Which shmup killed "shmups"

[Pretas]

Super Meat Boy is basically based around grinding away at short 10 second segments endlessly till you memorize enough to clear them, and it seems to be strangely popluar with "casual players". Admittedly it has a mammoth amount of content, but most of it is just bite sized arrangements of the same theme.

Super Meat Boy isn't at all comparable to something like Ginga Force. It's a very different thing to repeatedly practice a ten-second miniature level than a five-minute one, much less a continuous thirty-minute run through an entire arcade game. You don't have to continuously perform for long enough to make dying and resetting actually feel like a setback. In such a game, you might as well be playing with emulator savestates. Also, SMB has very simple controls and objectives, and reaped the popularity benefits of riding the wave of scare-cam Let's Play "angry gamer" Youtube meme culture that I Wanna Be the Guy spearheaded.

[Squire Grooktook]

It's a very different thing to repeatedly practice a ten-second miniature level than a five-minute one

I don't know, it's quite close. There are even a few Super Meat Boy derivatives on the market (They Bleed Pixels, for instance) which have done fairly well and offer slightly longer stages. To be sure, SMB's ultra bite sized is a large part of why it was successful with the "true casual" base, but I feel that tinkering with it a bit could result in something that appeals to slightly more hardcore players.

[dpful]

About throwing different modes into shmups for greater appeal: shienryu on the playstation had a great concept. Basically joke modes- just for fun and probably better for multiplayer than some kind of "balanced" multiplayer. If under defeat had a bunch of trashed silly modes for multiplayers to dink around with, I bet it would make a difference. For example.

[BryanM]

and it was just extra copies of THAT game, still sitting on the shelf, that made that KIND of game (Atari cartridges) unappealing.

I bothered to learn how to play E.T. this year, and, sadly, I've got to say it's one of the best 2600 games there is. That's not to say it's good: "A good 2600 game is something recognizable as a game."

SHMUPs have a number of factors going against them:

* Long tail of the genre lifecyle. Each genre has a bellcurve for its popularity, with a breakout hit (say, Super Mario Brothers) kicking the initial spike. Tons of games enter the market, to remain viable they have to become more complex (which makes it harder for newbies to adopt) and therefore more expensive to make, then eventually it crashes and everyone moves on. As pretty much the oldest genre there is, any shoot them up is in direct competition with decades worth of games. You can at least feel some comfort from the knowledge DIKU clones like World of Warcraft have entered the downward slope as well. (In their case, Star Wars: The Old Republic would be their ET. MOST EXPENSIVE GAME OF ALL TIME, BIG TIME LICENSE... free to play two months later. Let us giggle and chortle at Everquest Next's prospects.)

* People almost only care about presentation. The screen layout by necessity limits things you can do.

I guess we've never seen a spectacular failure with SHMUPs, since the industry never tried to make them spectacular.

[mamboFoxtrot]

(Don't we already have a "why are shmups niche" thread? But I don't blame anyone for being too lazy to dig it up.)

Another thing that throws people off with STGs is the idea of completing a game. If there's an end to the game, then people want to see it. If you can credit-feed to the end, then that's it. If you can't, then they'll get super-frustrated trying over and over again to get there.

I think one of the reasons Geometry Wars and its ilk are comparatively more popular is that they don't have a defined end. It makes it a lot easier to just enjoy the "sport" of seeing how far you can go.

[Lord Satori]

I'm pretty sure Cave killed shmups, guys.

[IseeThings]

Super Meat Boy is basically based around grinding away at short 10 second segments endlessly till you memorize enough to clear them, and it seems to be strangely popluar with "casual players". Admittedly it has a mammoth amount of content, but most of it is just bite sized arrangements of the same theme.

Super Meat Boy isn't at all comparable to something like Ginga Force. It's a very different thing to repeatedly practice a ten-second miniature level than a five-minute one, much less a continuous thirty-minute run through an entire arcade game. You don't have to continuously perform for long enough to make dying and resetting actually feel like a setback. In such a game, you might as well be playing with emulator savestates. Also, SMB has very simple controls and objectives, and reaped the popularity benefits of riding the wave of scare-cam Let's Play "angry gamer" Youtube meme culture that I Wanna Be the Guy spearheaded.

That's the point I was making earlier tho, pretty much any modern game that is considered 'hard' is basically this.

Of course modern developers also team this mechanic up with a 'pay for more lives' (or wait a day if you don't want to pay) one.

So that is what people are conditioned to see as hard, something they can eventually pass either through memorization, or getting lucky one time out of 100... The games are designed around it, and encourage it. You get a couple of hundred levels to grind through, and then never touch the game again until you can buy some new levels for.

Ask them to play a shmup for 30+ minutes solid and they'll laugh at you and tell them it's not a good thing if they have to credit feed it, and they'll laugh at you.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Many car games only get shorter as you play them better. What time attack is all about. All the best Sega games are designed to be "sped up" by the player. Then how easy did any of you find Teacher Hare's times to beat in Kuru Kuru Kururin challenge mode?

[Kollision]

Ask them to play a shmup for 30+ minutes solid and they'll laugh at you and tell them it's not a good thing if they have to credit feed it, and they'll laugh at you.

I just got a strong Piper Laurie vibe from this part.

they're all gonna laugh at you

[bsidwell]

I killed shmups, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

[Sinful]

I think the end of shmups were with R-Type Final & Gradius V. Those were really the last big budget shmups on current consoles. And if the biggest names in shmups with the best marketing and budget couldn't rake in enough cash, then yeah, the shmup genre is dead. And why we have still don't have R-Type Super Final, and Gradius "I'm not dead yet" 6 by Square Soft, lol.

As to why Raiden is the only shmup still alive and kicking? Well that one is very simple. It's called "Raiden." Nuff said. As in, no one named that is ever a failure.

[Heavy Viper]

As to why Raiden is the only shmup still alive and kicking? Well that one is very simple. It's called "Raiden." Nuff said. As in, no one named that is ever a failure.

[cave hermit]

The problem is the modern consumer doesn't "get" this genre anymore; the average gamer will balk at the thought of paying $60 for an arcade game that "only" has 5-7 stages for a total of about 30 minutes. The point of the average modern game is to just get to the end, regardless of how many continues you use, regardless of what difficulty you set the game to. Shmups expect the player to play the same stages over and over to optimize scoring and get as far as you can without continues. Most consumers will judge shmups by the same standard most modern games are judged (despite the fact that's like comparing apples and oranges), and criticize the game for being too hard, too simplistic, and most damningly, way too short since you can just credit feed to get to the end in less than a hour. The idea of a single shmup killing the whole genre is idiotic: exactly how would the release of one bad game ruin the entire market? Times have changed, consumers have become more passive when it comes to games, but shmups for the most part have not made an attempt to cater to the evolving (or devolving) market. Personally I don't want shmups to change, I want them to keep catering to hardcore fans in the way they have so far, but if shmups don't change, they're going to have to stick to the far more open minded digital/indie market. I don't think that the release of big name STG's like Gradius and Raiden will stop, but I really don't think there's any chance of them coming out as physical releases in the future.