With regard to stature I was thinking specifically of the top 25s over the years on this forum, having gone through the archives a while back. Those two games have consistently placed in them which, when you think about all the STGs that have ever been released, is a lot of very good and very widely known games to be placed ahead of. I wouldn't second guess the judgement of people picking them, only make the point that market availability clearly has an influence when you look at trends of other games appearing or rising on the list over the years. I just went through the archive again, to refresh my memory. I believe the first three polls are lost to time, but from 2006 forward here's what I found, with Esp.Ra.De added as a control factor:BIL wrote:DG and Rayforce were always highly-regarded amongst Japanese STG fans. I could swear I remember someone else from the US mentioning this theory forever ago, and yeah... it's not the US STG fanbase of Bumfuck Burgerland, or their equally ardent pals across the pond in Crumpetfuck Teabagfordshire, or even the continental powers of Wienerschnitzelburg, Baguette Handler Town or Cannoli Lover's Island behind any of these games' statures. We're good for regrettably sexual Ikaruga box quotes, that's about it. Conversely, many of the most widely Western-available STGs are roundly detested around here and other hubs. Someone whose familiarity goes beyond a small stack of GameSTs and doujin superplays and witnessing a couple decades' worth of Euroshmup pogroms could probably confirm on both of these counts.
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Layer Gaiden ESP.Ra.De
4th 21 - 25
5th 13 - -
6th 17 - 16
7th 24 - 18
8th - - -
9th - 23 -
10th - - -
11th 16 - -
12th 8 20 -
13th 8 20 -
14th 8 23 -
15th 8 - -
16th 13 - -
17th 15 23 14
18th 20 10 16
19th 23 9 14
I'm not sure what was behind Gaiden's emergence midway through. I'm not into emulation so I'm basing this off a bit of Googling: it seems like the Taito F3 was added to MAME later than that, but it does seem to generally correspond to improvements in Saturn emulation, though before the expansion bus hack.
On the Japanese point, I looked through the final Saturn Magazine reader's poll. Here's how the ten highest STGs placed at the time:
(1) 14. Thunder Force V
(2) 31. Sōkyūgurentai
(3) 33. Sōkyūgurentai Otokuyō
(4) 37. Radiant Silvergun
(5) 46. Game Tengoku
(6) 56. Layer Section
(7) 69. Sega Ages: Fantasy Zone
(8) 83. Dodonpachi
(9) 89. Battle Garegga
(10) 94. Darius Gaiden
So they're both at least in the running there on this platform (Salamander Deluxe Pack Plus in 99th place was the next STG down if you wanted to skip the other Sōkyūgurentai). I'd love to add a more contemporary overall Japanese poll, but I'm not aware of one that might be considered representative. There are things like ranking.net, whose STG list has Layer Section at 58 all-time, Darius Gaiden at 62. But given that the highest rated Darius game on that list is Darius Force at #40, I'm not sure how seriously to take it. Shout outs to the underdog Sky Kid for placing 12th though.
The other stuff I find through Google are just personal lists on blogs & youtube etc. If anyone knows something better I'd love to see it.
So in looking for an answer to my own question, did their ready availability on the Saturn in the West affect the profiles of Layer Section & Darius Gaiden? Yeah, it would seem so, but I also don't think it can be said to be the determining factor for their popularity.
On this particular point I would have to disagree. Not that Xevious isn't lame, that's pretty much factual (argh that audio). It's completely lost on us in the West, but Xevious was a huge deal in Japan. The conditions were just never there for it here, due to how late it arrived to the NES & Atari 7800. It certainly blew minds in Japanese arcades at the time, but where it really made an impact was on the Famicom. It and the inferior SG-1000 were the whole show when it came to the Japanese home console market in 1984. (The main Japanese home computers of the day, the PC-8800 & then still-new MSX standard, couldn't yet hang with the Famicom in terms of smoothly displaying games). When Lode Runner hit the Famicom in the summer of '84, it became a phenomenon and the system really started to pull away, becoming the dominant Japanese gaming platform. Here's the entire list of STGs available for the Famicom when the Xevious port hit in November of that year:I don't think anyone who likes RF does so because its weapons and scoring systems broadly resembles Xevious's, though. Then again, my opinion of RF's Gunlock is that it's Xevious Ground Bombing Except Not Lame.
Galaga
Xevious
That's it. That's the whole list. So in a country that had been Space Invaders obsessed, and when arcades were still filthy, scary Yakuza-connected places moms wouldn't let their kids into, you can see how in that context Xevious really stood head & shoulders above everything else available. And of course its influence was clear in several games over the years following. So there's no question that Xevious was in the back (or maybe front) of the minds of Layer Section's devs when they were making it, and it had to have been a huge part of the appeal to a section of the player base as well. If you look at that ranking.net list, Xevious is #2 all time (after Gradius). Sure, grains of salt & all, but it is a marker of its enduring cultural memory.