A vertically scrolling video game or vertical scroller is a video game in which the player views the field of play principally from a top-down perspective, while the background scrolls from the top of the screen to the bottom (or, less often, from the bottom to the top) to create the illusion that the player character is moving in the game world.

Continuous vertical scrolling is designed to suggest the appearance of constant forward motion, such as driving. The game sets a pace for play, and the player must react quickly to the changing environment. While top-down racing games, skiing and other sports games, and pinball simulations all commonly use vertical scrolling, the genre of vertically scrolling shooters has made it a fundamental design element.

In the 1970s, most vertically scrolling games involved driving. The first vertically scrolling video game was Taito's Speed Race, released in November 1974. Atari's Hi-way was released eleven months later in 1975. Rapidly there were driving games that combined vertical, horizontal, and even diagonal scrolling, making the vertical-only distinction less important. Both Atari's Super Bug (1977) and Fire Truck (1978) feature driving with multidirectional scrolling. Sega's Monaco GP (1979) is a vertical-only scrolling racing game, but in color.

One of the first non-driving vertically scrolling games was Atari Football (1978). Scrolling prevents the entire field from having to fit on the screen at once. Many later sports games kept the purely vertical scrolling display, such as TV Sports: Football (1988), while others zoomed in closer, adding varying amounts of horizontal scrolling.

Another early concept that leaned on vertical scrolling is skiing. 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. Magnavox published Alpine Skiing! in 1979 for their Odyssey² game console. In 1980, the same year Activision published Bob Whitehead's Skiing for the Atari 2600, Mattel published a different slalom game, also called Skiing, for their Intellivision console. In 1981 Taito published Alpine Ski, an arcade video game with three modes of play.

The 1980 Nichibutsu arcade game Crazy Climber has the player scaling a vertically scrolling skyscraper. Spider-Man Spider-Man for the Atari VCS (1982) also involves a vertically scrolling building. Data East's 1981 arcade Flash Boy was released in two versions: a side-scrolling version and a vertical scrolling version.

Pinball Quest (1989) and Devil's Crush (1990) are early examples of pinball video games with vertically scrolling playfields, a format which became popular in the 1990s. Scrolling solves the problem of how to fit a fundamentally vertical game on a horizontal monitor without shrinking the visuals.

1979's Galaxian from Namco is a fixed shooter played over a starfield background which gives the impression of vertical movement. The same is true of Ozma Wars from later the same year. The 1981 arcade game Pleiades is a fixed-shooter that vertically scrolls as a transition between stages and then continuously scrolls during a docking sequence.