Operation Wolf

Operation Wolf is a light gun game that was originally released by Taito Corporation for the arcades in 1987. It runs on its own dedicated hardware (a Motorola 68000 lead microprocessor running at 12 MHz, two Zilog Z80 sub-microprocessors running at 4 MHz, a Yamaha YM-2151 FM sound chip also running at 4 MHz for its music and effects, and two OKI MSM-5205 PCM sound chips running at 384 KHz for speech). It was later ported to a large number of home computers and consoles. The arcade version was included in the compilation Taito Legends on the Sony PlayStation 2 in 2005 (but lacked light-gun support). The NES version was added to the Wii Virtual Console in 2008 for North America.

Operation Wolf is one of the most recognizable games in the "on-rails shooter" genre, and one of the earliest to be released. The player takes on the part of a Special Forces Operative sent on a mission to rescue valuable prisoners of war from concentration camps, proceeding from one area to the next.

As the screen scrolls slowly to the right, various enemies run onto the screen at different distances to the player. The player has a short window to quickly shoot them before he or she takes damage from the enemies' gunfire. Some enemies require multiple shots to kill, while others are immune to bullets everywhere except at their weak points. The player also has a finite number of grenades which he or she can use as a last resort to kill, or at the very least injure, all the enemies currently on the screen.

This is the first entry in the Operation Wolf series. It was followed up with three sequels, all of which allowed two players to play simultaneously: Operation Thunderbolt (1988), Operation Wolf 3 (1994) and Operation Tiger (1998). A promotion for this game is also featured in Ā Eikō no Koshien (1990).