Shmup Related Questions That Don't Deserve a Thread

[XoPachi]

Does anyone know where I can view those sepia artworks that flash between each stage clear in ESP Ra De? They're just gorgeous. I love seeing them when I play it and it's criminal that they're seen so briefly. There a gallery somewhere of the game?

[kid aphex]

I can’t for the life of me find Sorcer Striker on the Japanese PSN store... anyone help?
Japanese PSN noob here.

Mostly curious about how/why the search function doesn’t seem to work... is there a trick or do I have to find the games in the store simply by browsing through all titles?


Thanks

[BIL]

Here you go. Found by CTRL+Ving 魔法大作戦 ("Mahou Daisakusen") into the search box - not very elegant, but that's how I usually find stuff.

[kid aphex]

Here you go. Found by CTRL+Ving 魔法大作戦 ("Mahou Daisakusen") into the search box - not very elegant, but that's how I usually find stuff.

Well thank you. I guess I’ll have to do my searching/purchasing from the web store instead of the console.

[XoPachi]

What was that one ollllld PC game where you and all the enemies are just crystals and you blew them apart? It's really obscure and very rare. Was called like Illuminator or something to that effect I think. Abstract backgrounds.

[Licorice]

Illumination laser on the X68000?

[jmclark]

Can anyone say what the “gy special” and “gy” switch options are for in Fire Arrow Plus?
Great game by the way...

[XoPachi]

Illumination laser on the X68000?

Yeah, that's it! Thanks!

[Hornet]

Hello,

This is one I have been struggling with for a while.

What's the first shooter that lets you push-scroll freely in any direction in some finite or infinite area, and also come to a rest almost immediately at any time (i.e. no (or very limited) inertia or gravity)?

I'm talking about things like:

Metal stoker
Firemen
Granada
etc.
...

I apologize for the necroquote, but I was testing an MSX emulator yesterday and came across a game called "Lonesome Tank", which immediately reminded me of your (very interesting) post. The gameplay seems to be at least somewhat influenced by Namco's Tank Battalion (1980), however the action here takes place in a free-scrolling "map" (a la Granada), instead of a single screen. No auto-scrolling and gravity/inertia either, so it seems to fit your criteria. Unsure about its release date, though. Japanese sites say 1983, Generation MSX, on the other hand, says 1984.

[Marc]

Am I missing something, or, in comparison to Switch / PS4, is it almost impossible to create a JPN account for Xbox? Wanted to pick up some 360 shooters I missed, but no luck, even with the new account created as JPN region?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

How hard is Kaneko's Cyvern generally considered to be for just a single loop clear vs a 2 loop 1cc? For instance, how would it compare on this list? viewtopic.php?f=1&t=56114

[XoPachi]

Gradius 3 AC gives two options before you go to the weapon selection.
What the hell do either of them do? I can't read Japanese. u-u

[BIL]

Full Game / Easy Game. The former mode is selected by default. The latter ends after stage 3. A classic SUPERHARD/SUPEREASY conundrum.

[Koa Zo]

Who the heck are the masterminds behind Data East's Nitro Ball.
sure I could look it up, but who were they, why aren't their names known in the same league as the Hiroshi Iiuchi's and Shigiru Miyamoto's of the world? Where are they now?
What a fucking game! Holy shit.

[UD2]

Who the heck are the masterminds behind Data East's Nitro Ball.
sure I could look it up, but who were they, why aren't their names known in the same league as the Hiroshi Iiuchi's and Shigiru Miyamoto's of the world? Where are they now?
What a fucking game! Holy shit.

Director "Jinbo" seems to be a match for Koji Jinbo: https://www.mobygames.com/developer/she ... Id,599194/
Couldn't figure anyone else out except for the music, which is known to be Hiroaki "Maro" Yoshida and Akira "Raika" Takemoto.

Data East rules, IMO they're the masters of "janky but fun as hell."

[XoPachi]

Guess what I'm about to ask? :^)

What kinda music is this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKIgFDSzrfk

[XoPachi]

What the fuck is wrong with Blue Revolver?

It doesn't like triggers and completely messes up when trying to map them. Streaming in Discord shuts off the music. Sometimes it registers certain inputs as other things in the menus (like the usual button I have set for confirm will sometimes back me out one menu instead).

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Which mods are looking after the index for the Strategy section? Would like this added to it. The index says to PM spadgy but they've not logged in for a year, so not sure if someone else is looking after it.

What the fuck is wrong with Blue Revolver?

It doesn't like triggers and completely messes up when trying to map them.

There's a lot of games that don't read triggers on Xbox controllers properly (seeing them both as one axis and not registering if you press both, etc). I often use JoyToKey to map them for that kind of thing.

[LordHypnos]

What's the problem with scoring in the X360 port of Guwange?

[Jeneki]

What's the problem with scoring in the X360 port of Guwange?

That sounds familiar enough for me to look for it. Found this topic: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=56378

[LordHypnos]

That sounds familiar enough for me to look for it. Found this topic: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=56378

Thanks! That sure is mysterious...

