Non-Traditional Enemy Collisions: the Definitive List

[LordHypnos]

R-Type Delta is the first game in the series when obstacles doesn't hurt you, instead it creates a "sparkling" effect if you string to it.

Only static walls though - anything moving (st2's falling pillar, st3's walker, st5's debris) will blow you up reeeal good as usual. :3

I like Einhander and Border Down's compromise on traditional STG walldeath. Bumping a wall in the heat of battle is okay - humping or grinding on one will kill you promptly. Puts a neat distinction between minor error and outright slop.

Do they bounce you, or just make sparks or something? Just so I know where to categorize them. On that note, how common is it in modern Horis for walls to be non-damaging? Is it actually an unusual thing that would be worth tracking, or is it just all modern horis, pretty much? Or IDK, maybe I should track it anyway just because in most older horis the walls are thoroughly deadly. I'm having trouble figuring out where to draw the line, here

Just remembered, Armed Police Batrider has a couple of air enemies that lack air collision, mostly in Airport, simply so it's easier to aura them for extra points, I don't think you have any of that in Garegga or Bakraid
Psyvariar Revision has just one of those in Graviton, annoyingly the same enemy shows up in earlier levels but WITH collision.

Probably won't add because of it being only in one/a few spots, but again, having trouble figuring out where to draw the line.

I'm almost certain that in some Touhous flying into popcorn-enemies will kill them and not you!

This would be worth noting if you can give me specific touhous. I'm pretty sure, for example, that in MoF that's not the case, and of course according to my intel, GFW has you just flying over non-bosses.

[Aliquantic]

I'm almost certain that in some Touhous flying into popcorn-enemies will kill them and not you!

This would be worth noting if you can give me specific touhous. I'm pretty sure, for example, that in MoF that's not the case, and of course according to my intel, GFW has you just flying over non-bosses.

I can confirm killing popcorn by ramming them should not happen. Touhou does have very inconsistent hitboxes for both popcorn (GFW excepted) and bosses, where some bosses just don't have a hitbox or it changes during the course of the fight.

(Imperishable Night has familiars which can be shot, spawn bullets, and only have a hitbox for non-Reimu humans. Reimu and non-humans don't get hurt by familiars, but that's probably not very interesting)

[BIL]

Do they bounce you, or just make sparks or something? Just so I know where to categorize them.

I seem to recall Border Down's walls bouncing you away slightly, but not so much that you can't rapidly come back for more (and soon enough explode!). Einhander and Delta will let you grind on a wall, but the former will quickly kill you for not backing off. Both BD and EH's walldeath seems to work on a principle similar to the "dizzy" mechanic in SFII and its ilk. Occasional bumps/grinds don't add up over time - it's a flurry of terrain contact that'll trigger death.

You simply cannot die via wall contact in Delta - environmental hazards exist, but they take specific, active forms like falling debris. Enemy contact is fatal as always - st3's titanic walker effectively is the level, and fatal to touch at any point, but the ground it's passing over is harmless.

On that note, how common is it in modern Horis for walls to be non-damaging? Is it actually an unusual thing that would be worth tracking, or is it just all modern horis, pretty much? Or IDK, maybe I should track it anyway just because in most older horis the walls are thoroughly deadly. I'm having trouble figuring out where to draw the line, here

Might be tricky to determine with there being so many more modern verts than horis. Gradius V and Gradius Rebirth came out after Border Down, and their walls are as lethal as ever - there's also the more recent Satazius (PC) for a doujin example. R-Type Final's walls are safe but it's Delta's direct sequel - seems more stylistic than an "industry standard" thing.

Similarly, walls don't hurt in Deathsmiles, but they don't in Side Arms (1986) or Forgotten Worlds (1988) either - all three are horis with humanoid avatars, a style choice associated with safe walls in shooters of all types. More hori examples include the Cotton series, plus Irem's Mr. Heli and Gun Hohki - the latter's characters even freely walk on the ground ala Winds of Thunder. Hyper Duel's a particularly good example with its transforming mech - the humanoid form is invincible to walls, the jetfighter will explode as usual.

(apologies if there are any mistakes in the above, quite a bit of this is from memory! grateful for any corrections)

[mamboFoxtrot]

Lords of Thunder (Hudson Soft / Red Entertainment, 1993, PCECD)

• Has a life bar and enemies damage you less; could probably use some confirmation on this one

Just double-checked, and nope. The enemies and bullets I ran in to all dealt 1 damage and sapped attack power.

Also, you might want to fix your text for Armed Police Unit Gallop. It's between img tags for some reason.

