Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

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BareKnuckleRoo
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Ajora wrote:At long last, I've finally gotten around to playing the highly revered Tyrian 2000. And, uh, it's... okay. I feel like all of the people proclaiming this to be one of the greatest games within its genre have either not played many shooters, or have been blinded by nostalgia.
Pretty much. It's a passable euroshmup with inertia and your ship bounces around wildly when hit. One of the things that makes it popular probably is the sheer quantity of content in terms of customization and weapons. Sadly, it still has a lot of fundamental issues.

The best DOS shmup I've ever played is Sideline: http://sideline.ghegs.com/

Raptor's way too easy once you're fully powered up. I loved it as a kid, but I can see it for what it is: a shmup with a massive potential lifebar with ridiculous weapons that can turn levels into a calk. The lasers in particular. Stargunner has the opposite problem; it's a lifebar shmup but I keep feeling like I'm getting hit by stuff I can't see that comes out of nowhere. Major Stryker by Apogee is pretty decent, but its colour palette is limited and it has a kind of choppy scrolling thing going on.
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Jonst
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Jonst »

Finally making progress on garegga (2016 rev), I managed to scrape into the final stage today. Although I have no idea how I would survive blackheart mk2...
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shmupsrocks
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by shmupsrocks »

How many revs for Garegga and what's the difference?
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Ajora
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Ajora »

Having finished Tyrian 2000 a couple of days ago, I've officially come to the conclusion that the game is mediocre. By the end of my playthrough, everything just devolved into a boring, poorly structured mess that I was able to coast through in my sleep. As with Robo Aleste, the storyline is an inane, pretentious, overwritten dumpster fire replete with unlikable characters. Stargunner wasn't anything special, but I'd put it above Tyrian 2000. Though I wish more shooters allowed you to pilot a flying pretzel truck. 

The Guardian Legend, however, is phenomenal. The people calling this one of the most underrated NES games of all time aren't wrong. I'm having so much fun with this, and really can't find anything to nitpick. It's a shame it didn't sell very well.
Last edited by Ajora on Fri May 10, 2019 1:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
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BurlyHeart
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by BurlyHeart »

Zeroranger.

My word it's a lot of fun.
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mycophobia
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by mycophobia »

finally putting my Mega Everdrive to extensive use with MD Same! Same! Same!

It's good.
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by wgogh »

mycophobia wrote:finally putting my Mega Everdrive to extensive use with MD Same! Same! Same!

It's good.
Theres something with that game that makes It feel so relaxing... Even when its hard.
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by BrianC »

mycophobia wrote:finally putting my Mega Everdrive to extensive use with MD Same! Same! Same!

It's good.
Fire Shark is good stuff.
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by mycophobia »

1-ALLed Easy and Normal in fairly short order but Hard is actually kind of tough. now that enemies are shooting at me more it's harder to avoid powerups I don't want. but I really like it and want to go for multiple loops. tfw you get to later stages and there's so many planes coming down and so many shots onscreen that the slowdown kicks in for a second. beautiful feeling
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by wgogh »

Isn't Hard similar to the arcade version? I need to check that
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mycophobia
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by mycophobia »

given the arcade version's reputation for extreme difficulty i'm going to wager it's considerably easier :P

but I can't say, as I haven't played the arcade version more than a few minutes
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Despatche
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Despatche »

Hard is considerably easier. MD is a somewhat different game anyway due to less player shots (2 instead of 4).

Currently playing: Gradius series research. The Gradius III SNES hack is a convenient excuse.
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Stevens
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Stevens »

After a week consumed by Katana Zero I'm back at Ketsui.

Finally broke through to stage five. I won't sit here and tell you I'm close to the clear, but I'm closer than I was.
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by BurlyHeart »

ZeroRanger is so awesome. Just got to the third boss and...
Spoiler
...I turned into this robot with a drill! Very cool.
Really digging the music too.
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M.Knight
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by M.Knight »

Keep at it, the game always gets cooler and cooler! And so does the music.
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by EmperorIng »

Was playing some Tatsujin Ou (or rather, Truxton II) last night. For the first time ever I made it past stage 2 on a single credit.

Good lord, these stage lengths. I was already tired playing at 11PM, but this is an exhausting game. The part of stage 2 with all of the ships floating in from behind starts to wear at your concentration after so long.

I wish I didn't die so early into stage three. It more or less sent me to the point of no return. Only realized about the 1up there after the fact. :evil:
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by shmupsrocks »

Been playing a lot of G Darius lately and there's a lot to like but ultimately I found it pretty frustrating with a lot of "I have no idea how I died" moments.
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Stevens
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Stevens »

Slowly continuing to improve in Ketsui.

Haven't made the 5th stage again yet but my runs are getting more and more consistent up to stage four. I'm getting the 1 UP on three sans dying with far more frequency now. Of course now I'll through one and two clean and die on stage three two or three times in spots I wasn't dying before.

Score is good enough to grab both extends sometime during stage three, but beyond that is nothing spectacular.
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Ajora
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Ajora »

Super Aleste. Definitely better than Blazing Lazers, which didn't impress me very much. I dig the jazzy music, and the difficulty is very well balanced. On the downside, some of the weapons kind of suck, and the sound effects are kinda crap. I really like this game, but I don't like it as much as several other SNES shooters.
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Stevens
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Stevens »

Back to stage five.

