Why do you suppose people can't make great shmups anymore?

[stryc9]

Any chance of ports of Last Hope/Pink Bullets and Fast Striker to PS2? Surly it would at least double your market. I blew my DC up plugging into a 240 V power supply and now have JPS2, PS3 and J360. Iv'e thought about replacing it but with these other consoles to support ... I do want to try your games.

[Despatche]

I came across this old thread and felt it needed to be bumped. It's more relevant now than ever. Not what the OP is saying of course. That's all memey gibberish. No, what's concerning is the sentiment behind it.

Bonus points because what people feared has come to pass: CAVE basically exited the market, and that was not too long after this thread, even.

Let's just look at that initial post. First, he drops Dariusburst, and points the finger at Pyramid. Now, he's talking about the original Dariusburst, the "bad" one, that's how old this thread is. That game is substantially more playable than the majority of Darius games. Darius is kind of a fucked up series, like a lot of old video games are, and Dariusburst did a lot to try and "fix" it. Not too long after that, we were given Another Chronicle, which is easily and unquestionably the best game in the series just as a general package.

Immediately after that, he drops Raiden III and IV, and points the finger at Moss. The old Raiden games are hot fucking garbage, player-unfriendly to a degree that only completely fucked games like Same! Same! Same! are. Raiden III mostly applied bandages, but God damn if those weren't some good ass bandages. Raiden IV actually made a lot of dumb changes, but it's still kinda sorta Raiden III at its core, and is still better than the older Raidens. Then you have Raiden V, which tore off all the bandages and put that fool through keto, making Raiden V the absolute best game in the series. (Raiden Fighters is not a Raiden game, it is an unrelated series that has the Raiden and Viper Phase 1 ships as cameos.)

Then he drops some MileStone games and points the finger at them. The majority of Compile and Compile-adjacent games are trash. They are "experiences", not games, and are overwhelmingly treated as such by fucking everyone. However you might feel about Karous or whatever, MileStone stuff is simply operating on a higher level at all times.

Then he drops Thunder Force VI. Poor poor Thunder Force VI. It's a fucked game as a package, but is somehow the best game in the series simply in terms of gameplay. Because, again, Thunder Force is a busted, broken old series that isn't really played for the actual gameplay.

A lot of old games are completely fucked. There are a lot of things I appreciate about older games, but actual gameplay, the actual fucking point of a video game, always needs to be side-eyed when dealing with those games. Konami went from Gradius, a good and fairly well-balanced game, to Salamander, a memey and buggy mess that is saved largely by a PC Engine port that everyone refuses to take seriously because it's not an arcade game, to fucking Gradius II, which is the game that actually started the "Gradius Syndrome" we all love to hate, even as it's often called the best Gradius ever.

The OP wonders why people can't make good games anymore, which is still a common question being asked today. The answer is that anyone who asks that question is completely full of shit and doesn't actually fucking play any of these games. It was wrong in 2010, it's wrong in 2021, and it'll probably still be wrong in the 2100s, if humanity actually manages to fucking make it that far. The last few years have made it very clear that humanity likes to stack the odds against them on this topic.

That's just the initial post. Then you've got people whining about "ripoffs", completely ignoring that Kamui is not based on Xevious so much as on Soukyugurentai, and that the guy who made Kamui also made Alltynex, the game Radiant Silvergun probably ripped off. Then the OP dares to even so much as obliquely mention the name "Treasure", ignoring that one of their games is kinda bad (and probably a ripoff) and the other one is the only other shmup they've actually made (unless you're rather kind of Sin and Punishment, which many here are not). Oh, and then you have a Steam fanboy for good measure. Sigh.

Golly, maybe it really is a matter of what someone likes. I daresay that the overwhelming majority of people calling games "good" or "bad" and encouraging people to play or stay away from them are, in fact, just expressing their personal taste, and not making any real comment on whether a game is good or not. The problem is that people talk as if they are, in fact, being authoritative and objective, right up until they get called out for it, at which point they retreat right back behind their subjective shield (while continuing to influence people elsewhere). This is how all discourse on any creative media works, and it makes it completely impossible to actually talk about any creative media.

