To Far Away Times wrote: ↑Fri Aug 02, 2024 5:54 pm
Granted, some of the biggest games like DDP DOJ and Mushi Futari hadn't even been released yet, but I like this list way more than the newer ones.
That list slaps SO hard, although it's already way too bullet hell centric for my taste. Soldier Blade? Axelay? FIVE different games with "Thunder" in the name? FUCK YES!
That said, Garegga deserves every bit of the praise it gets around here for being the video game equivalent of a Lament Configuration, or at least that crazy ass house from 13 Ghosts.
It’s a great list. But the most boring outcome is repeating it for 20 years. I love to see what games keep attracting new players, and which hold attention after hundreds or thousands of hours. If TF3 passed those tests it would remain in the top 25. Thankfully, we have most of the old lists. Anyone with Cave fatigue can turn back the clock and get some old school recommendations.
samspot wrote: ↑Sat Aug 03, 2024 6:07 pm
I love to see what games keep attracting new players, and which hold attention after hundreds or thousands of hours. If TF3 passed those tests it would remain in the top 25.
If that's your criteria then you've picked the wrong genre.
TF3 is objectively better than any Cave game because it has the word "Thunder" in the title. It's playground science.
Speaking of objective science, the following image comparison tells us all we need to know:
One of these gets me pumped to dispense my phallus craft's hot loads of laser justice into a giant space phoenix. The other chills me out for a relaxed weekend outing, maybe sandwiches in the park before a free evening symphony in the 4H club's band shell by the lake?
Air Master Burst wrote: ↑Sun Aug 04, 2024 3:00 am
"gets me pumped to dispense my phallus craft's hot loads of laser justice into a giant space phoenix."
Ha ha, Who truly could argue against this undeniable truth!?
The Thunder Force games are so eternally replayable, not for score, or because they are have incredibly deep mechanics...simply because they are so damn fun.
The original Japan region release of TFIII is the best as the bosses have enough HP that you have to have a handle on their attack patterns. With each subsequent release the bosses seem to melt quicker and quicker, the most egregious example being the first 'big' form of the final boss in TFAC which can be ended pretty much in a single hit. Its bouncing balls and spread shot would have been a good challenge to learn to dodge and the boss itself looks awesome, so it is bizarre they chose to effectively skip it, instead forcing you to face the miniboss prior twice.
I’d argue Thunderforce III is the most enjoyable shmup “journey” in the genre.
It fires on all cylinders, with the music and visuals being executed to perfection, and it’s pretty easy so you’ll most likely clear it if you have some experience with the game, but despite being fairly easy it’s very engaging and asks the player to be very active. And it still feels like an accomplishment to clear it. It is the absolute perfect console shmup.
samspot wrote: ↑Sat Aug 03, 2024 6:07 pm
I love to see what games keep attracting new players, and which hold attention after hundreds or thousands of hours. If TF3 passed those tests it would remain in the top 25.
If that's your criteria then you've picked the wrong genre.
Thinking shmups forum top 25 is an interesting list means I’m not a real shmup fan. TIL!
I will eventually give TF3 another shot based on all the love in this thread. It didn’t seem special on the first go, but plenty of great games are like that.
samspot wrote: ↑Sat Aug 03, 2024 6:07 pm
I love to see what games keep attracting new players, and which hold attention after hundreds or thousands of hours. If TF3 passed those tests it would remain in the top 25.
If that's your criteria then you've picked the wrong genre.
Thinking shmups forum top 25 is an interesting list means I’m not a real shmup fan. TIL!
I never said you weren't a real shmup fan, I'm just saying that if one of your main criteria for judgement is "keeps attracting new players" then shmups probably aren't a great genre for you to be judging.
ETA: Definitely play TF3, though. You can crank the difficulty up in the options menu if that helps.
If that's your criteria then you've picked the wrong genre.
Thinking shmups forum top 25 is an interesting list means I’m not a real shmup fan. TIL!
I never said you weren't a real shmup fan, I'm just saying that if one of your criteria for judgement is "keeps attracting new players" then shmups probably aren't a great genre for you to be judging.
ETA: Definitely play TF3, though. You can crank the difficulty up in the options menu if that helps.
