Favorite SHMUP?

It's retardedly hard and I can barely even get past the first level but I've never encountered a game that is so amenable to changes in tactics; there's basically no luck involved despite how ridiculous it seems. Underrated and awesome.

The best Cave game is ESP Ra.De. DoDonPachi is much better than Dai Ou Jou. Crimzon Clover is dope.

(I only play SHMUPs occasionally but I like them enough to have made a joystick out of a supermarket lunchbox. It works quite well. Seimitsu LS56 stick; the buttons are from some kickstarter and use Cherry microswitches, which I think is a very good idea).

Mars Matrix is cool, I like that companies games, like Giga Wing 1 and especially 2. i think that's the same company. Dreamcast has a lot of great shmups, Chaos Field too, which got a US port for Gamecube. it had a sweeping sword where you absorb bullets similar to Radiant Silvergun.

Thunderforce is pretty great, I have Thunderforce V for Saturn but haven't played it much. I really like Gradius V and R-Type 3 for side-scrollers. I finally got around to playing Deathsmiles the other day and that one is easy and fun to pick up. I haven't played Progear yet, that was Cave's first side-scrolling shooter.

Guwange is awesome! First played that one just the other day, I always wanted to try that one. Cool feudal Japanese theme and nice twist on the lockon mechanic, and interesting side-scrolling spots! fun stuff.

and hell yeah Contra. I pulled out my copy of Contra Shattered Soldier and have been playing that again as well. i still have my carts of Super C and Operation C and Contra. sold my Contra 3 cart though, wish i hadn't. got a lot of money for it, but money isn't worth not having contra 3.

bullet hell shmups are kind of like slaughter wads, in that the difficulty progresses as the years went on, and the earlier games are where it's recommended to start off, with Toaplan's Batsugun from 1992 then Cave's DonPachi (95) and on from there. Cave's DoDonPachi from 97, the sequel to DonPachi is still my favorite #1. it just gets everything right, for me.

truly though no other games really matter to me. RPGs? pfft. yeah let's click through cringey stories and a zillion menus for 20 hours. no thx. and world builder games? nah. you can only clean up your SimCity or save your country in Civilization so many times. and side scrolling platformers? if you like collecting, i guess. i've never gotten a sense of accomplishment from 100%ing a platformer, ever. not Castlevania Symphony of the Night, not Super Mario 64, not Banjo Kazooie, not Spyro, not Donkey Kong 64. Action RPGs can be fun for a time but then they hit a wall and there's no reason to keep playing them after x amount of hours.

an instant gameplay experience every time, great graphics, great music, blood pumping adrenaline fueled gameplay. that's the ticket. doom supplies the same experience unless it's an intentionally atmospheric/bizarre wad like Maskim Xul or something like that.

so I've been a fan of R-Type for quite awhile -- in terms of presentation it's gotta be the best old-school memoriser shooter and is generally pretty durn fun -- but I haven't really checked out any of Irem's other shooters other than In The Hunt many years ago -- haven't played enough to share an opinion, iirc I just dismissed it as a Darius me-too. Yesterday I spent way too long fiddling around with my new RPi in order to get it to play games (turns out that you can't play 'em off network drives for some fucking reason, but it took me yonks to figure that out. By which I mean it took me about 20 seconds once I stopped fucking around with the folder structure and just googled it like a non-retard), and so today I finally tried out X-Multiply and holy shit, it's fuckin awesome!



(not me playing believe it or not -- I'm even more skilled. Obviously)

It's a lot like R-Type but instead of a 'force pod' you can attach and detach from your ship you've got tentacles that move around your ship that block shots, fire extra projectiles and inflict damage themselves. It has the usual R-Typisms unfortunately, notably completely depowering your ship after death, but this might actually be an improvement over R-Type! Ask me again in a couple years when the early wow-factor has worn off of course, but right now I'm thinking the biohorror theme is better implemented here, mostly due to creepier music, and I'm also loving the extra finesse of the tentacles vs. the force pods. Haven't played enough to get a read on the level design but tbh they seem pretty similar to R-Type's in structure and quality so far, maybe a bit too close (eg. level 2 in both games has you flying around a big battleship blowing chunks off it), and it doesn't seem to have a charge shot, which is a sham.. Still good though. Gonna find my lunchbox joystick and go play it some more (also: practice R-Type so I can compare 'em more closely).