What to do when a Shmup has unlimited Continues

[GaiaSeed]

Hi. I have gotten into the shmup genre lately and and am loving it. I'm collecting for PS1, Saturn, Dreamcast, and Xbox 360. I just got Salamander Deluxe on the Saturn. #2 lets me have unlimited lives. When I beat it the first time, it gave me an option on Loop 2 to have a set amount of credits. But once I turned the Saturn off, I had to beat it again all over with unlimited credits just to get that limited option back.

I don't understand why they make it so easy for you to beat the game. For these games with unlimited continues, you don't have to play and you will still beat the game. You just have to keep on pressing continue. So what do you do in these situations? Of course I'm sure some just say they try to beat it on one credit. But the thing is most people are not disciplined enough to stop. I feel like it takes away a lot of the fun.

For the games on 360 and Dreamcast, which games do you know of that don't have unlimited lives?

[Mero]

Don't use the continues

/thread

[drunkninja24]

Well, I know Under Defeat (DC and 360) and DOJ on 360 kind of lock down the continues available until you've put in a certain amount of time into the game. I'm sure there's more, but those two stick out in my head atm.

The main thing to consider in your head when you have unlimited continues is that you haven't "beaten" the game, you've only seen the stages and the challenges. Seeing them and actually overcoming them are two totally different things.

[Jonst]

I generally try not to use more than 3 continues to learn a game. As people have said before, it's necessary to use some to see what lies ahead and learn later stages. As you progress, try and clear a game within 2 and then eventually 1cc

[pegboy]

Like most on the forum, I don't consider the game to have been beaten unless it was done ONLY on the original credit. Anything beyond the first credit is a practice run. They reset your score to zero when you continue for a reason. Score does matter.

[Squire Grooktook]

Its important to understand the score reset concept. Score represents your mastery of the game. So having a score of 0 due to continuing essentially means you didn't beat the game, even if you just saw the ending. It's similar to say, the "rooms explored" % you'd see in a Metroidvania save file. You need to have your score in tact in order to have truly beaten the game, hence the 1cc.

[Kaspal]

i usually use continues (if available) on the very fist runs, just to see the ending. After that, i impose myself the challenge of the 1CC, so it doesn't matter if the game has infinite continues, i just dont use them.

[LordHypnos]

I think people have pretty much covered the unlimited continues question.

As far as Dreamcast games go, Mars Matrix starts you with limited continues. You can buy more continues if you want (up to infinite continues), but I'd recommend buying the "score attack" (practice modes), instead. I know Gunbird 2 does give you infinite continues. Not sure about the other official shmup releases. If you want to count DC indie games, Fast Striker limits you to like 3 or something initially and gradually gives you up to--IIRC--7. Sturmwind "normal" mode gives you unlimited continues, while arcade mode gives you only 1.

[shmuppyLove]

Most (all?) of the Cave 360 releases have a "score attack" mode for submitting scores to the online leaderboards. There are no continues.

[chempop]

I think Layer Section on saturn “only” gives you 10 credits.

[null1024]

I think Layer Section on saturn “only” gives you 10 credits.

You get 5 by default. Really, I think that's a good tradeoff -- enough to make the game seem beatable for someone who isn't even thinking about the 1CC mindset, but not enough to let the player just breeze through the game.

was approaching a 5cc in that game, but I keep making stupid, avoidable mistakes early on [at this point, I shouldn't lose any lives before stage 4, and yet I do]

[Mortificator]

^ RayForce's rank is savage, so don't take those early deaths so hard.

As for Salamander, all this one credit talk ignores that it wasn't designed for a single credit, or indeed, a single player. The game's focus is co-op.

[GaiaSeed]

So I guess the question now is how much percent of shumps give you unlimited lives? It seems that most of mine don't, but a few of mine do. Do most of yours give you unlimited credits?

[Ed Oscuro]

Lives and credits refer to separate things, of course.

It also depends on how the games are set up. Many have DIP switch options to start you off with wacky life stocks (I have it on good authority that this is sometimes called "Dick Stock," apparently in reference to WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS - outside of a Gradius game, I mean) like setting 0 lives remaining, or maybe 5. Many boards also have a free play option, though I think it's rare that this is used for unlimited lives, and usually saves players from having to coin in (Raiden Fighters Jet score attempts are a bit quicker to play this way). Then there's the "Continue on final stage" option seen in some games. I think there's yet another semi-relevant common DIP switch setting that I'm not remembering at the moment.

