Had a revolutionary idea while playing shmups...

[ShotOfSelf]

Been playing Dangun Feveron with 1 credit and it feels like the game should end when my ships blows up. It feels weird to continue playing after losing a life since my ship was destroyed. Since the developers create a shmup with the goal of a 1cc there should be a life bar instead of lives. Each hit can take off a bar of energy and perhaps show the damage on your ship. Getting an extend would either repair said damage, put on extra armor, or simply add an extra bar if you pushed past the default amount. Your original ship exploding should only happen when you lose that credit and the game is over.

My only no-misses were Gradius 1 and 2 on the NES and Darius 2/Sagaia for Megadrive. Those felt right since I took my starting ship all the way to the end. Clearing Eliminate Down and seeing the beautiful ending screen didn't exactly feel right since I lost a few lives, meaning my original ship, along the way. Imagine if in Metal Slug you hop into a Metal Slug, you're rolling along and each time you take a hit it blows up, only to respawn another in it's place 2 more times. That doesn't happen because it wouldn't feel good. The Slug has a lifebar with 3 hits and when it blows up it's gone forever. On the other hand, when your soldier gets hit he dies and then a clone magically appears so you cannot take him through the game unless you no-miss.

In Armed Police Batrider, you can select a team of 3 different ships but if one blows up and you get an extend, that ship magically comes back. Better to have the destroyed ship take damage and spin off the bottom of the screen so it makes sense if it returns later on. That would feel much better.

Another solution would be to make it part of the plot. Take Gynoug, for instance. From the manual: "You are a winged warrior and if you fail, your wings will be clipped forever!" Sounds cool but it isn't true, your wings should only be able to be clipped forever once but if you die multiple times you can still 1cc the game. That's ridiculous! There is only one winged warrior and he should have a life bar until the final clipping. Now if the story said you were controlling a group of winged warriors or the main character could come back to life multiple times, that would make sense.

In conclusion, I would like my ship to only be completely obliterated when I actually lose that single credit. It will always feel wrong for me to continue after my ship explodes into nothing. Credit feeding doesn't matter since you're cheating the game anyway but I feel this is important for a 1cc. Off the top of my head the only shmup I know that has this is Guwange. It's awesome since you don't die until you lose your credit. Now I know that uses an energy bar and you can take varied amounts of damage but it could easily work with single hits in a more conventional shmup. Future devolopers need to be informed, the games stay the same but become more engrossing. If anyone who reads this is designing a shmup, implement this beautiful idea.

TL;DR: Just learned to touch type from 'Mavis Beacon 5' and 'The Typing of the Dead'.

[M.Knight]

I don't think it's "revolutionnary" as you have yourself outlined one example of the idea already implemented in a game a few decades old. There a few other shmups where lives are labelled as shield units or life points like for example (off the top of my head) Chaos Field, Esp Ra De, Radirgy, Shikigami no Shiro and Karous. In all of those you don't explode/die unless you actually game over.
In any case it's true that having the ship explode and then magically come back is kinda weird.

I know that Eschatos contextualizes the ship explosion by actually showing all your remaining lives as different ships during the ending, so a ship that exploded was actually destroyed in-universe. You may find this example interesting.

[ShotOfSelf]

Good list, can't believe I forgot about Esp Ra De. Just checked out the Eschatos ending and it is a perfect example, very well done. Life bars in shooters are definitely not new so my kinda stale idea is that every single shmup would be better like this. You only explode into bits when it's really over. How did this not catch on after all this time? It's probably part of the reason I've always liked Gradius, Raiden, Darius, R-Type and a bunch of Toaplan shmups. They're pretty much designed for a no-miss, die once and it feels right to start over since you're stripped.

[M.Knight]

I think there might be several reasons why devs have historically chosen explosions when losing lives :

-It's a very immediate and instant way to convey the damage to the player. Unconvincing damage animations may not even be registered by the player, who won't realize he took a hit.

-Having the player ship explode instead of coming up with specific damage animations and damage sprites is much less time-consuming to implement and arcade games of the time were made on tight schedules. As a result, this could be a useful shortcut for something that's good to have but ultimately not mandatory to have a shippable game.

-The oldest shmups had checkpoints and the ship exploding before having an other one come back to an earlier location in the stage makes more sense. And it's possible that this convention stuck even after checkpoints have been ditched from most games and the explosion contextualisation is no longer there.

[donluca]

Deathsmiles as well and in Batrider you actually have a team of 3 different ships, although if you gain a life you get them back.

[CyberAngel]

You could always just imagine the pilot using a catapult to escape the exploding plane/ship/whatever and landing in a similar one. Or remotely controlling expendable drone units. But really, if you want your games to make perfect sense then you sure picked the wrong genre to look into.

[jedinat]

In Grand Brix Shooter your ship has a life bar that goes down a peg with every hit. You can restore it by jumping into another ship that you occasionally come across, which has the consequence that all your power ups reset.