You know, I'm sure there's multiple more recent threads exactly along these lines. That's just really sad to think about.

[Creamy Goodness]

The last two years have been banner years for shmups, but a lot of that is probably the riding the wave of the recent retro video game craze. My worthless two pennies aboyt the future of the genre is that it just does not translate very well to HD. It is hard to not make a modern shmup look like a cheap mobile game. Even high profile games get slapped with that criticism. Most of today's successful shmups are sequels to well known franchises, rereleases, or love letters to games past. All things hitting the nostalgia crowd. Going to be very difficult to break away from that.

[Lethe]

Despatche, I'm looking forward to seeing you post in the 2021 top 25 shmups thread and elaborating on all your favorite games.

[Sima Tuna]

I played thunder force ac for the first time this year and thought it was pretty fucking amazing. I agree that it depends what your tastes are.

I remember when I was first getting into shmups in the ps2 era. I didn't stop liking shmups, but I did take a massive break from them until recently. So what changed? Shmup releases changed. I imported Futari, I bought deathsmiles, akai katana etc when they were newly localized on xbox 360. But then the shmup releases completely dried up. And there wasn't really a big community online for shmups. Not that there is today, but there is more now than there was. Nowadays, we have more shmups coming out than I can ever remember. Probably more coming out now than we've seen since the golden arcade era. A lot of them are really good. The knock-on effect of so many new shmups coming out and a larger community for shmups generally, is that we're finally getting old shit localized and released.

So this current situation is a win-win no matter what your tastes are. If you like dad shmups, then you'll get more of them via inde homages (crisis wing) and also more re-releases of classic dad shmups (m2 shot triggers porting toaplan etc.) If you like bullet hell, the cave stuff is getting ported to modern platforms and you have clover tac and other guys making clearly cave-inspired danmaku shmups. There's space moth dx, crimzon clover world explosion, danmaku unlimited 3 (I believe 4 on the way,) and all the doujin bullet hells.

I didn't abandon shmups when I stopped playing them for years. What happened was, I couldn't get any more shmups legally. I didn't have a good enough computer to emulate at the time. So I was just SOL. For a long time, "new" shmups came out at an absolute trickle and most were locked to pc. Things are better now than they have been in ages. You can actually buy a mainstream console and play GOOD shmups on it ("good" meaning not blatant shovelware) without spending $100 per game or more and needing to import everything.

[To Far Away Times]

Because, again, Thunder Force is a busted, broken old series that isn't really played for the actual gameplay.

You bumped an 11 year old thread to do Thunder Force dirty? I am disappoint.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

Because, again, Thunder Force is a busted, broken old series that isn't really played for the actual gameplay.

A great overexaggeration and a great overreaction.

The truth stands - Thunder Force 4, specifically, is incredibly well recieved for its style while its gameplay is mediocre. Your statement is correct for this game.
The truth stands - 3, 5 and 6 can be made into jokes with imbalanced weapons.

Also true - 2, 3, 5 and 6 are all ok games. 3 and 5 are particularly good.

We must ask ourselves - does bosses dying too fast, or overweapon existing make a game bad?

My answer - if you can refuse to use autofire in Darius Gaiden, you can refuse to use sever, free range or overweapon.

In conclusion, the gameplay is there, and TF has games that range from ok to extremely good. it is possible to have a worse experience in these games due to balancing issues, but they can easily be ignored, and the impact is not game-ruining.

The fact that the games also have kickass music and presentation (post 3) is just an addition.

The fact that I neglected to mention sidegames like Elemental Master, Blast Wind, Hyper Duel (or even Gate of Thunder) should also be considered a mercy. (Though admittedly, Hyper Duel's scoring can go die, but that's irrelevant)

[Despatche]

Despatche, I'm looking forward to seeing you post in the 2021 top 25 shmups thread and elaborating on all your favorite games.

I'm not touching that meme voting shit. Just go look at what happens year after year. Noone gives a fuck about that shit.

