17th Annual Top 25 Shmups of All Time - Discussion Thread

[EmperorIng]

Now that you mention it, Gal Agiese looks somewhat physically similar to MR CRAUD... They must have had a 'villain type' they stuck with.

[reckon luck]

FYI some people are forgetting to put their [Game Titles] in brackets too.

[EmperorIng]

Seeing a few votes for Battle Traverse makes me wish I put more than a cursory amount of time into it. Even more so than Rolling Gunner I dig its "Ketsui on the Side" thing going on.

[blossom]

How important do you think stage 1 is when voting on your list? For me it's always been pretty critical whether playing for survival or score, which led me to knock down 19XX a few points because there simply isn't enough to do in its first stage.

[finisherr]

Thank you for putting this together each year! Also, there might be more interest if you can promote the forum in the Shmups Facebook group. I've quit Facebook this year, so I have no reason to spend my time there any longer myself.

[Prales]

.

[Exy]

How important do you think stage 1 is when voting on your list? For me it's always been pretty critical whether playing for survival or score, which led me to knock down 19XX a few points because there simply isn't enough to do in its first stage.

I think, weirdly enough, it becomes increasingly important for games high up on my list, and probably isn't something I think about much if at all for stuff lower on the list. Stage 1 being unfun is something that increasingly preys on your mind if you replay from the start a lot (dodonpachi is probably the most obvious example) whereas for games I just dip into every now and then, I don't really care what stage 1 is like.

I think making stage 1 enjoyable (for longterm players but also new ones) is kind of an intractable problem in shmups.

[EmperorIng]

It -can- be important, but if a stage 1 is at least not drop-dead boring, I can take passable.

e.g. RayForce's stage 1 is pretty slow, but the allure of improving my chaining just a little bit, capping off with an always-fun-to-dismantle boss is relaxing and enjoyable. Darius Gaiden eases me in to its surreal atmosphere, especially with how the background mysteriously fades in as the ethereal vocals kick in. The others in my top 5 (Mars Matrix, Gunbird 2, Psyvariar Revision) have an endless amount of replayability in their stage 1s as far as I'm concerned (GB2's case quite literally thanks to random stage order).

Psyvariar Revision is also something that has been a revelation. It should be on more peoples' radars thanks to the newly-accessible pc/ps4/switch Delta release (of these, I recommend pc). We should be singing praises of a game that finally makes boss milking fun - where you purposefully draw out the fight not just to milk some spinning knob at the end of a sprite but are dodging difficult patterns the entire time. Otherwise the game is so unique, so well-crafted, it offers something like no other shmup. Grazing imo is often kind of dull in most shooters (move close to bullet and hug it, don't do anything else), but Psyvariar's novelty of taking grazing, adding level-ups and invincibility to chain to your next level, is nothing short of marvelous. The levels are microcosmic puzzles in bullet herding and buzzing - and then the X stages force you to shoot everything so the whole game isn't just a dodge-em-up.

[iconoclast]

Disappointed that ESP Ra.De is the only Cave game I could add to my list since last year.

[Special World]

I think almost every stage 1 becomes boring after you play it enough. I wonder if there are any games without a difficulty curve, where stage 1 isn't easy peasy? Would still get boring with repetition, of course.

[Jeneki]

Sky Adventure, sure I'll try to fit that in. It's a nifty game and worth a mention at least.

Is the three button version playable in mame these days?

[Queen Charlene]

I think almost every stage 1 becomes boring after you play it enough. I wonder if there are any games without a difficulty curve, where stage 1 isn't easy peasy? Would still get boring with repetition, of course.

i think Ketsui's stage 1 is great even still, but maybe i just haven't grinded the game enough to think otherwise.

[BIL]

How important do you think stage 1 is when voting on your list? For me it's always been pretty critical whether playing for survival or score, which led me to knock down 19XX a few points because there simply isn't enough to do in its first stage.

I'm still tinkering with my list, having sat the vote out last year, but I'd describe the majority of my picks as having succinct st1s, at the least. I think that's a reflection of design nous, not just for STGs but arcade-styled gaming in general.

A really good st1 will maximise its activity to runtime ratio. Difficulty curve is likely to be low, so a riveting survival challenge probably isn't on the table (barring hidden routes / secret zones, a solution I like the sound of, though I can't recall good examples offhand...). The canonical Bad First Stage, R-Type III's, isn't bad for its length but rather the dearth of things to do. It's particularly important in games that autoscroll, like the majority of traditional STGs. There are lots of run/guns and platformers whose otherwise sedate openings can be jazzed up by hustling through at 110% aggression, generally not an option here.

