A little retroengineering that may surprise Cyvern players about dragon speed. I was certain that Schwarz was much slower than Ferious, and that Altair was somewhere in between. But in multiple tests, I've established that dragons have exactly the same speed when not using the banish: horizontally, vertically and in diagonal. However, when they banish, the differences are very clear and Schwarz is clearly the fastest and Ferious the slowest. See the table for details.
https://shmups.wiki/library/Cyvern:_The ... pons#Speed
I think there are two main explanations:
1. Dodonpachi mental conditioning (and quite a few other games). In my mind, wide shot = slow.
But mostly:
2. The difference between speeds with and without banish is so enormous with Ferious that, by contrast, it gives a sensation of acceleration when you're no longer banishing. We're talking about a difference of 70 to 100 frames ! Schwarz, on the other hand, has much less deviation, and therefore less contrast, when you switch back to shot. And it has almost the same horizontal and vertical spacing, whereas the others have a 10-frame difference, which adds to the confusion.
In DDP, the ships have much less of a gap between their shot and laser speeds, and this gap is roughly similar between the ships (11 for the A-L, 15 for the B-L and 16 for the C-L), so their shot speed is more accurately felt, even though in shot the B-L takes only 5 frames longer to cross the screen than the A-L, and the C-L 11.
In Cyvern, I had a hard time deciding who was faster between Altair and Ferious, and it was just a few gameplay points that steered me in one direction. For Schwarz, I had no doubts. Weird.