shmups with a healthbar?

[komatik]

A standard trope in the world of arcades (and console titles derived from that era) is that while enemies and especially bosses take a bajillion shots to the face before they die, you as a player are a one hit wonder who keels over if a fly so much as looks at you funny. While most of the rest of the gaming world moved away from this design, shmups seem to have always been pretty conservative and retro in that respect, with many modern titles still basically acting like they're coin-based.

I'm trying to see if there are any decent games out there that ignore or subvert this trope. I'm not talking games where you can occasionally get a shield powerup that absorbs a hit or two, but games where you have an actual legit healthbar or live-recharging health, like how most modern FPSs do it (eg; Halo, Minecraft, etc). It's kinda hard to search for this since this isn't something most people seem to regard as a core feature.

I know healthbars aren't popular and run counter to the standard shmup circlejerk, but I'm wondering if anyone can remember any offhand that might be worth playing. I'm mainly interested in older 8/16-bit console and arcade titles (ie; stuff I can play via RetroArch and MAME). Thus far, Magical Chase is one of the few I've seen.

Any thoughts?

[WelshMegalodon]

The three that immediately come to mind are Silpheed, 1943 and... River Raid.

Okay, so River Raid's isn't so much a health bar as a fuel gauge, because you still die if something touches you.

EDIT: more comprehensive list here. Several of these use discrete units of health, though, not a bar.

[BIL]

I'm trying to see if there are any decent games out there that ignore or subvert this trope. I'm not talking games where you can occasionally get a shield powerup that absorbs a hit or two, but games where you have an actual legit healthbar or live-recharging health, like how most modern FPSs do it (eg; Halo, Minecraft, etc). It's kinda hard to search for this since this isn't something most people seem to regard as a core feature.

I know healthbars aren't popular and run counter to the standard shmup circlejerk, but I'm wondering if anyone can remember any offhand that might be worth playing. I'm mainly interested in older 8/16-bit console and arcade titles (ie; stuff I can play via RetroArch and MAME). Thus far, Magical Chase is one of the few I've seen.

Been a couple years since my last credit, but IIRC, Koutetsu Teikoku / Steel Empire (MD*) handles this well**. You have a huge lifebar, but:

1) it's eminently possible to go without getting hit at all, and
2) the designers use this as leeway for stages and bosses a good bit tougher than the console norm. Wasn't surprised to learn there was an arcade version in the works, at some point. Switch to 1HKOs and it'd be pretty mean.

TLDR: the lifebar is a handy crutch but it's absolutely not necessary. Skilled players will naturally disdain getting smacked around and aim for no-hit clears. Newbies will get a bit of relief. If you attached some score incentive to HP remaining, it'd be a pretty solid game system for long-term play.

Battle Formula / Super Spy Hunter (FC***) is ostensibly Lifebars Done Wrong, with lots of flak blizzards to tank through. At points in its second loop, you're basically trucking through flak to the next HP restore. However I admire this in a way - it's absolutely brazen and kind of gels with the armoured vehicle aesthetic. It's by no means easy to survive the worst shitstorms, or to reliably spawn those vital HP restores, at least not without slowing to an embarrassing crawl. The game's quite sound overall, so I wouldn't say it's a "so bad it's good" scenario, just an ostensibly broken outlier worth considering. There are no HP restores during boss battles, and accordingly everything there is dodgeable.

Battle Formula also uses its lifebar to divvy up enemy attacks between stuff that merely nicks your paintjob (common flak), stuff you'd really best avoid (air-to-air collisions with other vehicles, ouch) and the occasional instakill (gigantic fuckoff laser through your windscreen). A fine design benefit imo!

Spoiler

*not sure of regional differences, I'm used to the JP ver
**playing as the biplane at least! dunno about the zep, never used it.
***see point 1

TLDR: Lifebars as a crutch for weaker players = acceptable. Lifebars as a crutch for shitty game design = GET THAT SHIT OUTTA MY FACE

[mamboFoxtrot]

Cotton 2 is surprisingly not on that list.
Admittedly, I'm not a huge fan of it since it gets kinda vague how many more hits I have left, but it does tie in interestingly with the mechanic of being able to generate health items by shooting sealed enemies (limited amount of this per level).
For the "amount" of health you have in this game, it seems to be about 3 or 4 shots worth?
idk if this game is completely fixed yet in emulation, last I saw any of it the music would detune a lot.

