What is exactly the appeal in Yagawa's games?

[DestroyTheCore]

I know this is a very delicate question in this forum, but I was wondering why Yagawa's games are so highly regarded. I simply want an explanation and I am willing to understand those shmups. I am usually interested in Cave's games when it comes to shmups, so the contrast with Yagawa's is huge.

Scoring in YGW games relies heavily on very specific methods: secrets in stages, enemies that must be killed in a certain way, the ranking system, boss milking, etc. The problem is I have the feeling scoring methods can only be found in strategy guides and there is only one specific way to do it (in the case of Battle Garegga). I might not be aware of the real depth behind those shmups, so forgive any ignorance.

Please enlighten me.

Yagama is life. Yagawa is love.

[Erppo]

Probably because they're easier to learn.

[Xyga]

It's mostly about suicide.

[Pretas]

Autism, and the perceived exclusiveness of understanding all the obscure secrets and techniques that almost no one could figure out themselves. People like to feel that they're part of a special little club, even if all the scoring and rank information has been made publicly available.

At least, this is the attitude of Western fans. Japanese hi-scorers tend to be guarding of any new techniques they discover.

It's important to remember that Yagawa has openly acknowledged that Garegga's use of rank was a cynical ploy to boost operator profits. This was done by escalating the game's difficulty to unmanageable levels for anyone who goes into it uninformed, and holds down the fire button all the time while collecting every item, as you would in most any other STG of the era.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

They're definitely interesting to watch because of all the ways the RNG can screw the player over. I really have no interest in playing them outside of Muchi Muchi Pork which plays closer to a standard Cave game anyway.

[Strikers1945guy]

YGW games are just far more interesting. The scoring, bullet patterns, risk & reward of medal chaining, the gigantic amount of secrets. YGW games are a perfect balance of the "take only what you need" philosophy. Unlike cave games where it's a better strategy to just hoover in everything while stockpiling bombs and lives, YGW shmups tend to require balance.
i don't really see the appeal of enemy chaining like in DDP, it's boring and tedious as hell. Everytime I play Ibara for example, while the strategies I have remain the same, shit gets way out of whack and I need to rely heavily on reflexes and the ability to react on the fly especially when chaining your 10K medals. It's not so much just... stick to the same path to chain the same popcorn enemies that pop out at the same place every single time stuff.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

The Raiden Fighters series really does the secrets things a bit better IMO. And for Jet(and maybe 2 since I'm not as familiar with that one), there is none of that drop a medal but pick up other ones to save your chain, so there's more risk in the medalling as well compared to the Yagawa stuff where you can potentially save your chain.

Most of the Yagawa secrets tend to be more bomb something for medals.


In addition to the obvious Garegga, Batrider, Bakraid which are usually the ones mentioned here from when he was at Raizing, He did Ibara, Pink Sweets, and Muchi Muchi Pork for Cave. He also had a lot of the modifications to DFK for Black Label and he did something for Akaia Katana and ESPGaluda II's port(I think the arrange)

[Blackbird]

I think Yagawa games are interesting because they allow more "rubber banding" than other shooters. Let's look at Batrider for example. You only have 3 lives at any one time, and you need to suicide in order to get the highest score. Lots of times, you're playing on one life, so the level of tension in the game is always high. However, even if you fall behind in lives, extends in Yagawa games are relatively easy to get compared to most other shooting games. If you know how to score really well, you can gain extra lives fairly frequently, and can recover from mistakes with some tight play. I think that's the appeal of Yagawa games; that feeling that you're always walking on the razor's edge, and that it's possible to come back and win even if you're on your last life.

[n0rtygames]

Yagawa's games are so highly regarded.

From a design perspective, you have to understand that Yagawa (and he admits this) designed a lot of these systems purely for the purposes of making money. That is the objective of an arcade game - to take peoples money.

But it's not just unfair for the sake of being unfair. It takes a lot of goofing around to drive YGW's games to impossible states. In most cases, they just get a bit "angry" at you. A lot of the things in YGW games are overstated and people find them daunting. Ultimately what it comes down to is just blowing stuff up and having a good time. That's really the core of it all, just blowing stuff up.

