Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

[Master O]

Playing Super Real Darwin in Mame (with the MCU fix below applied).

Apparently, the MCU has now been dumped correctly for the World version only:

https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/2017/07/ ... win-award/

[Squire Grooktook]

1cc'd Caladrius Blaze with Noah. Cheesed the last 3 bosses pretty crazy. Definitely gonna return to it for a better score, and also for the other player characters.

There are some very cool late game patterns (and a few very annoying/silly ones) that I'd like to work my way past in a non cheesy run. Some of the stuff involving lava waves, meteors, puppet strings, etc. reminds me of the more gimmicky Armed Police Batrider boss attacks. Rad game.

[Sumez]

Just picked up (and finished) Crisis Force for the Famicom.
God damn this game is awesome. By far one of the most competent shooters I've seen for an 8-bit home console. The difficulty is definitely geared for the home market as well, and it was a bit of a breeze, especially the leeway you have of being able to take an extra hit as long as your weapons are even slightly upgraded. But it's immensely creative, just keeps on giving with the absurd abundance of boss fights towards the end. It's a ton of fun, and the hitboxes are likely the most fair I've seen in any NES/FC shmup.



Hopefully the game's Hard mode will be able to give it some more replayability, because as far as I can tell scoring is cosmetic at best.

[pestro87]

^Nice! Yeah I really enjoy Crisis Force but I don't find much incentive to go back to it. IIRC (it's been a while since I played it) there wasn't even a score display, you could only see your score in between the stages which sucks... Still a really fun game though, especially on Hard. The sprite flickering during 2-player mode is pretty insane though.

[wgogh]

Always wondered if there were any good NES shmup.
I've only tried Thunderbirds, wich wasnt very interesting to me.

[Sumez]

Gun-Nac, Zanac, and Recca are usually the go-to choices for shooties on the NES. Also Abadox, Final Mission, and the underdog, Sqoon. Probably forgot some, but those are the major ones at the top of my head.
Gradius 2 is a surprisingly good port, too.

edit: Damn, how could I forget Battle Formula/Super Spy Hunter

[BurlyHeart]

Visited the arcade at the weekend, and it had Strikers 1945 II. Only played 2 credits and really enjoyed it (despite the wobbly stick and having to mash fire). Been researching how I can play it at home, but from what I've read, none of the home versions are ideal. Luckily, I've seen the game in many arcades here.

[MrSancini]

I'm switching between Deathsmiles and DoDonPachi Ressurrection, and I'm looking forward to play Gundeadligne again, but I'm rusty.

[wgogh]

I'm switching between Deathsmiles and DoDonPachi Ressurrection, and I'm looking forward to play Gundeadligne again, but I'm rusty.

I believe if you play only one thing for a while you will get much better results. Its usually like that

[crazyrexz]

finishing pulstar yesterday, the visual is amazing, not surprised though its in neo geo, so far the games is neat, enemy pattern can be memorized, boss can be beaten by mashing fire, next play is blazing star

[crazyrexz]

Just picked up (and finished) Crisis Force for the Famicom.
God damn this game is awesome. By far one of the most competent shooters I've seen for an 8-bit home console. The difficulty is definitely geared for the home market as well, and it was a bit of a breeze, especially the leeway you have of being able to take an extra hit as long as your weapons are even slightly upgraded. But it's immensely creative, just keeps on giving with the absurd abundance of boss fights towards the end. It's a ton of fun, and the hitboxes are likely the most fair I've seen in any NES/FC shmup.



Hopefully the game's Hard mode will be able to give it some more replayability, because as far as I can tell scoring is cosmetic at best.

this games is great and absolutely unique, you can morph to super alien ish by collecting red orb, but the times is limited, and can be running low faster if you get hit by enemy, i like the third morph, wide shot targeting enemy in your front/side, cool! and nice soundtrack too, i remember playing it with my brother 18 years ago

[BurlyHeart]

Battle Garegga Rev 2016 - Great visuals and bosses, with a quality array of ships to choose from. I was enjoying playing it until I tried to play it properly by keeping rank down I feel this game would drive me crazy if I tried to get good at it. It's truly one for expert players.

[Kiken]

After spending time with Pulstar and Last Resort, I've decided to return to R-Type 2. Initially on R-Type Dimensions... then I remembered how awkward these reverse-engineered ROMs are and switched to playing it on R-Types. The one thing that immediately jumps out at me is how tightly packed the level-design is in comparison to its bastard cousin on the Super NES/FC. Everything is so close knit in stages 1 and 4 (the two ripped directly in Super R-Type as stages 2 and 5 respectively). Stage 3 is fairly wide open but ends with that obnoxious screen-filling boss. The stage 4 boss actually comes off a tad easier than its stage 5 counterpart in Super.