Another one not on that list is the EU version of Xexex, but... people don't like to talk about that version
Should be noted that there are no i-frames, and it completely replaces the lives system, so if you get hit by something like a laser-beam attack it can be instant game over.

Oh, and on the subject of 1943, quite a few of Capcom's shmups use lifebars, like Carrier Air Wing.

[Shepardus]

Astebreed has a recharging health bar.

Also, the shield in the Darius series may as well be a health bar since it can stack up to quite a few hits (gotta get it upgraded though).

[Stevens]

Valkyrius has a shield mechanic. Get hit it goes down, get hit while recharging you die.

[m.sniffles.esq]

For a recent example, Radirgy S most certainly does (different things do more or less damage, is refillable, etc.)

[Shepardus]

different things do more or less damage

This is true of Astebreed as well, which IMO is the main thing that distinguishes "healthbar" from a traditional lives system going by another name.

Guwange is also kind of like that. You've got a health bar divided into three sections that act as lives, but you can take partial damage in a bar and certain powerups will restore health within that bar. The damage you take depends on what firing mode you're using and whether you hit a bullet or ran into an enemy.

[xxx1993]

Raiden V ditches the lives with a shield bar.

[BIL]

different things do more or less damage

This is true of Astebreed as well, which IMO is the main thing that distinguishes "healthbar" from a traditional lives system going by another name.

Good distinction. For thread purposes, ESPRade (AC) is a good illustration of the latter. Its human avatars only visibly "die" after losing their final hitpoint, but functionally it's no different from the typical "three lives, one hitpoint apiece" shooter.

[Kiken]

Add Forgotten Worlds and Area 88/UN Squadron to the list. Raiden V also features a health meter. Sanvein's Remain of Time system functions closely to a health meter. Dodonpachi Saidaioujou's Arrange Mode utilizes a health meter that is tied into your Shot-Laser usage. The Japanese ROM set for Prehistoric Isle 2 uses a 5-point life bar, whereas the US ROM set uses a traditional 3 lives format.

[komatik]

more comprehensive list

Ugh. Of course a thread already existed for this, and of course it's using the term 'energy bar' instead of 'health bar' so I didn't find it when searching. Thanks.
(Still trying to figure out how to get Amiga stuff working though, it seems a lot of the titles I might be interested in live there).

TLDR: Lifebars as a crutch for weaker players = acceptable.

Obviously an expert player should be able to complete a game without being hit and that applies to any game including platformers and FPSs and whatnot. My issue with shmups is that they're painfully strict and force players to be an expert from day one. You're not allow to make ANY mistakes with respect to dodging, and when you do get hit you're often sent all the way back to the beginning of the level. If I'm still new to a given game or just playing casually without regards to winning it gets real freaking annoying having to constantly repeat stuff until I can do it perfectly before I can move ahead to the next section.

Several of these use discrete units of health, though, not a bar.

Also, the shield in the Darius series may as well be a health bar since it can stack up to quite a few hits (gotta get it upgraded though).

Valkyrius has a shield mechanic. Get hit it goes down, get hit while recharging you die.

To take Magical Chase as an example, your 'health bar' is a row of hearts where each hit knocks a heart off and you die when there are none left. You get IIRC like three hearts back every time you beat a level, and you can both refill all the hearts and keep extending the maximum number of them at the item shop, as well as buying an auto-refill potion (basically a 2nd bar). You can also buy backup hearts singly and store them in what would be one of your bomb slots.

Regardless of how a game dresses it up, internally the code always handles it as a variable with a numeric value which ultimately means you having a discrete number of hit points. I don't really care that much if the game shows you this plainly or tries to pretend that it's a continuous sliding scale or whatever. And I don't know that I care exactly how it recharges, as long as you have the ability to take several hits in a row, and you have the ability to manage this somehow. I like how many different options Magical Chase gives you to cater to different play styles, but I'm ok with other games trying different approaches.

Basically.... I just want to be able to play casually AND play a decent chunk of the game without having to mess with savestates.

[Sumez]

Guwange is also kind of like that. You've got a health bar divided into three sections that act as lives, but you can take partial damage in a bar and certain powerups will restore health within that bar. The damage you take depends on what firing mode you're using and whether you hit a bullet or ran into an enemy.

DeathSmiles of course does this to a lesser degree, with only two parts to each health bar / life.
What's the minimum amount of hits you're allowed to take before you can classify something as a "health bar"? It feels less like one when even low damaging attacks still take you out in two hits.

