Whats the shmup that inspired you to get into this hobby.?

[Dumple]

Back in the day, in the arcade: Aero Fighters, In The Hunt. Mostly because those are what the college game center happened to have.

Later, via emulation: Giga Wing and Batrider. Both of them always make me smile with their ridiculously over-the-top action.

[Battlesmurf]

Does Robotron count?

I'd have to say that, or Lifeforce.

[Satan]

Exed Exes, Tokio, Slap Fight, Gradius, Tiger Heli, Terra Cresta, Star Force and Flying Shark were the ones I remember being particularly impressed by.
I liked some of the earlier games like Galaga or Galaxian, but they didn't really do anything for me.

[FlyingFinn]

Psyvariar. Realizing that you play shmup and you can get better score without actually shooting. Amazing moment. First shmup owned was phoenix for mattel intellivision though.

[Ikazu-san]

Touhou 11 and then Dangun Feveron. Ouch.

[TonK]

Always liked standard shooters, but Deathsmiles is whay caught my interest. I remember getting it and being scared to play it. Turned out I'm not half bad at them.

[Cee]

Salamander on c64 as a 5yr old just drew me in, same with sol-feace on mega-cd and then nothing until i discovered dodonpachi years later and became consciously aware of the genre.

[CaptainBadAss]

I don't think Metal Slug applies here so I'll say Raiden. I spent so much time with that little red ship blasting everything .

[Gamer707b]

Must be honest and say I have a casual interest in the genre. With that said ,something about Treasure's games get me pumped up. I think back when Ikaruga came out is when I started to pay a bit more attention to them. Even as a non fan then I remember playing and thinking how awesome Ikaruga was. Then many years later it was another euphoric ,lovefest again with Radiant Silvergun. It better have ,as it cost me an arm and a leg. lol.

[postmanmanman]

Playing the Espgaluda 2 iPhone port when it released was my first introduction to shumps, outside of dabbling in Star Soldier and Solider Blade previously.

[DestroyTheCore]

Crimzon Clover or Jamestown. I can't remember which.

[mehguy]

dodonpachi

[waiwainl]

For me R-Type, on the speccie

[Oniros]

Jamestown and then Ketsui.

[royalfan84]

The hook that first grabbed me was Blazing Lazers on my uncle's T-16. I love that game, all the different weapon types at your disposal and how awesome they were when fully leveled up, all the different bosses and having to learn how best to dodge them- where to shoot them, and all the sounds I remember....explosions and the different sounds your weapons made...the crunching sounds your firepower made when connecting with a boss. I just had not played anything quite so awesome back then (I was probably 6 or 7, it was about '91). I loved that game so much that a couple of years later my parents bought the system off of him and gave it to me. I've played Blazing Lazers on and off ever since (he also had Violent Soldier and Galaga '88 on that system).

Admittedly however, I didn't play other shmups for a long time, on consoles anyway. Other than renting SkyShark once when I was little and getting demoralized. Where I live there isn't much to offer as far as arcades; but I do remember the local Pizza Inn having a Radiant Silvergun cabinet that I played everytime I was there. When my family would go vacation at our condo in Branson we would often go to the solid arcades they had there and the majority of money I spent was on shmups....although I can't recall one standing out.

Honestly wasn't even aware of the genre until about 4 years ago I read a top gamecube games list and Ikaruga was mentioned. When I learned Castlevania: SotN was on xbox live I decided to download that and Ikaruga as well. I was iniitially blown away with Ikaruga, when my friends would come over to play the newest Halo we often ended up playing Ikaruga even more. It caused me to start researching those type of games; I wanted more. Then I discovered Radiant Silvergun and downloaded it. It was even more in my wheelhouse than Ikaruga! From then on my love for the genre was fully born. Raiden Fighters Aces ratcheted up a few big notches. Then I discovered this site and the Top 25 lists...I didn't recognize but a few portion of the gamesm..it was daunting. But a lot of time spent researching, downloading, buying online and local used video game stores and here I am.

My favorite genre.

[Stompp]

Although I played tons of games (incl shmups) back in the 80's and a few Touhou titles in the mid 00's I think it's adequate to blame Monouchi for getting me stuck (sorry, hooked ) on this. He had me playing Espgaluda II on his Egret II for an afternoon some 5-6 years back. Took a couple of years more before I had the chance to pick up a cabinet of my own and sink entirely into the shmup hole. Love it!

[LordHypnos]

I'd say Sturmwind. Honestly, the main reason is that it hooked me was that you could play one stage at a time, and the difficulty level was pretty low, so it made me feel like I was getting better really fast because I would game over the first time or two and then eventually get through it. Then I discovered Gunbird 2 which was really fun and addictive, but also harder. I gradually learned how to get through the first three stages on default order with Morrigan, but it got too hard after that. Mars Matrix was the first game that really drove me to score, though.

[Mills]

No shump but this scene from the movie TRON at 15:07-15:45 where the character Flynn, sets a new highscore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCGa2dpjk6g
Laughable watch nowadays, but at the time, I thought Flynn was awe-inspiring and wanted that same feeling walking into an videogame arcade, kill a game off in style and walk off feeling like a god.

