DOA series creator: "Hardcore players killed shmups"

[320x240]

Shmups died around 85, circa Space Harrier...

[JBC]

I got into shmups because they are often so very challenging & would hurt me to play. In the arcades as a kid I'd lose those ever so important quarters I had saved to play games very quickly. I would be lured in by the graphics & sound but robbed by the difficulty. Only once I ended up with a few on home consoles where I could practice did I start developing the skill to play them in any decent manner. This difficulty is usually what drives the average Joe away, but I can't stand being defeated & love to overcome a challenge so I keep coming back to them. I can totally see how most people would be put off by it though.

On a similar note, easier shmups get mocked by heavy players & that can also be discouraging for newcomers. Some easy shmups still have fun gameplay, sound, & visuals. Storm Blade for instance. Someone could master that game & then proudly post about it here only to have their pride smashed by the responses. Do we have a thread for seperating them into tiers of difficulty? That would be pretty interesting.

I mostly favor the easy to normal difficulty shmups because I prefer a relaxing game over one that really taxes me. Shmups are video games after all, & the majority of game players play as an escapist hobby. A way to unwind after a day of real-life difficulties at work, etc. My favorite is Super Aleste, but it isn't hard. I also like Viper Phase 1 a lot but I wouldn't consider it any more than moderate at it's hardest.

[Doctor Butler]

I'd say it's the modern perception of value that killed it: 2d gameplay? Under an hour long? Freeware or dollar game tops.

I agree. Even after the consoles dwindled the arcade market in the US, shmups were still being released pretty prominently for the home; The Dreamcast had numerous ports produced, Gradius III & IV was a PS2 launch game, Ikaruga, and Gradius V were subject to (relatively) extensive coverage in gaming magazines.

Personally, I blame Steam, and to a much lesser extent, the digital outlets that followed; the rock-bottom prices have significantly skewed the casual audiences' perception of value, creating a culture of entitlement, where everyone thinks that everything should be as dirt cheap as the billion-dollar blockbusters that have made their profit and then some, and can therefore afford to sell their schlock for peanuts. Smaller companies, and niche titles don't have that luxury, but many people can't get that through their heads, and hold Orange-Juice to the same standards as Activision.

Compound that with the fact that this audience only values the number of cutscenes, and the total length of the game, as opposed to the game's depth, and the amount of time you can sink into it overall, and you'll have a huge chunk of the audience viewing shooters as mere "distractions"; "simple casual games" that "aren't worth the money", which is ironic, since most non-shmup single-player games consist of mashing buttons, or firing with auto-aim, to kill a wave of braindead enemies, and trigger the next cutscene, wash-rinse-repeat for about 15-20 hours - then sell the game, because it lacks replay value, or online components.

Spoiler

I'd suggest the "problem" is even more fundamental. You guys are arguing why a genre is dead, when it's the mindset itself that has been extinct for some time, now.

Humanity itself has changed.
Because: reasons.

To touch on a few (but not in any way all):

- The internet.

- The sheer volume of information and connectivity humans have now, compared to when I was growing up, is mindblowing. Seriously. If you're over 40 (MY COMMISERATIONS, BY THE WAY), just sit and think on that for a bit.

Yeah. A mindfuck, isn't it?
I'm surprised this generation hasn't already gone INSANE*.

- The internet?

- Shmups were born in a different era.
It was an era when your average kid put up with waiting ten minutes for a tape to (perhaps) load a game. An era where graphics actually took a back seat to your own imagination, because graphics were little more than slightly different size blobs of colour. An age when a kid had to save up his pocket money for six months to get a new game. Then we went down the arcade and... HOLEE FUCK, are you SEEING THIS SHIT? Shit is SCROLLING, dude! And there's MOTHERFUCKING SPEECH! Almost. LOOK AT THE LIGHT SHOWS. DAMNNNNNNN. Right?
Compare all that with now, where a kid gets what he wants, right fucking now. Where a kid gets to semi-realistically shoot me right innaface, while telling me what he'd like to do to my mom, even though he's actually not going to be physically capable (HELLO, PUBERTY) for three years. He's still probably doing that one handed too, but while "selfieing" himself in an entirely different way to what you'd expect. Arcades? Yeah, we go to the arcades. To meet up with the girls at the dance machines. I'm ten years old, and I already know more girls than you did in your entire life.

What I'm trying to say is, shmups were a genre that was forced on us somewhat through the tech available. It was, for a while, a perfect fit. Much as the FPS was five to ten years ago, and much as the open world shenanigans game (or the OWSG - yes, it is quite catchy, thanks) is now (i.e. your GTAs).

