Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

[Tarma]

Decided to spend some time with the Mega Drive and finally managed to sit down and enjoy Robo Aleste and Denin Aleste. I don't know why, but for some reason, the first time I approached these games I really didn't like them... which was strange as I really like their cousin Spriggan on PCE.

Anyhoo, finally clicked with these two, so will invest more time in getting to know them better

Also been honing my skills on Gleylancer... work in progress!

[BurlyHeart]

Taking a break from Nex, and fired up Raiden V today. It's not too bad at all, and I feel like it will grow on me. The talking in the background is a bizarre addition, although the music overall is superb.

I just wish they had a tate option. It's really hard to see bullets and even some enemies on a 23 inch monitor.

[wgogh]

Akai Katana
Playing on the XBOX 360, with the original controler, since I dont have a 360 arcade stick yet (luckly, it is not hard to find). I just started and I know that I'm playing wrong. Need to watch some video and read a little about the game. Don't know about you, but I really like that part of the experience, just learning the mechanics and starting to think strategies. Looks like a good port. Although I've never played the original, nothing seems terribly wrong.

[svensonson]

currently playing Dive On for the Sharp X68000. somehow I really like the graphics, design and of course gameplay. really fun shmup

[Udderdude]

So, yeah, Graze Counter. Pretty good game, gets really hectic by stage 3, and you're basically required to use break mode and graze counter constantly just to survive. I like the art style, reminds me of certain X68000 shmups.

It's on Steam for fairly cheap if anyone wants to pick it up. There's also a free demo. http://store.steampowered.com/app/629440/Graze_Counter/

[NeoStrayCat]

Yeah Udder, Graze Counter is kinda my jam to the PB, lol. But yes, its good in its own way for its mechanics and stuff.

[davyK]

I'm STILL at Gigawing!!!!

Damn close to a 1CC...

Here's my best run up to the TLB...

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrv7TrCKFM0
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-zcrqFRZdw

[copy-paster]

Playing SNES Gradius III on overclocked MESS, now this made the game much better. Even though I set it to maximum (200%) it doesn't really eliminate all the slowdowns like st3 underground for example, also the fight with high speed stage boss was harder because of this, lost all lives in here too.

[NeoStrayCat]

While the holidays are on as usual, DeathSmiles 2X to bring the Christmas cheer to Gilverado, lol.

[mamboFoxtrot]

I see I'm not the only one who makes a tradition of that
Every year I'm shocked again at just how bad that Extra stage is, tho


On a less seasonal note I've been just been playing stuff I've never played before at random in MAME. Cyvern and Vasara 2 seem pretty interesting.
Also playing that old Toaplan-style stuff for the first time - Twin Cobra, Flying Shark, Raiden and clones, etc. It's... certainly different from my usual horis and bullet-hells.

[Perikles]

Used the holidays to clear a few more among the selected classic shmups that are still on my bucket list. Had some surprises, both negative and positive:


- Finally sat down with Commando/Senjou no Ookami. Have to say I'm not impressed in the least despite the admirable amount of chaos, welter and disorder in such an early game. Unlike Kiki Kaikai and Valtric (also released around the same time) which likewise feature relentlessly spawning enemies and astute usage of terrain, Commando moreso seems to focus on enervating the player. It's not uncommon to get stuck on an object you've already passed (!), thus dying to a stray bullet. Drowning in a horrific squelch in what is probably a knee-dep pond due to absurd "collision detection" is also always grand fun. And let's not forget about those hallmark bridges that obscure your sight, makes stormin' through the outback all the more exciting if you don't know what's going to happen. I do acknowledge the idea of undaunted homicidal elopement towards the enemy camp, some balancing would've been absolutely necessary for an actually decent result, unfortunately. At least the game is short as well as undemanding.