But back to the original post - many console ports (and at least a few A-grade arcade releases) track time played to determine when to unlock various ships / characters, but I think some demand you actually have to play well (i.e. no continues) to unlock certain options. Not sure if Gradius V is like this - it unlocks something when you complete the game, but I think that lets you start off on previous stages. A long game honestly should have that option though. Probably a more relevant example would be something like the Raiden II / DX ports on PlayStation.

The ultimate goal is still what the Squire says - score well and maintain your Attitude For Gains.

[FRO]

I might get shot on-site for this, but here goes. I think ALL shmups should include unlimited continues right out of the chute, and then give players an option to turn that off, scale it back to a certain number, whatever they choose. Games are about fun, and some people don't care about score. I have only recently begun to care about score, so for all these years, I've been playing shmups to "complete" them, in the sense of either reaching the end in a game I may never master (G-Darius, for example), or completing a 1CC in a game I've put considerable time into learning and mastering. Score is great, and is an important aspect of the genre's design, but shmups are no longer infinite loops for a reason. Who wants to slog through all the levels in a 1942-esque game any more? Not me! I'd rather have 6-10 well designed levels with interesting scenery, good AI, cool powerups, good enemy design, and a killer boss. Give me all the options at my disposal to maximize score, milk the boss, gain rank, etc. but give me those continues so I CAN CHOOSE how I want to play. If you want to make a game that punishes me for continuing by making the game harder, or what have you, that's fine. But give me the choice. If I want to be a purist and go strictly for score and/or 1CC, good for me. If not, and I just want to play through the game and see it through to the end, let me do that as well, because I may just come back to it later to do the other stuff.

[S_Fang]

I might get shot on-site for this, but here goes. I think ALL shmups should include unlimited continues right out of the chute, and then give players an option to turn that off, scale it back to a certain number, whatever they choose. Games are about fun, and some people don't care about score. I have only recently begun to care about score, so for all these years, I've been playing shmups to "complete" them, in the sense of either reaching the end in a game I may never master (G-Darius, for example), or completing a 1CC in a game I've put considerable time into learning and mastering. Score is great, and is an important aspect of the genre's design, but shmups are no longer infinite loops for a reason. Who wants to slog through all the levels in a 1942-esque game any more? Not me! I'd rather have 6-10 well designed levels with interesting scenery, good AI, cool powerups, good enemy design, and a killer boss. Give me all the options at my disposal to maximize score, milk the boss, gain rank, etc. but give me those continues so I CAN CHOOSE how I want to play. If you want to make a game that punishes me for continuing by making the game harder, or what have you, that's fine. But give me the choice. If I want to be a purist and go strictly for score and/or 1CC, good for me. If not, and I just want to play through the game and see it through to the end, let me do that as well, because I may just come back to it later to do the other stuff.

[Pretas]

I might get shot on-site for this, but here goes. I think ALL shmups should include unlimited continues right out of the chute, and then give players an option to turn that off, scale it back to a certain number, whatever they choose. Games are about fun, and some people don't care about score.

The problem is that if many inexperienced casuals aren't forced to play with zero or limited continues for at least a decent amount of time before they unlock more, they'll complete the game on their first "try," feel gypped about having "finished" it so fast, and complain on the internet that the game sucks because it's too short and easy. i.e. "There's no challenge: you can just keep continuing every time you die!"

I'm not saying that all newbies or casuals will act this way, but enough do to make it a major issue. At the very least, the player should have to log about 5 hours of in-game time to unlock unlimited credits (and more ideally, the game would only give out 10 credits per run maximum).

If I had my way, all arcade-to-console ports would be structured like the Xbox version of Metal Slug 3: Zero continues no matter how long you play, but with the ability to begin from any stage you've reached. Ginga Force comes close by also not offering any continues whatsoever, which is made more forgiving by the game's designed-for-console, "one stage at a time" structure.

[trap15]

Don't use the continues

/thread

[Shepardus]

I might get shot on-site for this, but here goes. I think ALL shmups should include unlimited continues right out of the chute, and then give players an option to turn that off, scale it back to a certain number, whatever they choose. Games are about fun, and some people don't care about score.

