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themadcowtipper · Mar 4, 2005

Just recently started playing game on the PC, even though I have had one forever it seems. Iam not really familiar with PC games.

neptunes · Mar 4, 2005

shmups

The End · Mar 4, 2005

*cough*

MAME

AndoCalrissian · Mar 4, 2005

neptunes said:
shumps(sp?)

I do believe it is 'shmups'.

And for some rad ones, hit up Kenta Cho here. Torus Trooper, TUMIKI Fighters, PARSEC47, and a few of the other ones are very good, and even better, they're free.

ArcadeStickMonk · Mar 4, 2005

Check Star Monkey or Ultra Assault. Basically they're nice looking vertical shooters that rip off the Gradius weapons system. Decent challenge.

radios shipping overview · Mar 4, 2005

Try the Touhou series of curtain-fire shooters. Each one is beautiful and not too difficult for beginners, despite the heavy bullet patterns. Information and links to demos can be found here: http://www.shrinemaiden.com/

This one is Imperishable Night:

neptunes · Mar 4, 2005

AndoCalrissian said:
I do believe it is 'shmups'.

Yeah, I've seen it spelled both was so I was contemplating quite a bit. :lol

Yeah check out Kenta Cho's games.

aku:jiki · Mar 4, 2005

You guys are about to be so flooded... (Most of these games, if not all, control with the arrow keys and shoot/bomb/whatever with X, Y & Z. Some games, like the Touhou games jiji mentioned, use the left shift key as well.)

Cloudphobia, a beautiful but weird one. The game is timed and I always run out of time before I get to beat the boss, yet I've had someone fluent in japanese read the page and there were apparently no traces of it being a demo.

http://www.dwahan.net/uki/shooting/index.htm

GUNDEADLIGNE. I can't play it on my computer (since it's crap and ancient), but other people seem to like it and, come on, it looks hot:

http://www20.cds.ne.jp/~murasame/source/gundeadligne.htm (Demo is down by the little pixelated head, way down on the page.)

Ultimate Stage. Like the pure definition of "bullet hell". Holding one shot button slows you down, holding down both slows you down even more for extremely precise dodging. Getting hit by a shot autobombs, which is a kind of weird design choice since that effectively means you have like 12 lives yet I can't see it having any effect on your score...

http://www2.odn.ne.jp/ats/download/download.htm (Scroll down a bit and click "Ver.0.12". Freeware.)

RAYHAWK is a person, not a game. He has 5 pretty cool shooters with great SNES-style pixel graphics. All freeware and worth a look. His page is on Geocities, though, so I can't hit you up with some pics.

http://www.geocities.jp/rayhawk_game/index.html

Baroque Shooting. Based on the RPG games for PS1. The demo is sadly timed and doesn't really represent the full game, but I think it's worth a shot since I'm a fan of the full version.

http://www.sting.co.jp/play/baroshu/form_try.htm (Fill in your e-mail, or just gibberish I guess, and then you get to download the demo.)

Dotoumaru was never finished and is a pretty short, but definitely sweet, alpha version. Worth a look if only for the kickass sprites and MIDI music.

http://inouedelta.web.infoseek.co.jp/index/top/STG.html (Click the picture of the game to download.)

O-DEN 2000. SNES-style, good-looking and like literally impossible. (Unless you play the old version.)

http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA025956/ (Click "GAME" and you'll see it in the list. His other games aren't shooters, but are definitely worth a shot. Especially "Maou no Akuji" (the one on top). Quite possibly the most fun SOTN clone ever. I like it more than the ever-famous Doukutsu Monogatari.)

Hellsinker. Haven't had the luxury of playing it myself yet, but the man's previous work, RADIO ZONDE, kicks all kinds of ass. Logically, this one should as well, and it certainly looks good.

http://www.vector.co.jp/games/soft/win95/game/se324495.html -> Hellsinker
http://www.vector.co.jp/games/soft/win95/game/se313786.html -> RADIO ZONDE

(For both, click the japanese text in the grayed out tab on the middle of the page. You will now see game title, file name and file size. Click the blue and white button to the right of this info to download.)

