Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

[Gamer707b]

Took a bit of a shmup break. I dabbled a bit in Einhander last night. I'm pretty decent through the first 3 levels, then all goes to shit after that. Love the look and music though.

[Nahar]

Einhander is a blast, but I don't know if it's just me, if I played when I was a kid and I'm traumatized, but I find that game really, really hard.

[BIL]

You should give it another go if you haven't, chances are it'll seem a lot more approachable. Checkpoint restarts are always pretty mean for newcomers, and the ammo/grappling systems are more demanding than the typical beginner STG. It was directed by Tatsuo Fuji, who'd worked on Gradius II and XEXEX at Konami, and it's definitely got a bit of that traditionalist unforgiveness to it.

[DrBossKey]

Einhander is definitely challenging but super gratifying as you dial into weapons and approach to bosses.

On a side note, I am getting wrecked by the final boss in Gunvein right now.

[Nahar]

You should give it another go if you haven't, chances are it'll seem a lot more approachable. Checkpoint restarts are always pretty mean for newcomers, and the ammo/grappling systems are more demanding than the typical beginner STG. It was directed by Tatsuo Fuji, who'd worked on Gradius II and XEXEX at Konami, and it's definitely got a bit of that traditionalist unforgiveness to it.

I'm used to checkpoints, I 1CC'd Gradius recently, but yeah, I have to give it a go, I'm very fond of the game's music and ambiance. I loved it back in the day, in fact; it's just that I remember the game being very, very difficult. Maybe that's 9 year old me hating on the game anyways. I will try it when I get the Mushihimesama 1CC I'm set to get.

[Herr Schatten]

After clearing the Amiga version of Battle Squadron recently, I thought I’d give the Mega Drive remix another chance. What a mistake! While the original is a fun and easy cruise for a rainy afternoon, whose only faults are the pointlessness of scoring and its general lack of challenge, the Mega Drive game is way too hard for all the wrong reasons.

The playfield is wider, so there are more enemies on screen that can (and will) shoot. At the same time its height is reduced, so you have less room to maneuver. I could swear that my hitbox is bigger than my ship, too. Enemies shoot a lot more and the bullets are much faster. The weapon upgrades have been changed, not necessarily for the better, and the less is said about the parallax layers in the foreground that fucking obscure what’s going on the better. At some point the game just starts to flood the screen with constantly shooting popcorn enemies, swamping the player who feels underpowered even when maxed out. It’s a pity, really, as the core of a good game is there.

Does a legit 1CC replay of this even exist? All the ones I’ve found so far are very obviously tool-assisted and full of crazy unhuman dodges.

[Sengoku Strider]

After clearing the Amiga version of Battle Squadron recently, I thought I’d give the Mega Drive remix another chance. What a mistake! While the original is a fun and easy cruise for a rainy afternoon, whose only faults are the pointlessness of scoring and its general lack of challenge, the Mega Drive game is way too hard for all the wrong reasons.

The playfield is wider, so there are more enemies on screen that can (and will) shoot. At the same time its height is reduced, so you have less room to maneuver. I could swear that my hitbox is bigger than my ship, too. Enemies shoot a lot more and the bullets are much faster. The weapon upgrades have been changed, not necessarily for the better, and the less is said about the parallax layers in the foreground that fucking obscure what’s going on the better. At some point the game just starts to flood the screen with constantly shooting popcorn enemies, swamping the player who feels underpowered even when maxed out. It’s a pity, really, as the core of a good game is there.

Does a legit 1CC replay of this even exist? All the ones I’ve found so far are very obviously tool-assisted and full of crazy unhuman dodges.

These days it generally seems to be regarded as at the bottom of the MD shmup barrel. But looking at the review archive on Sega Retro, the Euro magazines of the time loved it. EGM are the only NA outlet SR list, they gave it straight 5/10s across the board.

The lone Euro voice of dissent at the time seems to have been none other than Julian Eggebrecht of Factor 5, writing in Gamers:



I cannot tell you how disappointed I was when I looked up ballerspiel and found out it didn't mean a game with gangsta swag.

