Monthly Shmup Club - March 2023 - Gradius 2

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FRO
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Monthly Shmup Club - March 2023 - Gradius 2

Post by FRO »

Allow me to preface this post by saying: Mods, if you feel this is in any way spammy, or it needs to be moved/deleted, please feel free to deal with the post at your discretion. I've been a member of this community for a long time, despite my occasional long stints of inactivity and 'lurker' status, so most of the old guard should know I have no desire to clutter the forum with spam posts.



Now that I have that out of the way, I wanted to let you all know that I'm starting a monthly shmup club. It's not going to be centered here, as it's specifically on the other forum where I'm active, at RF Generation. There are a number of more casual shooter fans in that community, and it's a way to engage folks one game at a time. The idea is, we pick a game each month, and whomever can participate will do so, and then during the course of that month, we'll discuss the game - what we like, what we dislike, strategies, scores, etc. To start with, we'll be playing the original R-Type, and that will be open to any ports, from ZX Spectrum or Game Boy to R-Type Dimensions on the PS3/360. The focus will probably be on more retro stuff to start, because many of the community members will already have a number of games already, or we'll be picking stuff that's more readily available and hasn't shot up in price to ridiculous amounts. For example, I'm thinking about stuff like Sky Shark on NES, Axelay on SNES, Thunder Force II, and then some of the stuff that's been ported to modern consoles digitally, such as the Psykio games on the Switch, or some of the Neo Geo shmups on Switch and PS4. Over time, we'll incorporate stuff on Steam and freeware/doujin stuff, and occasionally tackle more expensive games, as members of the community either vote for, or request, those titles. I'll probably elect to throw in some slightly more esoteric stuff from time to time, just to mix things up. Also, we'll be occasionally including "shmup-like" games that are related, like run 'n gun games, or on-rail shooters like Panzer Dragoon or Sin & Punishment: Star Successor, as well as stuff like Hyperzone or Galaxy Force.

I have no desire to fragment this forum. However, I'm active on more than 1 forum, and I imagine many of you may be as well. If anyone would like to join in, feel free, and if you want to register on RF Generation to participate officially, that would be great. The site also has articles written by staff (such as myself) that we contribute on a monthly basis, as well as a huge database of games and hardware, so if you don't already have a good method of tracking your collection, I would suggest that resource. That's the reason I joined the site in the first place, and then I got pulled into the community aspect, and began to participate in their regular monthly play-through. I even won their shmup scoring contest in December of 2014 :lol:


The official front-page news post announcing the club is here:
http://www.rfgeneration.com/news/shmups/Shmup-Fans-Of-RF-Generation-Unite-3707.php


And the thread for the first game/month (June) is here:
http://www.rfgeneration.com/forum/index.php?topic=18658.0

In March 2023, we'll be playing Taito's classic Gradius 2! Join our Discord server to participate with us:
https://discord.gg/9NgPxPaX


Again, I'm not trying to siphon members away from the Shmups forums, just try to help bridge communities and get more folks involved in playing and appreciating the genre. Also, since I'm hoping to parlay this into an accompanying monthly podcast (to recap the previous month's experience, *SPOILER ALERT* I already did), obviously some expertise from the community would be very much welcome and appreciated. This is as much a motivation for me personally to dig deeper into my shmup library as it is to help foster more discussion and awareness of shooters, so I hope that I can help bring out the competitive spirit in some of the more casual members, but also perhaps get some more seasoned folks to go back to games languishing on their shelves and dust them off for a fresh perspective. Thanks for reading the thread, and hopefully some of you will enjoy this idea.
Last edited by FRO on Mon Feb 20, 2023 6:39 pm, edited 64 times in total.
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club

Post by FRO »

I see Despatche is going to join in. Anyone else? Bueller?
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club

Post by Rue »

I'll hop in.
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club

Post by Square_Air »

I wouldn't mind playing along, I've been meaning to push out a 1-ALL of R-Type for a while now. The problem is that the only versions I have access to are emulated, and the version I would want to sink my time into would be the arcade version on MAME. I've held back on posting since unlike S11 where MAME is the norm, this is on a collectors website and the thread doesn't even acknowledge the arcade version on MAME or PCB, so I'm not sure if you guys would be for that or not. I could potentially post videos/share my INP files & MAME build (just basic ShmupMAME v4.2) if need be.