STORM CALIBER REVIVAL EDITION '99 & Gaiden. Very reminiscent of Ultimate Stage. In fact, there has to be some kind of developer connection there. They're just too similar. These are a little more humane and easier for beginners, though. I'm quite positive the developers are deranged, though. That true final boss in Revival Edition is some of the purest shooting insanity I've seen.

http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA015344/scwin/scwin140.exe
http://www.ssp.x0.com/scgdwin/scgdwin035.exe

Ahhh, hell. I'm too tired to go on. As you can probably see, there's boatloads of free or shareware homebrew brilliance in this genre. I'd say that except for Cave, all of the interesting shooting stuff is happening on the PC scene.

If this doesn't satisfy you, you can always head over to Shoot The Core's absolutely fantastic "PC shmup database". It lists all the ones I just did, plus like a bajillion more.

http://www.shootthecore.com/PClinks1.html

Edit: Oh, for more spot-on recommendations... Check Shoot the Core's N section for Nemesis (Gradius) remakes, and definitely check the G section for G-TYPE, an excellent R-Type/Gradius hybrid. Also, for Ikaruga, the T section has Tiyoruga which is supposed to be a good Ika clone. Also, Kenta Cho's rRootage contains several play modes, one of which is Ikaruga.

Go Go Ackman! · Mar 4, 2005

That was the best post I've seen in months, aku:jiki

aku:jiki · Mar 5, 2005

Go Go Ackman! said:
That was the best post I've seen in months, aku:jiki

Thank you, I try.

Just because I get more ecstatic than I should when someone cares about my ranting about this stuff, here's some more:

Kamui. The picture isn't very hot, but the game is. Unfortunately just a demo, though.

http://www.siterskain.com/products/data/kamui/downloadfiles/KamuiTrialSetup.exe

(The same guys, SITER SKAIN, have another one that looks pretty good, but I haven't gotten around to playing it yet. It's called RefleX -> http://www9.big.or.jp/~ysuer/siterskain/reflex/RefleX-Trial4a.exe)

Angel, Destroyer. Korean game based on japanese manga. Pretty good, though not the best one out there.

http://teamdevice.net/download/AngelD-Demo1.03.zip

I haven't played any of the following, but they just look too damn hot to not recommend anyway.

Samidare. Looks beautiful and insane. Great!

http://am-tdu.s10.xrea.com/project/smd/index.htm (Just do a page search for "23MB" and you'll see the demo link.)

Tsukihime no Shiro. Obviously a Shikigami no Shiro clone. Can't be all bad.

http://studio10.kdn.ne.jp/hoh/co/image/tsuki_public_c64_trial_b.exe

Moedan. From the same devs as the aforementioned game (DNA Software), this one looks a bit better.

http://www.moedan.com/d_files/moedan_trial_c66.exe

Danmaku Soeur series. I'm not sure if there are demos, but these screens just need to be posted for the super-pretty patterns.

Tain · Mar 5, 2005

Warning Forever is the best of all freeware shmups.

EGM92 · Mar 5, 2005

Hey are Hellsinker and Radio Zonde both demos? or are they full versions?

Prospero · Mar 5, 2005

aku:jiki: thanks for the educational posts.

themadcowtipper · Mar 5, 2005

Wow thanks to everyone for the replys, some really cool games there.

drohne · Mar 5, 2005

kamui is fucking awesome. unfortunately the full version is now really hard to come by, at least outside of japan. i don't know of any online retailers that still stock it.

callous · Mar 5, 2005

Tain said:
Warning Forever is the best of all freeware shmups.

Counting out demos, I agree. Definitely one to try.

carbonbased · Mar 5, 2005

aku:jiki said:
*snip*

Oh man, thank you so much. That shooter database site is amazingly useful. I can't wait to give a bunch of these games a try.

Blackcherry · Mar 5, 2005

Tain said:
Warning Forever is the best of all freeware shmups.

Wow! This one is great! the aiming rock, don't skip on that one!(It's not even 2MB)

JackFrost2012 · Mar 5, 2005

My hardcore otaku Japanese friend - the first thing he tossed on his new iPod was doujinsoft soundtracks - recommended this site:

http://www16.big.or.jp/~zun/html/game.html

Has:
Imperishable Night
Immaterial and Missing Power
Perfect Cherry Blossom
The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

I think this is just the Japanese-language repeat of Jiji's recommendations, but though I might as well toss it in here.