You bumped an 11 year old thread to do Thunder Force dirty? I am disappoint.

This is the whole problem. People fetishize that series, just like they do all those Compile games, and just like they do with old Raiden. These are not good games, but people call them good because of reasons that have nothing to do with the actual gameplay. All you can do is get mad because someone dared to call your favorite game out. You cannot even begin to explain why the games are actually good other than "I like them" or "other people say they're good".

The fact that I neglected to mention sidegames like Elemental Master, Blast Wind, Hyper Duel (or even Gate of Thunder) should also be considered a mercy.

If you had mentioned even one of these games, you'd be walking in the completely wrong direction. Not a single one of these games is comparable to Thunder Force, except maybe Elemental Master. At the bare minimum, the other three games are clearly operating on a much higher level than any Thunder Force not named VI.

The gameplay is not there. The gameplay is shit. You're cherrypicking specific issues, then downplaying those issues, while overall failing to see the bigger picture: these games cannot be taken even remotely seriously. You can't even help but sneak in some jab at Ohtani, because that's where your priorities lie: "this is what I like". Oh, but wait, here's the part where everyone accuses me of the same thing, right? What in God's name does it take to get people to put their opinions aside for five fucking seconds? I'm not writing a goddamned thesis on why Gate of Thunder is a good game, because it takes one sentence: the game actually fucking works. Here, have another: this has nothing to do with the difficulty of a game, but entirely to do with whether a game is worthwhile beyond "the experience" that everyone seems to worship so damn much. Done. There's your fucking thesis. If you don't believe me, go fucking play it. Technosoft wished they ever gave such a shit, so you know what they did? They made Hyper Duel and Blast Wind, unquestionably their best games in nearly every department, but especially gameplay.

The real truth is that basically noone actually recognizes that Thunder Force IV is a dumb game to actually play; they genuinely believe this is peak shmup gameplay, and to say otherwise is genuine heresy. At the same time, noone ever would give a single fuck or shit about Thunder Force IV if it didn't have that presentation. This is not a good thing. This is not the system working properly. It isn't actually possible to enjoy video games when what you care about is everything besides the actual reason you play a fucking video game: the gameplay.

[EmperorIng]

Sometimes I feel a little heretical in that I think TF5 is my favorite Thunder Force game.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Vastynex is my favorite Thunder Force game (I haven't played any of the TF games yet, sorry >w>;;).

[Udderdude]

Wow, this thread still sucks 10+ years later.

[Lethe]

I'm not touching that meme voting shit. Just go look at what happens year after year. Noone gives a fuck about that shit.

Okay. I just thought it'd be a fun opportunity to express your egocentrism and show us all what good taste looks like. I agree that the final results are mostly bunk and always have been, but how could they not be? The important part is having a chance to put your hand on the table and proselytize. A lot of good players cared enough to vote once - maybe in naivety - while repeat voters are interesting because you can get a sense of say, how a tournament or popularity in a clique can influence people to appreciate things they wouldn't normally care for, how much sentimentality is involved, and such.

There's nothing really meaningful to this crap besides encouragement to try something new or seek out the merits of games one doesn't get, but I think it's worth something nonetheless.

[harborline765]

It would have been helpful if you explained why you think the old games are rubbish today, or why Darius is apparently a 'fucked up series' by which its modern forebears have made irrelevant. Without any sort of evidence or explanation to back up the reasoning the post lacks credibility. It also leaves the reader to jump to conclusions which doesn't help - what am I supposed to read in to the assertion that DariusBurst Another Chronicle is the best Darius has been? That a glut of identikit content is important? I'm not so sure about that.

[BIL]

TFIII is the best 16bit original hori of its generation for one simple reason.

Spoiler

Its tracklist is the most Your Mommable known to man.

Your Mom Blew All Day Long
Your Mom's Behaviour Inspired Us With Distrust
Hunger Made Your Mom Desperate
Your Mom Take A Chance
The Grubby Dark Your Mom

Obviously.

[Sima Tuna]

It isn't actually possible to enjoy video games when what you care about is everything besides the actual reason you play a fucking video game: the gameplay.

