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Greatest Video Game Guns Ever

"Memories light the corners of my mind/ blood splattering memories of the greatest video game guns of all time!" We'll take it from here, Babs!

By Ben KharakhPublished 6 years ago 6 min read
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The bigger the baddies the harder they fall; the bigger the gun the bigger the hole! Whether your scrolling side to side, shooting shells from a third person point of view, or making mush out of Hell's demons, your weapons of choice leave a lasting impression. Let's take a stroll down memory lane while packing heat as we remember the greatest video game guns ever. And remember, no camping!

We're talking greatest video game guns ever, so let's skip numbers 100 to 11 and start at number 10: the BFG. According to the manuals for Doom II: Hell on Earth and Quake II, BFG is short for "Big, Uh, Freakin' Gun". But we really know what it stands for. We're space marines; not Goodfellas edited for TV. "Forget me? Forget you! Here's my Big Forgetting Gun!"

The Handcannon, and only the Handcannon, fires Ultimate Mighty Z bullets. And it's no wonder! This is a Magnum pistol that you can measure in baby forearms. With enough upgrades, Resident Evil's resident BFG will deliver 99.9 firepower with infinite ammunition! Where does it rank on our list? WE DON'T ANSWER TO YOU; WE HAVE A HANDCANNON! The rankings have been blasted away.

If we're going to put one raygun in our list of greatest video game guns ever then it's going to be the one built by Billy Blaze, Commander Keen himself. The boy genius saved our galaxy several times in 1990 and 1991, and has since disappeared aside from a brief re-appearance in 2001. He managed to deliver incapacitating blasts with his video game weapon to slugs, rock monsters, karate mice, and club wielding one eyed people eaters.

Take note, police officers: Blaze never killed anybody, and yet he saved the galaxy! Maybe you can take a lesson from his playbook and ease up on the killings of black men. Get some de-escalation and implicit bias training! Oh, do you think now's not an appropriate time to be political? SAY HELLO TO MY BFG!

There may be 5 reasons MMORPGs are ultimately unsatisfying, but there's few reasons to complain about shooting a gun that vibrates aggressively at a screen. One of the highlights of going to the movies in the 90s was blowing quarters on rail shooters where you got to point a light gun at the screen. There was Terminator 2, House of the Dead, Area 51, Lethal Enforcers, Time Crisis (where you stepped on a pedal to take cover behind the environment!), and many more.

None were as ridiculous as 1994's Revolution X, where you had to save members of the band Aerosmith from the New Order Nation (NON). Hey, if Wayne's World could have Aerosmith why not an arcade game?! The only thing that would have made it better would have been if NON was lead by Peter Hook from New Order instead of Mistress Helga. It'd be a "Blue Monday" indeed if we had to take down the seminal rock band!

You might be asking yourself, "Why are video game movies so awful?" but you've likely never asked, "Is there a game where I murder baddies with my feet instead of one of the greatest video game guns?" That's because there are so many games where jumping on someone kills them. THERE'S BLOOD ON YOUR FEET SUPER MARIO!

The overwhelming majority of those games aren't funny. Enter Adult Swim's Lee-Lee's Quest and it's sequel, Lee-Lee's Quest 2. Designed by Marcus Reichert, the games are LOL funny spoofs of platformers.

You play as Lee-Lee, who's thrust into saving his girlfriend (who later turns out to not be his girlfriend), collect shovels (for no reason!), and crush the inhabitants of his world to death. And they do not want to be crushed! NOT. ONE. BIT. Lee-Lee is the protagonist but not a hero in the slightest! So, head to Adult Swim to play Lee-Lee's Quest and treat yourself to one of the funniest games around.

There's plenty of games that might end up on a list like "Ten NES Games You Don't Need to Play," but Goldeneye would never end up on such a list. It's a seminal game with seminal weapons. Our choice for a good time is slapping. Oh, did you think we were going to say the Golden Gun? Ya, I bet you'd like that!

If we're playing Slappers Only, camping's not gonna help anybody! Paint the walls red with the blood of Alan Cumming and Sean Bean using just the palms of your hands. And if you don't think palms should be on this list let me direct you toward the gun show! I'm sorry; I'M FROM THE INTERNET! Check yourself before you wreck yourself. Now talk to the hand because it's SLAPPERS ONLY, BABY!

When I first played Duke Nukem3D my mind was blown. A first person shooter with a sense of humor? I hadn't had that much fun with a game since I'd played Day of the Tentacle! Of course, these days if you look at Duke Nukem 3D you're like, "Oh, yeah, of course Gamergate is going to be a thing!" But, at the time I was just floored to be a hero who said, "It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and I'm all out of gum."

Duke Nukem3D introduced us to the Microwave Expander, which made baddies blow up like hamsters in a microwave (Day of the Tentacle reference!); the Freezethrower (which froze your enemies and let you kick them into pieces); and the Shrinker, which Honey, I Shrunk the Kids-ed your enemies and let you step on their teeny-tiny bodies, which I'm sure Duke would love to do to his ex-wife who took the kids and the whole system is rigged against him and now he's involuntarily celibate. MAGA! Good times though in Duke Nukem 3D.

The Blue Shell is the most annoying projectile in Mario Kart history because it only effects the person in first place– an oft precarious place to be! When you're in last place, little tops a satisfying spite shell. Now if only we could hurl some of these at the 1%! Ammaright?! BERNIE WOULDA WON AT MARIO KART! (I have to break the fourth wall to let you know that that's not how I really feel. I, 100%, do not condone Bernie Bros and can't even pretend to for a joke. We needed to do everything in our power to stop President Sex Criminal so if you didn't vote for HRC you are complicit. A BLUE SHELL UPON YOUR HOUSES!).

I've lived a long life, and never have I been in the presence of as many steal rods, wooden boxes, and circular saw blades as Dr. Gordon Freeman seems to be in Half-Life 2. But if you're going to be fighting off an alien occupation you're going to want to use everything at your disposal. The gravity gun lets you do just that, making enough minced meat out of head crabs for a lifetime of crab rangoon.

You can take the portal gun out of Portal but you can't take Portal out of the portal gun. This puzzle game changed the gaming game and introduced the phrase, "The cake is a lie," into the popular vernacular. Even years later you can't walk down the street without hearing one kid say to another, "The cake is a lie. Slenderman, buttchugging, rainbow parties, Make America Great Again. But her emails!" Good to know the future is in good hands!

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About the Creator

Ben Kharakh

Manic pixie dream goth. With appearances in Fortune, Vice, Gothamist, and McSweeney's.@benkharakh

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