Shmups for newcomers

[Eithrial]

I am quite new to shmup genre and currently Im playing a lot of DoDonPachi Dai-Ou-Jou, but it's hard and really challenging, so sometimes I need to rest and play something less demanding. Could you suggest something which would be good for newcomer but not too easy, but also good enough to improve my play?

[amdiggywhut]

Deathsmiles and Eschatos are both lots of fun & relatively easy to make progress on. Deathsmiles II is probably the easiest shootemup I've ever played.

[CStarFlare]

Harmful Park

[Jonst]

Without knowing what systems you have...

My recommendations would be:

Donpachi
Dodonpachi
Akai katana (slash or zetsu modes)
Espgaluda

[chempop]

Try games from different developers: Cave, Raizing, Psikyo, Toaplan, Konami, Capcom, Seibu, Takumi, Compile, etc.
You will actually learn a variety of skills from playing an assortment of games.

Pointless to give specific recommendations when I don't know if you are looking for a game on console or jamma or ???

[Blackbird]

Here are a few games I generally recommend for new players:

Jamestown - Adjustable difficulty, lots of ship types and options, great graphics, cheap and easy to find.

Hydorah - It plays a lot like the classic Konami game Salamander. Difficulty is moderate. Best of all, it's free. Check it out if you want a more old-school flavor.

Mushihimesama Futari - One of the best shmups ever made. Play it on novice and work your way up to harder modes.

Recent Touhou games - A nice stepping stone into bullet hell shmups. The shot patterns have a truckton of bullets and are very aesthetic to look at, but generally move very slowly so that they are comparatively easy to dodge.

[Pretas]

Under Defeat. It's mostly self-explanatory, slower paced, gorgeous to look at, and the difficulty is at a manageable level.

The Dreamcast version is best if you can get it, but the PS3/360 versions are very good as well. The newer versions have some extra copters that are simpler to use and make the game easier.

Also, Ginga Force is a game that very effectively eases newcomers into developing skills for the genre, without being condescending or simply granting them unlimited continues. The recently released Ge-Sen Love does this too, in its Shmups Skills Test and CombatZeal modes.

[Kollision]

steer away from anything with the Dodonpachi label for now, with the exception of DonPachi

for bullet hell, I suggest trying:
Bullet Soul (360)
Deathsmiles (360)
Giga Wing (DC, MAME)
Espgaluda (PS2, MAME)

non-bullet hell
Pretas is right, Under Defeat is a good one (DC, 360, PS3)
Gradius V (PS2)
Raiden (PS1, MAME)
Shienryu (PS1, PS2, Saturn - just read something about it first, tha game has anal "rank")
Thunder Force V (PS1, Saturn)

[Obiwanshinobi]

Not easy, but Raiden III tends to work for newcomers.

[LordHypnos]

Depending on what you like, I'd recommend trying some Caravan games. I find them to be fairly enjoyable as a n00b, because they're fast paced, and you can usually make progress on them if you keep at them. Blade Buster is one that I got a lot out of initially trying to just get past the first boss on 2 minute mode, and now I enjoy trying to clear the game / score higher on 5 minute mode. It's an NES homebrew game, so you can play it in an emulator on a variety of different platforms (I've played it on PC in fceux and on Dreamcast in Nester DC, personally). Also, it's free!

For Bullet Hell, a lot of people recommend Blue Wish Resurrection Plus to beginners. I think it's a pretty good recommendation as well. Also free / PC.

[KAI]

Karous and Illvelo are piss easy.

[Doctor Butler]

Game Type for Xbox Live.

[Illyrian]

My signature.

In that order.

[Eithrial]

Actually all I have is pc with linux and variety of emulators and that unfotunately won't change in recent years, however this thread may be helpful mo someone else.

[nasty_wolverine]

CRS68k, BWR+, served for free... good starters, a slice of Armed Police Batrider for the "Normal Course", finish with a sip of good old Dodonpachi.

edit: the first two should run on wine, the last two are on mame.

[LordHypnos]

Actually all I have is pc with linux and variety of emulators and that unfotunately won't change in recent years, however this thread may be helpful mo someone else.

There's a linux version of fceux. It's probably in your package manager. You can still play Blade Buster
I think BWR+ and most Touhous also run in Wine, but I could never get it to work.

There's a good stage select-based boss rush game that teaches you a lot of the fundamentals of shmups called rRootage that is available for linux, as well. I like to think of it as Bullet Hell 101. It will last a while too, because there's like 40 stages or something (including some that give you randomized patterns)

[Teufel_in_Blau]

Actually all I have is pc with linux and variety of emulators and that unfotunately won't change in recent years, however this thread may be helpful mo someone else.