Getting the scoring game going ASAP helps, obviously. Ketsui and Rayforce have two of my favourites, lots of scoring potential to polish up on. Even games without meaningful score can keep the player occupied via good direction. Eliminate Down's opening zako rush is actually pretty involving to get perfect shootdowns on every time, requiring max speed and all three shot types, then it chucks out a beefy but eminently stompable midboss, then a missile-crazed setpiece straight into the boss. Gradius II's opening stage has an excellent compulsive element with its dragon hunting, all too easy to suddenly go from predator to prey seeking out powerups and thumping explosions.

Goes without saying that the worst thing an opening stage can do is make starting up a game a chore. Gekirindan is terrible for this. The dead last thing I want from the opening of any arcade-styled game, STG or otherwise, is to be made to wait. The ideal is a tight, replayable gauntlet - whatever the source of that replay, whether it's polished performance or feelgood escapism, there shouldn't be a sense of waiting for the game to get its act together after the curtain is raised.

One for the Evocative VGM Titles thread: >SHOWTIME

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Gekirindan is terrible for this. The dead last thing I want from the opening of any arcade-styled game, STG or otherwise, is to be made to wait.

The lesson is if you're gonna do cutscenes in a shmup, we need to be able to skip them so we don't have to twiddle our thumbs waiting for it to finish for the 100th time.

[Special World]

I think almost every stage 1 becomes boring after you play it enough. I wonder if there are any games without a difficulty curve, where stage 1 isn't easy peasy? Would still get boring with repetition, of course.

i think Ketsui's stage 1 is great even still, but maybe i just haven't grinded the game enough to think otherwise.

It's a great stage 1 but compared to the rest of the game it feels like "okay this formation goes here." It feels very methodical and like... du-dum, dum dum, ba-dum. Like there's some beats that are playing in a set pattern.

That being said, i'm sure you have played more Ketsui than me. And i do like the first level just fine, and i like how clean the aesthetic of it is.

[Queen Charlene]

ah yeah, in that case i think that's a fair assessment. Stage 2 gets way harder than Stage 1 and doesn't let up from there in the slightest, so i don't think Ketsui counts in that regard.

[TransatlanticFoe]

As much as I love Gekirindan, yeah stage 1 is a non-event plus you don't get a proper boss AND you have to wait around.

I like an opening stage to have great uptempo music - it's what you're going to hear the most and it'll often need to keep you awake. Toaplan usually nail it, Mahou Daisakusen is another good example.

[EmperorIng]

iconoclast, curious to hear why you have Psyvariar Medium Unit on your list. Do you like that more than Revision, or is that the only Psyvariar game you've played? Not questioning your tastes btw. Most people (myself included) like Revision a lot more.

[iconoclast]

iconoclast, curious to hear why you have Psyvariar Medium Unit on your list. Do you like that more than Revision, or is that the only Psyvariar game you've played? Not questioning your tastes btw. Most people (myself included) like Revision a lot more.

Yeah I've only played Medium Unit. Revision is most likely better, I just need to play it some day.

[copy-paster]

knock down 19XX a few points because there simply isn't enough to do in its first stage.

I honestly liked 19XX's first stage because it's like a tutorial mode, short and on-point. Still then worst stage 1 ever in shmup history goes with.... R-TYPE III

[Herr Schatten]

As usual, browsing other peoples' lists is almost as interesting as the end result. It makes me happy to see some love for Shiki II resurging, and also that I'm not the only one voting for Apidya anymore, apparently.

[evil_ash_xero]

I'm going to be honest. I haven't participated in the last few years, as the way you rank the games is still too freaking weird to me. It also seems "not right".
Eh.

[trap15]

viewtopic.php?p=1394452#p1394452

OK Nifty, I understood your like for Bakuretsu Breaker, but you're gonna have to explain Second Earth Gratia to me too.

Your list is always so intriguing to me

[Nifty]

/shrug

It's been on every list I've made (they both have actually, benefit of getting in early). Aside from still being the only horizontal shmup I've found with a dedicated background shot, it hits a lot of my buttons - tons of items to collect & bonuses to optimise, good weapon selection and stage layouts that encourage switching them, meme potential etc. The items are a bit more random than they need to be but there's a lot of game to get through before they'd realistically start swinging the balance. I think the graphics even got fixed in MAME not too long ago.

