Statistics, other data and information about shmup genre

[billzo]

Hello everyone! I'm trying to assemble some measurable and applicable data for people (like myself) who want to do a comprehensive review of this genre. I want to be able to have a place where accomplishments and other notable information about the genre as a whole are readily available.

In other words, what was the highest grossing shmup of all time? How large is this niche community compared to others? How often do large meet ups take place and where? What was the first shmup to have reached commercial success outside the arcades in the US?

Yes, I understand that what I'm asking for is very broad, but I don't think that's particularly a bad thing. For example, here's something I learned about Touhou, that it was actually inducted into the Guiness Book of World Records in 2010.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130424041 ... er-series/

Things like that are worthwhile to the genre in general because it gathers attention and shows that even individuals interested in shmups can make a large difference to our community.

What do you all have to share about this..?

[Xyga]

For example, here's something I learned about Touhou, that it was actually inducted into the Guiness Book of World Records in 2010.

Wrong start buddy.

Anyway some figures could be interesting yes, but figures are just figures and won't tell much about the reality of a 'niche' genre that's pretty much dead and from another 'time'.
Any comparison to the rest of the gaming world would be pointless IMHO.

That 'Guiness book' entry is mostly BS, that's what I believe the problem is with 'figures'.
If you want data reflecting the realty of the genre throughout its history, you'd better start refueling the DeLorean because any info you'll find in our present most likely won't be 'it'.

NB: Touhou isn't purely about shmups, it's a kind of marketplace with many commercial and fan-made products attracting kiddies with various interests ranging from actual video games to young males cosplaying as little girls. The video game genre 'shmup' it originally belongs to definitely isn't ranked first in the 'why do you like Touhou' poll.
(Also the kiddies will shriek at anyone not saying 'danmaku'. Careful.)

[billzo]

Alright, I realise I'm reaching a little.. If something like this isn't feasible, that's fine. I just figured it was worth a shot.

[Xyga]

Don't get me wrong I think it is worth really, what I mean is the task is huge because if you aim for realism/accuracy you will have to go back and collect data from the past decades.

Take a look at this for instance: http://www.shmup.com/?page=stat (use google translate, it helps a bit)
The graph shows the years of release of the 1356 shmups reviewed on that website.
It's not perfect, there are errors and it's not showing all shmups ever released of course, but it shows the trend over the years, roughly.
To be accurate we would need to add all missing titles and bring corrections (for instance regional releases can differ up to several years).
Only that is already a huge enterprise !

PS: for arcade games at least I think it's possible to extract some useable data from the MAME files.

[Ed Oscuro]

I took a few minutes to start writing a reply, gave up, walked around and pondered it some more. I think I have some ideas for you.

The short version: What is your actual objective here? You have just written a couple vague things which don't seem to me to translate immediately into something concrete.

The genre (like anything interesting) is full of contradictions. It is easy to get started playing and even get sucked into a groove, because few things look simpler or are more approachable than moving something about the screen with instant feedback and dodging obstacles. At the same time, to keep the interest of average players (let alone world-class talents and people with super reflexes) a lot of hidden depth has been added to many standouts of the genre. In short, this is not a genre that can ignore factors which complicate a variable comparing method of analysis. And some games have some complicated hidden rules and RNG effects which weren't well understood without an analysis of decompiled program code, or which are just obscure. On top of that, because it is an action game, "feel" means that there are factors a lot less well understood than simple DPS calculations. For example, see Pink Bullets editions.

The task of cataloging and preserving information is noble, but you really need to have a passion to keep going, let alone make a dent in it. A lot of information is out there, and with some good research skills you can find much of it. For example, the Strategy Forum is this way: http://shmups.system11.org/viewforum.php?f=5 Beyond that, how much personal perspective you manage to attain through playing, and how many points of comparison you have, will determine the outcome of the project. If I follow a common storyline - like "Gradius is appreciated for its good music and scenic boss/starscapes, and R-Type is well loved for its unique blend of memorization and strategy," I have only succeed in regurgitating some "common wisdom" which ultimately obscured the fact that any difference between the two series (let alone individual installments) is mainly one of degree and "what was first," not of type. All the things I listed here are found in most every entry of both series.