I wouldn't want to impose on a site with different customs though, so if you want to keep it as a console hardware only affair I understand. Unfortunately, many of us aren't collectors on here regardless of our skill level, so there's a bit of a barrier to entry for many of us.
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club

Post by FRO »

Rue wrote:I'll hop in.
Sounds great, the more the merrier!
Square_Air wrote:I wouldn't mind playing along, I've been meaning to push out a 1-ALL of R-Type for a while now. The problem is that the only versions I have access to are emulated, and the version I would want to sink my time into would be the arcade version on MAME. I've held back on posting since unlike S11 where MAME is the norm, this is on a collectors website and the thread doesn't even acknowledge the arcade version on MAME or PCB, so I'm not sure if you guys would be for that or not. I could potentially post videos/share my INP files & MAME build (just basic ShmupMAME v4.2) if need be.

I wouldn't want to impose on a site with different customs though, so if you want to keep it as a console hardware only affair I understand. Unfortunately, many of us aren't collectors on here regardless of our skill level, so there's a bit of a barrier to entry for many of us.
Honestly, play whichever version you have, or have access to. If MAME is what you want to play, go for it. Yes, RF Generation is a collector's community, but that doesn't mean you can't join in and enjoy the game. Just note that you're playing the arcade version, and that's probably good enough. I'm exploring multiple versions. So far, I've managed to clear the first loop on the GB port, for the sake of comparison, and I'll be playing via R-Types and R-Type Dimensions on PS3 as well. I'm dangerously close to grabbing both the SMS and TurboGrafx versions as well, just to compare, and because I've wanted both for my collection for some time, and this is a good excuse for me to take the plunge. But I wouldn't worry too much about which version, though I would encourage you to try out some of the other versions for comparison's sake, or to get a feel for the different ports, because that might help spark or inform additional conversation about the game and how it translated to different platforms at the time.
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club

Post by Sumez »

I love the concept, and would like to see more of that stuff. I won't have time to play R-Type this month, but be sure to give an update here for next month's game :)
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club

Post by FRO »

Sumez wrote:I love the concept, and would like to see more of that stuff. I won't have time to play R-Type this month, but be sure to give an update here for next month's game :)
Will do! I will probably do a poll on the RFG site to find out what kind of game folks want to play next, i.e. horzi, vert, arena, twin stick, etc. and use that to help pick the next game. That, or I'll select a handful from my collection and throw them in a poll to see which one garners the most votes.
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club

Post by qmish »

Sorry Guest, you are banned from using this forum!
Excessive Amount of Spam Registrations from the .ru domain
Oh, look, another site who ban the whole country due to some shitbots.

:roll:
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club

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qmish wrote:
Sorry Guest, you are banned from using this forum!
Excessive Amount of Spam Registrations from the .ru domain
Oh, look, another site who ban the whole country due to some shitbots.

:roll:
If you PM me your email, I can pass it on to the admins, if you'd still like to register, and ask them if they can do an exception.
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club

Post by qmish »

Oh, no thanks, i'm not active shmupper that much

But if anyone would be in similar situation, suggest the same for them! (unless they can just use proxy or something)
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club

Post by FRO »

qmish wrote:Oh, no thanks, i'm not active shmupper that much

But if anyone would be in similar situation, suggest the same for them! (unless they can just use proxy or something)
Yeah, anymore, it pays to use VPN or proxy solutions. Let me know if you change your mind, and I'll be happy to pass it along. Same for anyone else outside the US, if you run into issues registering, I'm happy to pass those requests along personally, since I work with the admins closely.
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club

Post by Square_Air »

FRO wrote:Honestly, play whichever version you have, or have access to. If MAME is what you want to play, go for it. Yes, RF Generation is a collector's community, but that doesn't mean you can't join in and enjoy the game. Just note that you're playing the arcade version, and that's probably good enough.
If that's the case than count me in! I started playing R-Type a few days ago and think it would be fun to run through this with another community.
FRO wrote:But I wouldn't worry too much about which version, though I would encourage you to try out some of the other versions for comparison's sake, or to get a feel for the different ports, because that might help spark or inform additional conversation about the game and how it translated to different platforms at the time.
While I'm still playing the arcade version currently, I think it would be pretty interesting to see how some of the ports compare. I've always heard the PC Engine version was pretty accurate.
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club

Post by FRO »