Really all of the advanced stuff that you hear people talk about is exploiting a system. It's a lot like bunnyhopping in a game like Quake where you are using the mathematics behind strafing and turning in the air to gain additional speed so you can move faster than your opponents. In a Yagawa game, you are simply exploiting your understanding of the underlying mechanics of the game to keep the points flowing in. The "complex" mechanics and abundance of secrets in a yagawa game don't make it any less about shooting the enemy and getting rewarded with shiny things.

Also - lots of milking. I tend to joke about how awesome milking is but honestly it's kinda shit. Again, it's just exploitation of mechanics and general brokenness.

When a player feels like they're breaking the game and doing some special trick to make their score better than everyone elses that is within the rules (i.e not entering a cheat code or game breaking bug) then they feel kinda rewarded for their efforts. YGW games give you a lot of these - because they're kinda broken.

Sometimes, people find something broken fun. That's it. "Haha, that's awesome. I'll keep doing that."

I really don't understand the Ikeda vs Yagawa thing that goes on here at times. You guys should just enjoy both.

[cave hermit]

Yagawa games aren't just games, they are holy relics that link us to the great spirit of YGW himself. With every medal we chain, our souls slowly become one with Yagawa. With every suicide, our life-force drains into Yagawa. As we continue to play and improve, we slowly change and reform ourselves in our Lord's image. We shall become a single collective mind, spread across a sea of Yagawa.
What is a drop of rain, compared to the storm? What is a thought, compared to a mind? Our unity is full of wonder, which your tiny individualism... cannot even conceive.

And when the transformation of the believers is complete, we shall all travel to the great Pachinko Parlor in the sky and have mass orgies amongst ourselves. From the pile of Yagawas, the sound of balls slapping against flesh will echo across the horizon in a grand symphony as the ripe scent of armpit sweat consumes the air. It will be glorious.


To be perfectly honest at this point I'm starting to forget why I love Yagawa games so much. I just know that I like them for some reason, but I can't really remember why anymore.

[Jonst]

I enjoy both ikeda and yagawa games (now) for a long time I didn't realize why games like Ibara/mmp/pink sweets felt different... Because I didn't realize for ages that they were yagawa games. For a long time I thought they were not fun, tedious and impossible! But with perseverance and more understanding of the game system, and it's similar for all of his games, that they do, with practice become very fun. I'm enjoying his games more than ever and for most of the reasons most people here have already said.

[chempop]

Also - lots of milking. I tend to joke about how awesome milking is but honestly it's kinda shit. Again, it's just exploitation of mechanics and general brokenness.

Only in some cases. I think there is a big different between destroying every single part of a boss before taking them down compared something like Pink Sweets where you shoot destructible bullets for an extra 5 minutes per stage. Both are milking, but the destruction % is awesome fun. Every little gun and section of a boss can be blown apart, unlike cave bosses which are just big blobs that bullets spew from.

There is an insane amount of freedom with how to approach a yagawa game. Based on your skills you make decisions that best suit your ability. Wanna get a dirty garegga 1CC, play golden bat and avoid most items. Or a dirty batrider advance 1CC, play shorty and speedkill bosses. Wanna go for the letter (+10mil) score, milk bosses and learn the dozens of tricks in each stage.

Cave has survival play and score play which can differ to an extent, but both require the same general rules to succeed (don’t die and save bombs).

I can play 5 credits of a Yagawa game and each time it’s a different experience.

[n0rtygames]

compared something like Pink Sweets where you shoot destructible bullets for an extra 5 minutes per stage. Both are milking, but the destruction % is awesome fun.

Yeah, this is definitely true. Blowing up bosses in a particular order and destroying parts is common in a lot of shooters - but very much a focus in YGW games.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

I don't consider destroying boss parts to be a form of milking, but it's definitely fun. The boss does tend to get angrier at you when you do it by giving you harder patterns after, but in some cases it makes things easier too even in the same game(MMP stage 1 and 3 bosses get a lot worse while the 2 and 4 bosses get easier for it). ESPGaluda series also tends to have some boss destruction stuff in it too.

With every suicide, our life-force drains into Yagawa.

The MMP loop requirement on the arcade version is kind of weird compared to what you'd expect from Yagawa. I know Ikeda helped some with that as well, but was it Yagawa or Ikeda that did the looping requirement? I guess it still applies even when you derp going for it even if its not intentional then, maybe even more so.

