Research on Side Scrolling Shooter

Given the task of researching more on what our game could include to make it stand out, I decided to go a different route than what everyone else on the team did.  The ideas we have for enemies all sound great, and out mall cop character is fine the way we have it already (in my opinion).

But what boils down to a great shooter is the weapons.  So what could we have our mall cop have?  Go the standard route and keep his weapons down to what regular mall cops have, include stuff he has available to him in the mall (a la Dead Rising), or go all out crazy and include all the weapons we could think of?

Considering this game is based in a dream, going the latter would seem the best option.  But having a mixture of all 3 sounds the best in my opinion.  Because dreams are based on our own psyche, it can include any and all objects.  It works on the basis of familiarity and goes to the surreal.

So our team has mentioned a sort of upgradeable system that would work like this:

Baton -> Club -> Knife -> Sword -> Flail

As we can see, it goes from something he uses daily to something out of the ordinary.  In this way I believe we can achieve something that can stand out.

This is just a small bit on the melee side.  What will be the selling point is the guns.  So what can we work for our mall cop?

Taser -> Pistol -> Shotgun -> Mini-Gun -> Laser

An idea I've had before is this concept of an add-on.  It can be let go and dragged with you, and would act as a secondary weapon.  This idea may be hard for our mall cop, but a generality can be applied.  His segway is always the weapon.  So why don't we have the weapon link onto the segway and change as we go?  Have a standard segway with attachments for weapons.

Now the next problem arises is how do we handle the weapons?  Two ideas come to mind:

-Have them stack on top of each other (a la Super Metroid)
-Have them replace each other (a la Contra)

The stack system could be used as a damage recourse.  If our cop is hit, he downgrades to a lower weapon.  But that means it will be difficult to utilize a rock/paper/scissors mode for our enemies.

The replaced weapons does the exact opposite, of course.  We can do a weakness for our enemies, but have the frustration of locating them, or accidentally taking a weaker weapon.

Lastly is the concept of where we get the weapons.  Should we get them from the enemies themselves, or will they be scattered around the area?  Something to talk to with my team, of course.