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Shooter: I'm taking it back, who's with me?

pancakesandsex

pancakesandsex

Member
Much like Randall in Clerks II attempted to take back porch monkey, I'm taking back shooter.

Shooter = Shootem'up = shmup = vertical/side scrolling arcade style game

Shooter != First person shooter / 3rd person shooter / Contra-esque run'n gun action game

This thread is a tribute to all things shooter.

Examples:

Shooter

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Not Shooter
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M

Mejilan

Running off of Custom Firmware
I'm content with leaving 'shooter' as a non-specific catch-all. FPS, TPS, and shmups are all shooters, IMHO.
 
W

Whimsical Phil

Ninja School will help you
For some reason, I know not why, I've always disliked the term "shmup." I've never spoken it, and I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've typed it. They will always be shooters to me.

On a semi-related note, I can't wait for some Blazing Lazers on the VC.
 
A

Aeana

Member
I'm with you.
I cannot stand "shmup" -- I hate it.

So much.

Unfortunately, people seem to want a word to differentiate all of the different types of shooters, so I've suffered the word regardless.
 
V

Vard

Member
I'm with you. I saw that "Too Many Shooters?" thread and thought it was going to be about all the shooters being released through the Virtual Console. :lol
 
F

Father_Mike

Member
Vard said:
I'm with you. I saw that "Too Many Shooters?" thread and thought it was going to be about all the shooters being released through the Virtual Console. :lol
Click to expand...

Same!

I'm with you too. shooter should = r-type and fps = halo.
 
G

Ghengis Cohen

Banned
WARCOCK said:
ok let me settle this once and for all. "Shooters" are a totally niche gaming genre dependant on massive amounts of play time in order to memorize the stupid projectile patterns. It demands no skill. The term is contested because FPSs are overwhelmingly more popular, and bitter gamers like you pancake reminsce about former glory.

This, this is skill.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_hmuTYjFw1Y
Click to expand...
yeah because no one wastes anytime memorizing fps maps
 
A

Atlagev

Member
Aeana said:
I'm with you.
I cannot stand "shmup" -- I hate it.

So much.

Unfortunately, people seem to want a word to differentiate all of the different types of shooters, so I've suffered the word regardless.
Click to expand...

Thing is, I *never* heard that term to desribe Shooters until relatively recently. I mean, when those kinds of games were popular, (Area 88/U.N. Squadron, Gradius etc.) I never heard *anyone* call them "Shmups." So where, pray tell, did this term come from? When did Shooters suddenly become "Shmups"?

It'd be like waking up one day, and everyone decided that Platformers were now called "Platters," and *you* were the odd one out for not using that term.

So, who coined the word "Shmup," so I can hunt them down and punch them in the face?
 
G

Ghengis Cohen

Banned
Atlagev said:
Thing is, I *never* heard that term to desribe Shooters until relatively recently. I mean, when those kinds of games were popular, (Area 88/U.N. Squadron, Gradius etc.) I never heard *anyone* call them "Shmups." So where, pray tell, did this term come from? When did Shooters suddenly become "Shmups"?

It'd be like waking up one day, and everyone decided that Platformers were now called "Platters," and *you* were the odd one out for not using that term.

So, who coined the word "Shmup," so I can hunt them down and punch them in the face?
Click to expand...
I believe it was Gamefan (many exgamefans post here) who popularized the tem.
 
B

BIG BUBBA

Did I mention it's time to cancel my Ratchet and Clank preorder yet?
Videogame: I'm taking it back, who's with me?

pong.gif


I swear, if your mothers knew how you spent your time..
 
pancakesandsex

pancakesandsex

Member
WARCOCK said:
ok let me settle this once and for all. "Shooters" are a totally niche gaming genre dependant on massive amounts of play time in order to memorize the stupid projectile patterns. It demands no skill. The term is contested because FPSs are overwhelmingly more popular, and bitter gamers like you pancake reminsce about former glory.

This, this is skill.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_hmuTYjFw1Y

http://youtube.com/watch?v=blyVaOSOHfQ&mode=related&search=
Click to expand...

it's not the projectile patterns you memorize, those need to be dodged on the fly, as they change based on your position.

enemy patterns are fixed, and if you know where they are going to appear, and how they attack, you can position your ship ahead of time to take the enemies out almost as soon as they appear, thus minimizing the amount of shots fired in the first place (not always possible) Any bullet pattern memorization is more of a what appears when nature, not a how do i move through this nature. The path through a stream of bullets is not fixed and varies each play, no matter how much memorization you do.

the object isnt necessarily to BEAT the game in a shooter, although its a nice goal, they are primarily score attack games. Scoring systems range from simple (shoot things for points) to intricate (chain bonuses). The learning curve isnt so much for survival as it is for survival WHILE scoring high.

Exploiting the scoring system while dodging variable bullet patterns does involve some memorization yes, but to say its devoid of any actual "skill" and solely reliant on that is a false assumption.



memorize this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC54wX4f3Z8

(r rootage is a randomly generated vector graphics shooter, with randomly generated boss shapes and bullet patterns, oh, and its free)
 
T

Tain

Member
I'm with you.
I cannot stand "shmup" -- I hate it.

So much.
Click to expand...

Yeah.

I figure calling them horizontal or vertical or scrolling shooters works pretty well.

"Shooters" are a totally niche gaming genre dependant on massive amounts of play time in order to memorize the stupid projectile patterns. It demands no skill.
Click to expand...

How about that.
 
K

Kaitei grunkan

Member
WARCOCK said:
ok let me settle this once and for all. "Shooters" are a totally niche gaming genre dependant on massive amounts of play time in order to memorize the stupid projectile patterns. It demands no skill.
Click to expand...

