Dooyong Shmups

[heisenbergman]

What do people here think about them? I don't usually see them being talked about here. I've been exploring some games recently and came across a handful of Dooyong games that, while far from being standouts, are actually quite fun play.

[Skykid]

I have a like, don't like so much relationship with R-Shark. It's just got the best laser ever - that double helix is so much fun to use. Unfortunately it's a bit of a pain in the ass to get involved with as a game. I very almost bought a PCB a little while ago before giving it one more double-check in Mame and then decided against it.

For all its good stuff, I'm really not sure it qualifies as a good game. It's just too frustrating/annoying.

[heisenbergman]

Oh and speaking of annoying, why do all Dooyong games have speed-up items scattered around like crazy?

[IseeThings]

No Super-X? I know MAME lists it as NTC, but it's more likely Dooyong made it, I think NTC is just Nippon Trading Company ie the Japan license

Anyway, they're all Korean games, so I don't think any are of spectacular quality, they're about the same level as the NG:Dev stuff, decent enough but lacking a lot of polish.

[soprano1]

R-Shark.

[Sinful]

No Super-X? I know MAME lists it as NTC, but it's more likely Dooyong made it, I think NTC is just Nippon Trading Company ie the Japan license

Anyway, they're all Korean games, so I don't think any are of spectacular quality, they're about the same level as the NG:Dev stuff, decent enough but lacking a lot of polish.

Hey, that Super-X game seems pretty super! Man, I've got to update my MAME shmup folder with the much more complete list here on this forum instead of the way outdated one on Xenofiles I first used. But considering how long it took me to compile that list getting them all one at a time... kinda scares me away from getting on that ASAP, lol (Wish someone wouid compile a complete Torrent on shmup genre already). Instead I've just been seeing the odd shmup here and there that I have missing from browsing this forum and other gaming sites. ... Last two obscure shmups I've added, thanks to this forum, were G-Stream & Wyvern Wings.

[Pretas]

People are fooled by R-Shark's better-than-average graphics and mistake it as a hidden gem, when in reality it plays just as poorly as Dooyong's other STGs.

Wasn't it still running on 8-bit hardware? I know Dooyong liked to claim that they could achieve "16-bit capabilities" with 8-bit.

[IseeThings]

People are fooled by R-Shark's better-than-average graphics and mistake it as a hidden gem, when in reality it plays just as poorly as Dooyong's other STGs.

Wasn't it still running on 8-bit hardware? I know Dooyong liked to claim that they could achieve "16-bit capabilities" with 8-bit.

Super-X and R-Shark are actually 16-bit, they both use a 68k.

Dooyong's main 'trick' from a hardware perspective was to hardcode all the tilemap layouts in the ROMs, so to present a tilemap you never even have to upload video data, just turn it on and give it scroll co-ordinates, allowing them to spend CPU cycles elsewhere. Seibu did similar in the early days.

[spadgy]

I'm curious that the games aren't more played or discussed. Perhaps I'm a typical case; I've always been keen to try the games, but as somebody who typically doesn't use MAME, they're hardly accessible.

Have there been Dooyong console releases?

[heisenbergman]

Just did a quick run through of their games yesterday and I think I prefer Flying Tiger the most.

[Pretas]

I'm curious that the games aren't more played or discussed. Perhaps I'm a typical case; I've always been keen to try the games, but as somebody who typically doesn't use MAME, they're hardly accessible.

Have there been Dooyong console releases?

It's probably because they're all low quality, have very identikit mechanics, and aren't worth bothering with for more than a couple minutes. The same can be said of most Korean games before the late nineties, really.

None of their games were ever ported. Not even to home computers, which would be more likely for Korea.

[Furry Fox Jet Pilot]

It's funny how the explosion from when you are killed in Blue Hawk is the same sprite from Raiden when you destroy those tanks in the first stage that have the spinning guns. Can anyone explain this? Is it ripping off Raiden, or were some people who worked on Raiden involved with Blue Hawk as well?

[IseeThings]

Can anyone explain this?

It's Korean...

really, I don't think there was a Korean arcade game developed in the 90s that DIDN'T rip something off, be it platform, code, gfx, or sound, or in a few cases the entire game

as far as not ripping things off go the Dooyong games are actually pretty good tho, the way the hardware works is original, most of the gfx seem to be, and the games appear to be programmed from scratch, but when the entire industry over there was built on this kind of thing I guess it was always going to creep in somewhere.