Cave Games Ranked by Aesthetic Merit

[To Far Away Times]

Regarding Thunderforce III vs IV, I think IV is more technically impressive, but I like the overall package of III's presentation better. III's soundtrack is an all time banger. IV has some very, very good songs, but also some less memorable ones. Metal Squad is legendary of course, but I think III is extremely high quality all the way through.

On the subject of the Mushi games, I was tempted to put the original over Futari but decided not to. I think the original Mushi starts off a bit flat, with a farily tame stage 1 and 2 background and song. However, from stage 3 onwards the stages and music are ridiculously good. The Bug Tank, iconic water stage, and instant classic stage 5 forest are the stuff of legends. That Stage 4 water level might be my favorite level in any shmup. Jamestown straight up copied that level, I'm pretty sure I've seen it elsewhere too. Futari, while being a little less thematically consistent, is nonetheless thrilling all the way through. I like its level 3 more than the original Mushi's similar stage 5, and its Stage 5 is among the best final levels ever made. The final level is surprisingly easy until the boss, it bascially routes itself with the way enemies force you around the stage with all the streaming and its more about taking in the experience of the easy tap dodging and frequent cancels. You feel incredibly powerful just ripping through all of it. The opening dinosaur is such a fun design. The game is an visual and audio experience.

[Lethe]

Just thought of something - lots of Cave bosses, or enemies at all, aren't noisy. Maybe they have voice clips or whatever but their attacks get nothing. Meanwhile nearly every attack in Ra.De can be identified on sound alone, and while Feveron and Guwange are a bit less complete they still have definition throughout.

[JJHLH]

1. Dangun Feveron. A perfect game. It’s music, comical nature, beautiful pixel art, unique scoring system, fluid gameplay, and speed of the ships combine to form the best game ever created. It’s a work of genius and the ShotTriggers port is an amazing way to experience it.

2. Everything else, which is still awesome because it’s Cave.

[XoPachi]

1. Espgaluda 2
2. Everything else

Its not my personal top favorite but even more now than when I was kid, I adore the art direction of this game.
Its one of the only character STG's that doesnt seem weird to me. I even like the character designs themselves despite almost never outwardly liking anime. But I just really love the more acclaimed Castlevania artists so thats a given for me. Theyre so striking and elegant with nice simple coloring. Reminds me of old FF character art a bit in some cases.

The machines are also just gorgeous. Just as intricate and nonsensical as DoDonPachi but with a steam punk and angelic flair. And that robot voice is too cool (though it sounded better in 1). Thoroughly in love with the stage 3 mid boss. The way Cave learned to contextualize the most ridiculous fights is a treat and that is personal favorite next to Trafalgar and Raikou.

Timelessly gorgeous video game.

---
Personally, my favorites are DoDoPachi 1 and Dangun Feveron. Mid 90's Cave did my favorite pixel art and ship designs in the medium. They inspired a lot of my mockup STG boss art back then.

[chum]

ESPRADE and Guwange are CAVE's most beautiful games, everything else is a bit of a mixed bag
Ketsui has ugly graphics but good stylistic choices
Mushi has beautiful backgrounds but it's also bullet vomit
Dodonpachi looks good, but a bit bland
Dangun is dangun, and that's just awesome
Yeah I dunno I never thought CAVE was that good for presentation, barring a few gems

[DMC]

One thing Cave did really well almost right away was providing compelling visual feedback to emphasize the scoring system--particularly Esprade (1998), Espgaluda (2003), and Ketsui (2003).
Esprade scoring system, for instance, is pretty bizarre, but it is just so damn pleasing to collect those fast-falling, big-sized cubes with golden letters telling me I got x16 of something.

It seems around this time, most scoring bonuses were shown as just flashing texts in boring fonts (e.g., the flashing x4 in Soukyugurentai) or as some kind of flashy medal (e.g., the golden bars in Psikyo games).
Espgaluda I thought took the visual feedback to another level. To me the whole appeal of the game was to, in an instance, transform all enemy bullets to those beautiful scoring gems. To see all the x100 messages piling up on your screen--implying an astronomical increase to your score (ironically providing more adrenaline than dodging and shooting themselves did in that game).
Takumi did something similar with Mars Matrix and Giga Wing, but I think Cave did it better.

Then around 2004 when Cave switched hardware I think they took things too far, not just with the visual feedback but more generally with the amount of bullets and stuff on screen (and depth of gameplay mechanics).
Most of those games had an immediate "Wow" effect, like I thought each one was the most beautiful shoot em up I ever seen upon first seeing it.
But I quickly habituated to each of them and realized the background seemed rather flat. Or maybe it was just buried in bullets, counters, and scoring gems.

I played Muchi Muchi Pork quite a bit and although it was pleasing at first to fill the screen with thick 10K medals that I could absorb in an instance. The screen was filled too often and too easily, that it was nothing special anymore.
It actually made me quite bored and I can't even remember a single thing from the background design.
I played Dodonpachi much less but things like the weird flowers and the bees are much more memorable.

