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ITT, we rave about shmups.

M

Mr. Pointy

Member
PULSTAR
Pulstar_cover.jpg

Pulstar003.png

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCa2KwE852M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHiaXUViZ4s

I personally think it should have been called R-Type 4. Which is not entirely incorrect, since Aicom were the original R-Type team.

This game was the equivalent of Gears of War for the Neo-Geo. I mean, the attract sequence was like an FMV; on a cartridge the size of a house brick of course. The pre-rendered sprites were mindblowing for the time; if you were drooling at DKC, you were pissing yourself just watching this game. The sound was pretty good, considering how the Yamaha FM sound chip on the Neo was pretty much a vacuum tube and a bunch of little Japanese men phoning in some noises.

Anyway, it played like R-Type, was a brutal as R-Type and looked like R-Type: The Movie.

I enjoyed it, but the game raped me once too much.
 
Odysseus said:
in this post, i laugh at you for trying to embed youtube videos

galaga ruled
Click to expand...
Truly, you can laugh at me for trying to embed youtube videos. Is there a youtube tag on this forum or something?
 
I just picked up Espgaluda again after a long break and it's like I never left. First time sitting down, and I get my third best score ever.

I still can't beat the boss of 5-1, though. I'm all fine through her rotating carousel pattern, but when she starts with the million and one crisscrossing thing bullets, I get ****ed up every time.

I also figured it was time to try something new, so I gave DoDonPachi Daioujou a fair shot. I think it's too much for me.
 
I loved Soukyugurentai and Thunder Force 5 for my Saturn. Moreso than Radiant Silvergun, which I bought from Che.

Also, a criminally underrated shooter is Alpha Mission 2 for the Neo.

reviewalphamission2-2.jpg
 
Mr. Pointy said:
The sound was pretty good, considering how the Yamaha FM sound chip on the Neo was pretty much a vacuum tube and a bunch of little Japanese men phoning in some noises.
Click to expand...

Huh? Pulstar uses sampled music.

Anyway, fantastic game if a little bit on the hard side. I've made it to stage 5 on 1 cred and there's 8 in total.. The default speed of the ship is too slow imo.
 
Favorite genre, hands down. The doujin community in particular has produced some really great stuff over the last decade.

Too bad Cave's post Ibara stuff will probably never get home ports.
 
Yay! Let's rave! 2 days ago I reached the 5th level boss of Imperishable Night for the first time (I only play 1credit/2life). Also managed a new highscore. I'll beat this game even if it takes another 6 months.

Here I died:
4250imperishable1.jpg


Also:
I guess all of you know this already, but I just recently found out that ZUN announced Touhou 10 for 2007. :)
Have any of the doujin shmup fans here played TWilight INSanity? I was just thinking about ordering it.
 
RAYFORCE
rayforce1.jpg

Ray_f.jpg

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ko3-tB9vR4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmzflhiFrVM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_ATrzKm6FM
I started playing this one again very recently. I was a huge fan of Raystorm and I enjoyed Raycrisis. Then I found a rom of Rayforce about 3 years ago. I played the crap out of it.

Rayforce is better than its sequels. The enemy patterns are better, its more frantic and the flat vertical viewpoint makes it easier to blow shit up. But there's something else about Rayforce that makes it much better.

Raystorm and Raycrisis are 3D. 3D is great, but its boring. No one is impressed by 3D anymore. Why do you think people bitch about the Wii being technically adequate?

Rayforce, with its eleven billion layers of 2D parallax and sprite zooming just to simulate 3D depth is much more impressive. If you saw Rayforce in the arcade back in 1993, you'd think the board was about to blow up because of the amount of stuff it was throwing out. Seriously, you could do a 4th Layer Section game on Type X2 hardware with a dual core Intel, Crossfired X1900s, CG quality 3D, 60fps and every single Direct X 10 effect known to man, and you would still not have your mind blown playing that than you would playing Rayforce.

The music is quality Zuntata.

The gameplay is perfect.

That's all.
 
Dodonpachi Daioujou is what brought me back into the genre after having not played any shmups since Raiden 2 in the arcades.

Daioujou is soooooooooooooooooooooooooo good. As is Espgaluda.

For my tastes, Cave > all other shmups I've played.
 
+1 for the Pulstar love. Definitely one of my favorite shmups ever. Top notch animation, top notch soundtrack, top notch everything. The explosions still impress me to this day. Damn shame it never came to a home console outside of the AES/NGCD, even more damned shame it probably never will.

