Why are Dodonpachi and Ketsui so dominant across this genre?

[Exy]

braindead autistic

i don't think you know what either of these words mean

Real talk: when someone uses the word "autistic" they often (read: pretty much always outside of healthcare) lose a bunch of credibility with me. Like, you couldn't come up with any other way to communicate your idea than a tired, aggressive meme? Really?

Ya, apart from being offensive and inaccurate, it's a big indicator of that vacuous fratboy mentality that infects all too many gamers. The kind of people whose brain is used purely for storing slang and memes from 4chan. It'd be nice if more of the reasonable members of our community/ies could be clear with them that being a shitheel isn't acceptable, but it'll probably never happen.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

But I don't know ha, if I'm the villain of the forum these days I can probably learn to enjoy that

Nobody here would say that, dude. Not if they'd want to be taken seriously.

Blossom's just... I dunno, very good at being wildly dramatic about gross misunderstandings? To put it politely. That or he's genuinely offended that someone who heavily mains DDP and has promoted Blue Revolver and put it on a list of the greatest shmups of the last decade joked about Blue Revolver being almost as good as DDP. You can't please some people. O_o

[Queen Charlene]

Ya, apart from being offensive and inaccurate, it's a big indicator of that vacuous fratboy mentality that infects all too many gamers. The kind of people whose brain is used purely for storing slang and memes from 4chan. It'd be nice if more of the reasonable members of our community/ies could be clear with them that being a shitheel isn't acceptable, but it'll probably never happen.

people tend to really get upset with me when i call them out on saying wack shit lol, so i'm actually really happy to see that there are other people who think that shit isn't cool.

It's curious you mention FGC when this is exactly a prime example of how the loyalty to a certain brand has doomed any other fighting game even before it was released.

Street Fighter keeps spiraling into doom, oscillating between games with absurdly high skill ceiling (SFIV 1-frame links, FADC and invincible backdashes shenanigans) to a way more bland approach (SFV) and in spite of this, it's still the most played game in the FGC alongside Tekken.
King of Fighters, after reaching its pinnacle in KOFXIII has shot itself in the foot with KOFXIV, GG has gone full n00b friendly and MK is still played because of its brand and history, while Tekken is the only one really worth mentioning because it has been steadily improving and it's still rightfully at the top of the food chain.

i think that a few years ago this could have been said as the case but i can't really agree nowadays. UNIST just had a hype showing at EVO last year and has been having incredible showings at all of the anime game-specific tournaments, to the point where it is quite literally the anime game to play if you're interested. additionally, thanks to Discord communities becoming more popular, even the unpopular games that you like can still form a dedicated fanbase that can grow their game to a point where they can reach a much wider appeal. Melty Blood is a great example, they've been grinding and propping their game up for so long that now it's a main game at Combo Breaker 2020. KOF unfortunately has always struggled behind Capcom titles and been much more of a game with a following in the arcades, but i think part of that is simply just that KOF has never been as widely available, and a lot of the older console ports are not amazing (or are rare to find), which both can be argued is a result of SNK going through dire financial issues at the time. i also think FGC nowadays especially is crazy open to the idea of playing and talking about more games. i see so many of my friends and fellow community members always showing interest in the games they don't play and even see them buy games i wouldn't expect them to buy and play when they go on sale, just because they saw something cool, or heard someone talk about how cool of a game it is.

honestly, nowadays, bad netcode is probably harming more fighting games than anything to do with their brand recognition (or lack thereof).

Yatagarasu is unfortunately a situation that isn't on the fault of the community or the developer; Nicalis killed that game before it even had a chance to shine, by continuously delaying the well-hyped console ports, constantly changing the platform they were going to release it on (last i heard it was PS3, then PS4, then Vita?) Nicalis has a habit of being horribly mismanaged and shitty to developers as any Cave Story fan is well aware of. indie titles that are beholden to their publisher typically don't have a lot of funding that they can use to spread the word of their game, and when the publisher themselves is fucking up too, it's basically a death spell.

[qmish]

Also Steam version never got updates that were planned.

edit:

and KS backers never got rewards like Artbook they paid for

[donluca]

Much worse than original Fighting Layer game which was very solid.

IMHO it was head and shoulders ahead of the original Fighting Layer game and a very good successor to the Street Fighter EX series.

Although, big disclaimer, I've always been a huge fan of the original Street Fighter EX (much less of its second installment), so I'm afraid my opinion is quite biased.