One more thing about the human factor: You will find a lot of information here about mostly Japanese-developed games focused on playing for score within arcade constraints (i.e., no infinitely repeatable scoring opportunities, limited lives), but not so many fans of Raptor: Call of the Shadows, Major Stryker, and only somewhat stronger advocacy for many C64-to-Amiga era European-made games (the one about getting hives, and one named after Hitman: Blood Money). In the right company, the dearth of attention paid to these games would be a high crime. And who's to say that people who like shooting games in the slow lane are wrong? Time and attention constraints say you probably have to choose a direction, but you shouldn't make the choice blindly. I know that I wouldn't take an article very seriously if it said that it needed to spend 1/3 of its space on American-made scrolling shooters for PC games, "just because" they were a springboard (along with platformer clones) towards modern gaming, unless the point was not to talk about shmups per se but to talk about how they fit into the larger history of things. At the same time, I wouldn't take any article about the history of shmups seriously if it ignored Xevious entirely, even if it was an exceptionally short branch of the shooting games evolutionary tree. Most everybody here is pretty well acquainted with the fact that these games are widely regarded as an evolutionary dead end; you can't improve on perfection.

Oh, there also is the matter of the hard work put into talking about these games over the years. There's that human factor again - while collecting all the information into one place sounds like a good idea, tone and also ownership issues can always cause some drama.

So, where to start? Find something you like to play and talk about that. Don't waste any time on stuff you don't like, IMO - once you've got enough of an idea where your interests lie.

But if your idea is to take all viewpoints and try to reduce them down to a common set of variables - well, I don't see that easily happening.

Alright, I realise I'm reaching a little..

To be blunt, whenever you have this feeling, you must take a second to consider exactly what your goals are and begin to whittle them down to something that's more likely to happen. It's not good enough to say "I want to do the perfect restrospective and review," because as I've hopefully explained, you have to make choices - things are too complicated to just jump in and pull all the right strands to the surface at once. If this was actually rocket science, setting a big goal would be nice. But this isn't rocket science - it's harder because there is no obviously agreed-upon standard of taste or even of comparison.

[billzo]

Take a look at this for instance: http://www.shmup.com/?page=stat (use google translate, it helps a bit)
The graph shows the years of release of the 1356 shmups reviewed on that website.

I really, really like this. I have some passive recognition with French, so maybe I'll even pick up some shmup French vocab while I'm there XD

But seriously, this is definitely a lot of what I'm looking for, so thank you very much!

To be blunt, whenever you have this feeling, you must take a second to consider exactly what your goals are and begin to whittle them down to something that's more likely to happen.

You're absolutely right. I very much appreciate what you're saying here. I'm very vague on what I've asked, and now that I think about it, I'm very vague on what I even want. I'm pretty new here and the amount of interaction and availability is a little overwhelming to me, but I'm loving the community and getting involved in all things shmup. That being said, I think I need to spend a little more time just hanging around and getting a better feel on the community as it is now before I tackle (or develop) any vested interests in the development of shmups as a genre.

There's a lot, like A LOT, of just like meta-data involved in shmups that complicate the matter many times over. I'll definitely try to re-evaluate what I want to do. Maybe in the future I'll have a better game plan and will reapproach this.

Regardless, any resources that anyone has similar to what Xyga provided would be stellar.

[japanesesuperplayer]

That 'Guiness book' entry is mostly BS.

The term fan-made is pretty incorrect, and the number of games is incorrect (2 were fighters, two were about taking pictures, and one was arkanoid) but I still don't think there's any doujin shmup series with as many games in a single series as Touhou. Next highest I can think of is Yakouga which is currently at 6. I can't even think of any arcade games with as many games as Touhou. I'm not even sure if Gradius would match it if you included spinoffs like parodius and otomedius and whatnot.