Speevy · Mar 5, 2005

Tain said:
Warning Forever is the best of all freeware shmups.

You kick so much ass.

Christoff Yurievich · Mar 5, 2005

just subscribing to this thread so I can find it later when I'm not on dial-up.

aku:jiki · Mar 5, 2005

EGM92 said:
Hey are Hellsinker and Radio Zonde both demos? or are they full versions?

Zonde is all freeware. Unfortunately, it's hacked up and isn't put together to be a cohesive game, but it's still all there. Hellsinker is labeled a "trial version", but I can't play it myself to see. Speaking of them, though, there's a french-developed game that is apparently very inspired by them (according to the author himself), Lightning Volta:

http://jeanpidom.free.fr/Volta.zip

bune duggy said:
just subscribing to this thread so I can find it later when I'm not on dial-up.

If you're into any of the ones I posted, check them out despite your connection speed. Games like STORM CALIBER and Ultimate Stage are less than 1MB compressed.

Rummy Bunnz · Mar 5, 2005

Go Go Ackman! said:
That was the best post I've seen in months, aku:jiki

Yes. Though I'd go even further and say it's the best I've ever seen on this forum. I've never even heard of a lot of these! Thanks very much!

EGM92 · Mar 5, 2005

I played shooters like Gigawings, and a whole bunch more for my DC a couple of years ago, is there anything nicely animated that's got good gameplay and won't make me rip out my hair with difficulty? Radio Zonde was just too hard, the shooting patterns in some parts was easy but in other it would be impossible to dodge it or so it seems.
Shikigami No Shiro was really good IMO anything along those lines?

aku:jiki · Mar 5, 2005

EGM92 said:
I played shooters like Gigawings, and a whole bunch more for my DC a couple of years ago, is there anything nicely animated that's got good gameplay and won't make me rip out my hair with difficulty?

The short answer, based on my experience, would be no. All the prettiest-looking and generally best ones are tough. RZ is kinda extra tough, though. You could give the Touhou games jiji mentioned a shot.

And I already posted a Shikigami clone!

PanopticBlue · Mar 5, 2005

Wow, awesome thread. Hadn't heard of all these.

Zelda-Bitch · Mar 5, 2005

Marked for awesomeness. Whoever started this thread, I love you.

*bows down to aku:jiki*

AndoCalrissian · Mar 5, 2005

Anybody else remember that submarine shmup, In The Hunt? I love that game.

EGM92 · Mar 5, 2005

AndoCalrissian said:
Anybody else remember that submarine shmup, In The Hunt? I love that game.

Didn't they turn the arcade into a Saturn game? looked cool from I remember reading years ago.

aku:jiki · Mar 5, 2005

EGM92 said:
Didn't they turn the arcade into a Saturn game?

Yeah. It's on PS1 too. I think it looks cooler than it plays, though.

IgeL · Mar 5, 2005

Tyrian/Tyrian 2000 is superb (awesome music!). Raptor was pretty good back in the day as well.

KAOS · Mar 5, 2005

Anything for...Macs(runs away)?

Rummy Bunnz · Mar 5, 2005

I think most of Kenta Cho's games have OSX ports.

anotheriori · Mar 5, 2005

Nice Thread, think i need to pick up Shikigami no Shiro just from playing that clone.

radioheadrule83 · Mar 5, 2005

Favourite screen in this thread.

I'm too weaksauce for these games btw.

Funky Papa · Mar 5, 2005

Try this one

It is just a demo, but it rocks shit. It has not the best art out there, but it is fun, it is good looking and it will kick your ass even on easy settings. Both old-skool and hardcore, I love it to death.

JackFrost2012 · Mar 6, 2005

So, how do we convince these doujin shooter developers to port their wares to modified Xbox SKU?

Tain · Mar 6, 2005

Noiz2sa and rRootage have seen unofficial ports, at least.

Kiriku · Mar 6, 2005

Here's a bigger challenge:

Are there any shoot 'em ups for PC with an online co-op mode?

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