[CyberAngel]

My issue with shmups is that they're painfully strict and force players to be an expert from day one. You're not allow to make ANY mistakes with respect to dodging, and when you do get hit you're often sent all the way back to the beginning of the level. If I'm still new to a given game or just playing casually without regards to winning it gets real freaking annoying having to constantly repeat stuff until I can do it perfectly before I can move ahead to the next section.

Basically.... I just want to be able to play casually AND play a decent chunk of the game without having to mess with savestates.

Sounds like it's not the healthbar you need, but games that don't reset your progress on death/continue. Of which there are plenty but that's a different topic.

[Shepardus]

Basically.... I just want to be able to play casually AND play a decent chunk of the game without having to mess with savestates.

Assuming you're also not into credit-feeding, you probably want something relatively forgiving with plenty of resources to work with, and without checkpoints to reset your progress every time you die. I feel like that's more common in console games and doujin games than arcade games. There are a bunch that give tons of lives, and newer games tend to shy away from resetting your progress and powerups on death too. Less pressure to keep sessions short in a home setting than in an arcade.

go play Cambria Sword

Edit: On the topic of healthbars, Sora and Suguri also feature health bars. Using your dash ability increases "heat" percentage which increases the amount of damage you take.

Akashicverse -Malicious Wake- features a recharging shield. It also lets you open up that shield to more quickly recharge the energy you use for attacks, which turns the game into a one or two hit game over depending on the difficulty level. I don't particularly like this system but it's worth mentioning in this thread.

Also, Kamui has a shield system that lets you take several hits.

[pablumatic]

Some modern-ish examples that come to mind are Omega Five for the Xbox 360 and Söldner-X and Söldner-X 2.

[mainpatr5]

My favorite guilty pleasure shmup, Tekkaman Blade for SFC uses a health bar.

[WelshMegalodon]

Regardless of how a game dresses it up, internally the code always handles it as a variable with a numeric value which ultimately means you having a discrete number of hit points. I don't really care that much if the game shows you this plainly or tries to pretend that it's a continuous sliding scale or whatever. And I don't know that I care exactly how it recharges, as long as you have the ability to take several hits in a row, and you have the ability to manage this somehow. I like how many different options Magical Chase gives you to cater to different play styles, but I'm ok with other games trying different approaches.

Ah. You mentioned that you weren't looking for shooters that only occasionally featured multi-hit shields, so I wasn't sure.

You might like Pop'n TwinBee, which I somehow forgot to mention right off the bat. You pretty much end up wanting to keep the shield in any TwinBee or Gradius game once you get it, though. I'm pretty sure an essential part of any Gradius is actually learning to keep the shield option highlighted on the Option bar so that you can turn it back on once it's depleted.

Salamander FC grants you a force field and doesn't feature checkpoints, so there's that as well.

Basically.... I just want to be able to play casually AND play a decent chunk of the game without having to mess with savestates.

TwinBee Da!! lets you reclaim all of your powerups upon death by recapturing the ghost of your previous life, making for a pretty easy clear.

[BIL]

Obviously an expert player should be able to complete a game without being hit and that applies to any game including platformers and FPSs and whatnot. My issue with shmups is that they're painfully strict and force players to be an expert from day one. You're not allow to make ANY mistakes with respect to dodging, and when you do get hit you're often sent all the way back to the beginning of the level. If I'm still new to a given game or just playing casually without regards to winning it gets real freaking annoying having to constantly repeat stuff until I can do it perfectly before I can move ahead to the next section.

I view it a little differently, and here's where the marmite kicks in - it's not that we're forced to be experts from day one, it's that we're expected to take a beating along with everyone else. A bit of masochism is in the nature of the hardcore beast, whatever your hobby.

First, you ass is made outta cookie dough. Then - you carved from wood! (｀ω´メ)

I should word it a bit differently, re "weak" players and "crutches." I'm perfectly happy to impose my own standards in stuff like Override (PCE), which gives you multiple lives with three hitpoints apiece, plus HP restore items. Played without restriction, a veteran will almost certainly finish the game on their first attempt. Played so that each ship explosion = one credit used, it's a fair bit more involving (though still a very easy shooter, to be sure). Elemental Master (MD) does this by default, you've got HP and restores but one life only.