- Did I mention the internet, yet?

- Let's Plays. Seriously. I will never get that shit, no matter how much it's "explained" to me, so don't even try. It's just alien, and does not fucking compute. So you'd... rather sit watching someone else play, than play a game yourself? Kids can't even be arsed to waste their own time these days, they gotta watch someone else do it?

i don't even (thanks internet - you're still good for something!)

etc etc.

E T jesus christing C.


* I'm pretty sure they have, but I'm reserving complete judgement until some sort of Deity gets involved down here.

I'm 25, and a lot of the people I know play either fighting games, shmups, or both.

Personally, I think it has less to do with age, and more to do with income - arcades are typically built in working-class/urban areas with high population density, to maximize traffic. Most of my friends lean towards arcade games, but I know a few rich suburban kids I met in community college, who exclusively play RPGs, or Assassin's Creed, or what have you, since they never had access to anything else growing up. I also know of some 40-year-olds who stick to PC games, since they lived in the midwest most their life, and had nothing in the area.

[HydrogLox]

- Let's Plays. Seriously. I will never get that shit, no matter how much it's "explained" to me, so don't even try. It's just alien, and does not fucking compute. So you'd... rather sit watching someone else play, than play a game yourself? Kids can't even be arsed to waste their own time these days, they gotta watch someone else do it?

Post was almost amazing until this part

I think you are being a bit hard on him - but you both have a point:

• The proliferation of video's where the game player (reviewer?) has barely a comprehension of the most basic game play mechanics is getting ridiculous.
• Then there is the extreme opposite - the super play video - I'm not an FPS fan and I was "meh" on the Halo franchise until I ran into the Mythic Tyrant Legendary Walkthrough videos.

Some people "don't get super play's" but I don't consider them "cheating" as they aren't an instantaneous solution, typically you still have to practice to duplicate the walkthrough - and I rather "waste my time" learning a successful way of doing things - a way that would take myself too many iterations to arrive at.

Over the years the size of the "video gaming audience" has grown tremendously - with it the composition of that audience has changed drastically. In the early days the proportion of people that were willing to spend a significant amount of time on a single "skill-based" video game was significant with respect to the overall video game customer demographic. Most of these people were all drawn in during the early days of video gaming. The more recent explosion of the business is based on the huge influx of primarily casual and social gamers - which now proportionally dwarfs the "skills-based gamers" group. Obviously game developers and publishers will primarily target the much larger casual/social demographic in order to secure their commercial survival. If you are developing an STG in the current climate:

• You may be trying to break into the business and have the impression that producing a successful STG should be a relatively low effort endeavour (you really haven't looked into the genre have you?).
• You're doing because you want to create an STG that expresses your passion for the genre - commercial success is only a secondary objective, if at all.

So creating an STG without the "hardcore audience" in mind is pointless - those are probably the only people who are willing to pay for your product. And as if creating a good STG isn't hard enough, creating one that satisfies both "hardcore" and "casual" gamers is much harder as the "gimped" casual mechanics are often too bland (boring/repetitve/short) to draw the casuals in to begin with.

The current pablum era games for the casual/social majority are drowning out the game genres from the dawn of video gaming, barely surviving in their ecological niches at the constant threat of extinction.

[Squire Grooktook]

Personally, I blame Steam

I actually think Steam and digital distribution are the best things to happen to shmups in years. Being able to instantly sell a game to a world wide audience for 10 dollars is pretty damn good. Beats having to spend all that money creating expensive region locked physical copies for each region that don't sell anyway...

I don't think there were that many shmups available during the ps2 era, either. Gradius V, Ikaruga, and the heavy hitters, yeah. But that was pretty much it. That was pretty much when more than half the relevant shmups out there were either doujin or import only Cave titles. AKA when Shmups started to become super turbo niche.

[Stevas]

- Let's Plays. Seriously. I will never get that shit, no matter how much it's "explained" to me, so don't even try. It's just alien, and does not fucking compute. So you'd... rather sit watching someone else play, than play a game yourself? Kids can't even be arsed to waste their own time these days, they gotta watch someone else do it?

Post was almost amazing until this part

Haha! Okay, so you like them I guess?
/Harry Hill camera 2 shrug*

But the fact remains, whether you like them or not, shmups don't really "fit" them, so it's just another example of humanity itself doing shit that naturally excludes them.
I'm guessing there aren't many let's plays out there of DDP SaiDaiouJou, right**?

* I'm... pretty certain this reference will be lost on you.
** I'm... pretty certain that's a safe assumption.