Square_Air wrote:
FRO wrote:Honestly, play whichever version you have, or have access to. If MAME is what you want to play, go for it. Yes, RF Generation is a collector's community, but that doesn't mean you can't join in and enjoy the game. Just note that you're playing the arcade version, and that's probably good enough.
If that's the case than count me in! I started playing R-Type a few days ago and think it would be fun to run through this with another community.
Excellent! Just be sure you register at the site, so you can post in the play through topic, and I can list you officially on the page :D
Square_Air wrote:
FRO wrote:But I wouldn't worry too much about which version, though I would encourage you to try out some of the other versions for comparison's sake, or to get a feel for the different ports, because that might help spark or inform additional conversation about the game and how it translated to different platforms at the time.
While I'm still playing the arcade version currently, I think it would be pretty interesting to see how some of the ports compare. I've always heard the PC Engine version was pretty accurate.
I've heard the same about the PCE/Turbo version. I'm on the brink of buying both the SMS and Turbo versions, just because I don't have them yet, but also to do comparisons, and see how well they play. Plus, I just bought a PowerBase Mini FM, and R-Type supports the FM unit, so I kinda want to hear that classic music via the FM unit :lol:
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club

Post by Despatche »

The PC Engine version is pretty on-point, but the versions of that version are weird.

The Japanese release was very early and they couldn't cheaply fit it on one card, so it was split into two parts. This was right after the game came out, so it was kinda worth it because of just how good the port itself was. The NES and the Master System, which the PC Engine was a direct competitor to at first, couldn't really do something like this. This makes the Master System R-Type all the more impressive, and I'd love to see an authentic late '80s-style crack at an NES port some day (inb4 Magic Dragon). It was the same kind of selling point that Sega advertised with the Mega Drive for so long, and it's why the PC Engine is usually mentioned alongside the Mega Drive and the SNES instead of the NES and the Master System. Really, the PC Engine is an in-betweener in the same way as the Dreamcast, good enough that it gets compared with the immediate next gen.

The American release was later and they could put it all on one card. Then you have Complete CD released a while later, which is based on the original port but has a bunch of crazy cutscenes and such. See, in the early '90s, there was this strong attempt to build the R-Type lore with things like Complete CD and R-Type Special (music album), and eventually R-Type III and onward. I don't know how well Complete CD gels with Special, though.
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club

Post by LordHypnos »

Out of curiosity, does anyone know if any of the home computer ports of R-Type are good? e.g. ZX Spectrum, C64, etc.
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club

Post by Square_Air »

Question. Are we holding off until June for posting scores/strats/etc to keep the event nice and tidy, or is it already open season despite being almost 2 weeks early?
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club

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LordHypnos wrote:Out of curiosity, does anyone know if any of the home computer ports of R-Type are good? e.g. ZX Spectrum, C64, etc.
Unfortunately, I don't have experience with any of the microcomputer ports, so I can't say. I'd wager that the ZX Spectrum version might be lacking, but that's supposition, based on my time with the Game Boy version, which has hardware similarly diminutive in power, and certainly presents as a lesser port. Based on watching a couple minutes of the C64 port, it seems like that version made some significant concessions for the platform. The first boss doesn't shoot the targeted rings out, which makes it even easier, and some of the enemy patterns are either changed, or nonexistent. All the weapons are there, however, unlike the Game Boy version, and the Chris Hulsbeck interpretation of the original game's soundtrack is high energy, and sounds fantastic. It also seems as though there are some minor hitbox irregularities, that may give you an advantage here and there. Some of the design concessions made for the hardware are similar to that of the Game Boy version - namely, the toning down of the battleship fight in Stage 3, where the ship itself isn't really destructable, only the turrets and portions that have been added on. I would assume that's because the primary form of the ship itself is a background element, and only the attached portions are actual sprites. Someone more familiar with the way C64 games are typically programmed should feel free to correct me if I'm wrong :D
Square_Air wrote:Question. Are we holding off until June for posting scores/strats/etc to keep the event nice and tidy, or is it already open season despite being almost 2 weeks early?
If you plan to participate, I would say feel free to play and practice all you like (I am), but if you're going to post scores over at the RF Generation thread, wait until June. That shouldn't stop you from posting scores here, however, if you decided to do so. But officially, the high score competition will be at the other site.
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club - July 2018 Gradius

Post by FRO »

Just a heads-up, the July 2018 game will be the original Gradius! Any console or computer port is eligible, at least of those that follow the arcade original's stages. Those who want to participate via MAME are welcome to as well, though there have been some good ports, like both Gradius Deluxe Pack releases, and the Gradius Collection on PSP, plus the new Arcade Archives port on PS4.