...But I play thunder force AC for its gameplay. It's one of my most played shmups in my switch library. For the gameplay. I don't even particularly see people shilling AC so why would I play it for clout or whatever? I come back to it because I like the way it plays.

Thunder Force 3/AC (whichever you prefer) is a good game to actually play. Is the gameplay as good as Futari or whatever? Maybe not. But I challenge you to find another shmup from the same era that has better gameplay. The only games I can think of that might qualify are the Compile ones, but those got shat on also.

Zanac holds up. Thunder Force 3 holds up. These games are not shit. Sure, this all breaks down to taste or whatever, but thunder force gives you all the tools and then lets you decide how you want to play. Set the speed to whatever you want, freely change weapons, it's all in your hands! Of course balance suffers when you do that, but it's not a player versus player game.

If you think thunder force 3 is bad then you must think gradius or r-type are 0/10 quality. Moving slow as a snail, tediously picking up power up items...

Also the whole presentation argument breaks down with a lot of older games because they look like garbage nowadays. Zanac looks like a pile of shit. But I can pick it up and play it and go "holy shit this gameplay is still really fun."

[Samildanach]

I think there is a pretty low percentage of genuinely shit games in the shmup genre (e.g. Deep Blue). The vast majority are imperfect but will have been enjoyed and appreciated by a good number of people. What is key however, is how much they all vary in what appeals about them. Obviously in Despatche's case Thunder Force is not good, but it is fascinating to hear that the much maligned VI is their best. Although I don't agree, it is great to hear an opposing view. I love Thunder Force as a series but completely bounce off the Raiden games, mainly as I can't be arsed to learn positioning for those hyperfast bullet spreads. I prefer the style where you can get through a good portion of the game by the seat of your pants, rather than learn where I need to be before the spread even appears.
So in conclusion, I think we have had pretty great shmups all the way through since their inception. Few are perfect, but very little are without value.

[To Far Away Times]

The audiovisual component of videogames is incredibly important. Gameplay matters, but truthfully presentation matters a lot. Now, that doesn't mean the latest tech or highest resolution make a game more fun. Take a non shmup game like Outrun. Super simple gameplay, dated graphics, but perhaps the sharpest audio and visual direction in gaming. Its soundtrack and pleasing artstyle elevate it to something really grand. And the gameplay is solid enough to keep you going for the 1CC.

And I think Thunderforce has alot of those same qualities. Its not absolutely flawless from a game design standpoint, but it is still very solid, and the presentation is just fantastic.

[Despatche]

If a game has terrible gameplay, not a single other element can save it.
If a game has great gameplay, the quality of every other element does not matter.

Ideally, we should not have to choose. Sadly, society demands that we do. Society also changes the rules of what makes a given element low or high quality every few years.

Thunder Force games are not "solid". They are flimsy, ready to fall apart if you even so much as look at them the wrong way. That may even be a technical thing, as IV in particular really seems like it wants to crash every so often.

Sometimes I feel a little heretical in that I think TF5 is my favorite Thunder Force game.

I mean, it's the best one not named VI, disregarding whatever Working Designs actually did to it, which I'm still not really sure about. It's got some II/III/IV issues while also having weird issues of its own, but if you're going to pick a favorite, it may as well be V.

I am to understand the Japanese fanbase saw it as lesser for some time, though that might just be a vocal minority. But how big was the Japanese fanbase ever, anyway...

Vastynex is my favorite Thunder Force game (I haven't played any of the TF games yet, sorry >w>;;).

The funny thing is that Vastynex is an actual good game, just an easy one. But that dev has never really been big on survival difficulty from what I know.

egocentrism[...]good taste

See, you're just doing the "muh opinion" thing. There is no value in anyone's opinion about things that are supposed to be based in fact, and there is negative value in people accusing someone trying to point this out of supposedly doing the same thing. It's so tiring dealing with that from people who are just completely unwilling to imagine that it's actually possible to be right or wrong about very fundamental and very obvious shit. It doesn't take a genius to realize that most Thunder Force games were made to be experiences and not really taken seriously as games. All anyone has to do to figure that out is to play them for a bit and do very cursory research, and to actually pay attention to what they're looking at; for some reason, the fans are just unwilling to do this. That's why we use the word "fans", and that's why the line between "fan" and "fanboy" arguably doesn't exist.