PS: I got no real problem with people using let's plays (or playthroughs) to either discover something about games that they wouldn't normally be able to (i.e. they're watching someone clearly more able play the game), or to see HOW to play a game, or get tips on how to... it's the whole "just watching some dude playing a game and talking bollocks" train I want to avoid finding myself on (and just plain don't get everyone else who's on it).
Even worse, watching dudes playing games and talking bollocks. I used to do that! With friends! Actual, like, real-life friends, who sat right next to me!

REMEMBER THEM, GAMES INDUSTRY?

/Gazes whisfully into middle distance
/Fondly remembers offline co-op
/single tear rolls down face

[louisg]

Wait, hang on. I don't know about the Japanese scene, but starting in the mid-90s, nearly every shmup got panned in game reviews in the west. Combine that with the demise of the arcade, and it's a miracle anyone made shmups past the year 2000! Of course they were aimed at the hardcore. Who else was gonna play them?

I'd even argue that shmups fell out of mainstream favor much earlier over here, about the time the NES really took hold and arcades took a backseat to more expansive console-style games. Platformers and longer adventures were the thing; shmups were old and busted

[Stevas]

Again, to avoid overall general confusion, my own personal confusion is directed towards Let's Plays (that is, at least one utter pisswit broadcasting himself playing a videogame - badly - while shouting obscenities and "witticisms" that are seemingly designed to amuse ten year olds, in a pitch/tone that is seemingly designed specifically to ANNOY JUST ME - YES, JUST ME*), rather than Super Plays (or other videos of someone playing the very damn hell out of a game, well) and video reviews, etc.

To clarifiy:
Let's Plays are shit. Everything else is gravy.
Sorry, I don't make the rules.



* NO OFFENCE, THOUGH BUT

[Kollision]

pablum era

Tks for the link.

[Volteccer_Jack]

Itagaki is an idiot, why would you ever listen to anything he says?

I don't think shmups ever had a chance of being big as a long-term thing. They're an oddity, like puzzle games. The difference is puzzle games got a reputation as fun distractions and shmups got a reputation as ULTIMATE HARDCORE ROCKET SCIENCE FOR PRODIGIES ONLY. Like Despatche talked about, the hardcore/casual divide is really harmful and stems from a misunderstanding of how games work. You know people aren't right in the head when SF2 is considered inaccessible.

[Cagar]

that are seemingly designed to amuse ten year olds

Congrats on finding the problem. You are not ten years old.
No I don't like "Let's plays" a lot either, I might randomly check parts of let's plays of my favorite games, but would totally fully watch a "let's play DDP SDOJ"

[Tregard]

I don't think Shmup devs needed to go as far as trying to net the "casual" crowd, but they could perhaps have catered a little better to those in the middle ground, like myself. I greatly admire shmups and was for a time obsessed with them, but despite the hours I used to put in they never stopped being anything other than seriously fucking intimidating. I only ever won a handful of 1CCs, none of which were for the games I truly respected. Gradius V... oh how I would have loved to beat that game, but that bastard level 6 reverse-scrolling section always handed me my ass. And I feel bitter that it beat me, and when I look at Shmups now I find myself put off by the knowledge that even if I sunk 40 (increasingly precious) hours into, say, Daifukkatsu, I would still probably be tasting that bitterness instead of sweet sweet victoly. So now I don't even put the time, and can't even remember the last time I bought a shmup.

TL:DR - yes, shmups were too hardcore, enough to put a fan like me off the genre somewhat, and I'm sure it must have happened to others too.

[S_Fang]

my own personal confusion is directed towards Let's Plays (that is, at least one utter pisswit broadcasting himself playing a videogame - badly - while shouting obscenities and "witticisms" that are seemingly designed to amuse ten year olds, in a pitch/tone that is seemingly designed specifically to ANNOY JUST ME - YES, JUST ME*)

You aren't the only one, I watch along my brother some youtubers with that style and only few of them amuses me, like Markiplier and the italian Rexen91 (he played a Touhou game in Lunatic without success if not for pulling di*k jokes), but the others are so unfunny that irritates ME (and someone else).
In addition, I read around the places where I usually hang around of people being annoyed by those videos, especially the one used to the old-school-style videos: comprehensive commentary of the game, with the gamer in second line (well, most of them). Although, there are very few of them by now, with the higher density in the Something Awful's Let's Play Forum. They even have a thread about Manic Shooters.


