Bioship Paladin
Bioship Paladin (or Bio-ship Paladin) is a horizontally scrolling Shoot'Em Up released for arcade and the Sega Genesis in the early 1990s. It's a fairly average shooter except for a rather unique feature; a point defense gun. That is, as well as your main guns which fire forward, you have a cursor which you can use to fire explosive blasts at any place on screen, in a very similar way to Missile Command. This allows you to use firepower defensively, by shooting down enemy projectiles before they can hit you, which is very rare in shmups. It also lets you target enemies and even parts of enemies selectively.
It is much slower paced than most shooters, probably because of the point defense, which requires the player to be able to intercept incoming fire in time.
- Attack Drone: You can collect them on the sides of your ship and they will shoot for you. They are easily destroyed, though.
- Charged Attack: The ship has a charge beam.
- Dynamic Difficulty: Sort of - the more health your ship has, the larger it is, and the more prone it is to getting hit.
- Painfully-Slow Projectile: The shots in this game are noticeably slower than in other games, which gives you a chance to counter them with your point defense gun.
- Segmented Serpent: One of the enemies is this. Unlike most of the entries under the trope, hitting it anywhere (not just the head) will damage it.
- Theme Naming: Many of the bosses are named after alcoholic drinks. Seems that the enemy forces were drunk when coming up with names...
- X Meets Y: R-Type meets Missile Command?