shmups.system11.org

I'll toss my vote on the Ikaruga pile. The chaining system made me like the game -less-. It's like it was mocking me.

Next...



I agree. Garegga's a fun game but I just don't care about doing all this dumb crap to get points.

Offhand I might also mention Batsugun's scoring system...for the majority of the game there's nothing complicated or outlandish to speak of scoring-wise, but there are a few points wherein certain "tricks" can be used to make enemies worth a lot more points than they normally would be, and they are quite simply the weirdest scoring techniques I know of offhand, since they pretty much have nothing at all to do with the "main" gameplay. I have no idea how anyone first figured out how to do most of them; I can only assume that Toaplan itself must have released a guide or something.

I won't detail them here, but check the Batsugun ST thread in the Strategy section and look over the scoring tricks and ways to reveal the pigs; go ahead and tell me that those things aren't completely out of left field, as I said myself on that topic. Although, according to Rando, they've been used elsewhere...

Meh, that goes along more with the arcade version, where you didn't have the Gunlock so finding a safe spot was the ideal strategy.


Though I will say I hate how Hyper Duel tries to award points for "Stock", when "Stock" refers to the helper ships. I'm yet to have any of them survive a boss fight past the first.

Raiden DX and the Raiden Fighters games went off from there and have a few equally unintuitive tricks up their sleeve. Even Raiden 2 has this 1up hidden in a way I didn´t find by myself in playing it for 15 years.

I don't care for the stick wiggling too much either but that game's scoring system did some things right. In fact I think "in theory" I prefer XII Stag's implementation of a chaining multiplier compared to many more popular games. The key being that in XII Stag your score multiplier can be raised up to 12 times through chaining, but then if you miss an enemy in your chain it doesn't suddenly wipe out your entire multiplier, rather the multiplier steadily increments back downwards from 12 to 11 to 10, etc.

Because of this scoring system in XII Stag there may be some situations where it might possibly work in a player's advantage to allow the multiplier to drop a couple of levels under 12 for a few seconds, for the sake of setting up something better in the chain a few seconds later. This gives the freedom to experiment and try to create custom chaining paths through the levels.

As far as I can see you don't have this kind of freedom to experiment with chaining paths in Ikaruga, DDP, etc - where the paths are more strict and limited in possibilities since your entire scoring run is often wiped out if you break a chain, and I guess this leads to levels in those games which have to be more strictly designed around an ideal chaining path to begin with.

For reasons I am choosing Space Moth DX mainly because of the make-neon-with-shot-kill-with-laser cliché that does nothing more than double the value of the killed enemy (a.i. 150 * 2 = 300) and the small enemy values. And DX mode doesn't add a extra scoring mechanic, like a chain system, which only makes it lamer to me. Some aspects of the game I like are the OST, but the bloodsplosions-- it's another story. Seriously, flowers literally bleed in Space Moth DX while in real life they don't. THE FUCK THOUGHT BLOODSPLOSIONS WAS A GOOD IDEA FOR THE GAME?!

For those who don't know, I use "a.i." as a abbreviation for "as in".

Sine Mora

Joke answer: Tyrian

Serious answer: Dodonpachi

Wtf? Hahahahaha I'm gonna use the "useful" abbreviation "a.i." instead of "as in" ONCE and then I'll write a full sentence explaining it


As for worst scoring... I'm not a fan of those strict, punishing systems where a tiny mistake makes you lose your whole multiplier.

It's okay and fun to get punished a bit, but not too much to the point it ruins the run. Of course this doesn't apply to super players, where every little mistake counts towards the WR. Take Ikaruga for instance, you barely lose points if you miss a chain or two, and even don't lose that much if you break the chain (except for super players). I love that system, makes me want to keep playing and trying to recover instead of another restart.

pinksweets, the game is shit if you try to score.

Any game with an infinite, that just completely kills a score game.

Although some games have infinites that are still avoidable (usually when they're the result of a glitch that has to be triggered in some specific way) so those are fine I guess.

Zed Blade

I didn't expect that, but Night Raid allows people to have negative scores by letting medals go offscreen which decreases the multiplier (and it's allowed to go negative as well) while collecting medals increases it, for a minimum and maxiumum of -100 and 100 respectively.

+1. Ketsui's creates such a wonderful flow, I think it's my favourite scoring system of all time.
I also rarely make it to stage 4...

Yeah, compared to something organic like Futari, old Ddp games are just lacking for me in terms of scoring flow. But they were the stepping stones for the most amazing shmups in the genre.

Agree on Espgaluda (2). Phenomenal scoring systems, both organic and spectacular!

Not "worst" by any means, but what do people feel about Battle Bakraid system? It scared me a away a bit. High scoring seems to require stage long chaining with precise timing of detroying big enemies, using bombs, suiciding, and picking up extends on top of catching all medals. The multiplier seems a bit excesssive (almost exponential) jumping from, say, 32x to 64x if you get one more item. It seems extremely unforgiving even for a Yagawa game. I am tempted to give it a real try though.


I love this abbreviation! Essentially replacing two letters with two periods. The only reduction is the deletion of a blankspace. The abbreviation also adds confusion as most people would associate a.i. with artifical intelligence.

It's crazy good fun. It's teeth-gritting, edge-of-your-seat action basically throughout entire stages. Can't think of a single more thrilling scoring system, but it does take some work to make a route that works and doesn't end with you accidentally suiciding your last life to try to keep the chain I think it's not really that unforgiving, there are a whole lot of options and abilities at your disposal to keep everything running on-track.

Usually I'm having enough trouble just staying alive to worry too much about scoring, but Dangun Feveron's scoring system is just a pain all around. Low scoring, based completely on collecting items that reset if you miss one and generally pretty unforgiving.

The scoring is absolutely what makes Feveron work, but if you're struggling with survival it's not a surprise you might not appreciate it. Personally I couldn't imagine playing it without scoring.

Assuming you're using Roll - which makes the bosses a relative joke - the main hurdle is whether you can handle the game's pace or not. I suggest playing on speed 4 if you're not already, it makes speedkilling and collecting easier and there's little to no necessary micro anyway. Due to RNG making lots of small routing adaptions is necessary, but going full flail is a quick death sentence, so memorize the order of the waves and be proactive. Enemies approaching from the side edges can be shot while offscreen; use this to mow through zako waves ASAP while macroing around constantly. You shouldn't be staying still at all unless the situation calls for it.

The masters of pants on head retarded scoring systems.

I used to hate Bakraid's system myself, but it really isn't too bad once you turn on the visible chain timer and audio cues to get a sense for how long you can go between chains. Those are two things that should really be present and activated by default without any sort of hidden button sequence. A bit unfortunate that it's so intimately tied to survival though. Bumping up the chain multiplier blows up the adaptive difficulty system and it's actually kind of hard to avoid getting a big chain going in some areas of the game. This means you have to be sure to take advantage of that chain and score from it so you get enough points to get an extra life and then suicide to bring the difficulty back down.

What "cliche"? The only other game that actually plays like this is Esprade and its derivatives (e.g. Eden's Aegis). It doesn't really work the same in practice, either.

Super Spacefortress Macross II and Thunder Dragon 2: "Allow us to introduce ourselves."

Gwangedash has the ikaruga ship in an otherwise cave game.

Good luck getting it.



Beyond the final boss this game just has you memorize stuff and kill everything! The final boss is the only time it goes full dumbo and it's the final boss, considering you're immortal in this game it's supposed to be hard! (For context, you have to milk his minions and destroy shots from a drone he has or you won't score good enough to get the good end)