[Shepardus]

i don't really see the appeal of enemy chaining like in DDP, it's boring and tedious as hell. Everytime I play Ibara for example, while the strategies I have remain the same, shit gets way out of whack and I need to rely heavily on reflexes and the ability to react on the fly especially when chaining your 10K medals. It's not so much just... stick to the same path to chain the same popcorn enemies that pop out at the same place every single time stuff.

I agree with that, there tends to be a lot more randomness in Yagawa's games than in DDP and other Cave games, but at the same time it's set up so that RNG (usually) doesn't screw you over if you know what you're doing since most scoring doesn't rely on as strict timing and movements as DDP's chaining system.

I also like how Yagawa games encourage an active gameplay style with lots of bomb usage for scoring purposes; it's a lot more interesting in my opinion than hoarding bombs and lives for survival purposes. In many games bombing is practically an unused mechanic if you're good enough to not need them to survive, and I feel that that's kind of a waste of whatever cool bomb effects people come up with.

Also, I like the style of many of the boss fights in Yagawa's games, with a ton of individual parts to destroy. Not enough games are like that, despite it not being all that complicated a concept.

There is an insane amount of freedom with how to approach a yagawa game. Based on your skills you make decisions that best suit your ability. Wanna get a dirty garegga 1CC, play golden bat and avoid most items. Or a dirty batrider advance 1CC, play shorty and speedkill bosses. Wanna go for the letter (+10mil) score, milk bosses and learn the dozens of tricks in each stage.

This I think is really important to the appeal of Yagawa games. Though it seems like you have to play for score to survive since extends are linked to score, there are actually tons of viable choices depending on your skill level, and each choice has a certain risk and reward element to it. You can go for low rank and relatively few suicides, and from there incorporate individual scoring tricks and gradually put a more advanced plan together. Batrider especially has a lot of variety to it with its secret bosses and different team compositions.

[Xyga]

Can we really explain to someone why a game on the level of a YGW shmup is great if he couldn't see it by himself ?

Sorry if it's a bit offensive comment DestroyTheCore, but beyond personal taste or (dis)approval of X specific point, there's objectivity.
It's not the wannabe movie critics thread here, we're talking about shmups, there are fewer 'standards' to good shmups and good video games in general.

I mean; I don't like Futari BL but I've played it enough to understand it's a really great game, and I just believe it would be kind of silly to ask the shmupcrowd "what's so good about it?"

[chum]

the raizing games look and sound nice, the cave ones give me a headache

fun factor could be higher otherwise. garegga first half zzzzzz...

call me a cynic but i think the appeal for many people is "lol this game is so unique and deep and totally genius cus everyone else says so" but the actual players must feel drawn towards the somewhat convoluted and unintuitive game plans/"routes". of note is also how much different ships can change the game, something that's sorely lacking in many other stg

i find touhou 10x more appealing since they're unconventional but also FUN which is the most important in the long run

[KAI]

They are great cause: Medals, Bombs, Rank, Randomness and the perfect risk/reward system.

[Xyga]

OMG chum, you post gave me cancer.

[MathU]

I think whenever a game has adaptive difficulty but doesn't give any indication to the player over how it might work that that is pretty bad design. Especially when major difficulty modifiers aren't particularly intuitive, it presents a barrier to entry that can be very off-putting and wastes a lot of a player's time when they're just looking for a good action experience. I'm sure most Yagawa fans are willing to acknowledge this too.

That said, once you do gain possession of this necessary esoteric knowledge, his games are really interesting to play both for survival and for score because it always feels like there's something new to discover. Probably the most enjoyable aspect of Yagawa games for me is not in fact their medal chaining systems (which are definitely one of most fun scoring systems around all on their own). For me it's all the multi-segmented bosses and enemies and how reactive their attacks are when you destroy this part here or that part there. It really is fun to pick apart a Yagawa boss, even if you're not really playing for score, because they get more exciting the more precisely you shoot them. Other shooters do this to varying degrees too but I think his games do it exceptionally well.

[Shepardus]

I think whenever a game has adaptive difficulty but doesn't give any indication to the player over how it might work that that is pretty bad design. Especially when major difficulty modifiers aren't particularly intuitive, it presents a barrier to entry that can be very off-putting and wastes a lot of a player's time when they're just looking for a good action experience. I'm sure most Yagawa fans are willing to acknowledge this too.