Edit: Forgot about this, but iirc about the time R-Type Final came out there was either a book released with R-Type Final or in the japanese version it had a game history and some people were saying that Pulstar was considered one of the R-Type games somehow. My memory is extraordinarily shady here but it definitely was related to R-Type Final's release. Anyone have further info on this?
 
I always show up in these threads to talk about the awesomeness of Gradius V, Dodonpachi or Espgaluda, or the good old Galaga, but I'll use this chace to make a honorable mention to one of the most interesting and certainly most atmospheric-charged shooter I've ever seen.


Disposable Hero

A rare, often forgotten gem from Amiga. Euro SHMUP development scene was crap for the most part, but this horizontal shooter pulled out all stops in graphics, sound, control and innovation. Every level the game would throw a puzzly surprise at you that you had to figure out, a rare thing in a genre. On each level there were few repair stations that you could land on if you chose so and get part of your energy restored, equip your ship with different weapons, and see the progress on research of new weapons (for which you had to collect blueprints during the levels). Each weapon would drain part of ships weapons energy generator, so you had to strategize which weapns combinations to use, later on you'd get more powerful generators, another better ship that you could use etc.

It may sound convoluted and unnecessary for a SHMPU, but it all added a LOT to the player feeling like an actual pilot of the ship, something every other SHMUP completely failed to do despite their attempts at story, elaborate intro sequences and whatnot.


See the level one here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v89QMDs3B1g

A review:
http://www.classicgaming.com/Shmups/reviews/disposablehero/index.html

d_hero_00.gif
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d_hero_05.gif
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d_hero_01.gif
d_hero_13.gif


d_hero_10.gif
2_screen_10.gif
 
ok you shmuppers... what makes a shmup really great?

i played a lot of them back when these "arcade" things existed as an excellent way to spend/waste your youth, and bought R-Type Final a while back to have some quick-play, humiliating, blow-stuff-up action at home - i'm terrible, but it's some good fun.

of course, i've subsequently learned that Final gets lots of hate from the shmup crowd (yeah - i'll get gradius v if i ever see it anywhere), but i can't quite see why (it seems pretty decently done to me).
 
final isn't a terrible game, but the level design isn't up to r-type standards -- play r-type delta and you'll understand the disappointment.

anyway, i've just hooked up my neo for the first time a while -- so far i've just been playing shock troopers, which is a little outside the scope of this thread, but i'll definitely play some pulstar and blazing star.
 
birdchili said:
of course, i've subsequently learned that Final gets lots of hate from the shmup crowd (yeah - i'll get gradius v if i ever see it anywhere), but i can't quite see why (it seems pretty decently done to me).
Click to expand...

The main problem with Final is that it is slooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwww. Remember stage 3? You should because it was as long as the last four years of your life. The almost constant slowdown didn't help matters and the other R-types just happen to be better games.

Once you play Gradius V however you should be able to see what all of the fuss is about. It's an incredible game.

Unfortunately if you'd really like to get into the games most of the people in this thread are talking about you'll have to look into importing, a Saturn that can play Japanese games, and quite a bit of spare cash. :/

It is definitely a niche genre
 
strangely, shmups have some of the same appeal as nethack for me - you learn how to deal with various situations, and what tools are right for what job, but they're very-much about dying, restarting, and using what you've learned to be better next time. i've got unlimited continues in final, but i can't bring myself to use them - it seems against the general game design somehow.

naturally, this will doom me to never actually beating the game (i also can't bring myself to play on an easier difficulty level than the default). so far i am ok with this.
 
i wonder if they've still got that strikers III cab at the ucla arcade. last time i went down there was to play...vf4. when it was new. :/
 
I recently downloaded Soldier Blade for the Wii.
Reminded me of Tyrian/Tyrian2000.
Never played Pulstar but a local gamestore has a NeoGeo arcade machine with.. BLAZING STAR!!!
 
Strikers 1945 Plus is the only Strikers I've really gotten into, but it seems like such an awesome series.
 
Every time you say "shmup" an angel has his wings violently ripped off and fed to innocent babies.

Think of the babies, call it shooter.
 
pancakesandsex said:
Every time you say "shmup" an angel has his wings violently ripped off and fed to innocent babies.

Think of the babies, call it shooter.
Click to expand...

this is false. those babies aren't innocent!

also: "shooter" has become ambiguous, while everyone knows how "shmup" gameplay works.
 
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