Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 29, 2024, 02:38:14 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Why do you not play shmups?

Started by The Boston Crab, April 10, 2019, 12:49:15 PM

Previous topic - Next topic
Up for a genuine chat about this, there's no accusatory tone at all. I love them and I wonder why there's relatively little interest here/anywhere because they're probably the most rewarding games I play. They used to be massive and probably many people associate video games with shmups of some description, but they have clearly fallen out of favour.


I wonder, though, given the massive surge in interest of retro and retro-inspired gaming, why shmups haven't had a comeback[size=78%]. [/size]I'll be honest, I've only really been into them for about eighteen months and so I can still remember how I used to feel about the genre. It's too hard, too niche, the bullet hell stuff looks like a prank, high scores are meaningless, you just have to learn where the safe areas are, they're pure memorisation, it's just moving left and right at the bottom of the screen, they're all the same, they're all too complicated.


I wonder then, why don't you play shmups?

Kalabi

I spent a lot of time playing through the Spectrum version of R-Type many years ago, and the same with R-Type Delta on the PS1 and R-Type Final on the PS2.

Ordyne was fun in the arcade too.

Ferris


seepage

I liked the arcade version of 'Spacewar!' and 'Galaxian', was rubbish at 'Defender' and 'Robotron' was just beyond the pale.

I used to like shoot 'em ups until The Boston Crab started calling them schmups and since then I think they are just for nincompoops.

Kelvin

I fucking love them and would play loads of them.

Never come out in this country, though, do they?

Quote from: Emotional Support Peacock on April 10, 2019, 06:22:15 PM
I used to like shoot 'em ups until The Boston Crab started calling them schmups and since then I think they are just for nincompoops.

'Shmups', they're not fuckin German or something. I actually prefer 'shooting games' or STGs but that's not the common nomenclature. Shoot 'em ups is fine.

Quote from: Kelvin on April 10, 2019, 07:08:43 PM
I fucking love them and would play loads of them.

Never come out in this country, though, do they?

Sadly not so much. I would massively recommend Rolling Gunner on the Switch via the Japanese eShop, though. It's immense. Ex-Cave dev made it, he worked on Dodonpachi SaiDaiOuJou and Deathsmiles II. It's bloody brilliant. Here's my stage one best run if you're interested. Not actually seen any vids online with a better stage one score. I love how it accelerates from 9m to 56m in about ten seconds.

https://youtu.be/JI05nsny2Mo


Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth


Thursday


I know I'm a dickhead and that but is the community seen as that annoying? I didn't think so. As I say, genuinely really interested (for my own sake, admittedly) why they're not of much interest to most people who otherwise really love games and from different genres. The bullet hell influence on Undertale, for example, would seem to be fundamental but I don't see loads of people saying that it turned them onto the genre. Likewise, Yoko Taro is a big fan and Nier:Automata had various shmup influences and elements but it doesn't seem to have triggered much interest beyond those particular minigames, etc.

Kelvin

I do genuinely love shmouops, for what it's worth. Easily one of my favourite genres, although more for the mindless, rhythmic annihilation of it all*, and less for the learning of patterns and grinding out high scores etc. They're just a very easy genre to pick up and play for a little while with your brain switched off - at least the ones I like and in the way I like to play them.

I have huge respect for the amazing runs people like you can do, Bosto. I loved seeing your very obvious progression in Ikuragua's playbacks, for example. It's just not what I play them for.       


*https://i.imgur.com/Fjc54zM.jpg?fb

madhair60

I enjoy them but mostly the ones with creative use of terrain or evolving enemies like Gradius or R-Type - if it's just straight-up bullet curtains I'm not as interested. I like the early Raiden games, very precise and rewarding.

Thursday

Quote from: The Boston Crab on April 10, 2019, 09:21:50 PM
I know I'm a dickhead and that but is the community seen as that annoying? I didn't think so. As I say, genuinely really interested (for my own sake, admittedly) why they're not of much interest to most people who otherwise really love games and from different genres. The bullet hell influence on Undertale, for example, would seem to be fundamental but I don't see loads of people saying that it turned them onto the genre. Likewise, Yoko Taro is a big fan and Nier:Automata had various shmup influences and elements but it doesn't seem to have triggered much interest beyond those particular minigames, etc.

I'm joking lad, just some #bantz

PlanktonSideburns

whats the best snes shooting things up game? having a go on r-type at the moment

Quote from: PlanktonSideburns on April 10, 2019, 10:05:24 PM
whats the best snes shooting things up game? having a go on r-type at the moment
[/quote

Super Aleste is one I played recently and it was genuinely really good. Like, compares favourably with the better modern stuff.

PlanktonSideburns


Jakey Chesterton

Quote from: PlanktonSideburns on April 10, 2019, 10:05:24 PM
whats the best snes shooting things up game? having a go on r-type at the moment

Wild Guns is good (is like Sin and Punishment).