It would have been helpful if you explained why you think the old games are rubbish today, or why Darius is apparently a 'fucked up series' by which its modern forebears have made irrelevant. Without any sort of evidence or explanation to back up the reasoning the post lacks credibility. It also leaves the reader to jump to conclusions which doesn't help - what am I supposed to read in to the assertion that DariusBurst Another Chronicle is the best Darius has been? That a glut of identikit content is important? I'm not so sure about that.

The existence of this post, and the factors that allow someone to even make this kind of post, are exactly what I'm talking about.

I could write a damn book about some of these games, but I know that noone would read it. I have wanted to do so many videos with god knows how many details and comparisons and theories about every damned aspect of gaming, but I do not have the means. I also know that either noone would watch any of it, or—far worse—that I'd luck out and hit the algorithm lottery, and the only people who would watch my videos would then be either the same kind of creeps who obsess over all the other "influencers" on YouTube, or just fucking bots. I'm not some genius dispensing sage advice. I'm just some nerd reminding people of basic shit that they either forgot or don't want to hear.

I can already tell by your pithy comment about Dariusburst AC, a game you clearly haven't played for more than five seconds, that you would not listen to a single word I say no matter how well-reasoned it would be. But fuck it, let me try, for the thousandth God damned time, to actually explain to people why certain old games are not anywhere near as holy as their fans would like to believe. Since you mention Darius, let's go with that for now.

Back to the first Darius. First off, I just want to point out that this is a game with far more "identikit" (a shitty word used purely to express personal dislike by the undiscerning, right alongside "mediocre") design than whatever you think DBAC has. Then you have all the issues with the weapon system, such as how it totally fucks you if die at very specific points (making lives almost irrelevant) and the issues with the Laser versus certain bosses that required an entirely new version of the game (Extra Version) to attempt to address (still plently arguable that you should never go beyond Missile for any version of Darius). Then you have the "Out Run/Darius branching paths problem" where the entire game eventually boils down to picking one specific route (or specific routes for different final zones like Japan smartly does) and ignoring all other zones, because tracking all those different possible routes is simply not worth it; this is a series problem, but I'm mentioning it here because this is the first game in said series. Then you have the potential issue where the game is seemingly meant to be played on difficulty A. THIS IS A GUESS. I COULD BE WRONG. (gasp!) It's unconfirmed, but it was true for Darius II, and the changes between difficulties are very similar between the two games. I'm sure I'm missing something, by the way.

Next we have Darius II. This game has nearly all the above mentioned problems, but cranks up the difficulty to a pointless degree, while also replacing the weapon system with one that's even worse and basically requires you to no miss. Again, the above difficulty issue is also not a guess here. Please don't play Darius or Darius II on difficulty D, please, I am trying to save your sanity.

Next we have Darius Gaiden, because noone actually cares about Twin or Force, and they have their own problems anyway. This game actually tries to fix some of the above problems while introducing new ones. There is a boss that can become literally impossible if RNG decides to fuck you. The weapon system is kinda fucked because the last power level isn't as strong as the power level before it; this is not a risk-reward system, there already is one with the rank on max power item pickup. The final bosses especially represent a headspinning sliding scale of difficulty, a series issue, but one particularly troublesome with Gaiden because good luck finding anyone who thinks touching any other boss besides Risk Storage is anything more than a bad joke. Also, they straight up copy entire stages wholesale to pad out the zone count, which not even Darius did from what I remember. I'm also pretty sure a bunch of patterns even aside from Crusty Hammer are straight up impossible to dodge, but I'm gonna need to do real research on that one.

