Rival Megagun Is the Competitive Shoot-Em-Up Game Teens Crave

This is Rival Megagun, it’s a competitive multiplayer vertical-scrolling shooter. I love it.

Twinkle Star Sprites was the first competitive multiplayer vertical-scrolling shooter I ever played, it’s a Neo Geo classic.

The thing that makes these games special is that they are unique multiplayer novelties. There are fighting games, there are shooters, there was even Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo if you’re into competitive multiplayer puzzle games and have good color vision. As far as I know there are just two examples of the competitive multiplayer shoot-em-up, and Rival Megagun is much more approachable than Twinkle Star Sprites, although both games are available via modern digital download services with online multiplayer today.

Rival Megagun does even more to differentiate itself from it’s one rival. Megagun has more interesting characters, better music, and you have a dedicated button to send bombs and other interesting weapons to your competitor’s side of the screen. Even better, Rival Megagun lets you transform into a giant boss monster space ship and fuck your opponent’s shit up.

Grab a controller, get a buddy, fight to the death to save the world from the Harvester aliens that are here to destroy us all. Rival Megagun is $15 on Steam for Windows, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and it’ll be out on the Switch soon (December 6th.) It’s a delightful novelty.

If you fall in love with this tiny genre (of two?) then you should try the version of Twinkle Star Sprites that DotEMU put out, it’s good and $8 on Steam for Windows.