Regarding the topic, despite the biased and ignorant's statement of the whole scenario, it has a valid point: most of them are really niche because of their hardcore nature and impegnative learning curve. The mistake was, of course, to put the whole responsability on the consumers's shoulders and ignoring the isolated marketing's strategies like Japan only and console exclusives (although, it was the safest of the approach for small companies at the time).
Just like Tregard, I like Shmups and I want to experience the thrill of the challenge and the fun of dodging the hell while you massacre fleets and fleets of enemies, even if I don't manage to 1CC a game and have to credit-feed to complete it. Do not think of wrong, I'm interested to improve with these kind of games and try to not being abysimal while playing it, but I'm the kind of gamer that do not focus too much on a single game because I have a lot of them, unless it an RPG or has some item-scavenging gimmick or challenge mode, which only require a guide and enough training to succeed.
Despite the today's market being flooded with casual and freemium games, there's still room for the hard-boiled challenge, like the Ninja Gaiden's games; fighting games; Nintendo's shooters like StarFox and Kid Icarus Uprising; Hack and Slash games and the Souls' series, all of them with an higher challenge than the usual soup. There's also Crimzon Clover which gave an excellent boost of popularity of the Sshmups genre on PC: the Dark Souls of the shooters, so to speak.

If the genre have to shine again, they should make games for the middle ground with the easy-learning-hard-conquering's philosophy, as well making ports or remastering of some old pearl of the genre (not mandatory and possible, though).

[Ed Oscuro]

We need this difficulty scaling/settings in every shmup:

Unfortunately it takes more than that. If it doesn't have mass appeal - whatever that entails - it still won't sell.

Some people complain about the loli stuff - I like biplanes and spaceships better myself - but that's a cultural thing and not so much a mass appeal issue. You'd still expect some more sales than what we've been getting if the loli factor really was going to draw people to the games. It's worth noting that even in places that are more OK with the loli look, shmups have gotten wedged in pretty deeply. In a niche, I mean.

Doctor Butler's suggestion doesn't disentagle the variable of genre. All games have been affected by this "entitlement," which really has allowed many games to find additional customers (at lower prices) and to sell for much longer (I mean, have you ever looked at the GoG catalog?) at the cost of some people feeling that $60 forever and Ultima Collection style scarcity was a thing of the past. So yeah, overall I view that as a positive thing. But look at the facts:
FPS + digital distribution = genre sales at their all-time peak
TPS + some digital distribution even on consoles = again, pretty sure we'll find an all-time sales peak here with new games like Dark Souls, Revengeance, etc.
Slumps + digital distribution = still more sales than you'd get selling CDs at comiket

[Squire Grooktook]

Before we get all doom and gloom again, I think it must be remembered that not every shmup in recent memory was a financial failure that killed its developer and convinced its publisher never to touch the genre again. Some of the shmups on Steam have actually sold pretty decently for niche games (of which there are many on steam that also do quite well) IIRC.

[Magma Dragoon]

Anyway, Itagaki has no idea what he's talking about, his assessments of fighters needing to be dumbed down is garbage as is his assertion about shmups.

Itagaki is just fucking dumb and salty. Always. I'm grateful for whoever kicked the little shitter out of Tecmo.

Itagaki is an idiot, why would you ever listen to anything he says?

Then again, wasn't this the guy who was not ashamed to admit that his games entire appeal was the fanservice/BOOBS?

[Ed Oscuro]

I don't think shmups ever had a chance of being big as a long-term thing. They're an oddity, like puzzle games. The difference is puzzle games got a reputation as fun distractions and shmups got a reputation as ULTIMATE HARDCORE ROCKET SCIENCE FOR PRODIGIES ONLY.

The better comparison is to that other obscure genre, adventure games. Puzzle games that sell well don't seem to have anything like the depth (i.e., obscurity) of scoring systems found in some of the most recent shmups, with various modes and auras and multipliers and hidden fairies to slip in and out of or find. Adventure games and STGs are both accessible in the sense that they're fairly easy to grasp, but mastery requires a lot of time spent thinking (and in the case of STGs, practicing). We've seen many games we thought were well-known end up being unsuitable for STGT due to some obscure trick or other. Recent STGs have gotten more long-winded under the "other tips and tricks" column than their old forebears. Adventure games are treading water here as far as sales go - those have remained fairly stable while just applying new coats of paint while remaining fresh each time (given enough of the particulars change). There have even been a good bunch that have sold very well, on budgets probably more akin to what a modern STG has, at the cost of typically incorporating HOGs - adventure game purists hate these, though ironically they just expose one of the core elements of many classic adventure games, while typically abandoning the Myst-like flavor of deliberation that attracted many people in the first place. But even many of these have managed to sneak in good doses of real adventuring.

