In the Hunt retrospective: revisiting a cult classic arcade shooter

Most shoot-’em-ups of the early 1990s wanted players in sleek starfighters blasting through space, weaving between lasers and alien swarms. In the Hunt went in the opposite direction, and that is exactly what made it memorable. Released by Irem in arcades in 1993, the game took the familiar side-scrolling shooter formula and plunged it underwater, replacing spaceships with submarines, stars with murky oceans, and futuristic dogfights with brutal mechanical warfare beneath the waves. Instead of speed and elegance, it offered weight, atmosphere, and the constant feeling that you were navigating through a hostile, flooded battlefield rather than simply flying through another shooter stage. What makes In the Hunt stand out even now is how committed it is to that idea. You control the Granvia, a small but heavily armed submarine sent to stop a terrorist threat on a devastated future Earth. The action is slower and heavier than many shooters of its era, but that is part of the appeal. The Granvia does not dart around like a nimble fighter craft. It feels like a machine built to endure punishment, and that gives the game a completely different rhythm. One of its smartest design choices is that the screen scrolls only when the player moves forward, meaning you control the pace instead of being dragged along by the game. That small change gives In the Hunt a more deliberate and tactical feeling than many of its contemporaries, letting players cautiously push into danger rather than simply react to it.

The weapons help reinforce that personality. Your standard missiles can fire straight ahead, but they can also be launched upward, which allows you to deal with enemies attacking from above the waterline, including helicopters and aircraft. That gives combat a nice layered quality and makes every encounter feel more dynamic than the game’s slower pace might suggest. Along the way, players can collect power-ups that provide new weapons such as the machine gun, wave cannon, and cracker shot, each one adding a different flavor to the destruction. Mechanically, it is still recognizable as a classic arcade shooter, but the underwater setting and the way the action is staged give it a unique identity that keeps it from feeling like just another imitation of better-known genre hits. Visually, In the Hunt is where the game really makes its case for being remembered. The pixel art is dense, detailed, and packed with industrial grime. The environments feel oppressive and mechanical, full of wreckage, steel, and collapsing infrastructure. Enemy vehicles and bosses are especially memorable, often looking absurdly oversized and wonderfully overengineered, like someone took battleships, tanks, and sea platforms and fused them into nightmarish war machines. There is a lot of personality in that art style, and it becomes even more interesting in hindsight when you realize that members of the team behind In the Hunt later went on to form Nazca, the studio that created Metal Slug. Once you know that, the connection is impossible to miss. The exaggerated machinery, the fondness for destruction, and the almost playful love of mechanical chaos are all already present here, just in submarine form.

That historical connection gives In the Hunt an extra layer of importance, but even without it, the game has its own charm. Designer Kazuma Kujo reportedly wanted to make a co-op shooter that broke away from overused genre ideas like forced scrolling and outer-space settings, and the submarine concept itself was apparently inspired by the sound of water from a fountain. It is a strange but fitting origin story for such a distinctive game. When In the Hunt later came to home platforms like the PlayStation and Sega Saturn, critical reception was more mixed. Reviewers often praised the graphics and appreciated the core gameplay, but some found it too short, too slow, or lacking the originality needed to compete with the best shooters of the time. Those criticisms are understandable, especially for players expecting speed and intensity above all else. Even so, In the Hunt remains worth revisiting because its strengths were never about polish alone. It succeeds because it feels different. It has a mood that few other shooters match, trading raw speed for atmosphere and momentum for pressure. There may be technically better shoot-’em-ups from the era, and certainly more famous ones, but few have such a strong sense of place and personality. In the Hunt feels like a game with rust on its hull and weight in every movement, and that gives it lasting character. Today it plays less like a forgotten relic and more like a cult classic that dared to be awkward, heavy, and unusual in a genre that often rewarded sameness. That individuality is exactly why it still deserves to be remembered.

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