Your favorite shmup backgrounds?

[copy-paster]

For me, some Taito shmup comes to mind (Metal Black, RayForce, and later Darius games) R-Type stage 5 also III and Delta's final stage, and Recca stage 2, due for it's abstract/psychedelic BG.

For the colorful one I'd choose Fantasy Zone, Muchi2 Pork, Parodius-es and Xexex.

[Stevens]

Far from my favorite shooter, but Sturmwind wins this one quite easily for me.

[Squire Grooktook]

I made a thread about this a while back, specifically about vertical scrollers.

In no particular order:

Rayforce
Metal Black
G-Darius
Dogyuun
Shippu Mahou Daisakusen
Mahou Daisakusen
Dragon Breed
X-Multiply
Daioh
Battle Garegga
Dragon Saber
Dodonpachi DOJ
Guwange
V-Five
Thunder Force IV

Might go into these in more detail later.

Sengoku Ace gets an honorable mention purely for the river of sunken Buddhas.

[To Far Away Times]

Mushihimesama, especially stages 3 and 4.

[evil_ash_xero]

Gradius Gaiden has some great environments.

[Feedbacker]

Progear
ESP Ra.de
Guwange
Dodonpachi Daioujou
Armed Police Batrider
Battle Garrega
Dogyuun
R-Type Delta
Blazing Star
Air Gallet
In the Hunt
Rayforce

Adding good quality pictures would make this thread more interesting:

Air Gallet. I just love all the details.




In the Hunt. Typical Nazca Corp excellence.


I'll try to find more later.

[pokemon123]

rayforce is amazing IMO.

[MasterJJ]

Do not forget 'Harmful Park'.

[emphatic]

Ketsui.

[ratikal]

Could anyone rip the backgrounds off of Ketsui and combine them all into one? I think that'd be pretty cool.

[Shepardus]

Rayforce is the obvious answer, especially with how well it's used in gameplay too. It's not like many shmups where you either have no background interaction at all or you have two distinct layers; the backgrounds feel like they've got a ton of depth to them and enemies fly back and forth between the background and foreground and different levels in the background, it feels more 3D than even shmups actually rendered in 3D. And the backgrounds are super pretty too.

Could anyone rip the backgrounds off of Ketsui and combine them all into one? I think that'd be pretty cool.

Someone should print them all out and include a folded section for the backwards-scrolling section in stage 5!

[Icarus]

I recall someone here took a chunk out of Dodonpachi's stage 5 and made t into a large framed poster.

[Feedbacker]

I recall someone here took a chunk out of Dodonpachi's stage 5 and made t into a large framed poster.

Wasn't me but I did something similar: http://imgur.com/Lijeblf
It's easy to do with Mame : hard reset the game (shift+F3), for some reason it will clear the screen from any sprites and hub stuff for a second. It probably works with other games.

[Captain]

A second vote for Rayforce.

Also Thunder Force series and RefleX.

[Mania23]

Darius Gaiden, Stage 1. The mixture of backgrounds changing between zones after beating the zone bosses. Giving that warping effect, Awesome!.

[copy-paster]

Could anyone rip the backgrounds off of Ketsui and combine them all into one? I think that'd be pretty cool.

Slateman's site already rip it. Just combine it yourself.

[Lemone]

Do not forget 'Harmful Park'.

Until Battle Garegga shows me an elephant in a hammock, the best it can do is 2nd place.

[AntiFritz]

All three ESP games but particular ESP.ra.de and espgaluda 2.
Kingdom Grandprix
Hellsinker

[CloudyMusic]

Could anyone rip the backgrounds off of Ketsui and combine them all into one? I think that'd be pretty cool.

Slateman's site already rip it. Just combine it yourself.

These are from CAVE's website, and they're unfortunately extremely scaled-down.

[ratikal]

Using my masterful* MS Paint skills, I've combined all the levels into one image.

*It's actually shitty.

[OmegaFlareX]

During a recent stream, Softdrink played Rayforce for the first (?) time and the backgrounds blew him away, especially that curvy one over the underground city. It was great to see his reaction.

Add another one to the pile for Dogyuun. I love the huge junk heap in stage 9 and the still-working torsos of robots firing shots at you.

An honorable mention would be Raiden Fighters stage 6. Start out over a pristine blue body of water, ascend into the thunderstorm with bolts of lightning and thunder flashing back and forth, amazing.

Pretty much every Raizing game. Also Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga. I recall Border Down's stage one flight through the city to be pretty awesome.

[Doctor Butler]

Using my masterful* MS Paint skills, I've combined all the levels into one image.

*It's actually shitty.

Good job, brah.

That must been a pain-in-the-ass to make.

[Squire Grooktook]

Dragon Saber is an incredibly notable one for me. Every stage is thematically and atmospherically vibrant, and makes you just want to explore and learn about them. On top of that, every stage is incredibly different from the previous one in terms of theme, color palette, etc.

Add another one to the pile for Dogyuun. I love the huge junk heap in stage 9 and the still-working torsos of robots firing shots at you.

I absolutely love Dogyuun's depiction of a colorful, and most of all, staggeringly vast machine world.

[ZacharyB]

The scrolling-perspective scene in Rayforce where the player flies down and abuts the the underground city's central shaft made a big impact on me when I was younger, influencing the way I lay out some panels in my comics work.

[borislaw]

Super Aleste has gorgeous backgrounds: at times rather minimalistic, gloriously colorful, some quintessential psychadelic swirling vortexes, also quite unique in some of its abstract designs / patterns.

Gradius V is another one that instantly came to mind. The game was goddamn gorgeous; a masterpiece of atmospheric effect.

Gunlock also, stunning. What more can I say, a towering giant, a beast, a masterpiece. Deserves the trophy.

Don't think I would put any Cave game on my list of favs; some very quality backgrounds among them, but in my opinion not genre-best.

I like that people have thrown out the name Taito for consideration. I was drawing a blank, so I went and dusted off the old PS2 taito legends (yeah, the one that's straight-up loaded with shmups) to have look and see what all the fuss is about. Very good pick. What true connoisseurs we have at this site! Librarians, Scholars, Historians, Museum curators, all of you!! Well done, well done.

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

The Battle Garegga stage with the thunder clouds is pretty nice.

[MintyTheCat]

Toaplan released some nicely done titles.

I tend to view each Shmup given the platform it used limitations too.

tatsujin-ou has some nice backgrounds along with doggyuun.
I also like ibara's too.
Soldier-Blade is not bad.

I agree, ketsui is very nice.
raiden 2 has some decent ones.

When I look at early Cave I can see a definite Toaplan lineage.

[hien]

Rayforce, Sengoku Blade, Cotton 2 (probably the two most beautiful horis, with Progear coming pretty close) and Police Batrider (which I only know from videos) come to mind. Of the "newer" games which got this slight Photoshop and cg look to them, I found Akai Katana to be the most appealing one visually. Concerning 3D backdrops, I always felt the ones from G-Darius to be the most impressive for their variety and how they are presented overall.

[terras]

Battle garegga

[nekketsu]

Off the top of my head (ie ripping off other posts):

Recca!!
Rayforce
Garegga
Espgaluda
Metal Black
Einhander
Progear