Have you heard of Akuma?

No, I’m not thinking about the Street Fighter character. There is a hard to find arcade light gun game with the same name. Akuma has two players pick up guns and shoot ghosts that resemble the specters from Japanese horror movies. Shooting ghouls is nothing new, but the layered screens make Akuma standout.

There are actually two screens in this photo, one on top of another. This gives Akuma a unique sense of depth that is sort of like a hologram. The grayscale ghosts on the transparent front screen eerily float. Very cool.

Besides the creative screen set-up Akuma is a run of the mill light gun game. Ghouls suddenly appear. You shoot them. Sometimes they vault forward from the back screen and appear on the front screen. There only major twist is how the gun works. You can rapidly fire shots, but if you stop shooting for a few seconds you can fire a charged shot that exterminates multiple ghosts. With two players you can alternate charged shots and completely forget about the main challenge in a rail gun shooter: aiming.

Regardless, Akuma gets an A+ for novelty.