That said, the classic shooter design catch 22 is "too easy/too hard," and letting players coast too much tends to trip the former (just as whacking them mercilessly invites the latter). As I say re: Koutetsu Teikoku, I think it'd be cool for a system to reward for remaining lives+HP, via points and preferably some sort of ranking. Maybe it'd steer some away from a "one and done" approach. Gradius V's booming, imperious announcer is my frickin godfather, man. I went from a 5CC to 1CC just to get his approval, changed my GAMING WORLD

[Obiwanshinobi]

Shmups with a heartbeat?

[komatik]

Sounds like it's not the healthbar you need, but games that don't reset your progress on death/continue.

Well... I mean that's basically saying the exact same thing with different wording though, right? If you can repeatedly get hit, "die", and resume in exactly the same spot (not a checkpoint) with all the gear you were carrying without losing anything, then that's effectively a healthbar regardless of how the game chooses to dress it up.

Assuming you're also not into credit-feeding,

I'm really not. MAME certainly takes the edge off by not forcing me to pay actual money to continue a game, but the only way it can do this is by basically offering a cheat button I have to keep pressing over and over. Credit feeding (or freeplay dipswitch) doesn't solve the underlying problem of unenjoyable gameplay design.

There are a bunch that give tons of lives,

The thing is, even the concept of "lives" I just feel is so archaic, a holdover from the coin-op days. Again to use Magical Chase as an example, when you finally run out of hearts and properly die, you have to start the level over from the beginning, but you can do this an infinite number of times until you finally get bored and turn off the console. At no point do you have to start the entire GAME over from the beginning. There's a limit to how much you're punished and that helps a whole lot when I'm just playing for fun (which is basically always).

Ah. You mentioned that you weren't looking for shooters that only occasionally featured multi-hit shields, so I wasn't sure.

When I talk about shields what I mean is that there are about a million games that feature some kind of disposable powerup that lets you absorb a hit or two. But it's very much a powerup- you don't come with it from the start, it's often random when you get it, you can't reuse it, etc. That's not what I'm looking for because it's just a bandaid over the bullet hole. I want to play stuff where being forgiving about dodging is something built into the framework of the gameplay at the base level. HOW exactly that happens I dunno that I'm too picky about yet, I'm willing to try different ideas. A bar where you can only take like ten hits per level is fine, a built in auto recharging shield where you can only take three hits per five seconds is fine. Just as long as it's something that's always there and not a random bonus or late-game purchase.

You might like Pop'n TwinBee

People have pointed me at various twinbee games in previous threads for different reasons. I still dunno that I get this series. They look cute but I must be doing something wrong because the gameplay is always some combination of nonsense or terminally boring. One of these days I'll try and dig up a guide somewhere and maybe I can get more out of them.

TwinBee Da!! lets you reclaim all of your powerups upon death by recapturing the ghost of your previous life,

Yeah, I've found a few games that do that but I'm not sure how I feel about this mechanic. I dunno, maybe I still have too much latent PTSD from Raiden to see it with neutral eyes.

it's not that we're forced to be experts from day one, it's that we're expected to take a beating along with everyone else.

That's the thing though. I don't want to "take a beating". A lot of guys see games as some sort of dickwaving contest and like to brag about how punishing a given title is, and get all macho and look down on people who aren't "serious" (hence all the disdain for things like healthbars). Whereas for me I just want to kick back and do something relaxing that's less mind-numbing than watching TV. I don't want punishing, I don't want repetition, I don't want grind.... I don't want a game that I have to treat like a minimum wage job. I want something to completely get away from all that shit. I don't care about score or winning and I have nothing to prove.

I dunno.... I guess... I just want to play games that act like a friend who wants to hang out and have fun and is happy to meet me in the middle, not an abusive parent who makes me do chores and then hits me when I'm not fast enough.

[Shepardus]

Sounds like it's not the healthbar you need, but games that don't reset your progress on death/continue.

Well... I mean that's basically saying the exact same thing with different wording though, right? If you can repeatedly get hit, "die", and resume in exactly the same spot (not a checkpoint) with all the gear you were carrying without losing anything, then that's effectively a healthbar regardless of how the game chooses to dress it up.

Assuming you're also not into credit-feeding,

I'm really not. MAME certainly takes the edge off by not forcing me to pay actual money to continue a game, but the only way it can do this is by basically offering a cheat button I have to keep pressing over and over. Credit feeding (or freeplay dipswitch) doesn't solve the underlying problem of unenjoyable gameplay design.

