For a dead genre, there sure are a lot of shmups being made.

[MX7]

With regards to doujin games: I love doujin games as much as anyone, and have played lots, with particular favourites being Bike Banditz, Blue Wish Reserection, Yalkina STG, Crimson Clover, Ghost Bladenand Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. So my argument is not that doujin games do not exist, or that doujin games are not good. However even the most 'authentic' doujin shooter is significantly different to their arcade inspiration. Things like autobombing, tonnes of extends, story segments. Continuing the music analogy they're like modern synthwave/coldwave/whatever artists imitating the spirit and qualities of 80's goth and synthpop. The games I listed are well regarded by this small and conservative community because in many ways accurately emulate the various assorted qualities of authentic arcade shooting games, which again it must be pointed out are products of a rigid environment. They're interesting as a facsimile. I absolutely agree that doujin STGs are alive and reasonably healthy, and in lieu of a physical arcade scene (of which I very much used to be a part of) they function as a necessary simulacrum.

What we are discussing here are tiny, perhaps even immutable variegations.this is much more apparent to those looking in to the forum from elsewhere. But to say that Shanghai Alice is CAVE and NG Dev Team is Psikyo is nonsensical. Yes, there are games now which resemble games which were made when arcades dictated the form and structure of videogames. But they are different. And to deny that they are different is to deny the purpose of a dedicated STG forum. Let's notice the difference between games!

[floralcateyes]

With regards to doujin games: I love doujin games as much as anyone, and have played lots, with particular favourites being Bike Banditz, Blue Wish Reserection, Yalkina STG, Crimson Clover, Ghost Bladenand Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. So my argument is not that doujin games do not exist, or that doujin games are not good. However even the most 'authentic' doujin shooter is significantly different to their arcade inspiration. Things like autobombing, tonnes of extends, story segments. Continuing the music analogy they're like modern synthwave/coldwave/whatever artists imitating the spirit and qualities of 80's goth and synthpop. The games I listed are well regarded by this small and conservative community because in many ways accurately emulate the various assorted qualities of authentic arcade shooting games, which again it must be pointed out are products of a rigid environment. They're interesting as a facsimile. I absolutely agree that doujin STGs are alive and reasonably healthy, and in lieu of a physical arcade scene (of which I very much used to be a part of) they function as a necessary simulacrum.

What we are discussing here are tiny, perhaps even immutable variegations.this is much more apparent to those looking in to the forum from elsewhere. But to say that Shanghai Alice is CAVE and NG Dev Team is Psikyo is nonsensical. Yes, there are games now which resemble games which were made when arcades dictated the form and structure of videogames. But they are different. And to deny that they are different is to deny the purpose of a dedicated STG forum. Let's notice the difference between games!

I get that and agree with you for the most part. I'm not fully on board with the idea that those games are simulacra of the old arcade scene, as I feel that approaching them as such is limiting from analysis and player engagement points of views, though the influence is obviously quite heavy. Like you said, they are different.

I guess tying the genre to the arcade scene to see how or why shmups are dead to the mainstream is useful from a historical perspective; the decline of the commercial viability of arcades certainly played a huge part in that, but it alone is not enough to explain why contemporary games in the genre can't seem to find a large audience, I don't think, as it doesn't take the present of the genre into account. And I guess I am in that camp that sees the present and future of the genre as tied to the doujins and indies (as well as the home port business and emulation scene I guess) for good or ill or neither.

i will say one thing about shmups and other genres; coming from fighting games, it isn't that long ago that we were in the same position that shmups are in right now (active players, new people coming into the genre, but lack of sales and general widestream appeal), and through community building, they've become the giant they are today.

How unified was/is the fighting game community as a whole though? Genuinely curious. As a newcomer to shmups, I feel like one problem to this approach is that the communities aren't super neighborly. Maybe it's because I only ever visit this forum. But while there's obviously a lot of overlap, a a vocal portion of this forum, for example, seems mistrustful of the reddit community, of the discord communities, of Mark as a phenomenon that exists at all (though he does seem to retaliate in kind whenever he pops back in here), even of other forums. Maybe it's a "visible but not actually representative" kind of thing though lol. But I personally wouldn't say no to more stuff like STG Weekly, or Icarus' strategy guides, Special Demonstrations, etc.