QDRPHNC

Because after the division, GTA 5, red dead 2, etc, a shmup on rails like battlefield 1 is boring.

Quote from: Kelvin on April 10, 2019, 09:26:19 PM
I do genuinely love shmouops, for what it's worth. Easily one of my favourite genres, although more for the mindless, rhythmic annihilation of it all*, and less for the learning of patterns and grinding out high scores etc. They're just a very easy genre to pick up and play for a little while with your brain switched off - at least the ones I like and in the way I like to play them.

I have huge respect for the amazing runs people like you can do, Bosto. I loved seeing your very obvious progression in Ikuragua's playbacks, for example. It's just not what I play them for.       

Thanks, man. In the grand scheme, I got good at the easiest stage and hardly played the game beyond that as you know, but it was one of the most satisfying things I've felt from any game. There is a certain overlap with the Souls stuff, repeating the same thing again and again and again until you get it. I totally understand how most people would find that quite a weird boring, grind though.

For the spectacle of destruction and almost switching off, if you do ever get the chance to play any of the Cave bullet hell stuff (Dodonpachi, etc.) they can totally be played that way and Dodonpachi Daioujou is the one which really opened my eyes at Arcade Club. I'm sure I've mentioned it before. They also have Ketsui and Armed Police Batrider cabinets (and Ikaruga) so if you ever find yourself over that way, I'd definitely recommend them as just perfect examples of the TOTAL FUCKDOWN side of the genre, if you want to play for survival.

Timothy

Boston, are there any good ones that play like rhythm games where you have to shoot or move on the beat of music? A bit like how Tetris Effect worked? I would love that.

I'd say nothing that I can think of. I've always thought that Ikaruga has a certain rhythm game element to it with the polarity switching and timing your missiles and stuff but it's certainly not linked to the music. It just requires certain similar skills.

Have you played Crypt of the Necrodancer, by the way? That sounds very similar to what you're asking but in a different genre.

Oh, Rez Infinite? Child of Eden? They're not shmups as such but they're both very much synaesthetic kind of games.

Kelvin

#21
Quote from: Timothy on April 11, 2019, 09:27:24 AM
Boston, are there any good ones that play like rhythm games where you have to shoot or move on the beat of music? A bit like how Tetris Effect worked? I would love that.

No shooting on your part, but Just Shapes and Beats is a game built around dodging through enemies, barriers, bullets and attacks , all coordinated to music. I've just finished playing it myself, so I'll try to remember to upload some example levels later.

That's a really good call, too. I enjoyed that.

greenman

Quote from: PlanktonSideburns on April 10, 2019, 10:05:24 PM
whats the best snes shooting things up game? having a go on r-type at the moment

I would say Axelay personally, whilst its half verticle and half horizontal its generally quite R-type like in style, excellent soundtrack as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIT03mDqX5Y

Timothy

Wil look the games up, thanks Boston and Kelvin!

madhair60

Axelay is brutally hard, I found, even for the already-rough genre.

Best SNES shmup imo is R-Type 3. Which is, er, also brutally hard. But also cool AF.

Bazooka

I've been playing Summer Carnival 92 Recca in bed at night recently, it makes me so angry I cry myself to sleep.

Space ghost

I keep returning to Sine Mora EX. I don't know if that counts as a real shmup or not. It's challenging but not punishingly hard and the screen isn't constantly filled with projectiles although sometimes it is. Feels like an entry point to the genre to me and it's on the switch so er check it out.

greenman

Quote from: madhair60 on April 11, 2019, 01:59:34 PM
Axelay is brutally hard, I found, even for the already-rough genre.

Best SNES shmup imo is R-Type 3. Which is, er, also brutally hard. But also cool AF.

Been many years since I played it but I remember Axelay having a pretty good difficulty curve only getting really tough more towards the end.

More specifically R-type wise I'd repeat from the previous shoot em up thread the recommendation for Pulstar on the Neo Geo, supposedly the original Irem team beside R-type working on and IMHO the best followup on it having more polish and not too much in the way of puzzle style levels. Made in the pre renders sprite era as well so I think holds very well visually.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHkRiKPhito


Kelvin

Quote from: Timothy on April 11, 2019, 01:43:13 PM
Wil look the games up, thanks Boston and Kelvin!

Just thought I'd post a few levels that give you a sense of what Just Shapes and Beats is about. I'm not convinced that, of the roughly 40 levels, all of them capitalise on the concept as well as they could, but the ones that do are excellent.

Also, in case you didn't realise, there is an actual story mode, with regions and a recurring villain, around which many of the levels are themed. You then get some more abstract levels mixed in, and 10-15 unlockable levels on top of that. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkAC9r8LJFM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--4XYvuEnBM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGu39Eo9JYA

and an early boss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lknnr-ypMg