[Andrade-Games]

For me it was Ikaruga on the Nintendo Gamecube. And then i found DoDonPachi-Resurrection for Xbox 360 and i was addicted to these kind of games.

[Lord Satori]

My first shmup was Tyrian, but I think the shmup that allowed me to get into the community of shmuppers was one of the Touhou games. I can't recall which one, though.

[Pteriforever]

For me I think it was Blue Wish Resurrection ^.^

[Shepardus]

I think the first shmup I played was Torus Trooper, which I found on the TIGSource DB (not sure that still exists) while looking for freeware games to play on my PC. I casually played that and several other games I found there such as Warning Forever and Fractal Fighter. I also found the Perfect Cherry Blossom demo on the same site, which I initially dismissed based on screenshots ("bullet hell" looked gimmicky and unfun to me though I hadn't bothered looking up any videos of the games) but when I actually tried playing it I found it pretty fun.

I didn't give much more thought to Touhou, though, until that Bad Apple video was going viral a while later and I found myself checking out Touhou again, this time with the full version of Imperishable Night. From there I branched out into the rest of the Touhou series, which along with a couple other games like rRootage and Cho Ren Sha 68k filled up much of my free time in high school. I also tried a bit of Dodonpachi but was never really drawn to it and for some reason I always had trouble getting MAME working properly on my computer.

In college I got addicted to League of Legends, and then Dota 2 after that, and basically forgot about shmups for over a year. About a year ago I finally managed to quit Dota, and around the same time Crimzon Clover: World Ignition was coming out on Steam so I ended up playing that a bunch. I didn't really get back into shmups, though, until around last October when I got Deathsmiles working in MAME and I 1cc'd that. From there I set out to play all the shmups I could find, and here I am now.

[Squire Grooktook]

You did well escaping from the Stygian abyss of Moba's, from which all evil flows.

[OmKol]

First shmup I was played - Galaxian on Famiclone.
First shmup I was enjoyed - Silkworm on the same Famiclone.
And first shmup I was impressed - DDP DFK on iOS which I played in 2011. Now it's my hobby and my 1CC list is a result of just two last years of practicing.

[Stevens]

It wasn't a shooter per se that got me into shmups, it was more the state and direction the video game industry as a whole has been in for years now.

I was fucking sick of the same over hyped big budget shit being pumped out year after year. I needed to return to my roots if I was going to keep playing.

I'm glad I did. It has been 2.5 years and I am still completely in love with this genre as a whole.

And it doesn't hurt that the people here are great.

[pegboy]

The first shmup I ever "played" was Parsec on the Ti-99, which actually came out the same year I was born. I took me a long time to actually figure out what that game was because all I had were foggy memories, I couldn't have been more than a few years old. The only reason I rediscovered it was because of this one time my dad randomly mentioned that we used to play the game. After I looked up a video I knew for a fact that this was the same game.

Unbelievably my dad still had that original cart stashed away all these years (1 of only 3 games he still had) and recently gave it to me when I brought up the topic. It's pretty wild that I now have the exact cart of the first shmup I ever played (and possibly the first game I ever played).

Years later I would get into Lifeforce on the NES, then some other stuff like Gradius III and Firepower 2000 on SNES, as well as casually playing arcade games like Raiden. I have always really liked the genre but I never took any of it seriously and had no concept of a 1cc or that playing for score was even a thing until literally a few years ago.

Gradius V was the game that finally got me into playing shumps "competitively" (i.e. playing for 1cc or score, more than just casual play). It kind of has a built in system that nudges you into going for a 1cc (with the announcer saying different things the farther you get into the game without continuing). I had already 1cc'd a bunch of other stuff before I came back and 1cc'd Gradius V, but I still count it as the game that inspired me to get into the hobby more seriously.

[CloudyMusic]

Parsec was my first shmup too, though our TI-99 stuff is long gone. Glad you were able to remember it!

[drboom]

Dodonpachi was the game that drew me in, but I had loved hard, skill based arcade games for years. I wanted to start playing something harder and more unforgiving where you needed real skill and lot of practice to do well. I should also put Ketsui down as THE game that solidified my love of the genre - music, gameplay and graphics all come together in that game in a nearly perfect way for me.

[bikingjahuty]

I grew up playing Galaxian at various sports bars growing up (perks of having an alcoholic dad), but I fell in love with the genre when a local Rec Center got a Raiden II cab installed. A friend of mine and I would try and find any excuse to go there to play it, and when we weren't playing it we'd talk about how awesome it was all the time. After it was removed and my enthusiasm for it faded, my interest in the genre was pretty casual up until I started collecting video games as a primary hobby. I made sure to collect as many domestically released SHMUPS that I could find, particularly ones released during the 5th gen and later. So I guess you could say Raiden II and Galaxian got me into the genre.

[d0s]

Cosmic Avenger colecovision port was my first when I was like 5 but Blazing Lazers on TG16 and Sky Shark, Twin Cobra and Raiden in arcades are what made me a big fan