Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

[Perikles]

Currently dabbling a bit with FixEight and Same! Same! Same! - after unwittingly clearing the rest of the Toaplan oeuvre I'm thinking on finishing the streak (I guess I could count arcade Fire Shark as a surrogate for the latter, my amour propre sneers at the equation, though, woe is me!).


Not entirely certain what to make of FixEight. I do like that it is distinctly different from Out Zone, which, to me at least, is an aptly "heroic" game. While you sometimes hold a strategic position or advance in a deliberate manner, it is mostly about the steadfast sprint to the end, covering a lot of space with the two guns, using the carpet bomb whenever a situation threatens to become unbearable. FixEight on the other hand is a lot more gritty, more of a guerrilla warfare simulator, if you will. Where you mow down enemies by the score in Out Zone, it's about incredibly lethal individuals in FixEight - mercenaries and robots spawning right in front of you and emptying an entire ammo clip, so to speak. It has you trudging through forests which obscure your sight, has you conquering small corridors and narrow hallways, has you balance upon quite dangerous platforms, step by step, inch by inch. That's a poignant contrast also mirrored in the "earthen" colour palette of FixEight where Out Zone features garish colours everywhere.

I'm not always so fond of the execution, however. Sometimes you really can't reliably evade bullets due to the fact that enemies will show up in your vicinity. Take the beginning of the third stage, for example. You need to be all the way up on the screen before it scrolls further (which thus will materialize the enemies) meaning that a) you either take out the enemy immediately, b) bomb if it takes too long, c) lose a life or d) run past all that. The easiest way out would be the flight, which I don't find that compelling. I also cannot comprehend why they didn't get rid of the random items (which were an ill-judged decision in Out Zone as well) which can even screw you over by giving you the wrong weapon at the worst possible moment. There are some spots where you have to sit still for considerable boosts in score, something they prevented in Out Zone via the energy bar - eventually there will be a punishment in FixEight, too, but that can take a while.


Same! Same! Same! on its part is as bluntly brutal as they get. I've been playing this game on and off a little for quite some time now, still not used to the bullet speed in later stages. Even the slightest hesitation or aberration (due to a haplessly bouncing power-up, for example) means irretrievable exitus on the spot. It is possible to creep a few checkpoints further on account of the bombs and the usually generous spacing of those checkpoints, recovering fully is only viable on paper, however, in the same manner you can "recover" in Gradius III AC, say. I do know how to theoretically overcome every stage and spot - even practiced the excruciatingly tough final checkpoint in the game -, stringing it together in one consistent run is another story altogether. Not so sure if and when that will happen.

[Squire Grooktook]

Out Zone, which, to me at least, is an aptly "heroic" game....where Out Zone features garish colours everywhere.

With its colorful sci-fi cover shooting, sprinting, storm trooper blasting playstyle, I like to think of it as the best unofficial star wars/flash gordon/buck rogers game ever.

[DEL]

Marc wrote:

Just realised that the Japanese version 9f Typhoon is infinitely more fun than the US one. What the fuck were Konami doing back in the 80's?

Ah! That probably explains why it used to dead-end when I reached the wall. Wouldn't let me past

[LordHypnos]

@Perikles: Yeah, I've heard that Same! Same! Same! is really intense. Saw a really good japanese superplay (I think it was a 1LC) on STGWeekly. Really impressive stuff. Another possible surrogate other than the western release (Fire Shark) might be the 2p version, as I've heard that's much easier, as well. Would be a pretty impressive feat to clear all of the Toaplan AC games.

[Perikles]

Yeah, I've heard that Same! Same! Same! is really intense.

I find it's without a doubt the hardest Toaplan shooter - I've spent more time with Same! than Tatsujin Ou by now, and while I did clear the latter, I'm still struggling to get past any of the stages in the second half of the former without either bombing too much or dying. I'd say that Same! is up there with Argus and Battlantis in terms of being one of the most demanding classic shooters, albeit in a more honourable (if inclemently savage) way. With the exception of roaming power-ups, that is.

Another possible surrogate other than the western release (Fire Shark) might be the 2p version, as I've heard that's much easier, as well.

2P Same! and Fire Shark are (almost?) identical as far as I can tell. Mind, those are still not trivial, yet fairly manageable even without too much practice. If you're able to amass lives in the first half, preferably for the first seven stages, you're almost guaranteed to overcome the first loop just by virtue of bombs alone. All those extends in the 1P Same! don't mean much unless you master checkpoint recovery on the other hand, for quaint, capricious concepts such as mercy have no meaning in this realm.