Here's the official thread:
http://www.rfgeneration.com/forum/index ... ic=18678.0
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club - August 2018 Raiden V

Post by FRO »

Bump to announce Raiden V as the shmup selection for August 2018! Come join in with us as we play through the latest Raiden offering from MOSS! I'll be playing via the PS4 version, but it looks like it's also on Xbox One and PC.

Here's the discussion thread:
http://www.rfgeneration.com/forum/index ... ic=18694.0
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club - September 2018 Warning Forever

Post by FRO »

Bump to announce that the September 2018 game of the month will be Warning Forever, from Hikware! Most of you will already be familiar with this fun doujin boss rush shooter, and we'll be concentrating on the game during the month of September.

Official discussion thread:
http://www.rfgeneration.com/forum/index ... ic=18779.0
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club - September 2018 Warning Forever

Post by Shepardus »

Warning Forever, now there's a name I haven't heard in a long while!
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club - September 2018 Warning Forever

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Shepardus wrote:Warning Forever, now there's a name I haven't heard in a long while!
It's one of those PC doujin games I go back to semi-frequently, because it's a fun little experience. Despite it being around the last 15 years, lots of people still don't know about it, outside the more hardcore shmup community, so I figured I would introduce it to a slightly more casual audience, and hope that they get something out of the experience. I know I'll be having fun with it next month!
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club - October 2018 - 1942

Post by FRO »

Bump to announce the October 2018 shmup of the month: 1942!

http://www.rfgeneration.com/forum/index ... ic=18797.0
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club - October 2018 - 1942

Post by davyK »

I find 1942 a punishingly tough game.

My current version is the Wii VC version which is pretty sweet. I use my Tatsunoko v Capcom stick with upgraded Sanwa buttons to play it.

Doesn't make it any easier!!!!

Think my best score is around 120K.
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club - October 2018 - 1942

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davyK wrote:I find 1942 a punishingly tough game.

My current version is the Wii VC version which is pretty sweet. I use my Tatsunoko v Capcom stick with upgraded Sanwa buttons to play it.

Doesn't make it any easier!!!!

Think my best score is around 120K.
Nice! I'm going to be exploring multiple versions. A couple nights ago, I played on the original Xbox via the Capcom Classics Collection, and it plays fine, but without a good stick, and the lousy D-pad on even the later "S" style pads, it's pretty hard to maneuver very well. Last night, I played the Saturn version, and was able to get over 100K after a few runs:

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I felt pretty good about that, considering I haven't played the game in years. I'll also be messing around with the NES version, and also on PSP with Capcom Classics Collection Reloaded. I might try to emulate the C64 version, just to check it out, and I'm hoping the local barcade has a multi-game cabinet with 1942 in it, so I can mess around with it using a proper arcade stick.
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club - November 2018 - Steel Empire

Post by FRO »

November's shmup of the month is Steel Empire! Available on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, Game Boy Advance, 3DS, and Steam, there are a lot of ways to play this interesting steampunk themed shooter. Come join in the fun!

http://www.rfgeneration.com/forum/index ... ic=18841.0
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club - November 2018 - Steel Empire

Post by retroshmuper »

Hi, I’ll join in and play Steel Empire. Looking forward to it.
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club - November 2018 - Steel Empire

Post by garrz32 »

The art on the cover of the Jpn version is absolutely stunning, pretty under rated game in my opinion.
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club - November 2018 - Steel Empire

Post by FRO »

retroshmuper wrote:Hi, I’ll join in and play Steel Empire. Looking forward to it.
Excellent, welcome aboard! If you haven't already, consider signing up for the RF Gen forums, so you can discuss there. Alternatively, feel free to hit me up on Discord or Twitter for discussion, and we can mention it on the podcast.
garrz32 wrote:The art on the cover of the Jpn version is absolutely stunning, pretty under rated game in my opinion.
Agreed! I think that's why they've used the Japanese art for all the branding on the 3DS and Steam releases. That logo, and the art in general is definitely top notch. And yes, it's an underrated game, which is one of the reasons we decided to cover it :D
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Re: Monthly Shmup Club - December 2018 - Atari 2600 Showdown

Post by FRO »

Bump to announce a face-off between 2 Atari 2600 proto-shmups: Imagic's Demon Attack, and Spider Fighter from Activision! Rather than bog people down during the holidays, I figured it would be nice to have a couple super-simple, pickup and play games that wouldn't require much dedication to play, no 1CC to worry about, etc.

Discussion thread:
http://www.rfgeneration.com/forum/index ... ic=18875.0
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