Shmups beyond spaceships

[komatik]

Shepardus recently turned me on to Mystic Riders and this eventually led me to discovering that "Witch riding a broomstick cute-em-up" is apparently an entire sub-subgenre, including titles like the Cotton franchise and Magical Chase and several others.

Anyone have any experience/opinions/suggestions on any of these sorts of games?

EDIT:
I'm going to expand/hijack my own thread. I notice that in the vast majority of shmups you play as either a spaceship/plane/helicopter, or an anime girl. How many games are out there where you're something else? Besides witches I know there are a couple involving dragons, but not much past that.

[BulletMagnet]

A fair amount of titles with multiple characters have a witch somewhere in there (Gunbird and Castle Shikigami come most immediately to mind), though relatively few focus on them them exclusively; on the doujin front there's Trouble Witches, not to mention a boatload of Touhou fangames featuring Marisa. If you really want to stretch the definition there's Kyuiin on the PS1, in which the main character rides a vacuum cleaner.

[WelshMegalodon]

Akazukin Chachacha for the X68000, in which you can gain experience points and level up.

[KAI]

There was a long article about majokko shmups in the 3rd issue of Shooting Gameside.
Here's the list of the titles they covered:
Cotton series
Magical Chase
Mystic Riders
Twinkle Tale
Trouble Witches


and some games with broomstick riders on them, like:
Ran and Time from Twinkle Star Sprites
Paulette from Eight Forces
Chitta from Razing's Mahou series
Marion from Gunbird
Fumiko from Shikigami no Shiro
Sakyura from Death Smiles

[2dvertical]

Not sure if they are witches but Deathsmiles is pretty awesome...

Harmful Park is also great

[OmegaFlareX]

Sakyura from Death Smiles

Also just so happens to be the best character. She's only in MBL, though, right?

[wasilewski]

Trouble Witches Origin is my current favourite game, I would highly recommend it. I bought the Cotton character with it too, she's the strongest character in the game. The 5 minute and 2 minute modes are my favourite. Loads of fun!

[KAI]

TW2 never

[CStarFlare]

copyright 2011

[komatik]

I'm hijacking my own thread.

In the vast majority of shmups you play as either a spaceship/plane/helicopter, or an anime girl. Besides witches I know there are a couple involving dragons, but not much past that. What else is out there?

[ACSeraph]

In that case you can check out Biohazard Battle or Undeadline on MD.

[Shepardus]

In Cambria Sword you play as a Sarotrocercus oblita.

The Parodius series has you playing as all sorts of wacky characters. Characters vary between different entries in the series, but include an octopus, a penguin, a bunny girl riding a missile, a pig, a stick figure riding a paper plane, a flying baby, and more.

In Armed Police Batrider you pilot hoverbikes (there are also a bunch of guest characters from Raizing's other games, which include more traditional warplanes and stuff but also Miyamoto, the flying samurai dragon, and Car-Pet, a girl who rides on a magic carpet).

There are also a number of shmups where you play as humanoid characters but not necessarily "anime girls," e.g. Out Zone, Gun.Smoke, Guwange, and the "ESP" series (ESP Ra.De, Espgaluda, Espgaluda 2).

[mamboFoxtrot]

Vacant Ark is an Anime Girl, but specifically a mermaid
Cyvern has ROBO DRAGONS. Or maybe Wyverns? idk. some others off the top of my head...
Air Zonk: 90s Cool Kid Astro Boy
Chimera Beast: an eternally-hungry alien called "Eater"
Insector X: the exact sprite changes between versions but basically is like a kid with goggles and a gun
ESP.Ra.De: has a flying psychic anime girl but also a flying psychic anime boy and a flying psychic anime indeterminable. I think there's actually a whole thread on Flying Human Shmups somewhere on this forum. A number of other CAVE games have unique kinds of player characters as well.
Kolibri: A regular-ass hummingbird that shoots laser beams for some reason

[EmperorIng]

In Chimera Beast, you play as... something, and you gain power by shooting out your mouth and eating lifeforms. You then take their characteristics/shapes/attacks for your own. It's a strange and unique game.

[Tarma]

The Game Paradise has a variety of non-space ship characters to choose from, and Star Paraodia lets you plays as a PC Engine...

