Any good books on Shmups ?

[antmavel]

Hi,

Looking for good books on Shmups I often read books about video games but only recently came to the shmup genre, keen to read more about it.

Thanks

[2a03]

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/books/ ... ups-vol-1/

[qmish]

If HG101 books are mentioned, then i also should mention "Untold History of Japanese Game Developers" Vol. 1,2,3. While it doesnt concentrate on shmups, it has interviews with developers from some important shmup-related companies of the past.

[antmavel]

If HG101 books are mentioned, then i also should mention "Untold History of Japanese Game Developers" Vol. 1,2,3. While it doesnt concentrate on shmups, it has interviews with developers from some important shmup-related companies of the past.

Thanks, I have all three of them. Great books, my favorite in general, super interesting, a bit raw but very cool to read and full of small stories.

[antmavel]

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/books/ ... ups-vol-1/

Thanks, I don't have that book and it was high on my wishlist, only thing I noticed was that there was no CAVE shmups if I am not incorrect but the rest seems quite strong. It says VOL1 but I didn't see any VOL2 so I assume not done yet.

[schnuth]

I’d also suggest Memoirs of a Virtual Caveman by Rob Strangman:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/131210483X/re ... BCbYBC4WY0

While it doesn’t concentrate just on shmups, there is a lot of great Gradius talk.

[Nameschonvergeben]

http://dc.etsu.edu/honors/249/

[EmperorIng]

It's not a book, but I will point out this topic which links to a very fascinating academic article written about Xevious during its heyday.

[BulletMagnet]

Not a physical book, but the forum put together several of the shmup-related articles on Racketboy; this one might be a good starting point if you're just starting out.

[garbanzox]

Here's another HG101 book that I don't see mentioned.

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/books/ ... -shooters/

There's also issue 142 of Retro Gamer - the cover article is titled Shoot-'em-Ups.

[gray117]

Not a read as such unless you happen to do Japanese but Rancor can probably hook you up with most of the shmup related magazines/books:
http://www.sk8tokyo.com/shmup/
(other shmup related items)

Everything by the wonderful blackoak @ shmuplations.com

Edge did a shmup issue a while ago... tie-in to thunder force vi... got it somewhere, can't find the issue no. online

Does reading a video count? There's this rather good french (eng subtitled) doc with good contributors from devs made a while ago... shame it's not 5 times as long:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMNW6NTfKvQ


Most of the hg101 books are like good wikis... although competent they're a little disappointing imho, since they're not amazingly well designed visually, but beggers can't be choosers . vol2 is apparently in the works I believe.

The untold series is the exception - absolutely amazing read - any qwirkiness/awkwardness just speaks to the truth of the stories told - take some personalities/facts with a pinch of salt, but 100% this is the story as as told by the people that did the work. (I think it's fair to mention there was some controversy surrounding the translation of these - long story short imho both sides were wrong to get into the situation, wrong to escalate it, and although he didn't deal with it well I think he was the target of a bit of a shakedown.)