There are a bunch that give tons of lives,

The thing is, even the concept of "lives" I just feel is so archaic, a holdover from the coin-op days. Again to use Magical Chase as an example, when you finally run out of hearts and properly die, you have to start the level over from the beginning, but you can do this an infinite number of times until you finally get bored and turn off the console. At no point do you have to start the entire GAME over from the beginning. There's a limit to how much you're punished and that helps a whole lot when I'm just playing for fun (which is basically always).

I feel like we have a difference in terminology here, the "concept of 'lives'" you're referring to here sounds more like what most people here would refer to as "checkpoints" and "losing your powerups on death." There are plenty of games with "lives" rather than "health," but don't make you lose any progress when you die. In fact I'd wager that after the mid-90s or so, there are more shmups like that than not (for example most modern bullet hell games including CAVE's output), but there are some older games like that too.

[OmegaFlareX]

I've seen someone else put forth this idea in your previous threads and I'll 2nd them - shmups (or action games in general) may not be for you.

It sounds like you'd get much more satisfaction out of something where you build a character, and the only penalty for mistakes is time. The Dragon Quest series fits that bill, but I would also suggest looking into MMORPGs. Among the big ones still going (WoW, FF14, ESO, etc.) you'd probably find something you'd like.

[BIL]

That's the thing though. I don't want to "take a beating". A lot of guys see games as some sort of dickwaving contest and like to brag about how punishing a given title is, and get all macho and look down on people who aren't "serious" (hence all the disdain for things like healthbars).

tbh, I'm a lot more scurred of Forgotten Worlds (AC, lifebar) than Hyper Duel (AC/SAT, 1HKO). :O

In my experience, the vast majority of lifebar hate has nothing to do with difficulty level, but rather, design quality. Few things are more universally disdained here than a sloppily-designed shooter (or game in general really) that relies on gigantic lifebars to soak up undodgeable shitwalls. (as mentioned I make an exception for Battle Formula's second loop, where even when tanking through shitwalls, catching the vital HP restores while steering and aiming remains a harrowing exercise. also you're in a friggin armoured car jumping gaps and running motherfuckers off the road, so it's kind of cool tbh)

I don't want punishing, I don't want repetition, I don't want grind.... I don't want a game that I have to treat like a minimum wage job. I want something to completely get away from all that shit. I don't care about score or winning and I have nothing to prove.

I dunno.... I guess... I just want to play games that act like a friend who wants to hang out and have fun and is happy to meet me in the middle, not an abusive parent who makes me do chores and then hits me when I'm not fast enough.

Befriending the enemy... *splutter* Hand in your Shumps Gun and Shumps Badge, YOUR OFF THE FORCE (■｀W´■)

Nah, have you played Zanac Neo? NTSJC PS1, included with the NES and Famicom Disk System versions of the original in Zanac X Zanac. That's one I like to put on for a relaxing evening of foot-to-the-floor blasting. It can actually be fairly mean on its highest difficulty, but the next rung down is lively without being too punitive. Nice simple compulsive combo system, based on not letting stuff escape the screen. Well-timed BOMBAs cause bubblewrap-satisfying chain splosions. Cool KHDN tunes, vibrant technosthetic, 2P simultaneous, it's a good time! As with a lot of Compile shooters it's overlong and unhurried by arcade standards, but there's a time and place for that stuff too. >;3

I'd also suggest Elemental Master (MD), which strikes an excellent balance of manic pace and flexibility. Big guns and a generous lifebar offset the teeming hordes. Ala Koutetsu Teikoku, it would easily become arcade-tough with 1HKOs. I've come to enjoy that school of console STG design. Also from Tecno Soft, Hyper Duel (AC/Saturn) is another good easier pick. Busy and relentless but never brutal, at least not until the infamously thorny later bosses NIGHTMARE and BLACK ANGEL who will slap the shit outta you. But it's cool because you'll have a ton of extends by that point. Kamui (PC, mentioned above) operates very similarly to Koutetsu and EM with its hitpoints, and is both viscerally rewarding (genre-leading monster dicklazor) and a superbly-designed scoring game too.

[WelshMegalodon]

The thing is, even the concept of "lives" I just feel is so archaic, a holdover from the coin-op days. Again to use Magical Chase as an example, when you finally run out of hearts and properly die, you have to start the level over from the beginning, but you can do this an infinite number of times until you finally get bored and turn off the console. At no point do you have to start the entire GAME over from the beginning. There's a limit to how much you're punished and that helps a whole lot when I'm just playing for fun (which is basically always).