NB: Touhou isn't purely about shmups, it's a kind of marketplace with many commercial and fan-made products attracting kiddies with various interests ranging from actual video games to young males cosplaying as little girls. The video game genre 'shmup' it originally belongs to definitely isn't ranked first in the 'why do you like Touhou' poll.
(Also the kiddies will shriek at anyone not saying 'danmaku'. Careful.)

I don't get how this was relevant at all. Also every community has its stupid people. Like for example, I know this one forum about video games where half the community just circlejerks over hardware, cardboard, and scanlines, but then there's still the others who actually play and discuss the games because they're good games.

[Lilium]

Ehmm... in case you haven't noticed, not everyone is autistic enough to play games like these nor does everyone even have the physical capabilities to do so. Please don't bully people for collecting things they wouldn't touch with a fire poker.

Please check your priviledge and stop being so ableist.

[Kollision]

Ehmm... in case you haven't noticed, not everyone is autistic enough to play games like these

[Squire Grooktook]

hurr hurr autism

*canned laughter*

[billzo]

Just for the record... japanesesuperplayer mistakenly quoted me instead of Xyga :3

[Ed Oscuro]

To be blunt, whenever you have this feeling, you must take a second to consider exactly what your goals are and begin to whittle them down to something that's more likely to happen.

You're absolutely right. I very much appreciate what you're saying here. I'm very vague on what I've asked, and now that I think about it, I'm very vague on what I even want. I'm pretty new here and the amount of interaction and availability is a little overwhelming to me, but I'm loving the community and getting involved in all things shmup. That being said, I think I need to spend a little more time just hanging around and getting a better feel on the community as it is now before I tackle (or develop) any vested interests in the development of shmups as a genre.

Glad I didn't offend you. I don't see any problem with being a little optimistic sometimes - you have a good outlook on this.

If anything, I think what the genre needs is detailed history of games (hard to get for some sources), always can use more good publicity for good things, and more interest in classic titles. Whatever else you can think of is probably good too - it's just good to start small and always be aware that the bums are trying to pull you down. Don't let them!

NB: Touhou isn't purely about shmups, it's a kind of marketplace with many commercial and fan-made products attracting kiddies with various interests ranging from actual video games to young males cosplaying as little girls. The video game genre 'shmup' it originally belongs to definitely isn't ranked first in the 'why do you like Touhou' poll.
(Also the kiddies will shriek at anyone not saying 'danmaku'. Careful.)

I don't get how this was relevant at all. Also every community has its stupid people. Like for example, I know this one forum about video games where half the community just circlejerks over hardware, cardboard, and scanlines, but then there's still the others who actually play and discuss the games because they're good games.

We'll see who's laughing after the apocalypse and you beg us for a monitor to play on! That'll be one...million...dollars! Per credit.

I guess you're not really a party to these discussions - obviously - but considering that some of us talk rather loudly about the dangers of rabid collection (also pot) we have a pretty different outlook than, say, Neo-Geo Forums' typical superposters. The hardware stuff is pretty much part and parcel of the genre - no way to talk about strategies in some games without it, and playing with a bilinear filter on - ug, kill it with fire.

[Softdrink 117]

I don't know about "highest grossing," but Ikaruga is probably (unfortunately) one of the most commercially prolific shooting games of the last few years. I'm sure it's not an all time high, but it's certainly a very widespread game; it exists on five platforms (NAOMI, Dreamcast, Gamecube, Xbox 360, and now PC) and always manages to get praise from the mass media whenever it pops up again, which is something few other shmups can say.

As far as meetups and get-togethers, much of that information can be found in the Shmupmeets subforum. There are small to midsize gatherings fairly often (in California for example there are meets every month or so, although they're spread all up and down the state), but I don't believe there has ever been a 'large' STG get together in the sense of a proper convention or tournament with a couple hundred attendees (although such a thing would be awesome, and I hope that one can happen someday soon).

[Ed Oscuro]

I don't know about "highest grossing," but Ikaruga is probably (unfortunately) one of the most commercially prolific shooting games of the last few years.

The recent past slips through our fingers. More time has passed since Ikaruga was released than passed between the introduction of the Neo Geo and Ikaruga. There was little more than half a decade between the "golden age" of the genre, which most STGT shooters are pulled from, and the release of Ikaruga.