- Speaking of short games: after many trepidations, I plucked up the courage and worked my way through all three courses of Choujikuu Yousai Macross II. I implacably abhor all things caravan and was ready to subsequently hate this game (despite praising the execution on a technical level and all that unctious nonsense), yet ended up loving it instead. The audiovisual department is nothing short of stellar, the tracks that play during the Expert Course in particular are outstanding. Granted, you still have to put up with rather arcane usances (e.g. let this innocuous mech live for a while so that he turns into another mech, thus granting a substantial bonus!) and the difficulty is all over the place (e.g. the second stage in the Medium Course would belong to the Beginner Course whereas the third stage in the Medium Course is easily as tricky as anything Expert throws at you), it's nonetheless a fluid, exhilarating, congenial (with all its connotations) experience. Certainly a game I might return to.


- I've been trying this one on and off, hence I'm immensely satisfied that Cybattler is in the bag now. When I first played the game, I simply couldn't get used to the controls whatsoever. Then I stumbled on various roadblocks throughout, such as the third boss and the fifth stage. When I eventually started to appropriately deconstruct the overall gameplay and its diverse exemplifications thereof, I still couldn't beat the final boss no matter how hard I tried. After a while it dawned on me that even though it usually doesn't look it makes any difference, playing with 30hz autofire instead of 15hz autofire is crucial to point-blank this guy into oblivion. There are also specific ways how you can manipulate him into conducting more favourable actions (i.e. throwing the scythe instead of flying all over the place and performing various antics), knowing how to approach and cripple him is by far the most important trait, though. It's a bit of a shame that such a creative game ends on such a sour note for there definitely is a lot to like about Cybattler. The lingering eidolon that is imprecise controls in conjunction with a few rough spots can dampen the overall good impression, alas.


- Since I was incidentally clearing the penultimate game of the TRP-STGT 2014, I figured I might as well tackle Sengeki Striker next for completion's sake. I've had a few quick rounds of this afore and dismissed it as terrible, turns out it is stunningly mediocre. I still strongly dislike the fact that most of your deaths come from little ships trying to crash into you instead from, you know, the plethora of bullets, it's luckily a rather harmless adventure outside of that. I absolutely adore the third boss' ineffectual flailing with his ceremonial spear, he's not going to let anyone deter him from his turgid, jaunty display of prestidigitation, even if it comes at the price of his robotic life. I can respect such adamant determination. Not a terribly memorable game outside of that, I'm afraid, there's virtually no level design to speak of, I suppose the raspberry bullet sound is rather unique. Scoring system sucks hard, of course, but why bother with it in the first place? Was also surprised by how easy the first loop is, you would think that a game with so many bullets would represent a fiercer threat.


- The most frustrating game out of the bunch was undoubtedly Koutetsu Yousai Strahl. I usually like UPL's peculiarities in one way or another, I even got some enjoyment out of Uchuu Senkan Gomora; Acrobat Mission and Atomic Robo-Kid are decent at the very least, Omega Fighter can be great if you've the right mindset, and let's forget for a second that XX Mission exists for it is the time of the year to show mercifulness. There is no excuse for the maddening flaws in Strahl, however. Not being able to use autofire whilst shifting the auxiliary weapons around is bad enough as it is considering how the stage design is laid out, the excessive repetition during the stages and especially the boss fights is what ultimately kills this game. After what has to be the most soporiferous first stage in any shmup (you can fortunately fast-forward through the first boss if you sit in the lower left corner), Strahl immediately starts with cheap set-ups commingled with mind-numbing iteration to take away your lives. Memorization and a prudent weapon selection will work wonders, it's just baffling how terrible some of the design decisions are. Bullet visibility is a pressing issue, doubly so if you have (admittedly glamorous) explosions on the screen everywhere, avoid getting rammed by flying saucers that love to stay outside the range of your bombs is your prevalent task, the final boss honestly takes some five minutes of circling around and adjusting shields. The real travesty here is that the art direction is magnificent and the boss theme emanates inestimable wistfulness of the most poignant kind. I can see several of the vignettes within the stages being amazing on the gameplay front, much more so with the fundamental Axelay/Ultimate Ecology armament. If someone were to cut at least 10 minutes of fat out of the game, fix the scoring system (or just add another digit, really) and adjust the difficulty (bosses should be a danger, not a nuisance or a test of patience; your deadliest foe shouldn't be a comical disc that inexorably surrounds and unceremoniously collides into the player; you shouldn't design a stage in such a way that hugging the bottom of the screen for extended periods of time is the most efficient way to go about it), it could be grand. Would love to see all that fantastic sprite work and artistic vision put to proper use.