[pja]

The lone Euro voice of dissent at the time seems to have been none other than Julian Eggebrecht of Factor 5, writing in Gamers:

... is it really a voice of dissent? If it's based on the German school grade system, then I think 1 is best and 6 is worst, "2-" is a pretty good score. (Someone actually knowing German should probably confirm though )

[Herr Schatten]

... is it really a voice of dissent? If it's based on the German school grade system, then I think 1 is best and 6 is worst, "2-" is a pretty good score. (Someone actually knowing German should probably confirm though )

That’s correct. A German 2 is the equivalent of a B. The German school grades aren’t really that different except that both a 5 and a 6 are the same as an F. So in Germany you can fail - and you can fail even worse.

My guess why MD Battle Squadron scored surprisingly well is that the reviewers probably didn’t really play it. They probably liked the solid original, found the port superficially similar, and called it a day. I suspect that was how most ports used to be reviewed back then.

[Sengoku Strider]

Interesting, I had no idea about any of that. But that does explain the 2., I was thinking it was some shorthand that German readers would get, like "secondary points" or something and then they list the product data.

My high school German is only good enough to give me bits and pieces of what the review was saying. Like I could tell '...die endgegner ziemlich primitiv und die technik nicht überragend..." isn't praise, and I came in with the impression it was somewhat critical because Sega Retro in their review aggregator have the score listed as 67:

Spoiler

(I don't count the Russian review scores, as near as I can tell those were all written years after the fact, and by people who hate video games). I was thinking the 67 was based off the two 3s for graphik & sound, with some modifier based on the tone of the text or something like certain other aggregators do.

My guess why MD Battle Squadron scored surprisingly well is that the reviewers probably didn’t really play it. They probably liked the solid original, found the port superficially similar, and called it a day. I suspect that was how most ports used to be reviewed back then.

I think this was very much the norm. A lot of games from the 8 & 16-bit days could be beaten in a couple of days, so reading them as a kid I just assumed the people at some of these magazines were really good. But I had no idea of what the demands of the working world or adult schedules were like. Now, looking back at old issues of EGM I see during the height of the 16-bit period they had 5 guys [EDIT: maybe 4, Sushi-X was a fake character] reviewing 40+ games a month. If they spent even 3 hours with each one that would take up nearly a full month's working hours. Without producing a word of magazine text, never mind layout work and screen grabbing with slow early 90s computer tech etc. :

Spoiler

[Herr Schatten]

My high school German is only good enough to give me bits and pieces of what the review was saying. Like I could tell '...die endgegner ziemlich primitiv und die technik nicht überragend..." isn't praise, and I came in with the impression it was somewhat critical because Sega Retro in their review aggregator have the score listed as 67:

It is somewhat negative, but it has to be noted that the linked review seems to be some kind of retrospective re-review, as this particular magazine didn’t even exist when the game came out in 1990. The issue this review comes from is from 1993. By that time a lot of shmups were available for the Mega Drive, including heavy hitters like Musha Aleste, Elemental Master or TF4, so the quoted bit constitutes as some mild criticism at best.
Ironically, the primitive bosses that are mentioned are one area where the Mega Drive game improves upon the original, albeit only slightly.

I was thinking the 67 was based off the two 3s for graphik & sound, with some modifier based on the tone of the text or something like certain other aggregators do.

That sounds about right. If you equal a 6 with 0% and a 1 with 100%, each of the school grades represents a 20% increase in score, so we have (60+60+80)/3≈67.
Even that score has to be viewed in context, though, as in German magazines up until the mid-90s the consensus was to use the full range of the 100% scale, so 50% would mean "average". Keeping this in mind, 67% is actually a pretty good score.


You know, I would be very much interested in hearing the story of how this port came about. How many of the changes were the developers' ideas and how many were requested by the publisher? I can imagine that at least the cranked-up difficulty could have been demanded by EA, presumably in regards to the rental market in the US.
There are indications that the developers themselves consider the port a failure, as for their iOS and Android ports of the game they went back to the original.

The tragic thing is that the game isn’t universally terrible. The stage designs and layouts of stationary enemies are largely untouched and as solid as ever. Changing the weapon types from four very specialized ones to two types of spreads and two types of focused attacks might not have been necessary, but doesn’t hurt either. Handing out extra bombs only in the underground levels is actually a good idea, as it means you can’t just fully restock on the endlessly looping surface and bomb your way through everything.