[ATTRACTS]

Devs never made shmups with the intention of getting 1cc’s. Devs made games difficult so you’d feed quarters into them.

[ShotOfSelf]

You could always just imagine the pilot using a catapult to escape the exploding plane/ship/whatever and landing in a similar one. Or remotely controlling expendable drone units. But really, if you want your games to make perfect sense then you sure picked the wrong genre to look into.

I've been playing these games for years and definitely don't want them to make perfect sense. Think of it like sparks flying from your ship when you graze bullets or the trees swaying from your rotor blades in Under Defeat. These are things that add immersion and a 1cc just feels better when you take that same ship all the way through. I admit it's unusual but I feel incomplete after getting a clear while losing a few lives. Can't do anything about the old stuff but after reading almost every article on shmuplations I now know the devs were very thoughtful in their design so it probably just comes down to sticking with tradition and definitely limitations of old hardware. A battle-damaged ship is something that always comes to mind when getting hit in shmups. Probably due to playing Metal Warriors a whole lot back in the day.

-The oldest shmups had checkpoints and the ship exploding before having an other one come back to an earlier location in the stage makes more sense. And it's possible that this convention stuck even after checkpoints have been ditched from most games and the explosion contextualisation is no longer there.

Very good point. A checkpoint shooter is totally illogical for this since you just go back in time anyway so it doesn't bother me. You just have to survive all the way through which is very doable and greatly encouraged given the punishment for dying. In regards to conveying damage to the player in respawn shmups, devs could just stick with a smaller explosion than the actual death one and show the feedback of damage on the ship. Not always applicable to old games but new ones.

It's not really a problem at all but I felt like typing and there's always the off-chance that a future creator will do a google search for revolutionary shmup ideas and this thread will pop up

[Square_Air]

Revolutionary may be a pretty strong word for a life bar. I've cleared games with both and honestly can't say I care either way, it's never really made me feel more immersed. Explosions do feel good and are very readable though, but I don't see why you couldn't have a multi-layered shield that creates large noticeable flashes whenever you "lose a life" (kind of like Cho Ren Sha 68K's shield animation).

Devs never made shmups with the intention of getting 1cc’s. Devs made games difficult so you’d feed quarters into them.

Video games weren't even meant to be played.

[ShotOfSelf]

@Square_Air Nice mention of Cho Ren Sha, the shield is taken care of wonderfully. Very impressive game from one guy(and musician) in 1995.

Devs never made shmups with the intention of getting 1cc’s. Devs made games difficult so you’d feed quarters into them.

Good devs have always tried their best to make the games fun for players and definitely had the 1cc in mind. Here are a couple of old quotes from Tatsuya Uemura, Toaplan's programmer/designer.

Taken from http://shmuplations.com/toaplan-uemura1/

With Toaplan’s games, you can feel a certain experimentation towards making the games less difficult for people who thought they were too hard. Outzone is easier, and I think a lot of people came to love Toaplan through that game.

Uemura: Outzone doesn’t have forced scrolling, so it didn’t require the kind of special skills you need in a normal vertical scrolling game. In that regard I think we achieved an easier game. Actually, we wanted to make our vertical shooters easier too, so we’d initially make them quite easy for our location tests, but then someone would 1cc them in one day and we’d end up dramatically raising the difficulty level.

The first Toaplan game I got into was the Megadrive port of Tatsujin. The difficulty level of the arcade version seemed very high to me.

Uemura: The games turned out to be quite difficult, but we didn’t deisgn them with the intention of “Hah, see if you can clear THIS!” The foundation of our design was to make a game that wasn’t overly complex, that anyone could clear… I always thought of it as a genre that even a busy salaryman could just pick up and enjoy. Though gradually everything started to be made more and more difficult for the hardcore players (laughs). In the end we sort of hung ourselves with our own rope.

What wonderful developers, always working with the player in mind. Well the Japanese superplayer anyway.

[heli]

Just remember : explosions are cool!

[WelshMegalodon]

-Having the player ship explode instead of coming up with specific damage animations and damage sprites is much less time-consuming to implement and arcade games of the time were made on tight schedules. As a result, this could be a useful shortcut for something that's good to have but ultimately not mandatory to have a shippable game.

The Master System port of Hang-On is a rather entertaining example of this point. Rather than programming in the wipeout animation from the arcade original, they elected to have your rider and motorcyle explode in a ball of flames, then magically reappear in the exact same spot. The fact that you can technically respawn an infinite number of times makes this even funnier.

[dan76]

Losing a life acts more like a reset. Your ship explodes, flys back on stage, enemies stop firing or all bullets are cancelled and you're invincible for a short time, with new bomb stock and maybe powered down. You can catch a breath and start again.

Losing a shield doesn't have that same impact, unless it does the same thing, in which case there is no difference except how the lives / shields are displayed in the hud.