Fortunately everybody's played Sky Adventure now so I shouldn't have to explain that one

[EmperorIng]

Playing a lot of RayCrisis over the last few days made me fall in love with the game again. It's not as polished as RayForce, but it has so much going for it. It's interesting mechanics and short length incentivize really aggressive, yet efficient play. There are so many tricks to be learned.

The fact that the enemy waves change, add, or subtract based on how you are doing makes runs wonderfully variable - if you like shootemups whose enemy patterns are dependent on how fast you kill them, you ought to check this out. Furthermore, the PS1 port allowing you to choose your route (as opposed to having a random one the arcade - that you can eventually choose between) gives you an additional amount of depth and variation to the game, as the stages's rank/difficulty will further add or take away new enemies on top of its Encroachment meter.

The scoring rewards killing as many enemies as possible with full-lockon Hyper Laser attacks (full lock on a single target + splash damage surrounding), and grants bonus points for bullets destroyed in the process, leading to a lot of milkable moments. However you can't sit around and milk bosses because the Encroachment is always threatening to get out of hand, so you are always racing against the clock.

It's such an interesting game. It's only real flaw is that dodging some of the tighter patterns is difficult with the perspective - but the game mostly wants you to macro-dodge everything. Maybe that the TLB requirements for the arcade are strict, too (though Taito voided this requirement in place of something far more lenient in the PS1 port, both JPN and USA). The plus side is that I discovered that the game mostly works well in mame (there is a glitch that is documented during the final boss that happened to me once out of 3 attempts, freezing the game during Dis-Human and forcing a reset).

I would like to do a longer write-up with blurbs about games I voted for. Meanwhile I took RayCrsis out of the HMs and had to make a decision about a game falling into the list... I'm not totally decided but for now it's Rolling Gunner. Great game but I haven't put as much time into it and its difficulty might be too high for me to fully enjoy.

[BurlyHeart]

Psyvariar Revision is also something that has been a revelation. It should be on more peoples' radars thanks to the newly-accessible pc/ps4/switch Delta release (of these, I recommend pc).

I'm actually looking to buy DELTA at the moment and actively researching which version to buy. Any reason why you recommend PC over the others?

We should be singing praises of a game that finally makes boss milking fun - where you purposefully draw out the fight not just to milk some spinning knob at the end of a sprite but are dodging difficult patterns the entire time. Otherwise the game is so unique, so well-crafted, it offers something like no other shmup. Grazing imo is often kind of dull in most shooters (move close to bullet and hug it, don't do anything else), but Psyvariar's novelty of taking grazing, adding level-ups and invincibility to chain to your next level, is nothing short of marvelous. The levels are microcosmic puzzles in bullet herding and buzzing - and then the X stages force you to shoot everything so the whole game isn't just a dodge-em-up.

As someone not overly fond of graze mechanics, this description is music to my ears.

[EmperorIng]

Always happy to preach for Psyvariar!

I think Delta is the best release. The PS2 version obviously has some advantages but unless you are going to go through the trouble of getting the right display set-up, it would be more of a hassle than it's worth, I think.

Also, others have mentioned that using a short bomb in the arcade game (holding the bomb button just for a simulated level-up invincibility) would not damage enemies. The PS2 port has a bug where using the short bomb also damages enemies like a normal bomb, which can mess up your bullet-collectin' opportunities. This feature is fixed in Delta.

As for which version, I suppose PC is probably the most responsive way to play. PS4 is probably good but I'm not sure if lag on your monitor or controller is a factor. With the switch's lack of great d-pads and overall increased lag, it might not be optimal, but I haven't done serious testing or research. And I can't imagine getting anywhere playing in handheld mode with all the tight movements you have to make.

[Nifty]

Voting has once again reached the final week of active entry window for those who have yet to participate.

[eebrozgi]

Finally voted.

Made me think how there's a bunch of games waiting for my attention that I haven't touched at all yet while being interested/having bought them... And some games I have a very good impression of, but simply don't have enough time put into them to determine their place in the list. Most notably Ketsui, its patterns felt surprisingly fresh even after having experienced some of CAVE's later titles before it.

[Mero]

Saw the imminent deadline and thought I'd better cast my vote, only a few minor tweaks as per usual.