I'm not getting how the Itagaki angle works for this discussion. Sure, he's not in the running for the world's best person, but - aside from the harrassment business - I wouldn't consider him even in the running for the title of most out of touch games developer, either. More to the point, I'm pretty sure the guy's job entailed being tasked with making educated guesses about marketing and demographics, and being exposed to feedback on that. Even if it's not completely accurate, I think he's still more right than wrong on this one.

[Squire Grooktook]

Nah he's completely wrong, both about his own genre and this one. The people who bought the games didn't have any control over how the games developed, and the games developed the way they did due to a natural progress of ideas and innovation. The "hardcore players" are the only ones who kept the genre alive when the general public had completely lost interest in arcade games and decided that a 30 minute game is a rip off if its more than a dollar. Some catering to a casual audience might have helped a bit, but at the end of the day its still going to be a niche genre that's hard as hell to sell regardless of whether the majority of the titles play like Cave games or Taito games.

Individual shmups can be profitable I believe through a combination of timing, luck, catering to certain audiences, advertisement and word of mouth, etc. but the genre as a whole will never be as "safe a bet" as other genres. The only way I could see it even approaching it is if every single game journalist in the world took it upon themselves to educate the general public in the ways of arcade philosophy and constantly wrote editorials on why credit feeding is bad, why level design is important, gave 10/10's to Cave games and urged all their readership to go 1cc them, etc. but I don't see that happening.

[Ed Oscuro]

The people who bought the games didn't have any control over how the games developed,

Not sure if you're serious! There's tons of evidence from the fanzine / mook scene saying that's wrong - plus probably tons of fan letters and direct feedback at big tournaments we'll never know about. There's also those things called location tests. From my very scarce knowledge of Japanese happenings, MegaDriveFAN even ran a contest for fan designs in Castlevania Bloodlines; that probably wasn't a singular event. At least in Japan, land of literacy, it's clear that lots of people stayed connected in print during the genre heyday. Even if it's the marketing filtering those things, some of that stuff found its way into the development process.

...and the games developed the way they did due to a natural progress of ideas and innovation.

Look at this idea. It is crystalized in a pure prism of thought which can only be broken by the hammer of intuition! Well, no, design is not a process of thinking thoughts as a Game Designer, sitting on an island clothed in the sturdy fabric of thoughts. Everybody's breathing down their necks, some more than others depending on the era and market - management, marketing, fans, and arcade operators who needed to prevent people from walking right past cabinets. It doesn't have to come directly and it doesn't necessarily impact specific details, as I said - the loli thing, for example, shows influence can be painted on with a big brush, or maybe not at all.

"Vote with your wallet" alone doesn't explain anything, agreed, but it looks like you've gone off the other end in imagining that there is some kind of special dimension that games exist in until plucked out by ratiocination alone...I don't buy it. How do you think your "innovation" works if it doesn't enter into conflict with the real world?

If nothing else, if you believe that wallet votes and direct fan feedback didn't do anything to influence the progress of STGs, then here is the final test: We're back to what people want to make and what can sell. What people want to make might be more like the STG of years past and might still find familiar fans (Twin Tiger Shark is pretty awesome). But there's also what will sell, and that implies finding a way back into more gamers' hearts.

You might be thinking I've gone after just the weakest part of your argument, but really, the "hardcore gamers kept shmups alive" argument doesn't do anything for the discussion. It was still a decline in interest. You've made half the analysis only - games can and do change shape over time to maintain mass appeal. The fact is that these genres have developed too closely to niche player interests to really hit the big time with mass appeal. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and I suppose you can make the argument that a shmup changing shape to hit mass appeal would no longer be a shmup. I think that's certainly the case with my adventure games to HOGs analogy - so I don't think you're wrong that STGs, if you demand that they remain rigid in forms in all respects, have limited appeal. But we're touching base on the increasingly baroque late '90s style with chains, secrets, and other stuff - while FPSses are basically the same as back then and tweaks to Pac-Man still do pretty good for Namco.

That undercuts your argument that games develop, because you're basically saying that other genres can change with the times, but STGs and fighting games uniquely can't, but for no discernible reason other than preordained fate, as if we weren't talking about people voting with their wallets / feet the whole time.

[Squire Grooktook]

^^^Okay, perhaps a bit of exageration on my part, but in the case of shmups, I don't think its arguable that hardcore gamers drove the genre off the deep end. When you come down to it, something like Dodonpachi or Touhou isn't terribly more complicated than say, Darius Gaiden or Rayforce. All these mystical scoring systems can be completely ignored, just like the homing system in Rayforce can be completely ignored if one does not feel like using them. Its more akin to the addition of side quests in an rpg, giving something optional to do for dedicated players.