And then there's stage 5... what an absolute damn mess of a level. I'm going to be struggling with this one for a while.

[Marc]

R-Type 2 makes me shudder. Love the original, and beat Super back in the day, as was common back when one game had to last 4-6 weeks, but this? There's hard but fair, and there's sheer bloody mindedness. Never made it off the 4th stage, and when I've tried to replay it over the years I simply can't muster any enthusiasm.

What's the story with the ROM ''s? I suspected something was amiss, when once on St3 of the original, I fired the force to the battleships weak point and it flat out refused to damage the probe bit, something I've never seen happen in 20-odd years of playing the coin-op.

[Cee]

R-Type 2 makes me shudder. Love the original, and beat Super back in the day, as was common back when one game had to last 4-6 weeks, but this? There's hard but fair, and there's sheer bloody mindedness. Never made it off the 4th stage, and when I've tried to replay it over the years I simply can't muster any enthusiasm.

Jaimers 2 alled it in 2 days.

[Marc]

R-Type 2 makes me shudder. Love the original, and beat Super back in the day, as was common back when one game had to last 4-6 weeks, but this? There's hard but fair, and there's sheer bloody mindedness. Never made it off the 4th stage, and when I've tried to replay it over the years I simply can't muster any enthusiasm.

Jaimers 2 alled it in 2 days.

That's cool, doesn't make playing it any less like pulling teeth for me personally.
Damn it, I want to like it, to this day I think it's one of the most beautiful games ever designed, but.... No.

[copy-paster]

Playing the PS1 Darius Gaiden on my Android, people said this port has massive slowdown but I can't find it tbh.

[Kiken]

What's the story with the ROM ''s? I suspected something was amiss, when once on St3 of the original, I fired the force to the battleships weak point and it flat out refused to damage the probe bit, something I've never seen happen in 20-odd years of playing the coin-op.

Comparing R-Type 2 as it appears in R-Type Dimensions to R-Types (Irem stated that outside of the resolution being off, these were the most accurate ports ever programmed of the 2 respective games), here are some of the differences I've noticed:

In General:
The Force Pod behaves oddly. This is really hard to explain, but the Force does not interact correctly when jettisoned into terrain or enemies and maneuvering the R-9 around the detached unit feels stiff.

Stage 1:
There are no instances of the enemies that burst out of the water (once you've entered the structure) on the left side of the screen.
The hatch encountered after the first snake streams out fewer zako.

Stage 2:
Once again, formations of enemies that appear from the left side of the screen have been removed.
The small enemies that walk along the bottom of the stage fire pulsating shots that can no longer be absorbed by your Force Pod.

Stage 3:
Right before the boss, the final two large ships do not attempt to wedge the player into a tight confined space... they hover much further apart.
During the boss battle, a single level 1 charge shot can take out multiple rotating shutters (the ones protecting the core units).

Stage 4:
Enemy formations that appears from the left side of the screen have been altered to appear from the right.
The largish blue enemies that slowly move across the screen while firing aqua-coloured lasers seem to take less damage to destroy.

I'm not as familiar with stages 5 and 6, but I'm sure there are changes.

[christmascameearly]

Playing a lot of Space Giraffe right now. I've loved the game since it came out in 2007, but I never really learned how to get good at it. It finally all clicked for me, and it's like falling in love again. This game is as deep as an ocean, and is cementing itself as one of my all time favourites.

[Perikles]

Comparing R-Type 2 as it appears in R-Type Dimensions to R-Types (Irem stated that outside of the resolution being off, these were the most accurate ports ever programmed of the 2 respective games), here are some of the differences I've noticed [...]

Haven't played the Dimensions version myself, but it seems like it is based on the easier Western version whereas the PS1 port behaves just like the original Japanese R-Type II in all its glory. That would be the most likely explanation in any case.


For what it's worth, I personally find that the first loop in both games is about the same in difficulty. II might seem a little bit harder, but checkpoint recovery is usually quite a bit easier, especially in the final stage, you also have less stages to deal with in total. The second loop on the other hand is much, much more difficult in II compared to its first loop, while the second loop in the first game is only moderately harder than its first loop for the most parts.

Jaimers 2 alled it in 2 days.