[LordHypnos]

Added a category for scenery / walls that don't kill or bounce. Hopefully won't regret it

[Shepardus]

I was just playing Titanion (ABA Games, 2006, PC) and was reminded of this thread because each of its three different modes have different enemy collision behaviors. Classic mode has enemy collisions that kill you, Basic mode has enemy collisions that bounce you away, and Modern mode ignores enemy collisions.

Gunroar (ABA Games, 2005, PC) has bounce-away collisions for both enemies and scenery.

Also, since you didn't have the years for these: Noiz2sa is year 2002, parsec47 is 2003, rRootage is 2003, Tumiki Fighters is 2004, Akashicverse -Malicious Wake- is 2012.

[copy-paster]

In the original Darius, getting Hyper Shield will bounce the player ship if crashing a terrain.

[LordHypnos]

Updated. Thanks!

[mamboFoxtrot]

Not sure if you still care about this, but I realized today that you harmlessly bounce off of enemies in Ironclad. I didn't think this was the case before, but it turns out that's just because the enemies seem to have no qualms about point-blanking you.

[LordHypnos]

Not sure if you still care about this, but I realized today that you harmlessly bounce off of enemies in Ironclad. I didn't think this was the case before, but it turns out that's just because the enemies seem to have no qualms about point-blanking you.

Yeah, I'm still keeping this up to date. This is Ironclad (1996) for the Neo Geo CD, right? I will add.

[LordHypnos]

Any new entries for this in the past few years? I added Demonizer. This one is kind of interesting because no enemies have collision properties, but there are little guys who run around swinging their swords at you which serve kind of a similar role as traditional kamikaze planes or perhaps more like destructible bullets. Pretty unique movement in this regard, though.

EDIT: One thing that's kind of interesting about this list is that it seems like there was sort of a peak popularity of these through the 00s, but seems like they've kind of declined since then. This is maybe just true in general of more "modern" style conventions (with complex scoring systems and more of a focus on bullets than enemies/obstacles). At least we haven't seen a resurgence of pea-shooters and speed-ups

[BareKnuckleRoo]

SideLine probably qualifies as a category III type example? It's rare to see games with invulnerability bombs as well as shields, especially in a MS-DOS era shmup (arguably the best one ever made), and in general terrain damage immediately destroys you on contact regardless of shielding (Gradius, Darius, etc, technically it's possible to zip through tiny walls in some Gradius games like GV with a max level shield but the shields are rapidly drained each frame you're in contact with terrain in that case). Both the bombs and the shield in SideLine will protect you from collision damage, with bombs having a short burst of invulnerability, and shields (which protect from 3 hits without increasing your hitbox size or anything) having a short period of invulnerability after taking a hit which behaves exactly the same regardless if it's a traditional attack or an enemy projectile, which is unusual for a game with a shield powerup as far as I know. Otherwise it behaves traditionally in that there's no unusual physics involved, it just treats terrain damage the same as normal projectile damage.

Tyrian 2000 for MS-DOS uses bounce-off type collisions, technically, although the level design also sometimes puts in large walls where you'll simply die from instantly getting crushed in the wall against the bottom of the screen as there's nowhere to bounce to and the per-frame damage is massive if repeatedly touching a wall this way.

Harmful Park for PS1 has no collision damage on normal terrain, unless you're crushed against the screen edge in which case you instantly die. Crushing isn't a real threat normally due to level design not being focused on that. You can collide normally with enemies, though, as far as I remember.

[Sengoku Strider]

R-Type Final 2 is type IV, I believe.

[LordHypnos]

SideLine

I might as well add it then. To be clear, though: Does touching a wall also deal damage to your shield, or does the shield protect you completely from walls?

Tyrian 2000 for MS-DOS uses bounce-off type collisions, technically, although the level design also sometimes puts in large walls where you'll simply die from instantly getting crushed in the wall against the bottom of the screen as there's nowhere to bounce to and the per-frame damage is massive if repeatedly touching a wall this way.

Harmful Park for PS1 has no collision damage on normal terrain, unless you're crushed against the screen edge in which case you instantly die. Crushing isn't a real threat normally due to level design not being focused on that. You can collide normally with enemies, though, as far as I remember.

It does seem like getting crushed will usually circumvent any normal invulnerability to walls/obstacles. Deathsmiles is the odd exception to this. Just slides you out without dealing any damage

R-Type Final 2 is type IV, I believe.

Good call!

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I might as well add it then. To be clear, though: Does touching a wall also deal damage to your shield, or does the shield protect you completely from walls?

Touching a wall does the same thing touching anything else like direct attacks does. You either die, or your shield soaks one hit (each shield powerup refills to 3 hits) with a brief invulnerability period. The only unusual element is the shield invulnerability treating terrain damage the same as normal damage. There's a lot of shield powerups and the invulnerability is long enough that you can safely trade 1 shield hit to pass through solid terrain. There's even one 1UP that requires passing through solid terrain in order to get it (either by bombing or using the shield this way; there's conveniently a number of both in the stage).

