Shmup Junkie Reviews Every Toaplan Game - w/Dev Interviews

[Sengoku Strider]

I thought this was worth its own thread.

Shmup Junkie has done some excellent long-form videos lately, examining a wide range of titles and company histories. Most recently, he went through and reviewed every PC Engine STG in a 3 hour epic that I've actually somehow watched through twice (it made me buy a Duo).

In this newest 1.5 hour video he goes through all 16 Toaplan STGs (he includes OutZone & FixEight). What's notable here is the input he includes from interview footage with the Toaplan devs themselves, with anecdotes about their intentions behind various design elements or planning stages and how things evolved.

In a world full of reviewers who don't understand the genre at all, this is really refreshing and taught me a few things I didn't know or hadn't thought about. They go through details of things like pacing, routing intentions, financial realities which influenced design, etc.

Definitely worth a watch for Toaplan fans, or just people with an interest in the mechanics and history of the genre. It even made me give Tatsujin another chance:

https://youtu.be/P-PVtt2L6Hg

Favourite anecdote: It took a month before anybody got through Tatsujin Ou's first loop, and a year before anyone succeeded in clearing the second.

[To Far Away Times]

Junkie makes some of the best content on youtube. I watched half of it yesterday and the other half today, and its really great. His videos always have great production values too. I may have even found a few new games to check out. Outzone seems like a winner.

[Flashman]

Yeah caught the premier for this, great video and Junkie has such high quality content in general, I'm amazed he doesn't have more subs - that's a 100k channel all day long.

Just shows how much a lotto YT is on channels blowing up; there's a relatively new one called "U Can Beat Videogames" who I've watched nearly from it's genesis, and is now getting close to 75K subs inside a year. Now don't get me wrong it's a great channel and I watch all the content myself, but I've followed other channels for many years who have just as high quality and struggle to get over 10k.

[Sengoku Strider]

Yeah caught the premier for this, great video and Junkie has such high quality content in general, I'm amazed he doesn't have more subs - that's a 100k channel all day long.

I think it has everything to do with the shmup space still being a small one. Electric Underground has been putting tons of content out every week and organizing live events, interviewing players around the world, constant live streams, collaborating with other YouTubers (including Junkie) etc. for a couple of years now, and he's just now about to cross 10k. He talks a lot about the challenges of persisting and growing an STG-centric channel.

Bullet Heaven has been going for like 13 years, almost as long as YouTube has been around. They've done hundreds of videos and their content has a ton of professional-quality work put into it, but they're only at 16k subscribers.

The closest I think anyone's come to a major shmup-centric channel was Classic Game Room, but he started before high-bandwidth video streaming platforms were even a thing, and obviously covered a lot more than just 'spaceship shooters' as he lovingly referred to them as.

That said, I think all of these channels have been growing lately, with Junkie's certainly being the fastest riser. The boom in retro gaming has no doubt had a positive effect, as everyone sees STGs are the most consistently valuable genre, and so there no doubt must be something to them. Having a Radiant Silvergun or a MUSHA or a Sapphire is a crown jewel for a collection.

The Switch being an ideal "the kids have the TV" dad console has no doubt helped the renaissance as well, as that seems to be where the most activity has been.

So hopefully your 100k prediction comes true, it'd be good for everyone. Just buy a copy of Soldier Blade before it happens.

[Steven]

I couldn't sleep the other day, so I ended up staying up until like 0345 or so watching this live when it premiered.

I stay away from Youtube in general and the video game section in particular, but I like his stuff in general aside from filling the black space on the sides with the blurry gameplay footage to fill the 16:9 screen. I hope he doesn't do that for the Toaplan documentary...

Anyway, I love Toaplan and this made me feel really bad about not insta-preordering Kyuukyoku Tiger-Heli when it was announced, so I went and ordered it the instant that it was done, along with Hishou Same! Same! Same!.

[Sumez]

Great video. Althought it's a mostly superficial view on each game, I think he covers the basics of each game extremely well, and manages to describe what identifies each of them. He strikes a perfect balance between demonstrating the games from a somewhat casual perspective without compromising the qualities of each one. I couldn't imagine it done better.

I'm surprised about his mostly positive views on some of the "lesser" games, especially Zero Wing, V-V, and Vimana which are generally some of the least popular Toaplan games. But his insight into how Zero Wing came to be was mostly new to me (I only just heard the "uh it was made by the interns" excuse), and I can definitely see the appreciation for it in that context. His perspective on V-V honestly reflects my own thoughts on it back when I first discovered it, and seeing the video kinda reignited my interest in it.