I can kind of imagine this being an interesting challenge in co-op, if one player concentrates on eliminating the bigger threats as quickly as possible with a focused attack while the other player keeps the relentless downpour of zako in check with one of the spread shots. For solo players, though, it’s simply too much of an onslaught.

[Steven]

Kyuukyoku Tiger PCB showed up in the mail today, so I guess I am now working on a no-autofire 1CC. At stage 8 so far. I was always very hesitant to play this game on PCB because no autofire, but it is actually very manageable without autofire! I was relying heavily on insta-killing some of the bosses on PS4 with the 30Hz, so I have to learn how to fight some of the bosses properly now lol. Right now my only strategy for the twin stage 4 bosses is to use a lot of bombs and I'd rather not do that.

[Gamer707b]

@Nahar Yea it is challenging. I bought it back when it came out and took it back a couple days later cause I didn't know what the hell I was doing.

@DrBossKey You're 100% on point. Once the weapon system mechanic clicks with you, then you're in this Zen. Pretty awesome actually.

Still mainly playing Einhander, but took a little break from it. Gotta practice level 4. That's were it gets shaky for me.

[Nahar]

Kinda testing the waters... A bit of Like Dreamer, a bit of Dangun Feveron and a bit of Thunder Force AC, not very focused at the time. Still undecided on my next 1cc.

[Sengoku Strider]

Kinda testing the waters... A bit of Like Dreamer, a bit of Dangun Feveron and a bit of Thunder Force AC, not very focused at the time. Still undecided on my next 1cc.

I've never played Like Dreamer, but Thunder Force AC is a very manageable 1CC once you have the game's layout down, especially if you already have Gradius under your belt. It's not a pushover (okay, some of the bosses are), but it's not as tough as Feveron.

[Nahar]

Kinda testing the waters... A bit of Like Dreamer, a bit of Dangun Feveron and a bit of Thunder Force AC, not very focused at the time. Still undecided on my next 1cc.

I've never played Like Dreamer, but Thunder Force AC is a very manageable 1CC once you have the game's layout down, especially if you already have Gradius under your belt. It's not a pushover (okay, some of the bosses are), but it's not as tough as Feveron.

Yeah, I've got to play a bit more. As I said, I'm still undecided because there are a couple of games I want to test before deciding, such as Einhander (mentioned earlier in this thread) and Psyvariar.

[To Far Away Times]

So I had a real berenstain bears/berenstein bears moment here.

I was pursuing youtube and watched a 1CC of Espgaluda II with some pretty inspiring strats. So I figured I'd fire up my PC copy because of course I already bought it on Steam right? All the CAVE releases are bought Day 1. Well... unlike every other CAVE Switch port, this one hasn't come to PC for some reason. Goddammit.

[Herr Schatten]

For some reason I can’t stop playing the shitty MD remix of Battle Squadron. It’s a deeply flawed game, not a patch on the original, and I really can’t explain why I continue to pour hours of my life into it. At first, I wasn’t even having fun, like, at all, but lately it has actually grown on me. After some save-state practice I can now make it through two of the three underground stages, and I’m working on the third. While at the beginning I hated every minute of it, I kind of appreciate the steep challenge now, although for all I know this could very well be just some kind of Stockholm syndrome.

Someone please hack this to remove the foreground parallax layer and maybe make the player's hitbox smaller than the ship. Then we could enjoy this as a fun bullet herding simulator.

[m.sniffles.esq]

As '22 was the year of the Astro City, '23--thus far--has been the year of the Egret. Halley's Comet, Tiger Heli, Scramble Formation, Darius Gaiden, Metal Black, Rayforce, etc, etc

Also, I'm not sure what inspired it (perhaps talk of a sequel), but I dusted off Karous to continue my quest for the hard mode 1cc. I still think it's Milestone's (and Milestone adjunct) best game.

[Herr Schatten]

I seem to have hit a wall at Battle Squadron MD. Playing very aggressively, hugging the upper screen border as much as possible and point-blanking everything seems to work most of the time. On a good day, I can get through 7/8 of the game, but the second half of the third underground stage is just ridiculous.

