A weapon from
Games Workshop's
Warhammer 40k, used almost exclusively by the
Eldar. It was invented in the early 90s, way before
Quake 2 popularised the
railgun.
The shuriken catapult is a rifle-sized
linear gravitic accelerator, which creates a strong gravitational field towards the muzzle of the weapon, into which aerodynamic,
monomolecularly sharp shurikens are dropped. Shurikens are most often shaped like ninja stars, but can also be square, triangular, or even ring shaped. By the end of the barrel the shurikens reach
supersonic speeds, and can travel through all but the heaviest of armour.
In
40k 2nd edition's
Codex Eldar, GW decided to allow guardian squads to carry Shuriken Catapults with no restriction, and gave the weapons a
sustained fire dice each. This was hailed as
cheesy by non-eldar players. It also made
Dire Avengers pretty pointless, as their specialist weapons were given to the squaddies.