What is your favorite shmup and why?

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a full game example, menu system, with the first level and a boss, to create a horizontal shooter
  • Pop'n Twin Bee ; D

    But Parodius is pretty awesome, too ^^

  • The irem classic Image Fight is my alltime favorite in this genre. It starts out simple but has a steep learning curve. They put some thought in the enemy spawning points and as well as in the enemy behaviour. Level design is decent and the boss fights are pretty clever. The last levels are really, really hard but fair. Also the way you pick up weapons, how they work and how they are arranged around your ship as shields is made very good. You can purchase it from dotemu.com with the irem arcade hits collection but I can't recommend this bundle since they messed up the sound.

    Check out this youtube playthrough:

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  • Awesome!

  • I liked most of Mountain King Studios' games, in particular Raptor: Call of the Shadows, and DemonStar Secret Missions 1 and 2. For all of those what drew me in most of all was the level of detail put into the levels, Raptor especially so. Never a dull moment in the background, each level was unique and always had different landscapes and buildings scrolling by, many of which you could destroy. In Raptor I also liked the progression of the stages where you started out in what looked like some sort of desert/barren part of the globe with ramshackle buildings and no clear color scheme amongst enemies, so it looked like you were fighting a haphazard group of mercenaries. Then you'd move on to greener, built up areas where enemies' paint themes were more uniform, giving the impression that you were now fighting an organized military. For the last stage you'd be switching between planets and moon bases which each tended to have their own theme.

    DemonStar SM1 and 2 had prerendered graphics which looked really pretty, though the backgrounds tended to be a lot sparser and there was less enemy variety. It was a lot more arcadey: there were fewer levels overall and no option to save, nor an upgrade shop, instead you had to grab various powerups during the game, which in some ways added the tiniest bit of depth to the gameplay.

  • Radiant Silvergun exhibits my theory of Total Gaming. This is where a game is not merely good in one area, but excels in all areas. It blasts all of our senses and afterwards we're left wowed. Tetris is a piece of genius game design, but aurally or visually it doesn't stun the senses, even though we might agree the melody was catchy and the aesthetic as simple as the game required. Radiant Silvergun has the genius design, all of the action beautifully choreographed so a player can learn the game quickly yet take years to master. But while you're doing so the game throws searing colours at you, and backgrounds which aren't static, but rotating, tilting, changing your perspective so that your ship appears to zoom into and out of the screen. Bosses galore, as many in one stage as other shooters fit into a whole game; all cleverly designed polygon behemoths made of various beautifully animated segments rotating and connecting and firing in 10 different ways and colours. A bombastic, catchy orchestral score makes every battle, every shot, every dodge, an epic moment. There are even characters, and an intriguing story of time travel (there are six stages; the game begins on stage 3 and ends on stage 1), narrated with the help of an animated intro and outro and voice-over interludes. It's all frankly more than a shoot-em-up requires, but Treasure did it anyway out of love, and the bar is still up there where they set it 15 years ago.

  • Old school games like Gradius III and R-Type III did it for me back in the day, but more recently I find myself enjoying Soldner-X2 a lot. It's hard to find a good shump nowadays that doesn't descend into the irritating "bullet-hell" territory.

    I wish Radiant Silvergun was on a system I had access to. I'd been hearing how awesome that game was for years, but never played it. (I did play Ikaruga, didn't enjoy that much).

  • Hmm, I really like the CAVE-shmups for their soundtracks. Crimzon Clover is good. Touhou Perfect Cherry Blossom had interesting patterns. I loved the customization possibilities in Tyrian.

  • I wish Radiant Silvergun was on a system I had access to. I'd been hearing how awesome that game was for years, but never played it. (I did play Ikaruga, didn't enjoy that much).

    Well if you're willing to spend close to $200, you can pick it up on eBay fairly easily for the Sega Saturn. Or...if you have still have an Xbox 360 laying around that hasn't RROD yet then you can get it off of Xbox Live for $15. The other option is to just download the actual arcade rom for MAME, which its fully playable.

  • >

    > I wish Radiant Silvergun was on a system I had access to. I'd been hearing how awesome that game was for years, but never played it. (I did play Ikaruga, didn't enjoy that much).

    >

    Well if you're willing to spend close to $200, you can pick it up on eBay fairly easily for the Sega Saturn. Or...if you have still have an Xbox 360 laying around that hasn't RROD yet then you can get it off of Xbox Live for $15. The other option is to just download the actual arcade rom for MAME, which its fully playable.

    Thanks for the info...I'm going to give the MAME approach a try.

  • Does Metal Slug count? Because Metal Slug 4evr.

  • Everything you need to know about shmups:-

    http://www.racketboy.com/retro/shooters/shmups-101-a-beginners-guide-to-2d-shooters

    If you are planning on creating a shmup, you have to play Kenta Cho's legendary games (his games are so simple graphically and so good gameplay-wise):-

    http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/games/index.html#windows

    http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/free/index.html

    Personal fav's:- Noiz2a, rRootage, Parsec47, Gunroar, Tumiki Fighters

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