Even the two replays I found that look legit and don’t seem to use savestates only succeed because of some lucky dodges in that part. (I also suspect that both are playing on a slower PAL machine, but I’m not sure.) I mean, look at this shit.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Currently working on trying to no-miss Drainus on Ridiculous mode. It's the hardest mode of the game to do this as the second loop makes nearly everything chuck red bullets at you when they die, and several bosses have received some serious boosts (the S4's second phase moves VERY fast now). I'm tempted to use Emergency Power-Up type S-Bomb which makes things very easy as you can constantly recharge your shield (though it can't punch through bosses with bombs or let you move through solid terrain with a quick bomb iirc) but I'd rather not resort to that if I can as Emergency Power-Up's free shield recharges generally makes the game very, very easy.

[Nahar]

I finally decided and I'm going for the Einhänder 1CC.

[Kollision]

I mean, look at this shit.

When I played this game I always went for the third undeground area first since it's the hardest one.
It's better to fail at the beginning of the run than at the end, after all the suffering you have to go through to get there.

[xxx1993]

I finally decided and I'm going for the Einhänder 1CC.

I took care of that myself.

[Steven]

I finally decided to try some of those other things on the Aleste Collection and now I kind of see why Despatche hates Compile, as the stage design in Aleste and Power Strike II seems to essentially be "make the player ridiculously powerful, put random shit everywhere, and call it good". After a no miss to Power Strike II's stage 5 boss I got bored, started wishing the game would end, and gave up. If anyone who worked on these games were the ones who joined Raizing, they certainly improved as game designers A LOT. Either that or they REALLY paid attention when Toaplan taught them how to make games.

[pulsemod]

power strike ii is different from the gg aleste games in that it has like 5/6 difficulty options, the balance is definitely pretty weird though.

[Steven]

Yeah, I didn't bother with the difficulty settings, I just left it on the default, turned the slowdown off, and played it until I got bored, which was somewhere around halfway through stage 2, and then I finally just quit at the stage 5 boss out of boredom.

Easy games are fine, and there are ridiculously good entry-level shooters like Crimzon Clover's novice mode (seriously, that thing is just so damn well-designed that that should be everyone's first bullet hell game) but the overall design of these early Aleste games is very messy. I can't believe I am seriously making this comparison, but the stage design here is way closer to Action 52 than it is to Soukyuugurentai or Mahou Daisakusen or Garegga. It's like... yeah, just put a bunch of random things in random places and that's the stage. Cool bosses, though they are still super easy.

I don't know, but maybe I'll try these again on a higher difficulty. GG Aleste 3 is really good, and that is what I bought it for, but Aleste and Power Strike II don't really do much for me, at least on their default difficulty settings.

[cfx]

Yeah, I didn't bother with the difficulty settings, I just left it on the default, turned the slowdown off, and played it until I got bored, which was somewhere around halfway through stage 2.

Easy games are fine, and there are ridiculously good entry-level shooters like Crimzon Clover's novice mode (seriously, that thing is just so damn well-designed that that should be everyone's first bullet hell game) but the overall design of these early Aleste games is very messy. I can't believe I am seriously making this comparison, but the stage design here is way closer to Action 52 than it is to Soukyuugurentai or Mahou Daisakusen or Garegga. It's like... yeah, just put a bunch of random things in random places and that's the stage. Cool bosses, though they are still super easy.

I don't know, but maybe I'll try these again on a higher difficulty. GG Aleste 3 is really good, and that is what I bought it for, but Aleste and Power Strike II don't really do much for me, at least on their default difficulty settings.

Me too.
I can't remember if I've even looked at the others at all. I will eventually though I'm not really expecting a whole lot.

I had initially discounted the entire collection as I really didn't pay enough attention to realize just what GG Aleste 3 was; I think it was Shmup Junkie's video that brought it to my attention and then I looked at bits of some other longplay videos.

My opinion of Compile is mixed. I quite like Super Aleste though it's also somewhat on the easy side, and I'm not any kind of expert player. I don't care for Musha Aleste at all though I can respect it as a good game that I just happen to not like. I think Dennin Aleste is a bad game. That train level is soooo loooong and interminally boring. I like Spriggan more than Musha Aleste but still don't really like it. I've only played Spriggan Mk. II very briefly as a store demo but did like that though felt all the dialog scenes break up the action too much, if I recall. And I like Zanac Neo.

I am looking forward to Aleste Branch and will buy it assuming it's on PS4 so I can play it.

