Beast Busters

Beast Busters is a light-gun shooter from SNK in which up to three players simultaneously face hordes of mutants and zombie-like creatures flooding a city after a mysterious catastrophe. The cabinet version was built specifically for cooperation – three separate gun controllers allowed three people to play side by side at once, an unusual sight in arcades and a draw for crowds of onlookers.

The gameplay is straightforward: players aim at the screen and shoot advancing waves of enemies, with ammunition limited and needing to be regularly replenished via power-ups scattered throughout the levels. The enemy design leans into exaggerated, B-movie horror aesthetics – from ordinary zombies to bigger bosses that require focused fire from several players at once. The pace of the game is fast and relentless, matching the arcade cabinet philosophy of maximizing the value of an inserted credit through short but intense fun. The setting of a devastated city, laboratories, and underground corridors gives each level visual variety, though the main focus remains constant fire on incoming waves of enemies.

Beast Busters is remembered today mainly as one of the more notable horror-themed light-gun shooters of the late 1980s, and as an example of how SNK experimented with cooperative multiplayer even before its more famous fighting games arrived. The trio of guns mounted on the cabinet became a symbol of the game for many arcade visitors even before they started playing. For fans of retro horror and cooperative action shooting, it's a must.

Why play it: a cooperative horror shooter for three players, unusual in scale already back in 1989.