Excluding the M2 ports for the moment, what about Raiden V? What about Gradius ReBirth? What about the latest Ikaruga ports (I've lost count)?

Touhou carved out its own corner of the market. Space Invaders and Galaga get revivals / collections. There are modern takes on old styles (Resogun, Ex Machina) which according to the developer were insufficient to keep their company profitable. It raises the question as to what games we are still missing, because if Gradius and Raiden can't stoke a fire why would DDP 6? Why would DDP 6 matter when 4 and 5 didn't?

Mobile gaming was likely the last good shot this genre had at coming back to life in the same way that dedicated puzzle games sprang back to life, but the opportunity was squandered.

How popular have Gradius and Raiden ever been compared to DDP? Honest question, I don't have any numbers on my hands, but if I had to throw out a wild guess, I'd say not even half as much as DDP and its sequels.

[Queen Charlene]

Gradius is significantly more recognizable than DDP. most people still don't know what DDP is, but Gradius has a well-known, long-standing legacy, and many Gradius references are packed into all sorts of games. hell, Konami has made the Vic Viper playable in tens of games, one of the most notable being in Zone of the Enders 2 as a transforming mech (and one of the best boss fights of the whole game).

[qmish]

How popular have Gradius and Raiden ever been compared to DDP? Honest question, I don't have any numbers on my hands, but if I had to throw out a wild guess, I'd say not even half as much as DDP and its sequels.

Popular amongst whom, though?

Gradius/Raiden always being brought up in "generic retro gaming" circles, so you mean more dedicated shmuppers?

(also R-Type and, perhaps... Thunder Force? )

[Special World]

Yeah, Gradius is actually a recognized videogame franchise. This is a hardcore niche community where things are skewed a bit--you'd be unlikely to find a typical gamer who can name any bullet hell besides Ikaruga, imo. But there were tons of gamers who grew up with an NES and have fond memories of Gradius.

I was super duper ultra into gaming and I had never heard of Dodonpachi until somebody on a forum was like "you ever played Cave shooters" and I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

[Queen Charlene]

yeah i don't even think i knew what a DoDonPachi even was until like 2018

[Special World]

And now i hate gaming. If it isn't Mario Kart or some fuck me in the ass shmup, count me OUT.

[donluca]

Popular amongst whom, though?

Gradius/Raiden always being brought up in "generic retro gaming" circles, so you mean more dedicated shmuppers?

(also R-Type and, perhaps... Thunder Force? )

I was thinking among the lines of "common/pop culture", not strictly among shmuppers, but I think that during early 2000s shmups have seen kind of a resurgence thanks to CAVE and the bullet hell genre.

Whenever I ask about shmups around people I know, they now automatically associate them to "vertical games with lots of bullets on the screen where you control a pretty overpowered ship", but again, I just don't have any real, meaningful numbers to back it up.

[BurlyHeart]

I'd be offended, but this this accusation of me putting down Blue Revolver is so absurd it makes me laugh. I have shilled and complimented Blue Revolver so often and so regualrly I might as well be part of the marketing team. The context of that quote was that everyone should play Blue Revolver, even if you are knee deep in some other shmup. The fact that you can go from playing DDP for hours on end to then unwind with some Blue Revolver is a great compliment to the well-designed gameplay. I honestly don't see how you guys could twist my thoughts on Blue Revovler as somehow putting the game down, but the forum finds a way to be offended X-D. The ironic thing is that I sort of see where Blossom is coming from, having played Danmaku Unlimited 3 for hundreds of hours -- a game that no one else cares about ha (other than Pazzy, who has dissapeared). But I don't know ha, if I'm the villain of the forum these days I can probably learn to enjoy that
Cheers!

Yeah, I was confused after seeing Blue Revolver at #6 in your shmups of the decade video. Glad it's cleared up.

Yatagarasu is unfortunately a situation that isn't on the fault of the community or the developer; Nicalis killed that game before it even had a chance to shine, by continuously delaying the well-hyped console ports, constantly changing the platform they were going to release it on (last i heard it was PS3, then PS4, then Vita?)

Holy shit, I never knew nicalis had a hand in Yatagarasu. One more reason to hate them.

Gradius/Raiden always being brought up in "generic retro gaming" circles, so you mean more dedicated shmuppers?