The only thing that became more "hardcore" when you come down to it is the reduction in hitbox size., and that is more or less something that I believe would have happened regardless of whether "hardcore players killed the genre" or not. Hitboxes had been reducing more and more over the years and it was a natural progression that somebody eventually realized "hey, we can be more lenient and make more creative patterns if we make the hitbox really really small!".

And the console ports have been offering unlimited credits and easy/novice modes forever. Touhou and Cho Ren Sha are some of the most ubiquitous pc shmups and both of them are very easy on default difficulties.

The only mistake I think they made is focusing on scoring systems entirely and neglecting more obvious, survival oriented innovations like weapon mechanics (r-type etc.) . But at the end of the day I think it hardly makes a differnce.

[Pretas]

I'd even argue that shmups fell out of mainstream favor much earlier over here, about the time the NES really took hold and arcades took a backseat to more expansive console-style games. Platformers and longer adventures were the thing; shmups were old and busted

Street Fighter II was the crippling blow that marginalized the STG genre for good and made it seem forever passé, with the Raiden series being the sole relevant exception in Western arcades afterwards. Before fighting games began to transfix the attention of players with a competitive streak who craved fast action, STGs were just another equally valid and appreciated genre. R-Type, Life Force, Twin Cobra, and 1943 all enjoyed mainstream Western success despite having released after the NES was well established.

Also, arcades never took a backseat to anything until the 32-bit consoles caught on, when the gap between arcade and consumer hardware narrowed enough that arcades lost much of their exclusive allure (the rising popularity of long-form RPGs being another factor).

Say what you will about Itagaki's overblown public persona, but the man has ten times the talent, vision and fastidiousness that his replacement Hayashi possesses. I'm greatly anticipating his long-awaited return to the industry in Devil's Third this year.

[trap15]

The number of bullets is off-putting. No new player cares about score, it's the intimidation factor of the actual game. A game with a handful of bullets is much more approachable to a new player than a game with screens full of bullets, even if the latter is easier. Danmaku killed STG, and I don't think that's deniable. Ask anyone who doesn't play them often.

[God]

I blame the memory card.

That's when people stopped playing games over and over and getting good (double dragon, contra, etc)
and when they started just playing through once and counting the hours a game lasted (gears of war, assassin's creed, etc)

Because why play over and over when you can just save and keep going? The memory card killed that play style and STGs went down with it.

It's like that youtube video: teens react to megaman. The audience doesn't even know what to do anymore.

Danmaku killed STG

That might be what he means by "hardcore". It's definitely an acquired taste.

[Ed Oscuro]

Speaking of exaggeration, I wasn't quite fair with Squire here...I realized that there is a fair bit of truth in that post too. Itagaki could be accused of oversimplifying the story, and I do like the idea that shmups did improve in some way that is bound by human feeling or instinct. Games like Raiden Fighters, Ikaruga or Mars Matrix (pick whichever style you gravitate towards), or DOJ are all very different, but they all feel right - maybe only to different people, but they mostly feel well-tuned.

But I still think it's important to note that STGs had their heyday starting in much simpler games, like Xevious, Zaxxon, Galaxian, and Twin Cobra, and developments have mainly followed along on straightforward lines since then. Those still have some level of popularity today. But when we consider that developers can be fans, and fans can become developers, I think it's clear that a bit of groupthink takes over - even if it's on a larger scale. I'm not sure you really can make the genre go anywhere worthwhile without making big changes, but at the same time I think there's lots of stuff that hasn't been tried. Some of it just scares us. I mean, Metal Slug 6 looks wrong due to the higher resolution of the Atomiswave system, doesn't it? There's definitely a lot of possibilities that arcade games in general haven't caught up with, except in some unique cases.

Back to Itagaki, it's 2015 so I've just got in my copy of Ninja Gaiden II
I think it's important to note here that, at least in the translation, he refers to a "dilemma" and isn't couching it in terms of blame. I think that's a point I can quite agree with: By developing - however that happens - STGs worked to the strengths of a particular idea, and like Squire says, those may have some limits. The key here is - are there some core ideas that can be carried through to new technology and new interests?

I often think of the fact that FPSes really haven't developed much since the old days. In many ways most of the games in the genre are much simpler than late-development arcade STGs. Even inventory management really isn't much different from the old days; Borderlands just borrwed the loot frenzy hook from MMOs. FPSes get by with not a lot of prowess in the gameplay changes department because of the technology wow factor - still though this has slowed down for me considerably - but beyond that the core gameplay idea seems to be more engrossing for many than some other types of games. I guess that's partly down to psychology. Maybe it's technology, or maybe it's just easier to get into a game doing something from a first-person perspective. Third person games similarly might be a bit more natural feeling than piloting spaceships. I guess it's interesting to note also that spaceship games, despite the appeal, often aren't major sellers, whether you're piloting from the top-down perspective or side-view perspective that seems mandatory for STGs, or from the cockpit view of Elite or a space sim. Many games with spaceships aren't really about the spaceships at all, like Mass Effect, where they're just window dressing for a pretty standard action game.

