering Kaboom, because if it's going to die, might as well take the rest of humanity with it. Then the credits roll over a dead planet.
- Phallic Weapon: The Tower has missile batteries installed in it's shoulders, and two gatling guns attached down there.
- Predator Pastiche: The slightly less-common alien mooks who doesn't use firearms tends to resemble Yautjas, armed with wrist-blades and wearing masks similar to their namesake. They'll pounce across the screen to hit you with a slash, and somehow deals greater damage than aliens with guns.
- Tank Goodness: The first boss is an alien tank codenamed The Chariot. Who, besides using it's main cannon on you, also have missile batteries allowing it to Macross Missile Massacre all over the place.
- This Is Not a Drill: In the opening FMV your communications drops this line, word-for-word, before deploying you to battle the aliens.
- Unconventional Vehicle Chase: The second stage has a high-speed chase in the Chicago streets, with you in one of the Sentinel Angels' high-tech transports on a skyway bridge filled with the aliens' walkers, mechanical drones and bug-like armored vehicles. It ends with you battling a King Mook version of the walkers who chases you down the whole stage.
- Waterfront Boss Battle: The Moon, the Leviathan-like mecha serving as the boss in the Polynesia stage. You're on a speedboat and fight it on the surface, where it submerges in and out periodically while spamming attacks on you.
- Xenomorph Xerox: The Final Boss, Hanged Man, resembles a pale albino Xenomorph - albeit building-sized and capable of firing energy beams from its mouth. It even spends the whole battle crawling alongside walls on all fours like a Xeno.