Yup. I knew about these, R-Type and the 194X series well before I heard of DDP or Ketsui. I only learned of them after coming to this forum. I'm guessing these shmups were around during my childhood, while DDP came out in an era when shmups weren't in the mainstream as much.

[Austin]

Gradius is significantly more recognizable than DDP. most people still don't know what DDP is, but Gradius has a well-known, long-standing legacy, and many Gradius references are packed into all sorts of games. hell, Konami has made the Vic Viper playable in tens of games, one of the most notable being in Zone of the Enders 2 as a transforming mech (and one of the best boss fights of the whole game).

How popular have Gradius and Raiden ever been compared to DDP? Honest question, I don't have any numbers on my hands, but if I had to throw out a wild guess, I'd say not even half as much as DDP and its sequels.

Gradius, Raiden, and others like R-Type have always been more popular in general gaming circles. A big reason is that these games actually had mainstream success at one point in time, both in the arcade and on home consoles, and people still remember them. It doesn't hurt that R-Type and Raiden have had continued presence in recent console generations (R-Type Dimensions, Raiden IV, Raiden V). They might not be big sellers these days, but long time gamers are still familiar with the names.

DDP is popular among the more hardcore crowd and not much past that. Ask the larger, more casual fanbase about it and you can always expect a "deer in the headlights" kind of look. It is what it is.

[Bananamatic]

Ya, apart from being offensive and inaccurate, it's a big indicator of that vacuous fratboy mentality that infects all too many gamers. The kind of people whose brain is used purely for storing slang and memes from 4chan. It'd be nice if more of the reasonable members of our community/ies could be clear with them that being a shitheel isn't acceptable, but it'll probably never happen.

you play ddp for score by following a super rigid route for 45+ minutes down to split seconds and doing it over and over while fascinating bullet patterns fly all over the screen
shmups are the fidget spinner of video game genres and your boy at agdq is a prime example

[Sumez]

people tend to really get upset with me when i call them out on saying wack shit lol, so i'm actually really happy to see that there are other people who think that shit isn't cool.

Don't worry. Most of us think that shit isn't cool, we just can't be bothered to pick a fight.

[qmish]

I was thinking among the lines of "common/pop culture", not strictly among shmuppers, but I think that during early 2000s shmups have seen kind of a resurgence thanks to CAVE and the bullet hell genre.

Whenever I ask about shmups around people I know, they now automatically associate them to "vertical games with lots of bullets on the screen where you control a pretty overpowered ship", but again, I just don't have any real, meaningful numbers to back it up.

Tbh i sometimes thought that Touhou could be more popular and recognizable due to reasons of it's expansion on merchandise and collaborations, but in reality half of people who know "touhou something" are not even aware of shmups...

[Lags]

shmups are the fidget spinner of video game genres

wtf I hate shmups now!

[Bananamatic]

I never said fidget spinners are bad though

[Licorice]

FWIW I had heard of Touhou and DDP far before Gradius.

And until recently I always associated Konami with MGS. I also thought all earlier Castlevanias were supplanted by SoTN. In fact I viewed early Konami as just a big lump of shovelware. It wasn't until I started browsing here that I realized wow some people really put these games on a pedestal and then started showing some interest myself.

[donluca]

I swear I somehow missed this post. I'm getting old.

i think that a few years ago this could have been said as the case but i can't really agree nowadays. UNIST just had a hype showing at EVO last year and has been having incredible showings at all of the anime game-specific tournaments, to the point where it is quite literally the anime game to play if you're interested.

Is it?
I agree that some of the "underdog games" have offered some incredibly hype moments, but remember that tournaments like Combo Breaker are somewhat special because they always try to give a spotlight to those lesser played games. In the end, unfortunately, it's the number of active players which decide which games are alive and well.
Honestly, if I was a newcomer and had to choose an anime fighter to get into based on popularity and number of active players, I'd definitely pick Guilty Gear over UNIST (or Dragon Ball if I was a big fan of the series).

thanks to Discord communities becoming more popular, even the unpopular games that you like can still form a dedicated fanbase that can grow their game to a point where they can reach a much wider appeal. Melty Blood is a great example, they've been grinding and propping their game up for so long that now it's a main game at Combo Breaker 2020.

Agreed but that has helped them keeping afloat, definitely not bringing them to the spotlight.

honestly, nowadays, bad netcode is probably harming more fighting games than anything to do with their brand recognition (or lack thereof).