Back at the time these games were really popular, the '60s was just something that happened thirty years ago.

[Softdrink 117]

I don't know about "highest grossing," but Ikaruga is probably (unfortunately) one of the most commercially prolific shooting games of the last few years.

The recent past slips through our fingers. More time has passed since Ikaruga was released than passed between the introduction of the Neo Geo and Ikaruga. There was little more than half a decade between the "golden age" of the genre, which most STGT shooters are pulled from, and the release of Ikaruga.

Back at the time these games were really popular, the '60s was just something that happened thirty years ago.

I'm honestly not sure what you're trying to say here. As I said, it's just a game that has been ported many times with good reception each time, and especially recently (with the Xbox 360 and PC releases) has managed to get a fair amount of positive press from normal media. I'm not trying to make the game into something that it isn't, and I'm definitely not trying to suggest that it's one of the most successful of all time (as I am absolutely certain that title belongs to something from the Golden Age of arcades, though I have no idea what it is).

I'm not even really a fan of the game, just making that point that it's one of the only shmups that you actually see outside of this forum nowadays, depressingly enough.

[Ed Oscuro]

Oh yeah, I tend to forget about the constant flogging of old games. Carry on then.

I don't think I'm being too mysterious here, though; I wrote fairly clearly, didn't I? Ikaruga definitely doesn't belong from any age of arcades, unless you want to talk about the Great Decline. I gave you some context here: Most STGTs have featured games from around the 1994-1998-ish period; by 2001 we were definitely and irreversibly well into the decline. But it still seems wrong to talk about this as a game of "the last few years" in any context. Tomb Raider got a Steam release just under two years ago. It's probably doing just as well as Ikaruga. I don't mean to quibble with your general comment that Ikaruga is pretty visible to this day, when many games since haven't been.

I hate to say it, but I anticipated this in my megacomment earlier. When we say some game or another is or isn't worthy of being mentioned, we are pushing our ideas onto others. That can be good and it can be bad - probably it is unavoidably a mix of both. But it does seem to me that if we're going to look to the spirit of what the OP was talking about, we certainly can think critically about what sorts of things we are going to talk about. So I don't have a quibble with your particular point, but I'm asking you to consider what relevance it has to the bigger discussion here (especially since none of us seems to care especially much about Ikaruga to begin with, like Twin Galaxies or Guinness World Records).

[Softdrink 117]

Not sure where the hostility is coming from, especially since I made it very clear that I don't believe it is a contender for the title and have no idea which older games were successful enough to be in the running. I'm not "flogging" anything; and I have been openly admitting my ignorance of the financial successes or failures of older games throughout this discussion.

Honestly it was just a passing thought; it is a very visible game right now and has been for a while so I figured it would come up at some point in this discussion. I figured it was relevant given the sheer number of re-releases on increasingly popular platforms, and the fact that it has managed to obtain a popular foothold outside of the normal STG niche.

[NTSC-J]

I don't know the numbers, but if I had to gamble, I'd put my money on Ikaruga being the most successful shooter of the last 20 years. Maybe that's more of a commentary on how weak the past couple decades have been financially for this genre, but I don't think it's a stretch to call that game one of the biggest hits, even if the early Gradius ports probably out-sold it.

[Xyga]

What about the pcb sales + game center revenues of the bigger arcade shmups names during the heydays of arcade shooting ?
Take R-Type, Raiden, or even Strikers series - which were found almost anywhere in the world - try to imagine the arcade + console generated revenue over the roughly two decades those major series were active, and maybe you'll get some surprising figures.
I'd love to see the full figures, but those probably were known only of Irem, Seibu, Psikyo, third party editors and the like.

EDIT: some wiki figures for arcade games where the oldies take the lead;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcade_gam ... ideo_games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_be ... mes#Arcade
From an other age though.

[billzo]

EDIT: some wiki figures for arcade games where the oldies take the lead;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcade_gam ... ideo_games

Holy shit Space Invades!

Even if that's from a different time, that's still ridiculously impressive.