It does seem like getting crushed will usually circumvent any normal invulnerability to walls/obstacles. Deathsmiles is the odd exception to this. Just slides you out without dealing any damage.

CAVE's Guwange does this as well (Category IV). No collision damage from normal terrain, no screen edge crush. You just suddenly get squeezed out with no issues. Touching enemies damages you, similar to Deathsmiles.

Actually I just thought of another game that does this (Category IV): Firepower 2000 for the SNES, when playing as the Jeep. You actually get a split second invulnerability whenever a safe to touch obstacle screen edge crushes you and you're warped out. It's also an honest to goodness platformer with various obstacles to jump over and such, lava to avoid, etc. This only applies to non-harmful buildings/obstacles though. Touching obvious enemies such as making collision with an enemy tank, or getting run over by a train will still kill you instantly.

[LordHypnos]

Touching a wall does the same thing touching anything else like direct attacks does. You either die, or your shield soaks one hit (each shield powerup refills to 3 hits) with a brief invulnerability period. The only unusual element is the shield invulnerability treating terrain damage the same as normal damage. There's a lot of shield powerups and the invulnerability is long enough that you can safely trade 1 shield hit to pass through solid terrain. There's even one 1UP that requires passing through solid terrain in order to get it (either by bombing or using the shield this way; there's conveniently a number of both in the stage).

Okay, that makes sense. I will make a note on the entry. I actually tried to get this game working not long ago. I should probably get back to that at some point.

CAVE's Guwange does this as well. No collision damage from normal terrain, no screen edge crush. You just suddenly get squeezed out with no issues.

Cool. I guess it makes sense that CAVE wouldn't want you to get crushed even when they are having obstacles. I should really try playing Guwange one of these days.

Actually I just thought of another game that does this: Firepower 2000 for the SNES, when playing as the Jeep. You actually get a split second invulnerability whenever a safe to touch obstacle screen edge crushes you and you're warped out. It's also an honest to goodness platformer with various obstacles to jump over and such, lava to avoid, etc.

Interesting. Overhead 2D platformers are a strange beast. I think Beyond Oasis on the Genesis/Mega Drive had some platforming sections. Do you think Firepower is shmuppy enough to include? I probably have a pretty low bar. lol.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Just thought of another Category IV one and an older one at that: Natsume's Final Mission for Famicom. You don't take damage from touching normal terrain. Being screen edge crushed will deal damage though; you can move through the terrain while taking damage (couple seconds of invulnerability) until you're back into a safe area again. Being screen crushed generally isn't a hazard.

Do you think Firepower is shmuppy enough to include? I probably have a pretty low bar. lol.

Firepower 2000 is 100% a vertizontal shmup, same idea as Mars Matrix or Giga Wing. It's got a very traditional (and boring) helicopter as a selectable ship, but the most interesting ship is the Jeep which has to deal with terrain by jumping/platforming over a lot of it. Unlike something like Guwange, you don't keep moving forward with the autoscrolling, you have free control over your position (though the autoscrolling will always keep moving you upwards if you are at the screen bottom). The Jeep also can fire in any direction it pleases, making it very fun to use. Example video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcEYWpviMTA

[LordHypnos]

Final Mission for Famicom. You don't take damage from touching normal terrain. Being screen edge crushed will deal damage though; you can move through the terrain while taking damage (couple seconds of invulnerability) until you're back into a safe area again. Being screen crushed generally isn't a hazard.

Good call. will add. It seems like there are a lot of games that treat terrain this way.

Firepower 2000 is 100% a vertizontal shmup, same idea as Mars Matrix or Giga Wing. It's got a very traditional (and boring) helicopter as a selectable ship, but the most interesting ship is the Jeep which has to deal with terrain. Unlike something like Guwange, you don't keep moving forward with the autoscrolling, you have free control over your position (though the autoscrolling will always keep moving you upwards if you are at the screen bottom). The Jeep also can fire in any direction it pleases, making it very fun to use. Example video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcEYWpviMTA

Oh yeah, that's absolutely a shmup. Looks pretty interesting. Will add.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Other examples that spring to mind:

Jackal (NES) - Category IV - No collision damage from terrain, you can actually run over enemy infantry to kill them, obviously dangerous enemies will still kill you on contact (tanks, etc). I'm pretty sure the arcade version functions the same way but I can't confirm this as I haven't touched it in forever.

