Playing Vertical Shmups in Horizontal Orientation?

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MrOldSchoolCool
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Playing Vertical Shmups in Horizontal Orientation?

Post by MrOldSchoolCool »

I was curious what everybody thought of this. It's nice that it's an option in a lot of home ports, but I wonder how many people use it.

To be clear, I'm talking about the option where home ports allow you to put your game in TATE mode as well as change the controls so that they can be played like horizontal shooters (with the perk being that you don't have to flip your TV).
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wht11
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Re: Playing Vertical Shmups in Horizontal Orientation?

Post by wht11 »

Always felt awkward with the idea and can't effectively play like this. Main reasons is that despite many similarities vertical and horizontal STGs follow quite a different design. There's a big difference where the difficulty is supposed to come from, if the game is well designed the speed of ship/character movement accounts for the area of focus against the flow throughout a run.

I can't imagine playing any of my vertical games of choice in horizontal and the same goes the other way around (horizontal into vertical).
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Herr Schatten
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Re: Playing Vertical Shmups in Horizontal Orientation?

Post by Herr Schatten »

I actually used to play Layer Section that way, when I had no way to flip the screen, and after a short time of getting used to it, I played as well as in vertical orientation. It's all in your head, I guess.
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Stan
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Re: Playing Vertical Shmups in Horizontal Orientation?

Post by Stan »

wht11 wrote:...and the same goes the other way around (horizontal into vertical).
I remember years ago somewhere it was mentioned that someone started playing Progear in vertical, resulting in way better score/progress.
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davyK
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Re: Playing Vertical Shmups in Horizontal Orientation?

Post by davyK »

I think it's good that the option is there at least. Not everyone is up for rotating a TV - especially if it's a CRT. I've never used it. I have a a 2nd CRT now that I keep perma-rotated.
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OmegaFlareX
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Re: Playing Vertical Shmups in Horizontal Orientation?

Post by OmegaFlareX »

It's perfectly fine on a modern display being fed by a HD device.

On consoles prior (SD), when tate mode was introduced (PS1/Saturn through GCN/PS2), the yoko modes were mostly awful in comparison. Some were worse than others, but back when I registered on this forum 21(!?!) years ago, the prevailing attitude was "once you tate you cannot go back". I can personally confirm that.
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Re: Playing Vertical Shmups in Horizontal Orientation?

Post by Darkseed_5150 »

Binary Star is programmed to be played properly in either orientation. Also if you have a Switch, a FlipGrip is a must. Turns it into a handheld TATE arcade machine. Should come packed in standard with the Switch IMO.
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Re: Playing Vertical Shmups in Horizontal Orientation?

Post by Eyvah_Ehyeh »

My brain has a hard time acclimatizing to horizontal shmups, resulting in many more "stupid" deaths than in vertical shmups, so I might try it the other way around, if I actually played any horis. Maybe Akai Katana, or Progear, if I ever run out of vert shmups. :D
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wht11
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Re: Playing Vertical Shmups in Horizontal Orientation?

Post by wht11 »

I still wonder about one thing though, graphics. I know that adapting to actual play is not impossible and might even suit anyone over the long run. That part actually ever brought me to see how it goes switched for a moment. However this is secondary to the fact most of these games are graphically designed one way or another. It just looks completely awkward or stupid.

Don't know, this bothers me more than getting more or less points after a few weeks play, it just cost good game impressions. I know this won't affect some games as much for sure, some that are drawn as close to "neutral" as possible. To many are not in my view.
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Jeneki
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Re: Playing Vertical Shmups in Horizontal Orientation?

Post by Jeneki »

I've only done the sideways controls once, for the North America release of Raiden Project. Worked ok but felt weird. If I spent more time with it I'm sure I could adjust.

As far as regular tate: I used to keep a second TV for tate. Rotating a TV every once in a while is hard, but keeping one that way all the time is easy. These days with higher screen sizes and display resolutions, it's not as big of a deal. I can see everything and still have a decent play area size even without tate. Granted I still use tate when I have a new release and will be playing it for a while, but I feel much less obliged to do so. I suppose it depends on your personal setup.
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Marc
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Re: Playing Vertical Shmups in Horizontal Orientation?