Then you have G Darius. G is funny because it attempts to fix certain issues in big ways. Every zone is unique, finally, even if they had to cut the game down to 15 zones (unless you consider the per-zone branches) to do it. Unfortunately, the branching paths problem continues to be a problem. They also brought in a revised version of the original Darius powerup system with all the problems that entails. They also made the game so excrutiatingly hard that people stayed the fuck away from it.

Last but not least, you have Dariusburst. I'm just gonna talk about AC because it's essentially an updated version of the original, it's the one most people know, and it's the one you mentioned anyway. Following from G Darius, issues continued to be fixed. The original Darius powerup system returns unfortunately, but it has been revised to such a degree that it's not nearly as much of an issue. The developers actually tried to do something about the branching paths problem by reducing the number of stages, but adding multiple starting points; it is not a perfect solution as some stages do get skipped, but at least most stages get played, there are still as many zones as G Darius, and the game still has the Darius branching people care so much about, so it's a good compromise. The difficulty is not as obscene from the start, and you now have a means to control it. As a bonus, you now have a bunch of different ships that allow you to play the game in a bunch of different ways, which is almost always a positive.

Look, I'm not calling DBAC a flawless game or anything, it's not. But it's extremely obvious that the developers have really tried to make a substantially better game than anything previous. That should be respected.

Now I know you aren't going to read any of this. You're just going to write it off as "muh opinion" because that's all you know how to do. I'm just a "DBAC fan" to you, and not someone who's concerned about the past, present, and maybe even future of this old video game series with a lot of heritage. That's sad, but I literally cannot do anything about that, beyond writing this stuff out far too many times and literally praying that someone will read it and appreciate it.

I play thunder force AC for its gameplay

I was going to be nice and put TFAC in the same group as Hyper Duel and Blast Wind (or at least sit it next to Elemental Master, but I can't with the rest of your post.

The only games I can think of that might qualify are the Compile ones, but those got shat on also.

I can tell you that TFAC is way better than most Compile games.

Sure, this all breaks down to taste or whatever

No, it doesn't.

Of course balance suffers when you do that, but it's not a player versus player game.

Are you trying to say that balance doesn't matter as much in a singleplayer game? If you are, you're admitting that Thunder Force games aren't games you can play seriously and are mostly played for the experience. Your comment praising "Compile" with no disambiguation outside of fucking Zanac of all things makes this pretty clear. Zanac is one of Compile's better games, by the way.

If you think thunder force 3 is bad then you must think gradius or r-type are 0/10 quality. Moving slow as a snail, tediously picking up power up items...

How is this comparison even supposed to work? What is the intended takeaway here?

Also the whole presentation argument breaks down with a lot of older games because they look like garbage nowadays. Zanac looks like a pile of shit. But I can pick it up and play it and go "holy shit this gameplay is still really fun."

Nah, we live in an era where people genuinely fetishize pixel art, especially "8-bit" and "16-bit" pixel art. Only extremely old games like Zanac get shit on anymore, and that's for the same reason people obsess over pixel art in the first place; people have been led to believe that pixel art somehow transcends technology, and games like Zanac show that isn't really true, so only those games get the bashing.

it is fascinating to hear that the much maligned VI is their best. Although I don't agree, it is great to hear an opposing view.

That text wall you see about Darius could just as easily be written about Thunder Force, but here's all I have the energy for:

VI just doesn't have some of the issues the previous games do. The obnoxious G Darius-esque difficulty spike that V had is gone. None of the weapons seem under- or overpowered anymore; balance is not quite as good as Gate of Thunder, but the dev tries. VI's overweapon system works a little better in practice than V's; they even tried to stop overweapon spam by adding a point bonus for holding on to stocks. Additionally, VI is also the only game besides the IV rereleases with multiple ships, always a positive.

Basically, VI is V but with less weirdness in its overall systems. Again, like with DBAC, it's not a perfect game and there is absolutely still weirdness. Honestly, it's not as good as DBAC was for Darius. But the title of "the best Thunder Force game" is currently held by VI, regardless of what people think about any given game. The biggest issues with it are the silly bugs, i.e. not gameplay issues but simple technical issues, and something that very few people talk about anyway.