[Queen Charlene]

How unified was/is the fighting game community as a whole though? Genuinely curious. As a newcomer to shmups, I feel like one problem to this approach is that the communities aren't super neighborly.

it was basically not unified at all. Street Fighter players more often than not hated Marvel players. Tekken players were in their own pool doing Tekken things. Guilty Gear players only in their GG corner. if you didn't play the top 2 games of the time (Street Fighter and Marvel), you may as well have been on a different planet entirely. the games and communities almost never talked to each other unless it was to talk shit. there was rarely any player crossover between games at all.

nowadays, there's still a little bit of that old mentality, but MOST people are in agreement that regardless of what games you play, we are all part of the same grander community, and work together with each other inbetween scenes to grow each other. even Smash has more respect now in the FGC than it ever did back in the day.

[floralcateyes]

it was basically not unified at all. Street Fighter players more often than not hated Marvel players. Tekken players were in their own pool doing Tekken things. Guilty Gear players only in their GG corner. if you didn't play the top 2 games of the time (Street Fighter and Marvel), you may as well have been on a different planet entirely. the games and communities almost never talked to each other unless it was to talk shit. there was rarely any player crossover between games at all.

nowadays, there's still a little bit of that old mentality, but MOST people are in agreement that regardless of what games you play, we are all part of the same grander community, and work together with each other inbetween scenes to grow each other. even Smash has more respect now in the FGC than it ever did back in the day.

Pretty cool to hear, actually. And I guess not that surprising that the communities were clustered around specific games or series. That's kinda-sorta true with shmups as well I think, though more around types or subgenres (e.g. arcade purists, people who focus more on doujin games, the core Touhou community as that game and its fangames are a subgenre unto themselves at this point, etc.). Though even that seems pretty loose nowadays.

And yeah, more of what you mentioned earlier would probably help in bringing the genre more visibility. It at least seems like the most viable/practical way of reaching that goal.

[qmish]

Point about arcades also sound a bit harsh / gatekeeping for those of us, who grew up in countries that didn't have arcade culture at all or almost.

[blossom]

About those sales numbers YARD posted: they are interesting and probably valuable to some extent, however there is no discrimination between purchases made through bundles. Who knows how many people have bought these point-and-click games, for example, as part of a package deal and not played most of them?

[apatheticTurd]

I would think that what people are talking about is that it's not at the forefront of the industry like it once was. Gradius, Rtype etc would be a huge deal when a new game would come out. Now they're not mainstream. It's mainly people like us that pay attention to these games. Not the masses.

The harsh truth is, shmups haven't been mainstream since Xevious. Even at their commercial height, they were never *huge* sellers and shmup sales declined a lot more quickly than people think.

-Literally the only shmups ever to sell over a million worldwide were the Famicom ports of Gradius and Xevious, and neither much more than that.

-The lack of comprehensive hard sales data for the 16-bits platform limit my analysis somewhat, but even then there are telling data points. Industry figures like SHigeru Miyamoto and Compile employees talking about the decline of the genre in interviews (as mentioned on the previous pages), Super R-Type bankrupting Irem USA because they produced 250k cartridges but only 50k were sold (source), shmups never showing up in the top X rentals or sales for US and UK mags that have scans online, etc.

-By the advent of the 32-bits era, shmups were already terminally niche. Even classic franchises like R-Type and Gradius posted extremely low numbers (numbers sourced from Famitsu's sales tracker, archived at https://sites.google.com/site/gamedatalibrary/)




See Gradius III and IV above? With those 85k, it's the best-selling retail shmup of the last 20 years in Japan. Before that, the last shmup to break 100k was Raiden Project, and only barely. For comparison, a solidly B-tier fighting game, Fatal Fury 3, sold 131k on the Neo Geo CD alone. This is why I don't think the fighting game comparisons on the previous pages work: shmups never had 1/1000th of the popular or *dedicated* following fighting games had.