The problem is that if many inexperienced casuals aren't forced to play with zero or limited continues for at least a decent amount of time before they unlock more, they'll complete the game on their first "try," feel gypped about having "finished" it so fast, and complain on the internet that the game sucks because it's too short and easy. i.e. "There's no challenge: you can just keep continuing every time you die!"

I'm not saying that all newbies or casuals will act this way, but enough do to make it a major issue. At the very least, the player should have to log about 5 hours of in-game time to unlock unlimited credits (and more ideally, the game would only give out 10 credits per run maximum).

I think what would work best is if there were some kind of cheats menu where you can activate stuff like invincibility, unlimited continues, etc., which would also disable high score eligibility. That way it's clear that it's not the intended way of playing the game, but the option's still there for those who want to practice and/or see the content. Many games in the past have achieved similar results using cheat codes (Contra and Doom being two well-known examples, and Nethack's explore mode being a similar concept). Though cheat codes seem to be less common than they used to be I think they're perfect for stuff like this.

[Captain]

[Doctor Butler]

Don't use the continues

/thread

[Pretas]

I think what would work best is if there were some kind of cheats menu where you can activate stuff like invincibility, unlimited continues, etc., which would also disable high score eligibility. That way it's clear that it's not the intended way of playing the game, but the option's still there for those who want to practice and/or see the content.

SDOJ tried this with a menu full of cheats and assists that had to be individually unlocked, including an incredibly silly cheat to let the game play itself. It was rather pointless with the presence of a training mode that already let you skip to any stage from the first time you started up the game.

Cheats have always been acceptable, but they shouldn't be made available through any means other than a code that is only provided outside of the game. Otherwise they're too tempting. Once a staple of the medium on both consoles and computers, the concept of cheat codes has unfortunately all but died off with the advent of paid DLC content and the increased focus on online multiplayer.

[Ed Oscuro]

including an incredibly silly cheat to let the game play itself.

Was Gradius Generations / Galaxies' hint mode incredibly silly? It wasn't superplay level by any stretch but it looked like an interesting idea to nudge players in the right direction.

Beyond that, this thread has become the story of "why we can't have nice things." I will say that the market for shmups soldiers on despite decades now of people "doing it wrong." Heck we had somebody recently posting about a couple players credit feeding to the end of a game. From the operator's point of view, they're probably not repeat customers but they did help with sustaining cash flow!

[Despatche]

here we go again... remove continues altogether and encourage people to head to a nice stage select; this will show people exactly what "gameplay" is so they can approach it at face value. try to keep as much "story" out of your game as possible, because again people will run over gameplay to get to some story bit. if you think your story is so good, have it as a separate "visual novel" mode or something. show people that they can't just treat everything like it's an rpg, where gameplay takes a backseat in favor of story.

I don't understand why they make it so easy for you to beat the game. For these games with unlimited continues, you don't have to play and you will still beat the game. You just have to keep on pressing continue. So what do you do in these situations? Of course I'm sure some just say they try to beat it on one credit. But the thing is most people are not disciplined enough to stop. I feel like it takes away a lot of the fun.

back in the mid-'80s some "genius" thought it'd be a great idea to allow the player to put in money and keep playing after they lost all their lives. it was such a "genius" idea that it completely took over and destroyed american arcades, and it would have taken over japanese ones were it not for some magical something that kept people "in line" (literally), that convinced people to keep caring about arcade games. a certain part of sfii's success was because its competitive multiplayer mode uses a very different definition of "one game per credit" that is completely incompatible with the continues concept.

the problem isn't "discipline", as people think continues or not is a split of playstyle. the problem is that people have no idea what a "continue" even is and what it means to game design, because right now people care less about "playing a game" than they have ever had before. when even one continue pointlessly gives you a bunch of lives, it is not a matter of playstyle.

Games are about fun, and some people don't care about score.

Score is great, and is an important aspect of the genre's design, but shmups are no longer infinite loops for a reason.

score and continues have nothing to do with each other. that said, people are being dishonest with themselves; they segregate a game into parts, and call whatever parts happen to quench their thirst for explosions or whatever "the game", criticizing based on that.

score and looping don't really have anything to do with each other either. the reason loops were killed was because designers and operators came to resent pros sitting there and fighting it out for hours.

