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
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.
