Rapidly there were driving games that combined vertical, horizontal, and even diagonal scrolling, making the vertical-only distinction less important.
Street Racer (1977), one of the launch titles for the Atari VCS, includes a slalom game in which the gates move down an otherwise empty playfield to give the impression of vertical scrolling.
Caverns of Mars follows the visual style and some of the gameplay of the horizontally-scrolling Scramble arcade game released earlier in the year.
In 1982, Namco's Xevious established the template for many vertically scrolling shooters to come: a ship flying over a landscape with both air and ground targets.
Xevious-esque vertically scrolling shooters rapidly appeared in the following years: Konami's Mega Zone (1983), Capcom's Vulgus (1984), Savage Bees (1985), Terra Cresta (1985), and TwinBee (1985).
Taito's mostly vertical Front Line (1982) focuses on on-foot military combat, where the player can shoot, throw grenades, and climb in and out of tanks while moving deeper into enemy territory.
The game seemingly had little influence until three years later when Commando (1985) implemented a similar formula, followed by the even more comparable Ikari Warriors in 1986, which added co-op.