Looking for a PC SHMUP I played as a child

[leevanf]

Hi everyone! A long time ago I've came to this forum in search of an old vertical shmup I played when I was a kid. I posted about it on the "SHMUP related questions that do not deserve a thread", but I was instructed to make a standalone post for this. Life got in the way and I kinda forgot about it, but with the discovery of EKT, I thought that I might as well give it a shot again!

I've played this game back in 2004-2007 on Windows XP. I had it in a CD-ROM that I think is not in my possession anymore.

The game had a very distinct "technological" art style and HUD. It wasn't pixel art, and it wasn't cartoonized either. Something akin to the style of Ginga Force, but more low poly. It was probably made to run on very small resolutions, because I remember that when I put it on fullscreen, the start menu got very pixelated. The start menu had around 8 options and the font was red. While trying to look for it, I've found that Genetos has a certain part that looks like the one I'm looking for. It's at 3:22 (in case the automatic timestamp doesn't work) on the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P34tYD0MO14&t=202s.

The game had two standard ships, one red and one blue. There was a difference in their pattern of attack, but both shot blue laser bullets. There was a 3rd ship, which you could unlock by looping the character menu a lot of times until it appeared. That ship was dark green / black, and it shot a huge green laserbeam. You moved the ship with the arrow keys and used Z to shoot and select stuff in the menus.

I can't remember any of the bosses, but the game was short, I estimate around 5 to 8 levels, and it was not a particularly hard game (given that I was able to beat it as a child). There was a storyline, although I'm not sure if it was in english or japanese. It happened in the form of dialogues between the ship's driver and someone probably on a command center. I also think that the only visual aid for the characters in the game were their heads, they didn't have full body illustrations, and the red pilot was a red haired anime girl (possibly implying that the blue pilot was a blue haired anime girl as well), but take that last part with a grain of salt, as it is somewhat of a blurry memory compared to the other parts I've described.

The ones already suggested to me, which I've ruled out, are: Raiden series, Raycrisis, Raystorm, Blue Wish Resurrection.

Thanks in advance!

[BareKnuckleRoo]

The game had two standard ships, one red and one blue. There was a difference in their pattern of attack, but both shot blue laser bullets. There was a 3rd ship, which you could unlock by looping the character menu a lot of times until it appeared. That ship was dark green / black, and it shot a huge green laserbeam.

Solid State Survivor's main shots are blue, and the third unlockable ship's gimmick is absorbing bullets to fire a large green laser. It's got no plot elements though, but the main antagonist is red, so possibly you're misremembering some elements if it's it. It's a Windows XP era game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI-pPo2dNWA

Was the dialogue something that took place in stages, or between stages such as Giga Wing?

I imagine it's not one of Siter Skain's games as they don't have much in the way of anime elements (Kamui, Reflex, Alltynex).

I'm not sure it was distributed on CD, but did you ever look at Ether Vapor?

Rayforce had a PC port called Layer Section, but it doesn't really have text dialogue unless the PC version added some.

[leevanf]

First of all, thanks a lot for the suggestions!

I looked through all the games you sent me, but none matched.

Giga Wing and Layer Section are too pixel-arty.

Ether Vapor had a style closer to the game I remember, but it's way more polished than the one I'm looking for. Also, the enemies do not have individual HP bars, and there weren't any sections that changed the style to a "first person", it was strictly top-down vertical.

As for Siter Skain games, the ship on Reflex got my hopes up, as it seems to resemble the one in my head, but the gameplay proved that it wasn't the one, either.

I made some very crude recreations of what I remember on Paint:

Title Screen


Ship Selection Screen


Game Screen

[leevanf]

Some other details I remembered:

• The CD I had wasn't an original release of the game. It was a CD full of all sorts of games, some in English, some in Japanese. For example, this CD also contained a version of Akuji the Demon in Japanese, as well as a 3D fighting game in English. Given that fact, the shmup I'm looking for could be a port / emulation of a game not originally made for PC.