Wasn't that regarding the first R-Type? I certainly don't doubt that he also managed to get the 2-ALL for II in two days, but he only explicitly mentioned it for his recent clear of the first game, didn't he?

[Cee]

Wasn't that regarding the first R-Type?

woops my bad.

[Marc]

Playing a lot of Space Giraffe right now. I've loved the game since it came out in 2007, but I never really learned how to get good at it. It finally all clicked for me, and it's like falling in love again. This game is as deep as an ocean, and is cementing itself as one of my all time favourites.

I'd have loved it more if they'd ever patched in the option to tone down some of the background visuals.
I appreciate he was trying to make an audio/sensory experience, but dying to bullets I simply couldn't see is beyond frustrating.

[Gamer707b]

Don't know if this counts, but been playing a bit of Sin And Punishment 2. Probably tied with Radiant Silvergun as my favorite Treasure game. Was able to pull out 12.5 million on hard stage 1.

[Stevens]

After an unintentional four month hiatus I am back to Under Defeat. Was a bit rusty, but after two or three credits in both loops it has more or less come back to me.

Made it back to 2-1 a couple of times, but not any further just yet. Comically (or sadly) when I start on the 2nd loop I make 2-5 with little trouble.

[LordHypnos]

Mostly been playing Mars Matrix, Prismatic Solid, and a little bit of Valkyrius recently.

I'm pretty sure I got the farthest I've ever gotten in Valkyrius recently, which was pretty exciting. But it's mostly not been going that well.

I think I'm pretty far from the 4 million exp goal at this point in MM. I think all the routing is there, but it's just really freakin hard to pull it all together. Usually I either break the chain in stage 3 or die in stage 4. Barely practiced stage 5 for a long time. In fact, I'm not sure if I still know how to get the nice amounts of experience I was getting last winter when I was trying to learn the new routes.

Might try to get a scrub clear of fast striker sometime soon, as I totally don't remember my scoring techniques. Then again maybe not.

[Stevens]

I think I'm pretty far from the 4 million exp goal at this point in MM. I think all the routing is there, but it's just really freakin hard to pull it all together.

Your dedication to MM is inspiring, you can get there.

Made 2-3 in UD this morning. It was actually my best run in a long time, even placed on my scoreboard. Gonna stick with it, but only play one or two credits a day at most. At this point I won't gain anything from marathon sessions.

I started playing Rayforce when I'm not chasing UD. Surprised I like it because I am not usually a fan of lock on and I find Raystorm unplayable.

[crazyrexz]

currently playing nanostray 1 in ds, good game , with 4 weapons variations, 1 smartbomb, 1 rechargable laser gauges. big boss size. neat!

[christmascameearly]

Playing a lot of Space Giraffe right now. I've loved the game since it came out in 2007, but I never really learned how to get good at it. It finally all clicked for me, and it's like falling in love again. This game is as deep as an ocean, and is cementing itself as one of my all time favourites.

I'd have loved it more if they'd ever patched in the option to tone down some of the background visuals.
I appreciate he was trying to make an audio/sensory experience, but dying to bullets I simply couldn't see is beyond frustrating.

On the PC there is a mode that tones down the visuals. I actually think the game loses something without the intense psychedelia, as it forced you to rely more strongly on audio clues.

I also have a strong affinity for intense psychedelic visuals in general.

[BurlyHeart]

Jamestown+ on PS4

Nice aesthetics, and a decent attempt at a story. Overall though, I'm a little disappointed. It's....just okay. Nowhere near deserving the plaudits it has received. It's not a bad game, just not a very good one (in my opinion of course). The pace is too slow for my liking, and the bullet patterns do not seem anything special.

I will say though, and this might be an unpopular opinion, the lack of infinite continues is a nice touch, and should appease the 'this game is too short!' crowd. Perhaps developers should look to this as an option more.

[Stevens]

Jamestown+ on PS4

Nice aesthetics, and a decent attempt at a story. Overall though, I'm a little disappointed. It's....just okay. Nowhere near deserving the plaudits it has received. It's not a bad game, just not a very good one (in my opinion of course). The pace is too slow for my liking, and the bullet patterns do not seem anything special.

I will say though, and this might be an unpopular opinion, the lack of infinite continues is a nice touch, and should appease the 'this game is too short!' crowd. Perhaps developers should look to this as an option more.

In order to fully enjoy Jamestown you have to play it with other people. That is where the game truly shines. As a single player experience it is lacking.