It's not my criteria for a great shmup, but I do think it's a interesting fact that comes from the top 25. The top games in the list are there because new players are finding out about them and replacing those who retire from gaming, die, etc.
the list is pretty accurate... but i dont get why everyone puts garegga to best shmup of all time spot, i mean it has some really revolutionary features and systems that will inspire many games but it has some really bad flaws.. but the music ROCKS that's a fact all hail namiki the god
It does so many things right, and has the intricacies a game needs to provide opportunities for continuous play/exploration even for such a traditional style, and it's done exactly that. From a casual perspective the major downsides are the high difficulty curve and boss milk, but it has a technical yagawa rank system in the forefront that you can manipulate a couple of ways by either by dodging items to keep the rank down or medal chaining, milking, bombing, and suiciding to keep the rank in check and potentially trying to push it to the limits. The secrets also help keep it feeling fresh.
admittedly, I still haven't gotten a clear, but MMP has demonstrated the sheer genius of ygw rank for me and helped orchestrate getting to one of the first the 2nd loop I've gotten (1.01 )
I guess I just never got the hype around Garegga. I bought it, but it just has no staying power for me. I really don’t like second guessing if I should be picking up powerups, or if picking up a power up two stages ago will get me killed later.
But then again, I prefer my shmups to be straightforward with clear rules and highly static to reward repeated play. Basically everything Garegga isn’t.
To me, Futari is the clear cut best game in the genre. Its art style is incredible, with some of the very best visuals and music in the genre, and the gameplay is immaculate. It’s a 10 out of 10 in everything it does.
As much as I love futari, the scoring is only really solid in the maniac/god/ultra difficulties. I do love the exhilarating feeling of getting the overall counter in black label original near 100k to see the rank crank the bullet speed up faster than psikyo speeds, but the 0-4 and 5-9 scoring rules are pretty nonsensical even though it introduces a flow to the stages
To Far Away Times wrote: ↑Tue Aug 20, 2024 5:25 am
I guess I just never got the hype around Garegga. I bought it, but it just has no staying power for me. I really don’t like second guessing if I should be picking up powerups, or if picking up a power up two stages ago will get me killed later.
But then again, I prefer my shmups to be straightforward with clear rules and highly static to reward repeated play. Basically everything Garegga isn’t.
To me, Futari is the clear cut best game in the genre. Its art style is incredible, with some of the very best visuals and music in the genre, and the gameplay is immaculate. It’s a 10 out of 10 in everything it does.
Garegga let's the player personalize their route, and all the quirks and things you want to collect and avoid allow for lots of swaggy play. When you get the 1cc, it's not just a 1cc; it's your 1cc.
RuySan wrote: ↑Tue Oct 29, 2024 2:01 pm
I'm not very active in this forum, even though I come and go, but this list isn't really appealing to me. When it's the voting for next year?
Nifty sadly does them biennial now. And I wouldn't worry too much about the results of the list, it's just for fun, and the way the scores are counted means that the most player/popular ones will almost always make the top of the list.
There was a cool list someone posted either this year or last time (think it was Lethe?), that ranked it a little bit differently so that the games that people gave a higher score to appeared higher on the list. So a 'most loved'-list rather than 'most popular' one. Think Gradius V might've been on that one.
Nifty wrote: ↑Sun Mar 10, 2024 11:26 am
As mentioned before, this event will not be taking place next year, or every odd-numbered year while I still run it alone. The 21st T25 is therefore currently scheduled for January 2026.
The hall of fame (all games unordered) is always in the voting threads. It should probably be in with the results as well.
A plain weighted average is by design going to eliminate all the qualitative data and create a genericized slurry which represents nobody in particular. If people were in agreement about the results that'd indicate the system was broken. Which is why the valuable part has always been seeing how individuals choose to score games and their comments. Anything which disincentivizes participating in that qualitative part, like having less reason to really think about your weightings, will just make things worse for no gain.
I don't think the suggestion is a terrible principle though, I just don't know if trying to curb misinterpretation via omission is the way to do it. It's got to be better to be more informative instead, but I don't have any elegant ideas for that either. Adding some variation coefficients isn't going to help if it's just an extra couple of inscrutable numbers to go with the existing couple of near-meaningless numbers. Doing something like a scattergram sounds ideal so people get an intuitive view of where the votes went, but representing everything is going to be a mess without making a whole series of graphs (which most will never look at), and you'd still only get anonymized trends out of it.
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