And props to Uemura for picking Out Zone and Flying Shark as his top two favourites. I couldn't agree more.

Yeah caught the premier for this, great video and Junkie has such high quality content in general, I'm amazed he doesn't have more subs - that's a 100k channel all day long.

Just shows how much a lotto YT is on channels blowing up; there's a relatively new one called "U Can Beat Videogames" who I've watched nearly from it's genesis, and is now getting close to 75K subs inside a year. Now don't get me wrong it's a great channel and I watch all the content myself, but I've followed other channels for many years who have just as high quality and struggle to get over 10k.

I don't know, 17k subscribers looks insanely successful to me, but what do I know about, erh, YouTube culture

[xxx1993]

I'm impressed he got all those ex-Toaplan employees.

[OmegaFlareX]

Watched it yesterday. It was good, I enjoyed it overall. His enthusiasm is impressive. Very cool to see Mr. Uemura tell us his favorite games.

Having started the similar PCE monstrosity as well, one significant criticism is that he seems to have some problems with his game footage. Frankly, the framerate often sucks. It's not consistent at all, though. Some games are 60fps. Sometimes there's a discrepancy between footage within the same game. There's no pattern to it that I can tell. The non-game elements all seems to run perfectly smooth, so what's the deal here?

This is pretty sloppy in the age of silky-smooth retro game coverage from GameSack, Parish, MVG, Replay Burners, etc. Not presenting these games at their native FPS is fairly detracting from the subject matter, and I hope the finished Toaplan kickstarter documentary doesn't end up like this. That would be a real shame.

Another, albeit minor, gripe is using scanlines in either the feed or in post. Scanlines do not translate well to Youtube (or any other streaming platform), although these don't look too bad in YT's "default" view on a 1080p display. In theatre and fullscreen though? Ugh.

[StudioMudprints]

Bullet Heaven has been going for like 13 years, almost as long as YouTube has been around. They've done hundreds of videos and their content has a ton of professional-quality work put into it, but they're only at 16k subscribers.

Under 13k, actually

[Steven]

the similar PCE monstrosity

I don't want to turn this into "The Official Criticize Shmup Junkie's Footage Thread", but I always thought the colors on his PC Engine footage looked... let's just say they don't look like the colors on either my CoreGrafx or my SuperGrafx. Sometimes his footage in general has some macroblocking or something going on, as well.

SJ, I know you post here sometimes and that you read these forums, so if you see this, don't think I don't enjoy your work; it's almost entirely thanks to you that about 8 months ago I decided to stop being complete garbage at shooters and start playing them seriously, so yeah. I have been meaning to buy Slap Fight MD for years, and I finally ordered Slap Fight MD on Tuesday because of this video. Now that Slap Fight MD's awesomeness is no longer a secret, I went and bought a copy from Surugaya before everyone else buys them lol. They apparently didn't make a whole lot of copies of it...

On the subject of Slap Fight, Uemura-san listing Slap Fight as his #3 best Toaplan game has me very excited to try the MD port of the arcade version again, but now I REALLY REALLY REALLY can't wait for the M2 ShotTriggers Slap Fight release.

[Sumez]

Slap Fight MD is already a ridiculously expensive game. I don't think it's awesomeness has ever been a secret.

[Steven]

Slap Fight MD is already a ridiculously expensive game. I don't think it's awesomeness has ever been a secret.

Yeah, I guess that's true around here. Go to a non-shooting games forum and most people won't even know the game exists. It being on the MD Mini was actually how I heard of it and Toaplan myself (I wasn't into shooting games at the time), so I tried it on the Mega Sg and loved it instantly. I think it was probably the first Toaplan game I ever played and the MD version wasn't even made by Toaplan.

[Tarma]

Great video, makes me even more impatient for M2 to get the Toaplan Arcade Garage series over with!

Outzone is awesome... one of the very few pcbs I've ever regretted selling. Cannot wait for it to hit the PS4, but something tells me I'm going to have to wait a bit longer as the most likely candidate for the third Toaplan collection is Tatsujin.

[OldSkoolShmuper]

This is an awesome video, Shmupjunkie has some of the best shmup content on YT.

[Samildanach]

This is an awesome video, Shmupjunkie has some of the best shmup content on YT.

Yep. He is great. Such great enthusiasm for the genre, and definitely the cause of me looking into games I wouldn't have otherwise.