I have no idea how good Touhou runs in wine but if you can run DOJ in Mame, you should give Espgaluda a try. Aside from the last boss, the game is fairly easy. But don't expect a 1CC. CAVE tried to troll the players in the Arcades with that last boss pattern.

[Eithrial]

Thanks for your suggestions! Tohou and BWR work well with wine so I guess I'll do them first.

[Patashu]

If you are here to play shmups to develop a skill at shmups, I highly recommend you grab Shmupmame 42 ( http://shmupmame.wordpress.com/download/ ) and load Dodonpachi into it.
Why?
It's not because Dodonpachi is the best or most welcoming shmup or anything like that.
But because you will get savestates because it's emulated.
Savestate before each level, before reach boss, before each hard pattern and difficult part of a stage.
Savestate-driven practice will make you the best the fastest, because you don't have to slog through other things you don't care about to retry the thing you are struggling with. You have as much free experimentation and drilling as you like.
It's not cheating - it's practice with the goal of being able to do good savestateless runs, and it works.

You can do savestates in Shmupmame 42 with any of the Cave games here that are older than Mushihimesama: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAVE_(comp ... _developed (Mushihimesama on are emulatable, but support for savestates is so awful that I don't want to subject you to it yet! )
Espgaluda is another good one to try, it has a lot of pretty patterns that feel awesome to dodge once you figure out their trick, and it has a toggleable bullet time mode too.

[6es_clinton]

Hey Eithrial. Fellow shmups newcomer here. Just wanted to chime in with my own recommendations from a rookie perspective. I have been diving headlong into as many shooters as I could find these past couple of weeks.

Note: a lot of new shmups or re-releases have adjustable difficult settings. I don't know if this has always been the case with the older bullet hell games. I find Easy is pretty digestable but for some games this is still too much.

Espgaluda II - this game will start to provide a challenge in the latter 2 stages (played on Normal) but it's also great at making you feel like a rockstar thanks to the wonderful pyrotechnics and great controls.

Aegis Wing - very approachable and should be a free download on XBLA.

Jamestown - looks and plays great without being overwhelming at the start. Sadly, you can't see the entire game until you finish earlier stages on higher difficulty settings.

Dodonpachi Blissful Death - similar to Espgaluda: the game is great at making you feel like a rockstar. You can unlock Practice mode very easily too.

Patashu >> Thank you for the link to Shmupmame!

[RaidenViper]

Ibara.

[nasty_wolverine]

Ibara.

garegga too

[chempop]

About save-states:

It's not cheating - it's practice with the goal of being able to do good savestateless runs, and it works.

Hobby ruiner.

[ACSeraph]

About save-states:

It's not cheating - it's practice with the goal of being able to do good savestateless runs, and it works.

Preaching truth.

Seriously more so than targeting an easy game to clear, pick a game that you think is awesome and use states to l2p. You'll have a lot more motivation to take your game farther if it's a game you love. Plus wouldn't it be depressing to say "my first 1cc was Otomedius"?

Also if you want to experience lots of different games that will test and improve lots of different shmup skills in a relatively stress free environment, come join us over in Operation Quickening.

[KAI]

inb4 savestates are........

[Kollision]

trolls + derail

it actually took longer than usual this time

[Patashu]

About save-states:

It's not cheating - it's practice with the goal of being able to do good savestateless runs, and it works.

Hobby ruiner.

Not using savestates is like being a musician, wanting to learn a really hard song but every time you mess up once you start from the beginning instead of redo just the hard part you made a mistake on. You're not impressing anyone with your perseverance, only hurting yourself.

[shmuppyLove]

Plus wouldn't it be depressing to say "my first 1cc was Otomedius"?

Is it more depressing to say I have yet to 1CC it?

[KAI]

You're not impressing anyone with your perseverance, only hurting yourself.

So, if you play games that don't have savestates, you are some kind of masochist or you are playing the wrong games or something like that?

[LordHypnos]

You're not impressing anyone with your perseverance, only hurting yourself.

I would actually be fairly impressed by someone clearing a decently hard game without using savestates.

...Which is not to say I'm against save states or anything. I'd probably use them if I had a powerful enough computer to mame something worth putting a lot of time into (complete POS computer, here). Or to run DC Mars Matrix in Demul especially (I don't think any of the lighter emus (aka nullDC) support save states, also my computer couldn't even run nullDC, I don't think.).