Old news I'm sure but I stumbled onto a Eurogamer article about GG Aleste 3:
https://www.eurogamer.net/how-m2-went-b ... agnum-opus

[Kollision]

Imo these early Aleste/Power Strike games just lack character, which hurts their appeal in the long term. Especially for old timers like the most of us, who are jaded by newer games and more diverse shooting experiences.
Even if the pseudo frantic nature of these 8-bit shmups might give people their share of thrills, you'll hardly recall any particularly interesting moments a year later.

I get almost the same feeling from the Soldier series, for example.
Except for the first one the NES, I hardly remember much of the others.
Which is odd because NES Star Soldier is just infuriating to play.

[Steven]

GG Aleste done. This time it had actual real stage design! Yay, Compile managed to get better! It was still insanely easy, but better, and I did actually bother to clear the game this time. Maybe these are supposed to be like entry level games for kids or something, and that's cool. If I had kids, I sure as hell wouldn't give them this, though; I would give them Hishouzame or Out Zone or R-Types on PS1 and tell them to play that instead.

Imo these early Aleste/Power Strike games just lack character, which hurts their appeal in the long term. Especially for old timers like the most of us, who are jaded by newer games and more diverse shooting experiences.
Even if the pseudo frantic nature of these 8-bit shmups might give people their share of thrills, you'll hardly recall any particularly interesting moments a year later.

I get almost the same feeling from the Soldier series, for example.
Except for the first one the NES, I hardly remember much of the others.
Which is odd because NES Star Soldier is just infuriating to play.

Yeah, I have the same feeling about pretty much all of the PC Engine-exclusive shooting games that I have played. They are good games, but they all just felt super generic to me and not really very interesting. Then again, I have not played Image Fight II yet and I absolutely trust late 80s/early 90s Irem to make a great game. I love Irem so much. I wish everyone could do stage design like Irem, but that's not realistic, although it would be really nice if everything was as solid as R-Type or Kaitei Daisensou.

Yeah, I didn't bother with the difficulty settings, I just left it on the default, turned the slowdown off, and played it until I got bored, which was somewhere around halfway through stage 2.

Easy games are fine, and there are ridiculously good entry-level shooters like Crimzon Clover's novice mode (seriously, that thing is just so damn well-designed that that should be everyone's first bullet hell game) but the overall design of these early Aleste games is very messy. I can't believe I am seriously making this comparison, but the stage design here is way closer to Action 52 than it is to Soukyuugurentai or Mahou Daisakusen or Garegga. It's like... yeah, just put a bunch of random things in random places and that's the stage. Cool bosses, though they are still super easy.

I don't know, but maybe I'll try these again on a higher difficulty. GG Aleste 3 is really good, and that is what I bought it for, but Aleste and Power Strike II don't really do much for me, at least on their default difficulty settings.

Me too.
I can't remember if I've even looked at the others at all. I will eventually though I'm not really expecting a whole lot.

I had initially discounted the entire collection as I really didn't pay enough attention to realize just what GG Aleste 3 was; I think it was Shmup Junkie's video that brought it to my attention and then I looked at bits of some other longplay videos.

My opinion of Compile is mixed. I quite like Super Aleste though it's also somewhat on the easy side, and I'm not any kind of expert player. I don't care for Musha Aleste at all though I can respect it as a good game that I just happen to not like. I think Dennin Aleste is a bad game. That train level is soooo loooong and interminally boring. I like Spriggan more than Musha Aleste but still don't really like it. I've only played Spriggan Mk. II very briefly as a store demo but did like that though felt all the dialog scenes break up the action too much, if I recall. And I like Zanac Neo.

I am looking forward to Aleste Branch and will buy it assuming it's on PS4 so I can play it.

Old news I'm sure but I stumbled onto a Eurogamer article about GG Aleste 3:
https://www.eurogamer.net/how-m2-went-b ... agnum-opus

I bought the Aleste Collection purely out of curiosity due to GG Aleste 3 being a new Game Gear game in 2020. Turns out that was a really good move because GG Aleste 3 is very good. Haven't played GG Aleste 2 yet, but I will get around to it eventually. My general opinion of GG Aleste is that the game is way too long and very uneventful, which is not a good combination, but they put some thought into the second half of the game and the miniboss right before the final boss actually managed to kill me! No way! I had like 20 extends by then, so I didn't really care, though it would have been nice to get the no miss on my first attempt.