[Jonst]

Still hyper duel. Came close to a 1cc tonight, but damn those fast, almost point blank techno soft bullets.

[pegboy]

Yeah, I've heard that Same! Same! Same! is really intense.

I find it's without a doubt the hardest Toaplan shooter - I've spent more time with Same! than Tatsujin Ou by now, and while I did clear the latter, I'm still struggling to get past any of the stages in the second half of the former without either bombing too much or dying. I'd say that Same! is up there with Argus and Battlantis in terms of being one of the most demanding classic shooters, albeit in a more honourable (if inclemently savage) way. With the exception of roaming power-ups, that is.

Another possible surrogate other than the western release (Fire Shark) might be the 2p version, as I've heard that's much easier, as well.

2P Same! and Fire Shark are (almost?) identical as far as I can tell. Mind, those are still not trivial, yet fairly manageable even without too much practice. If you're able to amass lives in the first half, preferably for the first seven stages, you're almost guaranteed to overcome the first loop just by virtue of bombs alone. All those extends in the 1P Same! don't mean much unless you master checkpoint recovery on the other hand, for quaint, capricious concepts such as mercy have no meaning in this realm.

Argus and Battlantis...that's some questionable company lol. I'd rather swim with Piranhas than play either of those again.

[trap15]

To be honest, I find Same! 1P's difficulty a bit overstated for the first half (well, first 4 stages, nearly half), which is surely the farthest anyone who complains about its difficulty can get. Only the second half is where the game shows its true colors and savageness. You're pretty on-spot about recovery though. I've seen it done though, there's some guy that's done 10 loops or something that has videos up, and he recovers a number of times, but I highly doubt I'd ever be able to do a single one.

It's super rewarding though, I intend to get 1 loop of it at some point, and I hope you feel like going for it too It's far above Argus and Battlantis in quality anyways.

[Perikles]

I've seen it done though, there's some guy that's done 10 loops or something that has videos up, and he recovers a number of times, but I highly doubt I'd ever be able to do a single one.

Indeed, you probably had this video in mind, I wager. Incredible performance throughout, he precisely knows how to deal with every single enemy and how to (seemingly effortlessly) recover. As I alluded to above, I would compare that to checkpoint recovery in Gradius III - it's theoretically possible, but you have to have uncanny familiarity with the game and need to be a master of your craft. For "normal" purposes you're better off learning to get all the way - or at least very far - through the game without dying, that will doubtlessly be quicker.

It's super rewarding though, I intend to get 1 loop of it at some point, and I hope you feel like going for it too It's far above Argus and Battlantis in quality anyways.

Now that I just cleared FixEight I have no choice anymore, do I? And I concur once more, the comparison to the other two games was merely regarding the difficulty. It is immensely frustrating to get murdered by some irreverent plane, but one can chalk this up to the truculency of war. Dealing with Argus' entirely useless weapons and bullet wobble or Battlantis' magnanimous tendency to use virtually everything against the player is something else entirely. Will admit that I admire Battlantis in a twisted way, though, the developers must've thought to themselves "What can we get away with?" when creating that one.

[Stevens]

I've gotten back into Progear recently, but since my laptop charger took a shit I can't play it at the moment. I figured the next best thing for a hori Cave fix would be Akai Katana.

I know part of Progear's charm is its graphics/art style, but I was dreaming of Progear with AK HD style graphics.

*drool*

[LordHypnos]

I did another couple MM runs. Had one where I managed to get all relevent chains pretty solid on stage 3, 4, and 5, but I still only made 1.8 trillion points (3.7 million exp), which solidifies my earlier impression that I'm gonna need to improve somewhere to break 2 trillion or 4 million. Not sure when I'll start working on that, but probably eventually. The only thing that I realistically could have improved about that run was break +2000 chain in stage 3, which did not happen. Even then I don't know that it would have been 300k more experience. I mean it could have been. I know that I've done significantly better on stage 3 before, but getting that plus the over +1000 chain in stage 4 plus full chain of stage 5 is a tall order. I guess that the gold cube fountain chain might matter too, actually. I think I went for high risk high reward in that run and ended up failing and getting under +700.