The fact is, shmups have been super duper uber niche for a VERY LONG TIME, far longer than they could ever reasonably be called mainstream. Their simplicity however, makes them an appealing option for hobbyists and as long as there's a dedicated audience buing them, they'll keep getting made.

[Austin]

The fighting game comparison isn't really an apt one. Regardless the status of the competitive scene, since the days of Street Fighter II, fighting games have never *not* found mainstream success. Even if the competitive scene felt rocky, the most popular games always sold well. Tekken, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Soul Calibur--they all continue to find mainstream success to this day, and have in every generation they have been a part of, in the last two decades. That's just the tip of the "fighting game iceberg". As it's been shown in previous posts, shmups barely found any sort of mainstream success in the last 20 years, past a few positive words for Ikaruga and Gradius V.

[floralcateyes]

The harsh truth is, shmups haven't been mainstream since Xevious. Even at their commercial height, they were never *huge* sellers and shmup sales declined a lot more quickly than people think.

I'll seemingly contradict what I said earlier and suggest that those figures might not tell the whole story as they focus solely on the home console market. If we were to look at the genre at the absolute peak of its historical popularity and commercial viability, wouldn't it be better to use figures from the arcades? I mean, if we were to look at the genre's popularity in the present, then sales figures for games on PC and home consoles would probably be the thing to look at. But I don't think that specific market is representative of the genre when it was most popular. And I'm not sure it would be very enlightening to compare figures from the arcades with the sales of other genres to the home console market without a fair few caveats and a bit of wrangling.

[FRO]

I was going to ask about the graphic as well - is the left number column the Japanese sales, and the right number column the sales throughout the rest of the world, or the total worldwide sales, including Japan? It's not a huge distinction, but I think it does make a difference.

[Special World]

^^^ if that's the case, i'm not sure why Gradius Galaxies only has the one number.

[FRO]

Good question. Maybe sales data wasn't available for outside of Japan for Galaxies? I can only speculate.

[apatheticTurd]

The harsh truth is, shmups haven't been mainstream since Xevious. Even at their commercial height, they were never *huge* sellers and shmup sales declined a lot more quickly than people think.

I'll seemingly contradict what I said earlier and suggest that those figures might not tell the whole story as they focus solely on the home console market. If we were to look at the genre at the absolute peak of its historical popularity and commercial viability, wouldn't it be better to use figures from the arcades? I mean, if we were to look at the genre's popularity in the present, then sales figures for games on PC and home consoles would probably be the thing to look at. But I don't think that specific market is representative of the genre when it was most popular. And I'm not sure it would be very enlightening to compare figures from the arcades with the sales of other genres to the home console market without a fair few caveats and a bit of wrangling.

That's a response I expected to get and one I should have adressed in advance: Focusing on home sales is entirely fair because the sales of home ports is invariably reflective of the popularity of the games in the arcade, and with the mainstream. There's no scenario where an arcade hit (that didn't rely on technology and input impossible on home consoles of the time) didn't do at least well when ported to the home market. Furthermore, there's really nothing that would make shmups players less enticed to pick up home versions of their favourite arcade titles, especially when compared to other genres that had far more to give up in the transition to home hardware (as I'll elaborate below).

Even ignoring fighting games (as one could argue their multipalyer focus meant they more palleatable for home consumption and yadadu yadada) focusing stricly on arcade ports (excluding console-exclusive sequels to arcade series and made-for-console new IPs that followed an arcade philosophy), the comparison between shmups and other arcade genre is not a flattering one. Arcade racing games still sold and reviewed well; light gun games (Virtua Cop 483k, Time Cris 200k) sold immensely better even though requiring optional peripherals to get an authentic (and playable, really) experience would theorically make them more niche; big "puzzle" games like Puzzle Bobble stil sold very well, and so did rhythm games. Arcade sport games, the NBA Jams and NFL Blitzes, still sold great. Only beat-em ups saw a similar collapse and even then at 95k sold in Japan, Die Hard Arcade/Dynamite Deka handily outsold most* shmups, original or ports, of the 32-bits era.

