What would the experience of your ideal shmup look like?

[Knightmare]

Hello. I'm curious to know how you would describe your ideal shmup, not in terms of how it looks, how it sounds, or even how it plays, but instead, in terms of what your experience of that shmup would look like.

Here are two examples:

Perhaps you would like a game so perfectly tuned to your current skill level that you manage to wobble on the razor's edge the whole way through on your first credit -- flying by the seat of your pants, you barely beat the final boss with one life left and all your bombs spent, sweat pouring down your face. I suppose this would be the experience of most pilots within the games.

Maybe instead you'd prefer a game so challenging that it swiftly boots you back to the title screen, but only after showing you a glimpse of brilliant, thoughtful gameplay that inspires you to try again and again until you reach mastery. Call this the classic shmup experience.

The former is appealing, right, but perhaps lacks longevity. And I think it's clear enough that the latter is where most beloved shmups land. I suppose you might boil the question down to this: would you prefer a game that was somehow tailored perfectly to you, or do you prefer to rise to the challenge offered by the game? Or do you have something completely different in mind?

[atro_city]

I prefer that games have a wide range of difficulty options so I can choose what I feel comfortable with and bump the difficulty up once I've improved. As I've gotten older, the "play the same 5 minutes over and over" style of getting my ass kicked mercilessly by arcade games has really lost its appeal and led me to seek out console versions with more reasonable levels of challenge.

[MidnightWolf]

Shooting Zelda's Link in the face with an Uzi.

Bubsy the Bobcat could make a cameo too.

[To Far Away Times]

I've had some of my favorite gaming moments clearing incredibly difficult shmups, but I also really enjoy easier but immaculately polished, fun as hell games like Thunderforce III just as much.

It can't be too easy though. I need to spend enough time learning the game that the experience sticks with me. Thunderforce III, while often cited as an easy game, will still take multiple play throughs to learn the traps and such, and that's enough time to really let the amazing music sink in and enjoy the visuals and stage layouts.

I'd say "easy" games like Thunderforce III, Mushi Futari BL, Deathsmiles, and Touhou 07 and 08 are really nice low difficulty games that require you to play enough times that you get the "full experience," and getting a 1CC in any of those games is still really satisfying, even if its likely 10-15 hours or less of playing instead of 80 hours plus.

[Lethe]

Difficulty is only a small part of appeal IMO, it's more about the game's ability to communicate. Whether a game makes you think it's good or has depth or is well-designed is infinitely more important than how ultimately true that is, and that's especially the case in an arcade environment. What difficulty exists for is to be a magnifying glass: it forces you to engage with the mechanics, and all the game's virtues and flaws become more apparent. If hypothetically a game was capable of fully expressing its mechanics without challenge, then difficulty wouldn't serve any purpose (beyond making the machine more money). But most games aren't capable of that, so they need challenge to give you a push into appreciating what they're doing.

How a new game responds to my early attempts to clown on it informs much of my first impressions. The scenario where the game and the player can simultaneously afford to toy with each other is the essence of "playing". If its response to whatever I try to do is to tell me to sit the fuck down and play it properly, I'm probably not going to give it much time. Why should I bother with something that doesn't want me to "play"? But if I clown all over a game and it doesn't stop me, it's boring. Conversely games with a haphazard attitude to survival and lots of piecemeal mechanics are consistently interesting. I can't imagine anything better than beating a game by the skin of my teeth every run, pushing my survival limits continually by gradually implementing more and more tech and making compromises on-the-fly.