But these "simpler" games, like FPSes, of course have a lot of hidden complexity and changes. Starting with its formal release at the new millennium, for many years the most popular online game was basically a couple key tweaks to the key idea of DOOM - "you must take aim carefully and not shoot too much at distance," "bomb defusal vs. rescue missions" and the risk-reward of saving money or buying better weapons - that's Counter-Strike, of course. Maybe since then things have slowed down, or maybe I'm just not up enough with the new changes. Certainly the Call of Duty / Battlefield dual wargame growth furnaces are constantly said to be slowing down. Maybe it's down to something entirely new taking over, like the apparently execrable MOBA style taking over from RTSes. I don't know, except that most people are scrubs, but that is where the money is.

I blame the memory card.

I don't think this is the entire story either, by a long shot, because action games are still with us. But carrying on the theme, many of them changed form to meet those technical changes, so instead of continues and lives we get "you must survive through the whole game," 3D, and 20-hours-is-the-minimum ideas baked in. I'm not sure anybody will swallow the idea that Dark Souls is the modern Double Dragon, but it's more like it than anything selling huge numbers of copies is like an STG - and DS is arguably more like Double Dragon than a Hidden Object Game is like Maniac Mansion.

[KAI]

Itagaki beign a dick (again).

Itagaki: Exactly. The fighting game genre is at risk of facing the same dilemma. Of course, there is a market for hardcore players.

He clearly doesn't know shit about modern FGs. I blame 1button combos for the demise of the genre, they are just 2deep4me.

[Pretas]

Itagaki beign a dick (again).

Itagaki isn't a dick so much as he's a fan of brutal honesty and hyperbolic bullshitting with a ring of truth, such as when he told fellow hyperbolist Tim Rogers to quit his job and start bodybuilding and gambling all the time, or when he told the developers of Heavenly Sword to their faces that their game sucked. Considering that we're still talking about him when he hasn't had a published game to his name in over five years (discounting THQ's aborted 360/PS3 release of Devil's Third), I'd say it's a successful persona he's cultivated.

[Obscura]

The number of bullets is off-putting. No new player cares about score, it's the intimidation factor of the actual game. A game with a handful of bullets is much more approachable to a new player than a game with screens full of bullets, even if the latter is easier. Danmaku killed STG, and I don't think that's deniable. Ask anyone who doesn't play them often.

This.

Posters here probably all would agree when I say that Raiden and Tatsujin are harder than most danmaku games, but I know a lot of people who are intimidated by the likes of Espgaluda or Futari, but will tell me they loved the likes of Raiden or Truxton.

[Squire Grooktook]

Speaking of exaggeration, I wasn't quite fair with Squire here...I realized that there is a fair bit of truth in that post too. Itagaki could be accused of oversimplifying the story, and I do like the idea that shmups did improve in some way that is bound by human feeling or instinct. Games like Raiden Fighters, Ikaruga or Mars Matrix (pick whichever style you gravitate towards), or DOJ are all very different, but they all feel right - maybe only to different people, but they mostly feel well-tuned.

But I still think it's important to note that STGs had their heyday starting in much simpler games, like Xevious, Zaxxon, Galaxian, and Twin Cobra, and developments have mainly followed along on straightforward lines since then. Those still have some level of popularity today. But when we consider that developers can be fans, and fans can become developers, I think it's clear that a bit of groupthink takes over - even if it's on a larger scale. I'm not sure you really can make the genre go anywhere worthwhile without making big changes, but at the same time I think there's lots of stuff that hasn't been tried. Some of it just scares us. I mean, Metal Slug 6 looks wrong due to the higher resolution of the Atomiswave system, doesn't it? There's definitely a lot of possibilities that arcade games in general haven't caught up with, except in some unique cases.

Back to Itagaki, it's 2015 so I've just got in my copy of Ninja Gaiden II
I think it's important to note here that, at least in the translation, he refers to a "dilemma" and isn't couching it in terms of blame. I think that's a point I can quite agree with: By developing - however that happens - STGs worked to the strengths of a particular idea, and like Squire says, those may have some limits. The key here is - are there some core ideas that can be carried through to new technology and new interests?