There's also the Cho Aniki series of games.

All the others I can think of right now have already been mentioned.

[garrz32]

Sengoku Blade: choice from multiple characters (Tengai flying monk)
In The Hunt: submarine

[mainpatr5]

Cybattler\Spriggan Mark 2\Spriggan Powered\Tekkaman Blade - Mechs

Griffin - Tank

Battle Formula\Last Duel\Turbo Force - Car
Thundercade - Motorcycle sidecar

[MrJBRPG]

Aurail - Walker on the ground omni direction shooting

[Herr Schatten]

May I shamelessly plug my own work? Flight of Pigarus lets you play as a flying pig.

[FRO]

I don't think you can qualify what you pilot in Bio-Hazard Battle/Crying as a "space ship" of any type. It's some sort of biomechanical alien creature, I think.

Don't know if this is splitting hairs, or not, but lots of classic shmups use planes, helicopters, tanks, etc. They're related to space-ships, in the way that the mechanics are similar, but I thought it was worth mentioning. A couple outliers might be Thundercade and Last Duel, both of which are ground-based, and use high tech motorcycles as your on-screen avatar. Same goes for Seicross on the NES/Famicom, though whether or not that's considered a shmup might be up for debate.

[Kollision]

in Oh Noes!! 2 you are a killing hamburger from outer space

[mainpatr5]

in Oh Noes!! 2 you are a killing hamburger from outer space

That reminds me.

Plaque Attack - Tube of toothpaste

[komatik]

Kolibri

I've recently been looking for games in this style where there's some nominal puzzle element to figuring out the levels past "shoot the bad guys" (and I've always had a soft spot for interesting animal ideas). Any more along these lines?

[Kollision]

Earth Atlantis
Söldner-X
Söldner-X 2
Pixeljunk Shooter 1 and 2

if you're keen on gravity shooters, Solar Jetman and Subterrania are must-plays

[mainpatr5]

Kolibri

I've recently been looking for games in this style where there's some nominal puzzle element to figuring out the levels past "shoot the bad guys" (and I've always had a soft spot for interesting animal ideas). Any more along these lines?

Mid-Garts for MSX\Operation Neptune for PC(yes, a educational game!)

Both are Fantasy Zone style games with either talking to people(mid-Garts) or sloving math problems(Operation Neptune)

Also Section Z(NES)

[S20-TBL]

Sol Divide has some beat 'em up and light RPG elements for the home versions. Basically D&D but with zero gravity and lots of bullets.

Midnight Wanderers and its "sequel" Chariot. The first is a run n' gun while the second is a horizontal shmup. You play as an adventurer duo out to stop an evil wizard.

Dragon Blaze and Cyvern have you piloting dragons, wit the former allowing you to separate from your dragon and use it as a turret. There's also the older Dragon Spirit and its sequel, Dragon Saber.

Lords of Thunder is basically Saint Seiya: the shootemup, but with lots more heavy metal. Play as a flying magic knight with elemental powered armors and a sword for close combat.

EDIT: Insector X by Hot-B. You play as a....tiny human exterminator?...against an army of cartoony insects.

And if you play Warframe, try entering "WYRMIUS" as your username when logging in

[PC Engine Fan X!]

On the NEC PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 gaming console, there's an STG by the name of Cyber Core that features the player known as "Rad Ralph" that morphs into a half human/half insect hybrid to battle the huge insect forces that have overtaken the landscape. Even includes a screen mode that simulates an arcade screen (but still presented as a verizontal STG at best) -- just enter a specific password code at the passcode prompts screen and you're good to go.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[xxx128]

Playing twinkle tale at the moment. Its pretty awesome.

[oso]

Came here to say Dragon Blaze, but someone beat me to the punch. Dragon Blaze also has the nice upside of making the dragon feel like a dragon since it can fly away without you and kick ass.

That mechanic was really, really nice. Like R-Type's force. Someone should bring that back for a vertical shmup!

[CStarFlare]

Kolibri

I've recently been looking for games in this style where there's some nominal puzzle element to figuring out the levels past "shoot the bad guys" (and I've always had a soft spot for interesting animal ideas). Any more along these lines?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2718 ... urrection/