[Meltyskull]

Just picked up Ketsui on the PS3. Not sure if it's a good port but it was a good price and I've never played the OG so I wouldn't know what to compare it to.

Other than that, I'm still playing Zero Gunner 2, Chaos Field, and Ikaruga on the DC (and a few others)

I recently got my first arcade cab and I'm just now learning about some of these pcb price tags
It's a Jaleco Pony Mark IV

[Perikles]

Dabbled with a couple more oddballs yesterday, one of which is simply amazing:

- Got quick clears of all three difficulties/courses in Wangan Sensou/Desert War. Was honestly dreading this game since it is uncannily similar to Dimension Force regarding shifting the altitude, you also rescue hostages akin to F/A, only that it is a central element in Wangan Sensou instead of merely being a bonus. Turns out the game is perfectly serviceable despite the horrific allusions - yes, it can be cheap getting shot while collecting little guys on the ground, yet if you're wary enough and take your time, you never should experience many troubles. If you play with 30hz autofire, you can cut through almost every resistance in a snap, dodging is unexpectedly lenient mauger the fact you are steering a Thunder Dragon-sized chopper. The scoring system is completely idiotic which kills any replay value the game might've had, I don't regret the ~1 hour it took to get through all the modes, however. You even earn an appropriate title if you clear Expert:




- I definitely had the wrong idea what would await me in SD Gundam Neo Battling. When you're playing the game at first you're perplexed by the multitude of different (no to mention random!) power-ups - most of which are either irrelevant or detrimental -, whilst you make your way through short & simple stages with adorable enemies in them. Little did I know this game would turn into loop 2 Image Fight savagery in a manner of a few more stages, except with cute robots in it. This game gets so unbelievably brutal it's unreal. You have long columns of little mechs coming from behind that must be avoided in highly specific ways, bosses that leave you but one or two pixels to dodge, ceaseless waves of enemies you have to take care of in a matter of seconds, foes from all sides unleashing blazing-fast patterns, it's glorious. I really should invest some time and try to get a clear.

[BIL]

You even earn an appropriate title if you clear Expert:

What a gruff little chap! Some hounds take a bite outta crime, this guy looks like he's gonna take a bite outta scrubs!

[Stevens]

Fired up MAME and played a little DOGYUUUUUUUN last night.

[wgogh]

I'm STILL at Gigawing!!!!

Damn close to a 1CC...

Here's my best run up to the TLB...

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrv7TrCKFM0
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-zcrqFRZdw

You're using Ruby, my girl! If you got a 1cc with her and record it, I'll sure watch it when I ger back to this game

[LordHypnos]

I just recently reinstalled my linux, because Arch finally broke on me again (Probably due to forgetting to go to archlinux.org before doing updates, that's usually what does it, but even after reading what I needed to do before the update, I couldn't get it to work. At least I kept it going for quite a few years this time. Used to have to reinstall way more frequently). This time I chose Debian, which is pretty new to me, but my reasoning was that Debian is very stable, and I don't really care about having the bleeding edge of software, actually (not anymore, at least). My laptop is really old now, anyway, so it's probably for the best.

