But I'm not sure if we are speaking about the exact same thing because you put star fox in there. My definition of an on-rails shooter is one where you move around from one screen to the next and just shoot things until the screen is empty, then the game moves you to the next screen. Your only inputs are shoot or reload
That is definitely my view as well, the reason I specified not Star-Fox is because I posted a similar thread to this on another website and all the replies were along the lines of "On rail shooters like Star Fox are too hard to make!", "I don't know many games like Star Fox, it's the only on-rails shooter I've played".
I never mentioned Star Fox, I said House of the Dead :S
I suppose Star Fox IS on rails and you do shoot but it's a different thing.