They had games without lives in the coin-op days too, though. Mercenary was released in 1985. Revs in '84. Zork in '80. Star Raiders in '79. It's purely a design choice.

When I talk about shields what I mean is that there are about a million games that feature some kind of disposable powerup that lets you absorb a hit or two. But it's very much a powerup- you don't come with it from the start, it's often random when you get it, you can't reuse it, etc. That's not what I'm looking for because it's just a bandaid over the bullet hole. I want to play stuff where being forgiving about dodging is something built into the framework of the gameplay at the base level. HOW exactly that happens I dunno that I'm too picky about yet, I'm willing to try different ideas. A bar where you can only take like ten hits per level is fine, a built in auto recharging shield where you can only take three hits per five seconds is fine. Just as long as it's something that's always there and not a random bonus or late-game purchase.

The Gradius shield is literally right there on the bar, and all of the good ones hand out powerups with enough regularity that you can reliably keep your shield. Heck, Gaiden even lets you put the shield at the beginning of the bar so that it can be the first thing you get in the game, although not without a corresponding increase in rank.

I dunno.... I guess... I just want to play games that act like a friend who wants to hang out and have fun and is happy to meet me in the middle, not an abusive parent who makes me do chores and then hits me when I'm not fast enough.

Have you tried Strider Hiryu? How about Gun-Dec?

Final Fight Tough is also on the breezy side despite its name suggesting otherwise. Trip World is pretty forgiving as well, aside from the Stage 5 boss.

Remind me again whether anyone's recommended the Kirby games.

[pegboy]

Has super aleste aka space megaforce been mentioned? It has a "life bar" and is also very generous with bombs and 1 ups. The only drawback I guess is the length but on the default difficulty it is very manageable.

[CyberAngel]

That's the thing though. I don't want to "take a beating". A lot of guys see games as some sort of dickwaving contest and like to brag about how punishing a given title is, and get all macho and look down on people who aren't "serious" (hence all the disdain for things like healthbars). Whereas for me I just want to kick back and do something relaxing that's less mind-numbing than watching TV. I don't want punishing, I don't want repetition, I don't want grind.... I don't want a game that I have to treat like a minimum wage job. I want something to completely get away from all that shit. I don't care about score or winning and I have nothing to prove.

Sheesh, do you really think people go for more challenging stuff just for some non-existing medals, and not because, say, rather than having everything served to you on a silver platter, it's more fun to see yourelf making progress and eventually pull off something impressive in a game you already like playing? I mean, there's nothing wrong if you don't see things that way for yourself at the moment, but don't just go around insulting people for caring about getting good at their hobby.

A bit more on topic, Hellsinker hilariously qualifies for the "healthbar" definition here. You have a limit on your lives but you get them so frequently that even if you go down to your last hit you can heal back to maximum within a single stage. However, it's NOT a game I'd advise as something easy - even wthout taking scoring into account, you could probably write a doctoral thesis just describing how to play it. And yet it was something I really enjoyed when I barely had any experience in the genre. "Challenging", "complex" and "fun" aren't related the way you might think they are, really.

[MathU]

Frankly I think Hellsinker pulls off its high danger but high number of retries system in an absolutely masterful way that I wish more non-arcade shooters would take note of and attempt to emulate. It demonstrates that such a system can be done in a way that retains the pacing and tension of arcade games without needing to limit the player to 3-6 mistakes in the course of an entire playthrough. Beating Hellsinker without taking a single hit is no small feat, especially when the game baits you with a massive number of addicting scoring scenarios. And yet the game eases the player gradually up its skill curve by dolling out massive numbers of extra lives. Hellsinker's life system and associated scoring bonuses is one of the best examples of easy-to-learn-but-hard-to-master design in the entire scrolling shooter genre.

[Shepardus]

I was thinking of Hellsinker too. Gives quite a few lives over the course of its stages, and in addition to that there's an autobomb system. There are a couple different autobomb styles to choose from (one of which is no autobomb), but the most lenient one will use your bomb, if you have one available, whenever you get hit, up to three times per stage. The bomb works on an energy gauge system so you can't have more than one available at a time, but it recharges fairly quickly over time and there are items that replenish the energy, so in practice you'll have bomb available quite often.