I can agree with this, part of the reason I put off on playing Battle Garegga for so long was because of its obtuseness. Once I got around to learning it, I found that it was worth the effort, but it would be nice if I didn't have to search external resources to figure that out.

[Imhotep]

he creates interesting stgs by interrelating the fundamentals (lives, bombs, medals, weapons and enemy resistance), without using attached scoring systems like chaining.

one can still feel the molecules the whole experience is based on, almost down to the code, when playing his games. Little details like the letter digits and the recently published "difficulty selection" out of the attraction screen in Pink Sweets fit this attitude perfectly.

his shots do count, there's hardly player or enemy fire that isn't clearly based on individual bullets, clearly distinguishable down to impact and score value. Bombs are based on fragments that can be used as such.

his enemies are the opposite of large squid sprites releasing geometrically interesting bullet patterns. Every bullet is fired from a weapon with its own sprite and often animation and hp.

His bullet patterns are very simple yet efficient, for the greatest part based on a combination of aimed bullets and simple, non-aimed geometrical forms. This combination is the most interesting to dodge, imo. Muchi Muchi Pork might be the purest in this regard.

some of his game concepts seem completely crazy, but make sense as an experience, like keeping the chain in extremis in Battle Bakraid, hovering over enemies to harm them by presence alone, negating enemy shots in an orgy of firepower, diving into the very source of enemy fire. These mechanics address basic instincts.

I guess I could go on, I regard him as a true artist.

[Jaimers]

Because his games are fantastic accidents.

Sometimes it worked out and sometimes not so much.

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

Don't really see the appeal myself. Graphics in half of Yagawa's games are boring to pretty shite, especially the backgrounds and the entirety of Battle Garegga and Bakraid. Music's not so hot either, most stages tend to sound the same. Bullet patterns especially are unappealing and samey to me. Don't really understand how anyone could think that Raizing > Cave in this regard. For some reason, steering your ship feels sluggish in most Yagawa games. Also the hitboxes seem huge to me, which personally I don't like.

Anyway, not trying to be a badass here, just my two cents... if people are happy playing his games then I'm happy as well...

[trap15]

Don't really see the appeal myself. Graphics in half of Yagawa's games are boring to pretty shite, especially the backgrounds and the entirety of Battle Garegga and Bakraid. Music's not so hot either, most stages tend to sound the same.

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Are you blind and deaf?

[Xyga]

He is.

BURN THE HERETIC !!!

- among the most beautiful and refined low-res pixel art graphics ever, imaginative settings including fucking A steam/dieselpunk
- wonderful music tracks even back to Recca, fitting the setting perfectly in almost every level
- excellent gameplay doubled with incredibly intricate and hidden mechanics if you look for them like old school rpg side-quests
- manic but without fucking useless walls of bullets filling the screen for nothing from stage one to credits

Of course the YGW games aren't perfect, a few empty/ugly backgrounds, some tracks we could turn off (i.e Pink Sweets stage 1 2), some sluggish ships (not all and definitely not every game), and questionable rank control methods you are almost forced to use and learn with a guide (so what? thousands of games require guides)

I can understand people don't like those for various reasons, taste or because they just can't get into the weird mechanics, or some of the other flaws... still, none of those are major flaws overshadowing the fantastic package each of these games is.
Saying otherwise, questioning the pharaonic quality of the YGW games, that do stand at the top of the shmup world with Cave productions, is profoundly dishonest and unacceptable !

I'm lighting the fires now.

[Some-Mist]

yagawa games actually have some of my favorite soundtracks....

specifically battle garegga and stage 4 and arrange stage 7

namiki bro

[Strikers1945guy]

Don't really see the appeal myself. Graphics in half of Yagawa's games are boring to pretty shite, especially the backgrounds and the entirety of Battle Garegga and Bakraid. Music's not so hot either, most stages tend to sound the same.

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Are you blind and deaf?

Yaaaaaa Garegga's music is GODLY and the backgrounds in that game are fucking gorgeous.

[Xyga]

fighting Black Heart with Stab and Stomp playing has always been one of the greatest pants wetters in the history of shmups.

[Icarus]

fighting Black Heart 2 with Stab and Stomp playing has always been one of the greatest pants wetters in the history of shmups.