Of the newer games, I must say the Daifukkatsu counter display (the font, the color, and the way it updates the figures) is just perfect eye-candy.
Sdoj had a great, blue-purple color pallette, lots of warm, vibrating auras around ships, bullets, and texts that made it very atmospheric. Felt like fresh, new-gen STG visually. I wish I first encountered it in an arcade center through a bunch of Egret 2s.
The menus in Mushihimesama Futari is another detail I want to praise. The meditative feel of the soundtrack, the brilliant sound effects, and the pleasant background sets the mood perfectly.

One thing I did not like with Cave so much was boss designs. I like the more charismatic bosses of Raizing. Any boss in Dimahoo is visually more interesting than virtually any Cave boss. Most Batrider bosses too. Black Heart as well.

Donpachi is beautiful but looks a bit too Toaplan-esque, so I feel it is not a Cave look.

So my list:

1. Esprade
2. Espgaluda
3. Dodonpachi
4. Ketsui
5. Sdoj
6. Futari
7. Guwange
8. the rest

[hamfighterx]

- I like both of the Mushihime-sama titles for the eyes and ears alike, but I'm tempted to give the first one a slight edge simply because it's more thematically consistent; I can understand if someone prefers the more varied enemies in the sequel, and they do look pretty cool, but at the same time I can't help but feel like they sort of threw together a bunch of leftover stage/enemy ideas they had laying around (dinosaurs! sea critters! dragons!...and back to giant bugs for awhile!) and called it a day. Though the sequel earns itself a point or two just for its slightly less ear-piercing death screams.

Totally agreed here.

Mushi 1 is probably my favorite STG there is on a purely aesthetic level. I just love the wonderfully executed Nausicaa-esque thematic consistency. The larvae being exposed when you destroy a tree trunk, the plants and insect designs, the feeling that the stages are just teeming with life. It feels like you're looking into some sort of terrarium (with lots of bullets). Soundtrack is fantastic. I love the end of stage/interstitial art and music. Little visual elements like bullet designs, power ups, and fonts just look RIGHT to me.

And gotta give a shout out to highlight the BEETLESHIP level 3, pure genius IMO and perhaps my favorite STG level there is solely on a conceptual basis.

Futari is gorgeous too, and it's up there on my list, but I absolutely agree with BulletMagnet that it seems a bit like they were just tossing the kitchen sink in there for the sake of "it looks cool". I prefer the more disciplined approach of the original to stay within the theme.

[Blinge]

What absolute clown puts DFK above original DoDonPachi

[jehu]

What absolute clown puts DFK above original DoDonPachi

Someone who's not a fan of the music.

What absolute clown communicates disagreement this way

You can contribute something to the thread other than derision, you know?

[trap15]

He's right though

[Sima Tuna]

I can only go off the Cave games I've played.

For full disclosure, I have played Futari (this was my intro to cave, years ago on 360,) Espgaluda II, Akai Katana, Guwange, Mushihimesama, Deathsmiles, Progear and DDP DFK. I only played DFK recently though, so I don't have a full impression of that game. I've SEEN full playthroughs of every Cave game, so if we're just talking about visual design then I can comment on those, I suppose.

The first one that immediately comes to my mind when I think of amazing visuals in a cave game, where they communicate something unique that other games didn't/don't bring to the table, is Mushihimesama. Love it or hate it, but at the time it came out, it was pretty unique. That whole Nausicaa, Ghibli from bullet hell, Thot riding a giant stag beetle thing hadn't been done before. You can still look at ANY screenshot from Mushihimesama or Futari and know what it is. You just instantly know. It's impossible to confuse Mushi screenshots with some other shmup. Even a layperson, if they've ever seen Mushi in the past, they'll remember when they see it again. It's that one with the bugs. Or it's that one with the bugs and the dinosaurs/dragons. The color palette is great for Mushihimesama as well. A lot of shmups use really bold colors, for obvious reasons. Mushi has a lot of pastels while still keeping the bullets nice and bright. Great looking game.

The next one, for me, is Guwange. On-foot japanese shinto horror shmup. What a concept! Cave bring their typical insanely high production values to japanese mythology and the result is fantastic to look at. Whatever anyone thinks about the game, the look is A+++. (I love the game as well tbh.) The game being on foot and with no vehicle allows for more blood and gore, creating a scarier atmosphere. The concept alone opened up all these avenues for representing shmup design. Like, instead of a ship transforming into a gundam to show a phase change, maybe a demon can have its head come off and fly around it in the circle? I love it.

Esprade still has a unique style that has held up well. A lot of japanese IPs ripped off Akira, but not many did it this well. The introduction and boss enemies are particularly memorable. Not many shmups feel "gritty." Esprade has that atmosphere of a desperate battle against long odds. The use of bright red blood was a masterstroke. Shmups have used plenty of gore in the past, but there's a difference between "gore" and arterial spray as exclamation point. Espgaluda II deserves an honorable mention from me here. It doesn't look AS good as Esprade in my opinion, but the steampunk style is neat and it has some memorable and crazy boss designs.