Partly agreed.
Skullgirls was first to get the PS4 legacy controller mode right, had excellent netcode and so had other small games which you don't hear much about today.

SFV and KoF got away with terrible netcode and despite all the critics they are still on top. (well not KoF anymore, but still).

But I'll agree that if you're not a big name game, messing the netcode up will doom your game from day 1.

Since we're kind of talking about the more technical part of a videogame, I'll definitely add that if we want shmups to get back to the top, they'll need proper configuration options good compatibility across several PCs with different hardware.
This means various orientation options, resolution/ratio switching, complete remapping of controls and joystick support and proper leaderboard support with excellent anti-cheat tech.

[Sumez]

FWIW I had heard of Touhou and DDP far before Gradius.

And until recently I always associated Konami with MGS. I also thought all earlier Castlevanias were supplanted by SoTN. In fact I viewed early Konami as just a big lump of shovelware. It wasn't until I started browsing here that I realized wow some people really put these games on a pedestal and then started showing some interest myself.

That's a really unique perspective.
Really curious, how old are you?

[Bananamatic]

i think that a few years ago this could have been said as the case but i can't really agree nowadays. UNIST just had a hype showing at EVO last year and has been having incredible showings at all of the anime game-specific tournaments, to the point where it is quite literally the anime game to play if you're interested.

Is it?
I agree that some of the "underdog games" have offered some incredibly hype moments, but remember that tournaments like Combo Breaker are somewhat special because they always try to give a spotlight to those lesser played games. In the end, unfortunately, it's the number of active players which decide which games are alive and well.
Honestly, if I was a newcomer and had to choose an anime fighter to get into based on popularity and number of active players, I'd definitely pick Guilty Gear over UNIST (or Dragon Ball if I was a big fan of the series).

IMO unist really got the spotlight only because ggxrd is basically dead, so is blazblue and bbtag and dbfz are dumbed down team games...and now arcsys decided to go full retard and dumb down guilty gear for no reason so now you have people jumping ship to the next anime dev that doesn't want to gut their main game for an audience that doesn't exist

unless you want to play koihime or melty there really are no other 1v1 anime games right now

[MathU]

What Arc System Works did to Guilty Gear (and the crippling inability of fighting game communities to reject what they are routinely fed by greedy developers/publishers and continue playing the good games that never stop existing) is the reason I will likely never get heavily invested in a fighting game again.

[qmish]

Won't someone PLEASE think about the 100+ page Progear guide at stake here? Please guys, I need this.

The guide will come out, don't worry. Not anytime soon, but somewhere around June/July probably. I calmed down now.

So, eh... what about Progear? Do you still have the document? Would you share it, please?

[Juju Kenobi]

I put most of the info in a condensed manner, that you can find on the shmup wiki :
https://shmups.wiki/library/Progear_no_Arashi

There is also a video on Mark's channel where we explain most of the game mechanics :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW38MAfieow

[beer gas canister]

I put most of the info in a condensed manner, that you can find on the shmup wiki :
https://shmups.wiki/library/Progear_no_Arashi

There is also a video on Mark's channel where we explain most of the game mechanics :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW38MAfieow

Oh hey, thanks for this! I used this info to learn the game many months ago and it's one of my favorites now. Well done!

[ThundergunExpress]

Merci beaucoup Juju for these amazing contributions to our community. I watched your video with Mark before and I immediately bought the recent port. Amazing shmup and I don't normally love horis.

[To Far Away Times]

Is Ketsui really that big?

DDP yes, and DOJ especially since its the standout title in series with five entries. Kinda wish Mushi Futari was that title, since it's the best shmup of all time, and offers a little something for everyone with Original, Maniac and Ultra/God, IMO.

[Lander]

What a difference in tone four years makes

[shmuppy-puppy]

Well, if I take a look at my most played Steam games in 2023 DoDoPachi Dai Fukatsu is still in the top 5 (together with DS I and Mushi), so I guess the reason why people talk so much about these CAVE games is that they still enjoy them. That is 15 years after the initial release of the last DDP!
Since I am a PC only player I have unfortunately never played Ketsui. I am sure I would love it.
Of course there are other amazing games. Interstellar Sentinel, Ginga Force, Eschatos, Operation Steel, Infinos Gaiden, Natsuki, Andro Dunos II, Danmaku Unlimited 3 all got a LOT of playtime as well last year.
Still, not as much as DDP Resurrection, though.
The CAVE stuff is just so freakin addictive.