The people who hate on VI do so entirely from two perspectives: "the experience isn't as good", and "I haven't played it but everyone says it's bad". I am to understand that it was so hated by the Japanese fanbase purely on the back of the "experience" bit that Sega has seemingly struck it from Thunder Force history. That's fucking sad. and it's very clear that the situation around the series is the same in Japan as it is anywhere else. For fuck's sake, I've seen the game be directly compared to Death Crimson (needs no introduction) in how much people hate on it, and I've seen implications that Darius R, an actual problem game, is treated in a better light. Something is very wrong with how people talk about Thunder Force VI, far more than anything wrong with the game itself.

For what it's worth, VI may or may not be developed by Gulti in whole or in part. Make of that what you will.

I love Thunder Force as a series but completely bounce off the Raiden games, mainly as I can't be arsed to learn positioning for those hyperfast bullet spreads. I prefer the style where you can get through a good portion of the game by the seat of your pants, rather than learn where I need to be before the spread even appears.

See, you recognize that Raiden is simply not your thing. Are you going to call the games shit or the people who play them weird because of that? I'd hope not! That's important.

[Sima Tuna]

Bro, aren't you calling games shit and saying people are playing them for the wrong reasons? You're not saying "I don't like compile, the games aren't for me" or "I don't like thunder force, the games aren't for me."

What can even be argued here anyway? You think people are playing certain older shmups for the "experience." I'm sure there are some people who do. There's always someone who does x for y reason for anything. But do you really think a) a shmup forum will be full of those kinds of people or b) that people would be playing games (repeatedly) where they think the gameplay is awful?

I still haven't heard what's bad about Thunder Force AC. I've heard you say that you think the thunder force series have poor balancing. My point about the weapons is they give you all the weapons and the ship speed up front. If you find some broken shit and make the game too easy for yourself then that's on you, but I'd rather be given the tools than not have them. Gradius has an annoying difficulty curve primarily because the game doesn't give you anything, so recovery is hell but playing at max power feels too easy. Thunder Force AC is balanced around the player having at least 2-3 different weapon types at all times. One of which is a backwards shot to hit ass ships (which you have no way to deal with in most older shmups.) Raiden 1 vs Thunder Force AC provides a great example of why I like AC. Oh, some enemy coming in from the sides or behind? The game accounts for this and I can switch shot types to blast it. Fast enemy bullets? I make my ship fast instantly. Tight spreads? Slow my ship down. The game still punishes you for fucking up by taking away the special weapon types and powering you down, so it's not totally toothless.

Why would I play a game that looks mediocre or bad for "the experience." That doesn't even make sense to me, still. If the game is shit to play then I won't play it. I can't make an objective statement about pixel art, pixel art fetishists or whatever. I can only say that Thunder Force AC looks generic to me, and kinda bland. Thunder Force 4 is a lot more visually impressive. But I play AC and not 4 because I prefer AC's gameplay. For how old it is, Zanac is still an impressively-made game. I think its gameplay has held up. Neither game looks very good nowadays imo. You can say you think the games are shit or whatever but people are enjoying playing these games and I don't think it's for some weird nostalgia poseur reason. Soldier Blade is a fun game to play, so I play. It's not complicated from where I sit. *shrug*

[Sengoku Strider]

Vastynex is my favorite Thunder Force game (I haven't played any of the TF games yet, sorry >w>;;).

If you have a Switch, check out M2's Sega AGES releases of Thunder Force AC & Thunder Force IV/'Lightening Force.' They're dirt cheap and utterly fantastic.

[reckon luck]

*paragraphs of Compile, TF and Darius-bashing*

well yeah but they're fun, so

[Lethe]

See, you're just doing the "muh opinion" thing. There is no value in anyone's opinion about things that are supposed to be based in fact, and there is negative value in people accusing someone trying to point this out of supposedly doing the same thing. It's so tiring dealing with that from people who are just completely unwilling to imagine that it's actually possible to be right or wrong about very fundamental and very obvious shit. It doesn't take a genius to realize that most Thunder Force games were made to be experiences and not really taken seriously as games. All anyone has to do to figure that out is to play them for a bit and do very cursory research, and to actually pay attention to what they're looking at; for some reason, the fans are just unwilling to do this. That's why we use the word "fans", and that's why the line between "fan" and "fanboy" arguably doesn't exist.