Post by Marc »

I can't remember the last time I bothered TBH. I mean the screen size on even my 43" is larger than the 14"(ish) CRT I used to use.
I can't do the horizontal sideways thing at all, just doesn't compute with me.
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Despatche
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Re: Playing Vertical Shmups in Horizontal Orientation?

Post by Despatche »

Depends entirely on the game.

A proper vertizontal is perfectly fine. For example, Strikers 1945 Plus, Giga Wing/Mars Matrix/Giga Wing 2, Jamestown, Ginga Force, etc, those work well.

Proper conversions (i.e. a different game is created, it's not a straight port) of vertical games to horizontal screens, which account for the change in screen, are perfectly fine. For example, the Mega Drive Toaplan conversions actually by Toaplan, such as Same! Same! Same!, those work well.

...Ports of vertical games to horizontal screens that cannot fit the entire picture, however... It's not really the developers' fault, as they're trying to make, well, ports; their focus is on the actual port job, so any horizontal mode is in there for compatibility sake. Grind Stormer and Tatsujin Ou are phenomenal ports as far as getting a largely identical game onto another platform, but they are also extremely hard to play for that reason; there's no horizontal mode in either game, as far as I know.

Last but not least, successfully getting the entire picture to display in horizontal mode, bars and all, is not really the same thing as the above. If your display device is big enough, it's not really an issue. This is why original games that are vertical but are intended for horizontal monitors also work fine, despite everyone wanting to complain about every little thing in Raiden V until the heat death of the universe.
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Shogun
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Re: Playing Vertical Shmups in Horizontal Orientation?

Post by Shogun »

I've tried this a few times. Some games will flip the controls but many are missing the setting. Either way it never felt quite right and I always went back to vertical.
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heli
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Re: Playing Vertical Shmups in Horizontal Orientation?

Post by heli »

It is very special to find this in any game, i can only remember layer section for saturn.
The items fall the wrong way, i can not play like this, and dont want to.
It is a nice extra you can add easy to a game for plus points,
not sure if someone will use it with a flatscreen.
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BrianC
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Re: Playing Vertical Shmups in Horizontal Orientation?

Post by BrianC »

I found out that some yoko modes on PSX and Saturn were actually displayed in 480i. The classic games in Xevious 3D/G+ are a good example of this. I'm guessing it's a workaround to fit the entire picture on screen, but the results aren't pretty.
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LordHypnos
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Re: Playing Vertical Shmups in Horizontal Orientation?

Post by LordHypnos »

IIRC, Gunbird 2 and a few other DC games supported this (sometimes it's called rotated controls). For Gunbird 2 I just flipped my TV on its side instead, slight magnetic issues be damned (it didn't actually impact the picture too noticeably in this case). I've always felt that it's harder to dodge horizontal attacks than vertical ones, but you probably adjust.
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Rastan78
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Re: Playing Vertical Shmups in Horizontal Orientation?

Post by Rastan78 »

LordHypnos wrote:For Gunbird 2 I just flipped my TV on its side instead, slight magnetic issues be damned (it didn't actually impact the picture too noticeably in this case.
CRTs have an automatic degaussing coil around the tube that will get rid of that unwanted magnetism at power on. If you have some rainbow action going on in tate, just power down the TV, wait a while and flip it back on to trigger the degaussing. Should completely clear up after that. Of course now flipping back to hori might require the same.
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LordHypnos
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Re: Playing Vertical Shmups in Horizontal Orientation?

Post by LordHypnos »

Rastan78 wrote: CRTs have an automatic degaussing coil around the tube that will get rid of that unwanted magnetism at power on. If you have some rainbow action going on in tate, just power down the TV, wait a while and flip it back on to trigger the degaussing. Should completely clear up after that. Of course now flipping back to hori might require the same.
Neat! It's actually entirely possible that I was doing that at the time, but it's too long ago for me to remember. Alas, my CRT days are over at this point :( I just don't have the space. I am always pretty impressed by the low latency on my Dell P2414, at least. In a perfect world I would love to have a multisync CRT that could do both standard and enhanced definition, though. A shame that there were so few models that supported this.
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