(I'll concede my statement in my earliest post about Raiden Project being the best selling shmup is wrong, that'd be Rayforce/Layer Section with 204k sold, and Raystorm also did respectably at 124k sold. It's a big outlier though).

One can make excuses, that those games better showed off the capabilities of the new hardware, had more casual appeal for X and Y reasons, etc. But the point I'm making is that the decline of arcade philosophy still wouldn't explain why the biggest shmups franchises were reduced to selling appaling 20k-40k numbers, in a time where selling racing games with one car and three tracks was still a good idea. Clearly, the decline started before.

(Plus discussing arcade numbers is well, hard. It's information that would only be available to the development team and industry insiders. The most comprehensive source of arcade game numbers I can find is this blog post and it's... far from comprehensive.)

Also re arcades; Outside numbers, another thing that paint a grim picture for the viability shmups is the fate of the companies that made them. Toaplan went bankrupt, the original Irem (which didn't *just* make shmups, but they were still a plurality of their arcade releases) went bankrupt and was reformated as an home console company three years later that didn't publish a lot of shmups, Psikyo went bankrupt, and its assets were purchased by a company that also went bankrupt, 8ing completely abandoned shmups at the turn of the millenium. Takumi evetually abandoned shmups and closed shop. And that's just arcade developers, I didn't even name Technosoft or developers rooted in the arcade industry that made a lot of shmups in the early 80's but largely abandoned the genre by the mid-90's etc. There's a clear trend of shmups-focused developers going bust or just "holding on" financially.

I was going to ask about the graphic as well - is the left number column the Japanese sales, and the right number column the sales throughout the rest of the world, or the total worldwide sales, including Japan? It's not a huge distinction, but I think it does make a difference.

The left is the first week sales, the right is the lifetime (total) sales. All of the sales are for Japan only. The number not changing on the right column meant it immediatly dropped out of the top 20 and never climbed back up again.

Before anyone replies with the obvious, using Japan sales as representative of the genre's commercial success is sensible: Japan is the hub of the genre, where it is the most successful (as evidenced by the abundance of Japan-only shmups in the past 30 years and localizations being often delayed or an afterthought). While the American and combined Euro market may be bigger in total size, the US video game sales being X times bigger than Japan doesn't mean there is X more prospective shmup buyers. I can't think of a scenario where a shmup that flopped in Japan was saved by its western sales (beside maybe Ikaruga, and I may still be too charitable), and I'll also point to Vic Ireland saying *none* of the shmups Working Designs localized turned in a profit.

Also I don,t think the previous two replies appreciate just how tiny those Gradius Galaxies number. 8k may be fine for a one-man indie shop with a part-time job, but that number for an high effort retail release in a name series on a viable platform is atrocious for the size of the Japanese market.

[floralcateyes]

That's a response I expected to get and one I should have adressed in advance: Focusing on home sales is entirely fair because the sales of home ports is invariably reflective of the popularity of the games in the arcade, and with the mainstream. There's no scenario where an arcade hit (that didn't rely on technology and input impossible on home consoles of the time) didn't do at least well when ported to the home market. Furthermore, there's really nothing that would make shmups players less enticed to pick up home versions of their favourite arcade titles, especially when compared to other genres that had far more to give up in the transition to home hardware (as I'll elaborate below).