I often think of the fact that FPSes really haven't developed much since the old days. In many ways most of the games in the genre are much simpler than late-development arcade STGs. Even inventory management really isn't much different from the old days; Borderlands just borrwed the loot frenzy hook from MMOs. FPSes get by with not a lot of prowess in the gameplay changes department because of the technology wow factor - still though this has slowed down for me considerably - but beyond that the core gameplay idea seems to be more engrossing for many than some other types of games. I guess that's partly down to psychology. Maybe it's technology, or maybe it's just easier to get into a game doing something from a first-person perspective. Third person games similarly might be a bit more natural feeling than piloting spaceships. I guess it's interesting to note also that spaceship games, despite the appeal, often aren't major sellers, whether you're piloting from the top-down perspective or side-view perspective that seems mandatory for STGs, or from the cockpit view of Elite or a space sim. Many games with spaceships aren't really about the spaceships at all, like Mass Effect, where they're just window dressing for a pretty standard action game.

I was actually walking right out the door with my previous post, so let me respond again with something less frenzied sounding, heh.

First off, I do not agree that shmups are dead, have been killed, or can die or be killed. There will always be new shmups and there will always be a niche of individuals with classy taste who enjoy them. The worst case scenario is that the genre becomes unprofitable enough that these releases become limited to doujin titles with stick figure graphics.

However, conversely, I do not believe that the rise and fall of shmups and their decline into obscurity is an inevitable and unalterable process. The stick figure scenario is a possibility, but it is not a neccesity. If the genre plays its cards right, I think it can be as healthy as any other niche single player genre on the market.

That's the main problem with that Itagaki quote. He acts as if they are dead and acts as if Shmups could have been saved. As if there could be tons of new, well selling shmups from triple AAA developers if gamers hadn't bought so many Cave titles. Now, does this sound realistic? I don't think so.

At the end of the day, the biggest problem with shmup popularity is the mainstream idea of value. Innovate and switch up the formulas as much as you want, but as long as your making an arcade style game (which is what any shmup game fundamentally is) you will always have to contend with people thinking your game cannot possibly deserve a high score or be worth more than a dollar because it's only 30-60 minutes long.

I think less Cave Danmaku games on the market and more diverse games like Radiant Silvergun or Ikaruga on the market would genuinely improve the opinion of more niche but not so niche players on the genre. But it's never going to be as popular or safe as fighters or whatever.

The number of bullets is off-putting. No new player cares about score, it's the intimidation factor of the actual game. A game with a handful of bullets is much more approachable to a new player than a game with screens full of bullets, even if the latter is easier. Danmaku killed STG, and I don't think that's deniable. Ask anyone who doesn't play them often.

Speaking with casual friends, I've actually had the opposite experience. Non shmup players I've spoken with tend to see the older games patterns as bland, easy, and boring. With "the increase in number of bullets" being the only thing interesting or unique about the genre. Not all of them do mind you, but I feel like the flashiness of danmaku actually created a lot of interest for the genre for a long time, giving it a momentary novelty appeal with more mainstream players (and did so for so long that it's worn off and now seen as somewhat generic). Even if they are not really comparable challenge wise, it gave it a Dark Souls/Super Meat Boy/I Wanna Be The Guy appeal of "LOL LOOK AT ME PLAYING THIS IMPOSSIBLE GAME XD"

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Speaking with casual friends, I've actually had the opposite experience. Non shmup players I've spoken with tend to see the older games patterns as bland, easy, and boring. With "the increase in number of bullets" being the only thing interesting or unique about the genre.

This is really more of an issue with player perception due to knowledge about the genre being niche. More bullets isn't always harder, and not every older game was bland, with some very solid older games being made that didn't rely on dense curtain fire at all times. It's definitely an adjustment for new players to switch from a game with tiny hitboxes and dense patterns to ones with larger hitboxes and more modest pattern density that relies more on speed (Donpachi, Rapid Hero).

Personally, I've always found games with high speed bullets to be the toughest. Raiden and Psikyo's games in the later stages are always very challenging for me.

If more players became interested in shmups the same way that fighting games have a huge following, the general perception of shmups would be more educated as a whole (as opposed to basically expecting any mainstream review of a shmup to be garbage, etc).

[Formless God]

but the man has ten times the talent, vision and fastidiousness that his replacement Hayashi possesses

In other words, he is the ultimate idea man? Hayashi treats his daughter far better than he ever did. Let's just face it. Itagaki is nothing but a one-hit wonder who's already way past his prime. When was the last time he did anything other than circlejerking on Facebook and acting like some sort of mistreated hero for pity points? How many people can seriously look at Devil's Third and say it looks good with absolutely no bias toward the fact that it simply involved that wapanese guy with a bunch of scandals?