Playing verts horizontally

[PooshhMao]

Hi,

I use a homegrown, minimalist Mame frontend built into my Litestep based-shell, with plenty of quirky features. One of them is the ability to 'tate' all vertically oriented games, with modified directional controls, so that verts become hori's effectively. I thought it'd be gimmicky at first, but in fact, I find myself enjoying some verts a lot more this way, it really makes some old games pretty interesting again. Image Fight is a great example - apart from the way the sprites are drawn, the game feels very natural as a hori, also because there are never any ground targets (tanks), and level 2 is so very hori-like...

One of the other features is the ability to control both players with a single joypad, the two thumbsticks to control the two ships, and the four shoulder buttons for fire and bombing.

So what verts would you people recommend to be played in a hori fashion?

[Alpolio]

I actually tried messing around with Ikaruga like that once. And even before I started playing it, I felt like I was about to fall sideways on the floor.

[theevilfunkster]

I made a similar thread ages ago. I found that Ikaruga and most Psikyo games make good horizontal shmups and Layer Section was pretty much unplayable.

[Frederik]

Another example of messing around with mame:

Once I set the player one and player two controls in Dodonpachi to the same buttons and started a two player game, choosing type A both times. When they appeared onscreen, I moved both to the leftmost corner so they eaxctly overlapped. TADAA! Now you play with TWO ships sharing the exact same space and staying there, since they have the same speed.. I almost though of "wow, I have to be twice as strong then" until I realized only one ship takes all the powerups while the underlying one got nothing. But a nice experiment though.

Playing a hori vertical on the other hand makes you sick. Playing Progear this way is way too confusing. Dodonpachi played horizontal is HUGE fun.
I guess that works so fine because you have this topdown view. Horis have this gravity view from the side, so turning them up is irritating in my opinion.

[Frederik]

Or try playing any vertical shmups from top to bottom. Bosses coming from the down side of the screen while you dodge bullets up there must be awkward. Try that sometimes!

[elvis]

Another example of messing around with mame:

Once I set the player one and player two controls in Dodonpachi to the same buttons and started a two player game, choosing type A both times. When they appeared onscreen, I moved both to the leftmost corner so they eaxctly overlapped. TADAA! Now you play with TWO ships sharing the exact same space and staying there, since they have the same speed.. I almost though of "wow, I have to be twice as strong then" until I realized only one ship takes all the powerups while the underlying one got nothing. But a nice experiment though.

That is a damned cool experiment. I'd always wondered who got priority if two ships happened to be in exactly the same pixel space at exactly the same time.

[Frederik]

Thanks. Though I don`t remember if BOTH ships die if they got hit - I think they did. Try it out next time.

[SAM]

I rotate my RGB monitor today and play Progear horizontally on it for the first time, it feels much more nature at this oratation then in vert position.

Then I take out MD Fire Shark, MUSHA Aleste and Saturn Blast Wind. All these vert shmups play more natural horizontally.

[Frederik]

Maybe its because horis traditionally have obstacles in it, walls or boxes you can crash into - this might be why MUSHA feels good played horizontally.

And Progear is a manic shooter,there is no reason why they made it a horizontal one. They even made vertically scrolling levels, and while I admire the graphical style of most Cave games, the background in Progear look shitty to me because they look so FLAT (I guess its the lack of parallax scrolling). I like the scoring system very much but horizontal manic shmups looks and play awkward (there are many doujin shmups that tried this).

In my opinion verts and horis are much more than just different orientations; they developed apart from each other. I guess its because in verts you concentrate on a much smaller area while dodging, while in horis you simply need to see where you are going or you get crunched between walls or environment.

[ParryPerson]

I lean sideways as well, it's amazing how soon you get used to it