Give me all the options at my disposal to maximize score, milk the boss, gain rank, etc. but give me those continues so I CAN CHOOSE how I want to play.

but you're not "choosing" anything. what continues do is allow you to completely forgo playing the game at all and just mash your way through to see some ending sequence or whatever... and criticism of most games only cares about these small, almost meaningless parts. it's really absurd to have to say something like this: games aren't about story, they're about gameplay, and this isn't opinion. gameplay itself is the real "story" in a game; when you make a "story-based" game, it can only get in the way of gameplay.

people's understanding of what a "video game" even is anymore is broken, might have always been broken, and really has nothing to do with indies or whatever.

[Pretas]

back in the mid-'80s some "genius" thought it'd be a great idea to allow the player to put in money and keep playing after they lost all their lives. it was such a "genius" idea that it completely took over and destroyed american arcades, and it would have taken over japanese ones were it not for some magical something that kept people "in line" (literally), that convinced people to keep caring about arcade games. a certain part of sfii's success was because its competitive multiplayer mode uses a very different definition of "one game per credit" that is completely incompatible with the continues concept.

Indeed. I have a particular respect for the few arcade games that bucked the trend and refused to implement continues after everyone else had started doing it, such as Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun/Renegade. And for a few years, it wasn't unheard of for arcade games with continue systems to forbid continuing on the final stage, or to only allow a limited number of continues per run.

score and looping don't really have anything to do with each other either. the reason loops were killed was because designers and operators came to resent pros sitting there and fighting it out for hours.

Loops were never really killed. They persisted in later Psikyo, Cave and G.Rev games, and are still present in the Raiden series as of IV. It's only Konami-style infinite looping that became obsolete, with good reason. (Otomedius Excellent being a fairly recent exception.)

[gray117]

There's no consensus.
Bugs can be introduced.
Silly users will even look at options, and give up if first they can't succeed and it's not clear how the game will unlock.
Some particular players will extol the virtues of the limited continue. More will complain and associate ill will towards your brand if they can't see all the game they paid for.
Path of least resistance; allow unlimited continues.

... I must admit I still feel slightly bummed I never got to go all the way (!?!) with ps2 ibara arrange/bl or whatever it was... but I also wasn't going to spend my life practicing... I'm fine with timed unlocks, but know plenty of other people who would fck that in the bin and never play it again, some would probably want their money back. We're babies these days, for better or for worse

[Weak Boson]

The problem is that credit feeding is not how you're meant to play, but some people seem to get that impression when infinite continues are there. There are many amusingly bad reviews where it's clear the reviewer has no idea what it's actually like to play the game because they just fed through it all.

That being said I don't think you should never continue (especially when there's no financial penalty). I used to only ever play single credit runs, but I've recently found continuing is a great way of practicing because doing full runs gives you a better sense of the long game and is a nice break from restart syndrome. So to answer OP's question, I usually start by seeing how far I can get when I don't continue, then I'll practice whatever problem bits come up, then when I know the game I might start continuing when I know it will be productive.

So for me systems that limit the number you start with and award you more over time fit with my playstyle. I like the idea of a cheat menu best. It seems like most of us know what we like and will just do that whatever the options, and most of the time nothing gets in the way of that. But it can change how an incidental player experiences the game dramatically. If I were a developer I would definitely force players to play with a finite number of continues, at least for a time, just to make sure they're playing the game I'm making, not some video of its scenery.

[Pretas]

Salamander 2 is an easy 1CC solo, largely because the game is ridiculously short.

[Squire Grooktook]

I think the question has been more or less answered in a number of ways, however there is another angle that has to be appreciated.

Going back to the beginning of the game on game over is an integral part of the games experience goal. If you're not familliar with that term, its how game design books sometimes refer to the overall feeling/mood/sensation a game is trying to create. In order to have excitement, you need to have tension. In order to have tension, you need to have the possibility that something bad can happen. Arcade games deliberately punish players for failure by blanking score and/or sending them to the beginning in order to create tension, tension that rises as one approaches closer to the end game and eventually becomes pure excitement. This is what makes shmups and arcade games the best action game genre.

[Pretas]

"Arcade games" aren't a genre, nor are they separate from "shmups." Nor are "shmups" inherently more capable of delivering tension and excitement than, say, Souls-style action RPGs.