Anyway, probably information that most people reading this don't understand anyway, so I'll end it there.

[Stevens]

snip

You are really far down that rabbit hole. Can you get anything else from stage two?

Played more AK tonight while the Mrs.was working. It took me a few credits and about two hours playtime but I managed to beat my pb. Didn't get any further (5 boss) though.

Then I realized I hadn't played it since last December and felt pretty good about it.

Still want back at Progear though.

[LordHypnos]

I can get some. I could actually probably get more with a bit more practice, but linking the two chains is basically one of the hardest possible Mars matrix challenges. My max so far is like 270k. Not bad, but also not too significant
EDIT: I think I probably get around 200k normally

[kidpanda]

Starting to work on Rade now that I finally cleared Luda.

[Ayanami]

Pink Sweets. Damn fine game.

[Pixel_Outlaw]

Currently storming beef and pork product in Hotdog Storm.

Seems like a solid title. No idea why the Xenocide file reviewer didn't care for it.
The tapping rate gets a bit annoying later in the game.
But 5 stages is perfect length for me in a shmup.
Things really start to get intense at stage 3's boss and on.

Part of me wants to think it has some correlation to Muchi Muchi Pork as a proto "animal product em up" in title only.

[Stevens]

Haven't gotten any further in AK, but my pb yesterday was212 million, now it's just shy of 300.

[null1024]

Fantasy Zone 2 W [3DS]
Damn, what a fine game.
It's a shame that the 3DS d-pad's position is cramping my hand so much.
could just fire up FZ2 in MAME or grab the PS2 release, but it's such a nice port and I enjoy the 3D effect

Also, autofire feels like it's mandatory here, unlike in FZ1 where it feels like cheating.

[Gamer707b]

I went back to Gaiaires. Havent got past 4th level boss yet. Will soon.

[wayultratech]

.. jus played Ketsui Death Label for first time, it was ok def jus a boss rush game as far as I could tell, but in my opinion better than Nonostray on DS as that platform is pretty starved for SHMUPs. Been playing "Shooter Space Shot" on PS1 for a video I am doing showcasing the ridiculous cutscenes.

[CloudyMusic]

Currently storming beef and pork product in Hotdog Storm.

Seems like a solid title. No idea why the Xenocide file reviewer didn't care for it.
The tapping rate gets a bit annoying later in the game.
But 5 stages is perfect length for me in a shmup.
Things really start to get intense at stage 3's boss and on.

There are things I can appreciate about it, but it really is sorta unremarkable at best, especially when you consider the year it came out. The charge weapon system and most of the bosses are fun, but the final boss lasts twice as long as it should and scoring is completely busted.

[PooshhMao]

After several false starts, I started playing R-Type Final again.
I've already unlocked 20 or so ships, and I'm looking forward to see the others.

There's so many things this game absolutely nails. The R-9 and it's many variants showcase some inspired visual design as we've come to expect from Irem, and they're simply delightful to control, offering a myriad of possible approaches to any given situation. Using charged Wave Cannon shots to tear through waves of enemies never gets old; the visual and sonic feedback is just so satisfying.

It's a shame R-Type Final gives you so much to play with, but so little to play in. Assuming AI Battle Mode won't keep your attention for long (which is a reasonable assumption to make), you basically have just your standard arcade mode, with linear progression through a set of stages. At least there's three different final stages, and some stages have several variants, so there's that - but I can't help but wish for a more elaborate campaign mode, encapsulating mankind's struggle against the Bydo on a grander scale. Sigh, playing CS Mode in DariusBurst CS sure spoiled me.

Another problem I have with the game is the music. It's hardly even there, and barely memorable. I'm not sure the melancholic style fits the theme all that well - at any rate, Gradius V's music went the opposite direction and is probably the key reason why I prefer the game slightly overall. Maybe I should try muting the music and playing Gradius V's in the background.

At least the sound effects are splendid.

And the last piece of criticism - the inspired visual design is somewhat let down by the drab colors. At least the laser blasts and exhausts pop nicely.

It's still a magnificent game, but it's frustrating to see it comes so close to being a fucking magnificent game, and not quite making it.

[null1024]

Was playing the Sega Ages Fantasy Zone collection on PS2, so I spent some time with all of the FZ games today.