Sure. Not very relevant to what I was talking about though. I'm only interested in your horrible fallible opinions and not whatever you're trying to pass off as objectivity.

[evil_ash_xero]

I was like "wow, who wrote this nutty thread", and saw my name.

You know... I still stand by it. What was the last truly great shmup? Crimzon Clover, for some? Game's like 10 years old.
For me, it's probably Futari.

But being negative isn't going to get positive responses.

[harborline765]

Natsuki Chronicle in arcade mode is pretty damn good.

[harborline765]

Look, I'm not calling DBAC a flawless game or anything, it's not. But it's extremely obvious that the developers have really tried to make a substantially better game than anything previous. That should be respected.

You make some interesting points about the balancing and difficulty issues of the earlier games, and it's great. But whether a more polished title is definitively superior is another question entirely - it honestly seems like you're trying to pass it off as an objective truth when it's really just an interesting difference between both titles that make the old and the new intensely fascinating to play today.

The sentence about how the developers' intent was to fix the issues of previous titles (particularly Darius II) is a better read on things I think. It's hard to argue with that, and yes, Pyramid's titles are better thought out in that manner. But something has been lost - I don't think it makes the older games redundant for all their flaws, there's still something of value there. I hadn't played Darius II until M2's collection two years ago - DariusBurst was actually my first Darius - and I still found it intensely engrossing despite the issues you mentioned.

Now I know you aren't going to read any of this. You're just going to write it off as "muh opinion" because that's all you know how to do. I'm just a "DBAC fan" to you, and not someone who's concerned about the past, present, and maybe even future of this old video game series with a lot of heritage. That's sad, but I literally cannot do anything about that, beyond writing this stuff out far too many times and literally praying that someone will read it and appreciate it.

This is a really unnecessary paragraph that only seeks to perpetuate a self fulfilling blind fanboy prophecy that isn't here in this thread. At the end of the day the genre clearly means different things to different people so your argument isn't going to click with everyone. I too am jaded by the quality of public discourse these days, but give the folk here credit where it's due, since we are engaging in discussion here. Now if the replies were all along the lines of "lol Pyramid stan" or "Another Chronicle simp" then you might be on to something...

[Sturmvogel Prime]

Why I suppose people can't make great shmups anymore?

I've said the answer a few times in my reviews and its because they do them on the cheap and just for the sake of give you cheap Trophies/Achievements (Project Starship series for instance).

[Sumez]

But being negative isn't going to get positive responses.

I doubt being positive would have fared much better in this specific scenario

[BIL]

I could write a damn book about some of these games, but I know that noone would read it. I have wanted to do so many videos with god knows how many details and comparisons and theories about every damned aspect of gaming, but I do not have the means. I also know that either noone would watch any of it, or—far worse—that I'd luck out and hit the algorithm lottery, and the only people who would watch my videos would then be either the same kind of creeps who obsess over all the other "influencers" on YouTube, or just fucking bots. I'm not some genius dispensing sage advice. I'm just some nerd reminding people of basic shit that they either forgot or don't want to hear.

Patchy-kun you have an obligation to your talent to make these videos happen (■｀w´■) Write on fucking JPGs with Comic Sans or some shit. PRINT OUT JPGS and write on them, then scan them! Get like 14y/o Japanese infantryman charging down Yankee foxhole biting on live grenade after doing fat rail of methamphetamine sulphate off best friend corpse!

Anyhoo I'd watch. Ain't got nothing better to do

[PerishedFraud ឵឵ ឵឵]

I have wanted to do so many videos with god knows how many details and comparisons and theories about every damned aspect of gaming, but I do not have the means.

What exactly is stopping you?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

You know... I still stand by it. What was the last truly great shmup?

Have you not played a single shmup made in the past decade?