🎮 Play Exerion Online (NES)

Exerion is a vertical scrolling space shooter developed and published by Jaleco, released in arcades in 1983 and ported to the NES the same year. You pilot a lone fighter against relentless waves of alien enemies — insect-like swarms and geometric attackers that dive and wheel in formation across a parallax-scrolling starfield.

How to Play

Your ship carries two weapons: a rapid-fire single shot (Z / B button) and a double shot (X / A button) that fires two bullets simultaneously. Double-shot ammo is limited and replenishes slowly, so save it for tight clusters. The game’s defining trait is inertia — your ship drifts a beat after you release the d-pad, which means you need to position yourself a moment early rather than snap to a lane at the last second.

• Arrow keys — move
• Z — single shot (rapid-fire)
• X — double shot (limited ammo)
• Enter — Start
• Shift — Select

Tips

• Work with the inertia, not against it — nudge into position a beat early and let the drift complete rather than correcting at the last second.
• Reserve double shots for dense enemy columns; two simultaneous bullets through a tight formation are worth far more than singles.
• Enemy waves follow fixed patterns. After the first few loops the dives become predictable, and routing yourself ahead of a wave beats reacting to it.