Of particular note is Fantasy Zone Gear, a game which would be absolutely wonderful if you could a: see where the bases are with a little map bar or something and b: the GG's screen was bigger.
The backgrounds are really fantastic -- it's one of those games that reminds you that the Game Gear has a wider system palette than the Genesis, it's a GG game that'd suffer pretty badly from being backported to the SMS because of the older machine's lower color palette.

Almost all the difficulty seems to have come from getting hit by shit that just barely came on screen, it's driving me nuts. Also, control is a little iffy because it runs a bit choppily [but that's standard fare for the GG, so I'll tolerate it].
and then the bosses are a tad naff and take like a zillion hits, which is enough to really bring the game down

On a side note, anyone know exactly what the conditions are in the System 16 version of Fantasy Zone 2 to get the different endings?
Like, if you ignore the dark stages, you get the bad ending, but what if you only do some of them? What happens then?

[edit]
And now I'm playing Thunder Force VI [PS2].
I kind of like this game so far, except for one thing -- enemy attack visibility is absolutely miserable. All of the shots are additively blended [and explosions, and pickups, pretty much everything that isn't solid is glowing], so everything just blurs into a bright, hard to distinguish mess. TF5 is probably a better game, but I've only been at this for like twenty minutes.

[Ruldra]

WOLFLAME

Bought this during the steam sale. The game is rather unpolished - music isn't anything special and doesn't loop correctly, no intro of any sort, an attract mode where the ship does nothing, and managed to crash the game in the practice menu.

As usual from Astro Port, normal difficulty is pretty easy and hard/insane is where the fun really is. And holy shit, the game is brutal on insane. Bullets are super fast, heck the basic tank has a lightning-fast shot. Even compared to hard, bosses on insane are a lot more dangerous. Beating this one will be tough.

On the other hand, the game constantly gives you bombs and powerups. If you die at full power, the next carrier will give you an item that restores your firepower, so thankfully it's easy to recover. And an extend at every 1mil is pretty generous.

I have yet to confirm if there's a stage 11 but the final boss on hard has completely different patterns compared to normal, so there's that (edit: and different patterns on insane too, just checked).

Overall I'm enjoying this one quite a bit. Recommended!

[bikingjahuty]

Realizing how much of a disservice I I was doing to myself by not having ever played a Darius game, I decided to pop in Taito Legends 2 and play me some Darius Gaiden. I thought is was a very unique and fun game for the most part. Admittedly I died a ton, but for a first, second, and third play through I didn't do too bad.

[atheistgod1999]

I finally got back into Crimzon Clover. While waiting for my Steam controller to arrive, I realized I could use my Dualshock 4 for my PC, which turns out to be infinitely better than anything I've previously used on a PC. The previous controllers actually had like 2-3 frames of lag, which I thought was the game, but my DS4 doesn't have any. I just wish I found out sooner Better late than never, I guess.

Like, I was tired, and was just testing it out, and did way better than I ever did before; just seeing the stage 4 boss in Novice mode was a rare sight before, but now I almost 1CC'd Novice Original. Here's a recording of it.

[Bananamatic]

I'm pretty sure CCWI has a few frames of input delay and the only reason you don't feel it is because you're using a shit controller
I couldn't feel any input lag playing on a steering wheel either

just use a keyboard on pc, way better than any commonly available controller if you can't get a stick (not horipad/saturn or other stuff that's already way too expensive)

just deal with it, it's not a gamebreaking amount of lag, especially with the hitboxes being way too small

[atheistgod1999]

I'm pretty sure CCWI has a few frames of input delay and the only reason you don't feel it is because you're using a shit controller
I couldn't feel any input lag playing on a steering wheel either

just use a keyboard on pc, way better than any commonly available controller if you can't get a stick (not horipad/saturn or other stuff that's already way too expensive)

just deal with it, it's not a gamebreaking amount of lag, especially with the hitboxes being way too small

What? The opposite is the case. The DS4 is a great controller, has no lag, and the game has zero frames of delay with VSync turned off. If there was input lag, I'd feel it.

[Bananamatic]

it doesn't matter how little lag the controller has if the dpad is garbage for shmups
if the movement is trash and inaccurate then you won't notice whatever lag the game itself has because the controls already suck dick

and if you can't 1cc novice mode in ccwi then you probably can't tell if there's lag even it hit you on the head with a baseball bat

[Squire Grooktook]

PS4 controller d-pad is actually pretty good iirc.

The SNES d-pad, now that's an under-appreciated wonder.