So tell me, how many shooters have you actually finished on 1 credit yourself? Or is this "demands no skill" just a theory.
 
M

meppi

Member
WARCOCK said:
ok let me settle this once and for all. "Shooters" are a totally niche gaming genre dependant on massive amounts of play time in order to memorize the stupid projectile patterns. It demands no skill. The term is contested because FPSs are overwhelmingly more popular, and bitter gamers like you pancake reminsce about former glory.

This, this is skill.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_hmuTYjFw1Y

http://youtube.com/watch?v=blyVaOSOHfQ&mode=related&search=
Click to expand...

Hahaha, no. Just no. :p
 
Haunted

Haunted

Member
Well, let's not turn this into a shoot 'em up (shmup, whatever) bashing thread.

It's about the genre categories - and there's no problem to differentiate imo.

'Shooter' is the generic term for all games where shooting is a primary part of the game mechanic. Among shooters there are sub-genres like FPS, Third Person Shooters, Shoot 'em ups etc. etc.

To now take the generic term Shooter and trying to apply it to the sub-genre of Shoot 'em ups - not gonna work.
 
H

Hitokage

Setec Astronomer
Warcock is lying off his ass. In CS you need to learn where people are going to be in a map even if you don't know if they're actually there or not so you can aim for a shot far more quickly and accurately, which is little different from any side-scrolling shooter. Also, learning how to reflexively dodge arbitrary shots is a SKILL.
 
D

Durante

Member
FoxSpirit said:
A bit of gameplay to go with that shot
Click to expand...
Nice video (it's good to see a video by a player who's not on a completely unreachable skill level), but wrong game. The video shows the extra stage of Touhou 8: Imperishable Night. The shot I posted is from Touhou 9.5.

Anyway, if you've never played a touhou game before, I'd recommend starting with Perfect Cherry Blossom (Touhou 7). There's even an english language patch for it. The touhou wiki has more information on that, and also tells you how to buy the games.
 
K

Kuroyume

Banned
Maybe 10,000 - 20,000 people worldwide still play those spaceship shooters, while millions play the others. You should just give up this fight.
 
j^aws

j^aws

Member
I'm with anyone who raises the awareness of shoot-'em-ups, shooters, SHMUPS... anyone who disagrees, needs to be ceremoniously incinerated with a plasma-beam.
 
j^aws

j^aws

Member
shuri said:
The term shmups goes back to the '80 :|
Click to expand...

Yep, I'm from the UK and I read it in magazines in the 80's.

The word "shmup" first originated in the British C64 magazine, Zzap 64, in 1985. They created a glossary of words they invented, which included the word shmup (they also used the word "Aardvark" for "Arcade Adventures", though this wasn't absorbed into common games parlance like shmup). The magazine was around during the C64's lifetime, during the 1980s and early 1990s. Various magazine scans are available online, proving this point.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmup
 
D

D-X

Member
I always think shooter does mean stuff like Ikaruga anyway. I use FPS or 3rd person for the other kind.
 
A

Akuun

Looking for meaning in GAF
I just call them things like vertical shooter, horizontal shooter, and FPS.

It really doesn't matter what you call them; most fans of each genre will probably know what you're talking about no matter what you call it. Fighting over definitions just breeds more hate for no real reason.

And yeah, while shoot-'em-ups (or whatever you want to call them) almost always have a memorization element to them, that memorization is often used as an aid to one's dodging skill, not a replacement for it. I've seen many replays of top scoring runs of Perfect Cherry Blossom now, and there is a fairly clear difference between each player's skill and in how they take on certain patterns in ways appropriate to their skill level. Even if you know a pattern inside and out, there are still things you can't do with it if you aren't skilled enough.
 
M

MikeHaggar

Member
what's the best shooter on the ps2? i've been playing a lot of xbox live arcade these days and i think i would dig the 'old school-ness' of a good 2d shooter right now. bare in mind that the last shooter i played seriously was probably u.n. squardron on the snes, so by 'best' i don't necessarily mean 'hardest'.

edit: i lie. i owned ikaruga on the gcn and played that (damn was that game hard). unfortunately, i sold it and now new copies on ebay for for like $70 ( i refuse to buy used).
 
pancakesandsex

pancakesandsex

Member
MikeHaggar said:
what's the best shooter on the ps2? i've been playing a lot of xbox live arcade these days and i think i would dig the 'old school-ness' of a good 2d shooter right now. bare in mind that the last shooter i played seriously was probably u.n. squardron on the snes, so by 'best' i don't necessarily mean 'hardest'.

edit: i lie. i owned ikaruga on the gcn and played that (damn was that game hard). unfortunately, i sold it and now new copies on ebay for for like $70 ( i refuse to buy used).
Click to expand...


All the best ones are import only, and therefore 70$ new ANYWAY

but that crown goes to Dodonpachi Dai Oh Jou

As far as in the US, you have a few nice ones to choose from, most of which can be obtained fairly cheap:

-R-Type Final (not reccomended)
-Castle Shikigami 2 (hilariously bad translation, worth the 10 bucks, decent game too)
-Mobile Light Force 2 (actually castle shikigami 1 sans story mode / bastardized, ok for 10 bucks if you just want the gameplay (which is all there)
-Gradius V
-Raiden III (bullets are a little tough to see sometimes, not yet released)
 
B

border

Member
You lost me at "Contra is not a shooter".

People who use the word "shmup" are retarded.

WARCOCK said:
ok let me settle this once and for all. "Shooters" are a totally niche gaming genre dependant on massive amounts of play time in order to memorize the stupid projectile patterns. It demands no skill.
Click to expand...
Even knowing the patterns, you have to maneuver pretty deftly and there is a level of random-ness to it all. There's a number of games that don't really rely on sequences or patterns either.
 
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