Even ignoring fighting games (as one could argue their multipalyer focus meant they more palleatable for home consumption and yadadu yadada) focusing stricly on arcade ports (excluding console-exclusive sequels to arcade series and made-for-console new IPs that followed an arcade philosophy), the comparison between shmups and other arcade genre is not a flattering one. Arcade racing games still sold and reviewed well; light gun games (Virtua Cop 483k, Time Cris 200k) sold immensely better even though requiring optional peripherals to get an authentic (and playable, really) experience would theorically make them more niche; big "puzzle" games like Puzzle Bobble stil sold very well, and so did rhythm games. Arcade sport games, the NBA Jams and NFL Blitzes, still sold great. Only beat-em ups saw a similar collapse and even then at 95k sold in Japan, Die Hard Arcade/Dynamite Deka handily outsold most* shmups, original or ports, of the 32-bits era.

Fair enough, and thanks for the reply. It's interesting, though not very surprising the more I think about it, that light gun games of all things did much better in the home market. That's a genre that's seemingly disappeared in recent times, though maybe I'm just uninformed (and if you're dismissive enough to argue that they're just gallery shooters with optional peripherals, then I guess they live on in that genre). It might be possible to to explain away their success in sales over shmups as a fluke (they were novel enough to attract fans who were drawn in by the novelty and the popularity but who weren't "actual" fans of the genre per se and thus would not support it beyond its brief boom), but I've nothing to defend that line of argument. And it can't be used against the other genres anyway.

One can make excuses, that those games better showed off the capabilities of the new hardware, had more casual appeal for X and Y reasons, etc. But the point I'm making is that the decline of arcade philosophy still wouldn't explain why the biggest shmups franchises were reduced to selling appaling 20k-40k numbers, in a time where selling racing games with one car and three tracks was still a good idea. Clearly, the decline started before.

That's a very interesting point to make imo. Do you have any personal guesses as to when/how the decline started..?

[FRO]

Also I don,t think the previous two replies appreciate just how tiny those Gradius Galaxies number. 8k may be fine for a one-man indie shop with a part-time job, but that number for an high effort retail release in a name series on a viable platform is atrocious for the size of the Japanese market.

That's why I wondered about the numbers. I'd be curious to see what the sales numbers for Galaxies worldwide actually were. I don't live in a high population area, and shmups are barely a thing where I live. But I see Gradius Galaxies in the wild often enough, even in my corner of the US, that I have to believe it sold decent in North America. It still seems like the total number would be relatively low, so that's still not a reflection of a surge in genre popularity around its release, but as often as I find it at game shops, it would be hard to believe that it didn't sell at least marginally well here.

[Queen Charlene]

The fighting game comparison isn't really an apt one. Regardless the status of the competitive scene, since the days of Street Fighter II, fighting games have never *not* found mainstream success. Even if the competitive scene felt rocky, the most popular games always sold well. Tekken, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Soul Calibur--they all continue to find mainstream success to this day, and have in every generation they have been a part of, in the last two decades. That's just the tip of the "fighting game iceberg". As it's been shown in previous posts, shmups barely found any sort of mainstream success in the last 20 years, past a few positive words for Ikaruga and Gradius V.

honestly, we should ignore the bigger brands in these comparisons. fighting games that are not the aforementioned big names have historically been flops. there's an entire "poverty" term that exists for this very reason. in fact -- the big convo in fighting games recently has been how to get these non-Tekkens, non-SF games to sell. like, Darkstalkers, Cyberbots, Virtua Fighter -- even these are seemingly big-name franchises with popular names and characters brought in from other games, but the games themselves have never really been hotcakes. and then you get deeper into stuff like Waku Waku 7, Battle Fantasia, Skullgirls, Melty Blood... these games don't sell; and the latter two games only survived through the competitive scene and a ton of shilling from said folks. arguably, stuff like Gradius V and Ikaruga are more in line with our bigger franchises, although obviously not so explosive selling-wise in comparison.

plus, like others were saying, this really only considers the home market; the arcade is where a lot of these other games survived, and passed on their legacies through word-of-mouth. many of the popular shmup titles don't even have official ports, or only have subpar ports on far-last-gen hardware.

that being said -- yeah, fighting games as a whole have definitely seen a lot more action than shmups have. but back in the day, home ports of fighting games were also pretty feature-rich and had lots of options for what you could do (arcade, versus, time attack, survival mode, team battle, training mode, hidden unlockables, additional ending FMVs...)... and even to this day most shmups don't really offer these kinds of benefits; perhaps this could be a factor? honestly, you really only see this much choice in the Cave ports (DFK, Mushi, et al) and the M2 STG line. (i personally think these kinds of features should be included with all arcade game ports regardless of the genre.)

