have simple cartoon graphics, Operation Wolf has more realistic graphics. This provides a depth of perspective by using different sized sprites. Operation Wolf took the military themes of 1980s run and gun video games (such as Commando, Green Beret, and Ikari Warriors) and action films (such as Rambo and Commando) and applied them to light gun shooters. It presents a prisoner of war (POW) rescue mission with massive violence, killing masses of enemy soldiers, which was novel for light gun shooters at the time. It innovated on the mounted gun mechanismused before in Taito's Attack and even older Midway mechanical games from the 1960sby using an optical light gun sensor along with a geared motor that makes the player feel the kick when pulling the trigger. It spawned many arcade shooters with mounted machine gun controls and increasing levels of violence during the late 1980s to early 1990s. The game popularized first-person light gun rail shooters and inspired numerous clones and imitators during the late 1980s to early 1990s. Examples include SNK's Mechanized Attack and Sega's Line of Fire in 1989, SNK's Beast Busters in 1990, Namco's Steel Gunner and Midway's Terminator 2 in 1991, and Konami's Lethal Enforcers in 1992. Further influenced by Operation Wolf, the genre remained popular into the late 1990s and declined following the rise of the first-person shooter (FPS) genre. Operation Wolf spawned four sequels: Operation Thunderbolt (1988), Operation Wolf 3 (1994), Operation Tiger (1998), and Operation Wolf Returns: First Mission (2023). Notes References External links 1987 video games Amiga games Amstrad CPC games Arcade video games Atari ST games Commodore 64 games DOS games FM Towns games Golden Joystick Award winners Golden Joystick Award for Game of the Year winners Light gun games MSX games Master System games Nintendo Entertainment System games Ocean Software games Rail shooters Square Enix franchises Taito arcade games TurboGrafx-16 games Video games about terrorism Video games scored by Jean Baudlot Virtual Console games ZX Spectrum games Video games developed in Japan