You are Flight Commander McCoy and after saving the ship Thundercross you have been given a new mission from Space Control 25 to destroy 32 giant spacecraft high in the Stratosphere. In your Advanced Flight Capsule (AFC) you must fly along side each ship and blast and destroy as much of the outside of the ship. This will include anything sticking out like blocks, shields and more importantly it's defenses especially as these will fire back at you. You do have a gun yourself but you can only fire if you move the ship and you can't move the ship while firing. You only have one attempt to destroy all 32 as you have one life but you do have a shield which decreases if you hit an object or a bullet. Die past ship one and you receive a password to start from that ship again.

Trigger Happy is a horizontal shoot-em-up viewed from the side with the screen scrolling left to right constantly. As you are flying along side the ships then everything is behind you so you shoot anything sticking out. A joystick is used to control your AFC.