Super Spy Hunter (NES) - Category II - Bounceaway collisions when you touch solid walls, solid walls deal 1 damage per touch. Lots of stuff can instantly kill though such as falling into a pit, the floating mines in the boat stage, giant laser beams and getting screen edge crushed by specific enemies (the 1st boss is a giant truck that can instant kill by ramming you into the screen edge, strangely enough the final boss is even bigger but doesn't instant kill if it screen edge rams you). There's also the really weird and annoying sand pits in Stage 2 which, in addition to dealing damage, also cause you to lose a max health powerup on contact!

Rolling Gunner (PC, Switch, Arcade) - same distinction Progear has, it's a hori but it has distinct ground and air enemies, with ground ones (turrets, tanks, most of the midbosses in the game) being safe to fly over

Akai Katana (Xbox 360, Arcade) - same as Progear with respect to enemy collisions on ground troops as far as I know, most threats are considered as aerial enemies though

[LordHypnos]

Excellent! Updated.

[minion]

Cat IV is my preference. I know for sure there are a bunch of games that aren't on the list yet, but I'd have to go back and play my favorites to remember which are which. I've been playing Battle Mania Daiginjyou lately (AKA Trouble Shooter Vintage, Mega Drive) and it's definitely Cat IV, but with crushing killing you outright - most things that damage you just remove a heart.

[LordHypnos]

Cat IV is my preference. I know for sure there are a bunch of games that aren't on the list yet, but I'd have to go back and play my favorites to remember which are which. I've been playing Battle Mania Daiginjyou lately (AKA Trouble Shooter Vintage, Mega Drive) and it's definitely Cat IV, but with crushing killing you outright - most things that damage you just remove a heart.

I do think that there's a lot of potential with Category IV. You can have a "cover" element to game play, which can be interesting. Any idea if this is also true of the original Battle Mania/Trouble Shooter?

[velo]

iirc Prehistoric Isle is another one where the static environment won't damage you. There are also cavemen that grab onto your ship and weigh you down without killing you, if that's worth mentioning.

Sky Kid must be one of the most unique ever: getting hit puts you into a tailspin, and you can mash out of it before you hit the ground. I don't know if there's any limit to the number of hits you can survive.

[wht11]

Aurorablast has fun aggressive collision, contact can be made with all enemies and they just push us back along the way when moving. This goes for all parts of the game, for sure 1st and 2nd but I can't confirm 100% about the 3rd. Developer blog:

http://northerndarkstg.blog35.fc2.com/

This would probably be Category IV for all enemies, I'm kinda not sure if it doesn't fit under Category II but we don't really bounce off much, they just push away, we can try to "push right back" although with not much effect.

[LordHypnos]

Aurorablast has fun aggressive collision, contact can be made with all enemies and they just push us back along the way when moving. This goes for all parts of the game, for sure 1st and 2nd but I can't confirm 100% about the 3rd. Developer blog:

http://northerndarkstg.blog35.fc2.com/

This would probably be Category IV for all enemies, I'm kinda not sure if it doesn't fit under Category II but we don't really bounce off much, they just push away, we can try to "push right back" although with not much effect.

I tested the first game, and I would definitely count it as Category II even if it's not the bounciest among them. Great find!

iirc Prehistoric Isle is another one where the static environment won't damage you. There are also cavemen that grab onto your ship and weigh you down without killing you, if that's worth mentioning.

Sky Kid must be one of the most unique ever: getting hit puts you into a tailspin, and you can mash out of it before you hit the ground. I don't know if there's any limit to the number of hits you can survive.

These are both great examples of unconventional enemy contact! I was actually playing Sky Kid not too long ago (but before resurrecting this list, so I wasn't thinking about it), and boy what a weird game. Hahaha.

[minion]

Cat IV is my preference. I know for sure there are a bunch of games that aren't on the list yet, but I'd have to go back and play my favorites to remember which are which. I've been playing Battle Mania Daiginjyou lately (AKA Trouble Shooter Vintage, Mega Drive) and it's definitely Cat IV, but with crushing killing you outright - most things that damage you just remove a heart.

I do think that there's a lot of potential with Category IV. You can have a "cover" element to game play, which can be interesting. Any idea if this is also true of the original Battle Mania/Trouble Shooter?

Haven't played it recently; sorry. Super Star Soldier for the TG-16/PCE is also Cat IV, just played that yesterday

[LordHypnos]

Updated!

[FRO]

I'm surprised Steel Vampire hasn't been mentioned. It would fit in Category II, since you can bump into enemies and get pushed back, or push them around a bit, and not take damage. Same with scenery, though like Tyrian 2000, you can get crushed if you're behind something as the screen scrolls.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I got to play Blast Wind for the Saturn recently and I think it's a Category IV? You can touch walls without taking damage, and there's even route changing buttons you have to ram your ship into to activate them. I never tried to see what happens if you get crushed at the screen edge, and I never rammed into an enemy, but I assume both of those will kill you based on how there's an early stage with a closing wall as a hazard.