NebulasRay was developed by the same team of Namco employees that created the vertical shooter Fighter & Attacker (1992).

[2] Stages conclude in a boss fight where players must destroy the weak point of an enemy battleship, such as its core or turret guns.

[5] They chose to create another shooter because of their dissatisfaction with the quality of the genre at the time and wanting to improve on faults present in their previous game.

[5] Namco created the models on Macintosh computers using the same rendering and texture-mapping techniques it used for Ridge Racer (1993) and Cyber Sled (1993).

[5][7] The soundtrack was composed by Masahiro Fukuzawa and Takayuki Ishikawa, who wanted its music to feel empowering and thrilling for players.

[9] It was released midway in the year in North America and was later demonstrated at the American Amusement Machine Association (AAMA) tradeshow in Illinois.

[10] Victor Entertainment released its soundtrack in July as the thirteenth volume in its Namco Game Sound Express series.

"[10] A Consoles + writer was similarly impressed, and believed its creative use of 3D and fast-pacing would help keep the shooter genre alive.

[3][10] Micom BASIC in particular was fond of its pacing while Shooting Maker showed appreciation towards its innovation and sense of power while playing.