[Austin]

honestly, we should ignore the bigger brands in these comparisons.

Ignoring certain parts of the market segment because it's convenient immediately makes your narrative fall flat on its face. The simple fact of the matter is that fighting games appeal to mainstream audiences. Shmups do not. Just because there's a large middle market in the fighting game genre, filled with releases that don't do anywhere near as well as the big titles, doesn't make the genre directly comparable to shoot 'em ups.

[Queen Charlene]

Ignoring certain parts of the market segment because it's convenient immediately makes your narrative fall flat on its face. The simple fact of the matter is that fighting games appeal to mainstream audiences. Shmups do not. Just because there's a large middle market in the fighting game genre, filled with releases that don't do anywhere near as well as the big titles, doesn't make the genre directly comparable to shoot 'em ups.

i never said that it was the same. it doesn't even have to be a 1:1 comparison for there to still be something to gain from exploring the ways that fighting games have managed to grow awareness of the games that aren't just "the big names" in the genre. how did Under Night In-Birth start to get enough recognition for people to know what it is and find it exciting to watch and engage with despite not being Street Fighter? i very earnestly believe that with enough passion and care, you can do the same thing to grow something like DoDonPachi to have the same recognition as Gradius. i don't think my entire argument is invalid just because fighting games are more popular, that seems like a bit of a pessimistic viewpoint to have.

[blossom]

I don't really understand this yearning for Dodonpachi to be popular. It's already huge within its niche, and occasionally you'll meet people who don't play shmups that can name DDP and Touhou as major series. It's all the other games that need recognition - you know, the ones that inspired Special World to create this thread. I'm not going to be delusional by brainstorming how exactly you'd have the genre appeal to the masses once again, because that's just not going to happen. But having these games appeal to players already within the niche? This is the tricky and confusing part. That quote from NTSC-J is more and more relevant as time goes on: "You know STGs are in trouble when you have threads on how to introduce them to a wider audience and get more people playing followed by threads on how to get its hardcore fan base to play them, too." Cave's Twitch channel is amusingly one of the better spotlights on modern indie games and their viewer numbers aren't exactly high - never seen them break 100. But that's fine, as I said I don't think it's realistic to assume shmups will ever be mainstream and that marketing towards the niche audience is the smart move. If Cave's streams were to convince even one person to buy Neko Navy, Graze Counter, etc, then I'd say that's some kind of victory.

[shoryusatsu999]

I don't really understand this yearning for Dodonpachi to be popular. It's already huge within its niche, and occasionally you'll meet people who don't play shmups that can name DDP and Touhou as major series.

Being huge within a niche isn't exactly enough to keep a genre relevant, and that's all that some people here want in the end. Promoting DDP and other CAVE games is just one means to that end. Besides, it's not exactly fair to compare the popularity of DDP to Touhou. It's like comparing Street Fighter to the entirety of Nintendo rather than just Smash Bros. Even the biggest 10 or so shmup franchises after Touhou combined wouldn't be a fair comparison.

[quote-"blossom]Cave's Twitch channel is amusingly one of the better spotlights on modern indie games and their viewer numbers aren't exactly high - never seen them break 100.[/quote]
That's probably because it's a small Japanese company with relatively little experience doing business outside there and very few games officially released outside there that's doing livestreams on Twitch, a streaming site dominated by mostly non-Asian viewers. Why would Western gamers know where to watch CAVE-le TV if they don't know about the company, that a livestream channel exists at all and what they're streaming? Something that bugs me, though, is why they decided not to stream on Niconico as well, since that would probably get more viewers than Twitch alone.