• That CD existed for as long as I can remember, so it is possible that the game was released for Windows 98 and I just happened to play it on a Windows XP.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

What country were you living in at the time? There's this demo disc that includes Akuji the Demon, I can't find footage of all the games though: https://archive.org/details/SF2003-07

[leevanf]

You wont be able to find the disc, it was most likely custom made. I remember the CD was white, with only a "PC Games" written on it with a red marker

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I believe I may have a candidate after searching. It's a low poly 3D vert with red, blue, and green ships, with the first two stages fitting the theme as described and having anime elements, and is old enough to be from that timeframe. Is it Idinaloq? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yAtlsYOuGDA

Also found another candidate, Restraint of Zero / R.O.Z.:

https://www.old-games.com/download/2733 ... f-zero-a-k

Sounds like it was a low poly freeware game with more anime elements than Die Slave or XSynergyGate.

[leevanf]

Idinaloq has an angled camera, while my game is strictly top-down.

ROZ does match the positioning of the dialogue with what I have in mind, but it's not it either.

Die Slave and XSynergyGate also do not match.

When sorting by year, I've combed through all games on this page of Shmups Wiki from 1978 to 2007, but none of them matched.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Would the name be enough to jog your memory? There's a few google drive folders here with repositories of Windows XP era shmups: viewtopic.php?p=1365638#p136563

[leevanf]

Just the name wouldnt be enough. I've been going through the games on the drive, but haven't found it yet

[leevanf]

Would the name be enough to jog your memory? There's a few google drive folders here with repositories of Windows XP era shmups: viewtopic.php?p=1365638#p136563

I found it! It was Creature Jungle 16! It was on the Staging folder.

Thanks a lot for the help!

Now i'm trying to make it run in not hypersonic mode so I can play it on my PC

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Great! It sounds like you'll have to force your system to be 60 FPS as a lot of these games were made before 120 FPS was a thing and do not run it at the correct speed (some will run at 60 FPS when fullscreen but not windowed).

It also looks like there was a sequel, Creature Jungle 256: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c-vXreTZy0

[BIL]

Impressive detective work

[leevanf]

Great! It sounds like you'll have to force your system to be 60 FPS as a lot of these games were made before 120 FPS was a thing and do not run it at the correct speed (some will run at 60 FPS when fullscreen but not windowed).

It also looks like there was a sequel, Creature Jungle 256: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c-vXreTZy0

I tried doing it with the msi afterburner and RivaTuner, also with the NVIDIA Control Panel, but it didn't work. Seems like games that depend on D3D running on compatibility mode need some magic for these softwares to work. So I just installed a Windows XP Virtual Machine and the game was good to go!

It was a blast to play it again, I'll try for a hitless run later.

I've downloaded the sequel from internet archive, will definitely be checking it out!

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Impressive detective work

"Here's a list of old games, look through it" hardly strikes me as the most praiseworthy thing, hahah.

You know the stupidest part? A few days ago I actually saw Creature Jungle 16 when I was browsing a channel that had a lot of doujin releases for the "going through the clouds" thread and it didn't really click to me as as a possibility for this thread because it looked more pixellated than I'd had in mind, oops.

[BIL]

I'm amazed a hardcore spaceship n' laz0rs STG named Creature Jungle exists. (I wonder if they were inspired by this cookin' RIDDIM)

[To Far Away Times]

Great! It sounds like you'll have to force your system to be 60 FPS as a lot of these games were made before 120 FPS was a thing and do not run it at the correct speed (some will run at 60 FPS when fullscreen but not windowed).

It also looks like there was a sequel, Creature Jungle 256: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c-vXreTZy0

You know, this doesn't look half bad. I really like the bullet patterns, looks like a bullet hell but with larger gaps, and it looks like the player is making a lot of decision making weaving through it all. Visually it kind of reminds me of Blue Wish Resurrection Plus with the pre-rendered sprites.