Axelay

Top: Vertical gameplay Bottom: Horizontal gameplay Axelay is a scrolling shooter similar to Konami's own Life Force where players take control of the D117B space fighter craft as a last resort to stop the Armada of Annihilation by recovering its lost weaponry through six stages, each with a boss at the end that must be fought before progressing any further. The gameplay varies quite a bit from that of traditional 2D scrolling shooters. Rather than collecting weapon power-up items from defeated enemies in order to obtain more advanced weapons, players earns new weapons as they advance in the game instead. There are three weapon types with which the fighter is outfitted at the start of a stage: a standard weapon, a special weapon and a bomb or missile.

Players may freely switch between each of these weapon types during a level. At the end of each level, a new choice of one of these types of weapons is added to the ship's armory and players are given the ability to modify their fighter to suit the needs of the next level. Examples of weapons include multiple-way shot, vulkan cannon , and spread bombs. Similar to Life Force , levels transition between vertical and horizontal scrolling layouts, forcing the player to select weapons that will be most effective for each level.

Each selectable weapon in Axelay also operate like shields . The game eschews the standard one-hit-kill model prevalent in space shooters, instead simply disabling the currently selected weapon and reducing the player to a weak default version of that weapon type. Sustaining a second hit while using a weakened weapon will destroy the player's ship. However, directly colliding into an enemy will still destroy the ship instantly.

The title uses various visual effects in both the top-down and side-scrolling stages. In the top-down stages, enemies and objects are warped as they come into view to produce a pseudo-3D effect, in addition to parallax scrolling effects. Axelay uses a respawn system where their ship immediately starts at the location they died at. Getting hit by enemy fire or colliding against solid stage obstacles will result in losing a life and once all lives are lost, the game is over though players have the option to continue playing via a limited number of credits.

Although there is an ending, the game loops back to the first stage after completing the last stage, with each one increasing the difficulty and enemies fire denser bullet patterns.