Anywho, since doing this, I installed a bunch of shitty open source shooters and played some of them casually, to see if any were worth playing more. Very few seemed any good at all. Some of the good standouts though were, unsurprisingly, Kenta Cho's games. Val and Rick was especially surprisingly fun just given how weird it is. I will say that there's not much variety in enemy shots, though. It basically gets just more enemies. Most of them just do straightforward aimed shots, too, so I'm guessing once I figure out how to stream those with large numbers of enemies in play, it'll be pretty easy. Then again it might just get more and more enemies until it's literally impossible to dodge. I think there's some RNG in where enemies and scenery spawn, but I'm not totally sure. I also don't know if it's endless like some other Kenta Cho games (though I would guess it is, in which case there must be RNG as well).

Also, on the Kenta Cho front Tumiki Fighters is the shit. I kind of already knew this, but it's probably my favorite shooter that is available in Debian's repositories. Well, rRootage gives it a run for it's money of course, but that's a much different type of game. Tumiki Fighters actually has a set of stages and stuff. It's structured much more like an arcade game. But yeah, what a cool game conceptually, and also very fun! I think this one might not have any RNG in it, which is unusual for a Kenta Cho game.

Much further down the list, Garden of Colored Lights is not half bad. This is designed by a guy named Linley Henzell, who seems to have also designed the predecessor game to the popular roguelike Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, which is interesting. He also did White Butterfly, which is about as good, but a bit more straightforward (Garden integrates the gameplay into the music. It's kind of trying to be a shmup version of Rez). White Butterfly seems to be absent from Debian's software repositories. Both of these games are pretty brutal in difficulty, and seem to have too much enemy HP, but I think that's really the main flaw (well, also no bullet deadzone at the bottom of the screen even in the early stages, I don't think). Still, somebody has cleared it, and on a higher difficulty no less, so that's good to know. I don't know if I'll pursue it beyond casual credits, though.

Geki 3 (haven't tried Geki 2, and didn't see a Geki 1) is also pretty fun. This one has a lifebar, but you do actually get a good amount of feedback for being hit. It does suffer from some really bad Gradius syndrome, though. The first boss takes like a year if you're at low shot power. You do lose shot power when hit, as well. The first and second stages were both pretty easy at high shot power, IIRC, but I powered down too much before the boss, so haven't made stage 3 yet. The one really fatal flaw is that it has no fullscreen mode, though. Who the hell designs a 640x480 game with no fullscreen mode!? I suppose it could be pretty old though, I really don't know when it was written. Also, apparently someone at least started working on porting it to dreamcast at some point. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a straightforward cdi file, so I don't really know how to get it to run. You might need writable storage and a dev kit (Though it is probably the homebrew dev kit).

Additionally, I do have the steamless version of Blue Revolver for linux (Haven't installed steam yet). This game is pretty sweet. No question about it. I could see getting serious with it eventually. My version is still pretty old and has the no enemy collisions with popcorns bug, which I'm guessing has been fixed by now, but I probably like it better this way, anyway.

Apart from PC shmups, I also had the opportunity to play Valkyrius with a P2 not long ago, and it was pretty fun. My P2 went through all of his continues before I died once, so I didn't even have to continue . Pretty solid two player, and also just a really excellent game. One of my favorite--if not my actual favorite--commercial indie shmups, for sure.

Also dusted off the Dreamcast for a little Mars Matrix action as I do every now and then. Actually managed to get the clear on my second or third try, which was pretty cool . I don't actually usually get the clear when I play. Wasn't even too bad of a run. I think I got around 3.3 million exp, maybe? Can't remember the actual score. Maybe 1.4 trillion or something...? It's certainly no where near my best (1.9 trillion, if anyone's wondering ) Too many chain breaks in stage 4, but I think I no missed the stage 4 and 5 bosses, which is pretty amazing given how long it's been since I played.

Sorry for the wordiness, but I haven't posted here in like a year. Happy New Years, everyone

[Marc]

Picked up Raiden V is the PS4 Jan sale. I like it.... sorry. Not played much as of yet, but apart from it looking a bit bland I certainly can't see anything massively wrong with it. Haven't got a clue what the Cheer thing is all about mind.