Getting 2700 - 3000 on stage two which is better than I had been doing. Getting the battleship to drop its 1 up nearly 100% of the time and dying on it way less frequently.

All around I'm improving, which I'd one of the greatest things about this (any arcade style have game really) genre.

Stage four could stand to be a bit cleaner overall, but I've got a pretty good handle on the mid boss and boss.

Been ages since I stuck with a shooter this long.
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by FabulousVioletGuy »

Raiden IV (Steam Version). I forgot how fun that game was. Second loop is pretty wild.
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Jonst
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Jonst »

Nice one @Stevens! ...Sounds exactly like my garegga game atm.
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shmupsrocks
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by shmupsrocks »

I'm loving Garegga too! Much easier to get into than Bakraid IMO.
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Jonst
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Jonst »

^ I actually found bakraid much easier to get into. I've only learnt more about garegga since the ps4 rev, despite having the saturn version for years. Great game, the equivalent of videogame crack for me.
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Stevens
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Stevens »

Jonst wrote:Nice one @Stevens! ...Sounds exactly like my garegga game atm.
Thanks Jonst! Loving Ketsui right now. How's all on your end?
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Jonst »

Ketsui is just a fantastic game. So rewarding when the practice starts paying off! You'll feel awesome when you clear it and you will clear it because it's so much fun to play. I always thought one day you'd get into that game 8)

Yeah, I'm good thanks! Like I said I've been on garegga for a while now, it's coming together now. Not far from the end but need more resources for blackheart mk

Edit: hey did you clear akai katana in the end?...
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Stevens »

No not yet, but I may go back to it one day.
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Went back to Eschatos to take a stab at Hard mode, not quite at the point where I'm getting the clear. I'm not good at speed shifting game where you gear shift - it's hard to do it naturally in the middle of a fight so you more have to memorize what speed to use where and shift in advance. Or just use the max speed all game long.

After clearing Monolith on Hard Mode, Sudden Death with the default weapon and no upgrades I took a stab at a few more relaxing, casual runs. I ran into a frustrating issue when I was using a Sword weapon with slow keywords (Giant, Triple, Heavy). It was a great weapon, but during a boss I realized that like the player sprite, the Sword is drawn on the top layer above enemy bullets - with a slow swing speed, there were bullets being spawned underneath the giant Sword sprite and travelling towards me I couldn't see and react to properly between sword swings. Normally with a fast speed Sword it's not an issue you'd notice cause you're cancelling bullets with each swipe. Brought it to the dev's attention, hopefully it gets addressed - bullets should always be on the top layer unless you have a small visible hitbox drawn on top of the player sprite. It's not a huge issue in Monolith as the player ship is pretty small (and the actual hitbox smaller still) but there's still a small portion where bullets can pass under the ship out of visibility but still be dodgeable. Only other shmup I can think of that draws player ship above bullets is Judgement Silversword / Cardinal Sins, and like Monolith, it's one of the few if any design flaws in the game I can think of (where slow patterns like double Mirror Shield can sneak bullets under your ship where you can't see how close they are to your small hitbox in the center).

Apparently there's Monolith DLC coming out with extra content. Hoping this gets addressed, mainly because aside from this layer issue the base game feels really slick as it is and nearly perfect, as I can attest to having played Monolith pretty obsessively.

I'm also playing Rayforce - is there an issue with the audio in the latest version of MAME that wasn't in the older versions? ShmupMAME has a bug where a miniboss doesn't properly fire a specific (and easy to dodge) attack, but the latest version of MAME has the audio glitch out when I get a gameover and play a second credit. Effectively I have to reset every time I get a game over, or the music and audio does weird stuff.
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by bobasaurus »

Jonst wrote:Ketsui is just a fantastic game. So rewarding when the practice starts paying off! You'll feel awesome when you clear it and you will clear it because it's so much fun to play. I always thought one day you'd get into that game 8)

Yeah, I'm good thanks! Like I said I've been on garegga for a while now, it's coming together now. Not far from the end but need more resources for blackheart mk

Edit: hey did you clear akai katana in the end?...
Can you get Ketsui for a North American console (other than PS4)? The 360 version apparently Japan region locked. Is the PS3 version the same? Don't have a PS4, but honestly considering it just for this game (and Battle Garegga). I guess hoping for a PC version is too much.
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by BurlyHeart »

bobasaurus wrote:
Jonst wrote:Ketsui is just a fantastic game. So rewarding when the practice starts paying off! You'll feel awesome when you clear it and you will clear it because it's so much fun to play. I always thought one day you'd get into that game 8)

Yeah, I'm good thanks! Like I said I've been on garegga for a while now, it's coming together now. Not far from the end but need more resources for blackheart mk

Edit: hey did you clear akai katana in the end?...
Can you get Ketsui for a North American console (other than PS4)? The 360 version apparently Japan region locked. Is the PS3 version the same? Don't have a PS4, but honestly considering it just for this game (and Battle Garegga). I guess hoping for a PC version is too much.
PS3 version is not region locked, and a retail version can be found on ebay for a reasonable price.
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