Desert Assault (known as Thunder Zone (サンダーゾーン) in Japan) is a shoot'em up and run-and-gun developed and published by Data East. It was only released in the arcades.

The game is about the operations of an elite squad consisting of four hand-picked soldiers in the Persian Gulf in an unspecified conflict.

Desert Assault is a run-and-gun similar to Mercs, Shock Troopers and Metal Slug. Up to four players can take part in co-op. Everyone chooses one of the four members of the squad. Each soldier has a different standard weapon and a different effect when using his nukes. Nukes are bombs which deal a vast amount of damage to everything on screen. Dead enemies will often drop weapons which can pick up. All weapons have infinite amo and differ in spread, reacfh, damage and fire rate. There also sometime additional nukes to pick up, and food which replenishes health. You can also get additional nukes after completing a stage when scoring enough points. Sometime, you came across vehicles which can be entered. A vehicles will protect you until it is destroyed. Vehicles often have more powerful weapons, and some of them can simply run over enemies.