Sunset Riders was originally an arcade game (later ported to both the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive and the SNES) where you controlled one of four cowboys. Stages were mostly set in a left-to-right side-scrolling manner, but sometimes you could shoot into the background and there were some bonus stages where you controlled a crosshair.

Anyway... after looking at Express Raider, I was amazed at how similar these two games look (and probably) play.

For the record, I'm not suggesting that Express Raider copied Sunset Riders; if anything, it's the other way around because Express Raider came out in 1986, whereas Sunset Riders was released in 1991.

I'd never heard of Express Raider until today, so it's interesting to think that Konami "borrowed" so much from Data East.