Speaking of memorable and crazy boss designs, what about a flying dude oh wait I mean a plane, wait did that boss just summon a fucking tank using a portal gun? Akai Katana, bitches! Stylish! Cool! Incomprehensible! This is my favorite Cave hori. I love the way Cave blended visual styles. You have fighter planes, ethereal spirits wielding katana, the game is batshit but looks amazing.

Deathsmiles (NOT 2) definitely has a unique style. I guess it reminds me of if somebody made Cotton HD (you know, before they... made cotton... hd.) I don't like lolis, but the cow is funny and memorable. I'm not gonna bitch about a game or say it looks like shit just because it doesn't appeal to me personally. For a lot of people, this is probably their favorite cave game visually. The palette is hyper saturated, the enemies and stages aren't generic in the slightest... Yeah it looks good. Blah, what an amazing analysis.

The rest of the games in Cave's library I either think look uniformly "of a style indicating Cave" or are visually bland by Cave standards. I still want to point out that Dodonpachi, DFK, SDOJ, Progear, etc look amazing compared to other shmups. Because they have a uniform, slick, glossy style, designs that mesh well, highly visible bullets, etc.

I mean, I love Caladrius Blaze, but the game kinda looks like shit. Bullets can blend into the background, hit you and kill you. Womp womp. Castle Shikigami 2 is my favorite shmup of all time. But the game... Looks generic. It looks like kusoge sometimes. It's only when you play it you realize how fucking amazing and deep the gameplay is. From my point of view, what Cave offers is the entire package. You get a game that looks all-around good, plays good, sounds good. Some of the games are A+ or S tier, others are B+ or whatever, but few are downright bad. But since we're talking about how cave games look, I find that a lot of the "space ship shooter" ones have this glossy visual aesthetic that, while nice, is more derivative of other shmups and less interesting to look at than, say, Guwange.

Edit: also yeah I agree with the dude saying Mushihimesama is more visually coherent than Futari. Stage 5 Mushi is one of the most beautiful things in a shmup imo.

Edit Edit: how the fuck did I forget Ketsui? Dammit. Put it above Akai Katana. It takes a lot of skill to make a gray color palette interesting to look at.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Burinju can't appreciate firing his supercharged laser into the crotch of robot lolis because he's a true gentleman.

Quoting for emphasis:

He's right though

a) Don't take the tone of his response as a super serious personal attack; he's just a platypus, and it's just vidya games

b) Let's be honest: no matter how good the game looks, you're arguing subjective aesthetic opinion about a game where you fire a laser into the crotch of robot lolis to make them get naked and explode orgasmically vs one where you don't have suggestive rape-y imagery in your face each boss fight. REAL DONPACHI SQUAD SUPER SOLDIERS DON'T NEED THAT. :V

As I've mentioned elsewhere, SaiDaiOuJou's aesthetic is actually superb if not for the cringey element. It's better than DFK if only because there's no actual lolis in-game except for Hibachi/Inbachi (especially if you're playing the XB360 port where you can optionally mute the voices and unlock the option to disable the operator cutins, etc). The whole dress-up your doll thing is extra weird; at least Deathsmiles handles the gothic loli stuff mostly tastefully ingame (no let's not talk about merchandise CAVE has released, please no).

[Blinge]

DFK's music is alright

But clearly something's amiss if you can't appreciate some good old fashioned cock rock.
Real men get their dick fix in the ears.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Real men get their dick fix in the ears.

Does it count if it's literally trying to hit you in the ears? QUIT RUNNIN', BLINGEY.

[Sima Tuna]

DFK Black Label music tho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeyVsRC ... B558D57C26

[Despatche]

DDP having a whopping three stage themes for six stages, in 1997, after your previous game had a unique song for each of its five stages at the bare minimum, is pretty unforgivable. DDP has great art, but its soundtrack is clearly lacking. Then you have Esprade and Guwange with their 20 second loops for like half of each game. People can claim Progear's soundtrack is "weak" all they want, at least it doesn't feel like half of it didn't make it onto the PCB.

The only reasonable choices are either Donpachi or Dangun, because they have both great pixel art (I like prerenders but I recognize that pixel art is strictly better) and something vaguely resembling a complete soundtrack. You can't really hold the hardware audio issues against Donpachi much because the PS1/SS versions exist. The graphics in CV1000 games are much less tolerable because they try to cram so much detail into such a small resolution, and are once again saved by ports.

Progear is a CAVE game. IP bullshit doesn't matter, CAVE made the game, it's 100% like a CAVE game, etc. It's the same with all those games published by Atlus, all those games published by AMI, and so on, only difference is Progear was presumably part of some deal Capcom was making with various arcade devs around the turn of the century, and so they own the IP. Pretty sure it's the same with Giga Wing and those Eighting games, which is why Giga Wing Generations being published by Taito is so weird.