[BurlyHeart]

Played a couple of levels of Super Hydorah at the weekend and came away impressed. Cool visuals and sound, and certainly challenging! I'll definitely be putting some hours into this during 2018..

[LordHypnos]

OG R-Type in MAME. Holy shit this game is good! Did anyone realize how good this game is!? I really didn't think it would be this good!

So far can make it to stage 3 in one credit (actually one life, recovery looks daunting). Might have made it to stage 4 once. What a cool weapon system though, for real!

[mamboFoxtrot]

Yeah, Stage 3 is as far as I've ever made it with R-Type, either, though I haven't put a huge amount of time into it.


I spent a little quality time with Capcom Arcade Cabinet, mostly with 1942, which I hadn't played before. It's old af, but... I kinda like it, honestly. Probably not ever going to bother trying to 1CC all 32 (!!) stages, but it seems some good fun, anyways. What caught me a bit off-guard is that they actually reserve the bottom portion of the screen so that you can't get surprise-butt-sexed by enemies. Funnily enough, I didn't realize they did this until after I had dodged a few rear-spawning enemies, because I've already made avoiding the absolute bottom of the screen a normal shmup-playing habit by now.
I just find it a bit surprising that they had the foresight to do this, because really, how many other shmups have any manners about enemies from behind? Exed Exes has this as well, to a lesser degree, but otherwise the only other game I can think of right now is Thunder Dragon 2, where some of the enemies just don't have collision until they move up the screen a certain amount.

1943 is kind of a mess, though I'm sure it's possible to avoid all that shit, but even still that game has no chill jfc

[BIL]

I just find it a bit surprising that they had the foresight to do this, because really, how many other shmups have any manners about enemies from behind? Exed Exes has this as well, to a lesser degree

Capcom stablemate and close contemporary Gun.Smoke will never jam anything up your bum either. Not that this'll stop enemies from shooting you in the back, mind, but they're very considerate about it!

[Stevens]

I think I've decided Hyper Duel is going to be the first "new" game I get into this year. It would have been R Type or Dangun if they had a 3rd rapid fire button:( While I'm on the topic does the PS4 Dangun have one?

Anyways Hyper Duel looks, plays, and sounds amazing. Mechanics are easy to grasp and a convoluted scoring system is nowhere to be found. Doesn't seem too difficult - already hovering around stage six. Bosses three and four could be a little tougher though..

[LordHypnos]

Have been able to get to stage 5 of R-Type on one credit. I should be able to get to stage 6 thanks to this extremely cheesy stage 5 safespot, but when I did finally get far enough to use it, I hadn't really practiced the boss at all, so I died there, and the safespot doesn't seem to work if you're not fully powered. Have also started learning a route for stage 6. Stage 6 definitely seems more memorizey than earlier stages. Overall still really enjoying in spite of the really hard recovery, which can be very frustrating. Probably just going to try to get a 1LC if I decide to try to clear, because I don't really want to have to learn recovery in addition to everything else.

[lilmanjs]

Ghost Blade HD
Looks good and plays well. Enjoying the music as well. I wonder why the original is so awful.

[Stevens]

Ghost Blade HD
I wonder why the original is so awful.

Massive frame rate drops to single digits. It was too much for the DC to handle is my guess.

[wgogh]

Played a couple of levels of Super Hydorah at the weekend and came away impressed. Cool visuals and sound, and certainly challenging! I'll definitely be putting some hours into this during 2018..

Playstation 2 version? I would like to know if the port is any good.

[BurlyHeart]

Played a couple of levels of Super Hydorah at the weekend and came away impressed. Cool visuals and sound, and certainly challenging! I'll definitely be putting some hours into this during 2018..

Playstation 2 version? I would like to know if the port is any good.

Was it on the PS2? I had read it was a free indie game on PC, that was beefed up and ported to consoles whilst adding the 'Super' prefix.

[Shepardus]

Probably a typo, it's on PS4 and Vita, not PS2.

[Stevens]

This evenings credits were brought to you by Technosoft, makers of manly fucking shooters.