Hellsinker also has a couple interesting systems with how it doles out lives, too. In the first two stages it'll actually replenish your lives over time for free if you drop below a certain amount, sort of acting as a crutch if you're really failing. But more interesting is the Shrine of Farewell, which is a sort of bonus stage that appears between two of the stages depending on how well you're doing (the better you're doing the later it'll appear). You have infinite lives throughout the stage, and at the end you'll get life fragments and score depending on how well you performed. High-scoring players try to leave it for as late as possible because it acts as a sort of multiplier for the score you've gotten up to that point, but for less proficient players it'll often appear at the nick of time to replenish your lives as they run low (since getting hit a lot in the main stages accelerates the Shrine of Farewell's arrival).

Hellsinker quite forgiving of individual mistakes if you're simply aiming for a clear. There's a significant learning curve to understand the way things work in it, but after you do learn that it's quite friendly to pick up and play because most of the dodging itself isn't super hard (though I wouldn't say it's easy either), it's understanding how to use the tools at your disposal that's the hard part.

[komatik]

I feel like we have a difference in terminology here

Probably. Maybe I'm not understanding what people consider or refer to under the word "progress" and what it means to lose it. For me, the concept of lives is basically synonymous with the concept of losing progress and dealing with grind- you have a limited number of tries to complete a section, and each try punishes you (to some degree) by making you start over from some previous position or making you lose your stuff or whatever. I don't really get how you could have 'lives' that don't do something like this. As I wrote in my last reply, if you're looking at a game where you can 'die' but you reappear in exactly the same spot with exactly the same gear in exactly the same state (no lost progress) to me that's just a healthbar but with a graphics swap so that the tick marks on the bar are replaced with a row of ship icons. To take Magical Chase as an example yet again, if you took the healthbar and replaced the heart icons with icons of Ripple's face, it's still a healthbar and still the same game. "A rose by any other name" and all that.

There are plenty of games with "lives" rather than "health," but don't make you lose any progress when you die.

Can you name a few and describe exactly how they operate? Maybe if I see some examples I can understand what people mean.

They had games without lives in the coin-op days too, though. [snip] It's purely a design choice.

That's technically true, but you're missing the point. Games still have lives because the field of gaming is pretty conservative and most game designers just iterate and build on what's already the standard. Modern games still have lives because that's the framework established by old consoles. Super Mario had lives because the gameplay was copied from the arcades before it, even though the physical reason no longer applied. And arcades had lives because of coins. Yes there were a few arcade exceptions, but the exceptions prove the rule. There's no functional or practical reason a game needs to limit players this way anymore in today's technology- this mechanic only still exists because it's been carried over from the original arcades where gaming was born. If arcades never existed and gaming was invented last year, hardly anybody would have 'lives' with this concept of one-hit-kill and artificially limited tries because it doesn't even make sense in most games it's applied to. Sure it's technically true that this is a design choice, but it's a choice born of people not wanting to (or not realizing they can) buck tradition. Again, modern games where the designers actually sat down and thought about things from a fresh perspective have near universally thrown out this mechanic in favor of things like infinite recharging health or something else entirely.

The Gradius shield is literally right there on the bar

I don't know what you're referring to. Which platform? When I play Gradius if I dive into the first enemy on level 1 I die instantly. If you're given a shield at the start it's not obvious to me how to activate it manually. (and anyway, manual activation isn't really what I'm looking for).

and all of the good ones hand out powerups with enough regularity that you can reliably keep your shield

Ehh.... that's not really the same thing though. There's a subtle but important difference between "recharge mechanic built into the dodging" and "shower you with shields so you don't have to worry as much about dodging".

Have you tried

Honestly the answer to most of these is "no", that's why I'm here asking for suggestions. When I have time maybe this weekend I'll try to dig up roms for most of these and check them out.

Remind me again whether anyone's recommended the Kirby games.

No, I'm not aware of any Kirby shooters. Unless this is back to "you want something different = you hate shumps, so play something else" again.

Has super aleste aka space megaforce been mentioned? It has a "life bar" and is also very generous with bombs and 1 ups. The only drawback I guess is the length but on the default difficulty it is very manageable.

I tried playing Space Megaforce (SNES) once before. It was meh- didn't really do anything for me. I want to be clear that overall difficulty is not really my issue per se, I just hate grind with a passion. Games where the difficulty is something OTHER than "press this sequence of buttons with this exact timing with no mistakes" I don't have a problem with (eg, puzzle games. etc).