[velo]

So, about shield item spawns in Thunder Force IV...

There's one in the desert level that only shows up if you don't have a shield already. So if I have a partial shield already I deliberately take hits so I can grab a fresh one, it's kinda silly. And there's one in Air Raid that doesn't seem to show up sometimes, but I have no idea why. Is there any overall rhyme or reason to this, or do certain item drops have random pointless rules attached to them? I worry that I'm missing some items without even knowing about them...

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Without knowing anything useful about TFIV, there's a lot of shmups with weird arbitrary rules like internal counters that increase that determine when items drop, and there's at least one game where you can get a mercy 1UP if you reach that section with 0 lives in stock. It may be something similar?

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

So, about shield item spawns in Thunder Force IV...

There's one in the desert level that only shows up if you don't have a shield already. So if I have a partial shield already I deliberately take hits so I can grab a fresh one, it's kinda silly. And there's one in Air Raid that doesn't seem to show up sometimes, but I have no idea why. Is there any overall rhyme or reason to this, or do certain item drops have random pointless rules attached to them? I worry that I'm missing some items without even knowing about them...

Haven't played in a long time but I remember always starting with Air Raid to get the early shield. I always thought the drops were based on difficulty, and that less shields dropped on normal than on easy.

[CloudyMusic]

That sounds familiar enough for me to look for it. Found this topic: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=56378

Thanks! That sure is mysterious...

Yeah, to this day, I'm not sure anybody's really been able to explain what could be going on...but it sure seems like scores are noticeably inflated compared to MAME/PCB. It's weird.

[LordHypnos]

Yeah, to this day, I'm not sure anybody's really been able to explain what could be going on...but it sure seems like scores are noticeably inflated compared to MAME/PCB. It's weird.

Has anyone ever tested or noticed this discrepancy in the Blue version? I ask this because it sounded like we know the ROMs are identical. Would reveal whether it's a weird emulation issue or a ROM issue. I noticed that the scoring on restartsyndrome is still combined for that variant.

An unrelated question: I remember there being a thread on first shmups to do something (e.g. Bosconian is the first shmup to allow you to continue). I can't seem to find this anymore.
EDIT: found it

A question related to that: Does anyone know what the first shmup to have bonus enemies is? (bonus enemies here meaning enemies that only spawn if you kill other enemies fast enough). I occasionally see people crediting Ikaruga or Dangun Feveron for this, but I'm pretty sure it goes back much farther. Isn't this a fundamental feature of oldschool caravan shooters?

[CloudyMusic]

Has anyone ever tested or noticed this discrepancy in the Blue version? I ask this because it sounded like we know the ROMs are identical. Would reveal whether it's a weird emulation issue or a ROM issue. I noticed that the scoring on restartsyndrome is still combined for that variant.

I didn't test it, both because there weren't very many Blue replays floating around back then so it wasn't possible to get a good sample size, and I actually don't know the fine details of the scoring system in Blue. There are plenty of web sites that exhaustively break down Guwange's internal systems; the same doesn't really seem to be true of the Blue version, perhaps not surprisingly since it wasn't widely available.

[LordHypnos]

Has anyone ever tested or noticed this discrepancy in the Blue version? I ask this because it sounded like we know the ROMs are identical. Would reveal whether it's a weird emulation issue or a ROM issue. I noticed that the scoring on restartsyndrome is still combined for that variant.

I didn't test it, both because there weren't very many Blue replays floating around back then so it wasn't possible to get a good sample size, and I actually don't know the fine details of the scoring system in Blue. There are plenty of web sites that exhaustively break down Guwange's internal systems; the same doesn't really seem to be true of the Blue version, perhaps not surprisingly since it wasn't widely available.

That's a really good point!

[velo]

Without knowing anything useful about TFIV, there's a lot of shmups with weird arbitrary rules like internal counters that increase that determine when items drop, and there's at least one game where you can get a mercy 1UP if you reach that section with 0 lives in stock. It may be something similar?

Haven't played in a long time but I remember always starting with Air Raid to get the early shield. I always thought the drops were based on difficulty, and that less shields dropped on normal than on easy.

I always do Air Raid second, always play on Normal, almost always restart if I die before then. Maybe one time in 20 the shield doesn't spawn. I don't even have a theory about why. It's weird that there's apparently a special rule for only these two items in the entire game afaik, and it's not even the same rule for both, and the one in Desert barely even impacts gameplay if you know about it.

[Lethe]

Let me muddy the waters further regarding the Guwange port. Check out this archived replay from XBL Blue. Notice how at 4 minutes in, the player is coinstreaming off the stage 2 boss just like one would in the original version. Now try doing that in MAME, or even on a romswapped PCB. It doesn't work because coinstreaming doesn't exist in Blue boss fights! So if the Blue ROM was extracted from the XBL version, why are they mechanically different? Is the dump just utterly screwed up? Is there some additional layer running on top of the XBL version giving it mechanics that don't exist in the ROM? Is the XBL version merging the two games at runtime and creating an unholy union? What the fuck is happening?