Bosconian, Thunderforce, Vanguard II, Last Mission, Amnios...

[Turrican]

As in, arena shmups (not generically "shooters") with forced scrolling imposed by the movement of the player (which excludes stuff where your avatar can stop in a fixed position, ie Robotron, Gauntlet, overhead Contras, Granada and in general ground-based vehicular stuff).

How many can you list? Are they all "sons of Bosconian"? (Not looking for non-scrolling background and inertia movement as in Asteroids). Time Pilot may apply thought not necessarily.

How many representatives from the western school besides Amnios?

How do you like them?

[Turrican]

Although Bosconian has two official sequels, neither fits here. Half of Thunder Force II belongs here.

1981 Bosconian, Namco
1982 Time Pilot, Konami
1983 Thunder Force, Techno Soft
1983 Nova 2001, UPL (somehow similar but not quite)
1984 Vanguard II, SNK
1984 Time Pilot '84, Konami
1986 Last Mission, Data East
1986 Parallax, Sensible (part of It)
.?
1988 Ark Area, UPL (somehow similar but not quite)
1988 Fusion, Bullfrog
1989 Thunderforce II MD, Tecnosoft (half of It)
1988 Pioneer Plague, Bill Williams
.?
1990 Photon Storm, Llamasoft
1990 Awesome, Reflections (bits of It)
1991 Amnios, Flying Chicken / Psygnosis (here the way the scrolling's handled is already a bit different reverting to an Asteroids like setup, where you can stay almost standstill)
1991 Battlestorm, Titus
1991 Vyrus, Epilogue (somehow similar?)
1993 Blastar, Core Design (ditto)
1993 Zone 66, Renaissance


Paul Shirley's Quartz seems to fall decisively in the Granada camp, so I would exclude it. Ditto for Thalion's Warp.

[Bassa-Bassa]

12.1983 Nova 2001

Ark Area's scroll is not forced but it's hard not to include it there, the enemies' appearance isn't determined by the scroll, if I recall.

[Turrican]

Good find. Yes, the way both the UPL scroll their background makes for a slightly different outcome.
Truly not a crowded subgenre. But I'm pretty sure there are several others in the home computer range...

[SuperDeadite]

Zugya is a doujin remake of Bosconian for the x68k. Worth a go.

[SavagePencil]

1993’s Zone 66

[soupbones]

ThunderForce 2 is half arena, half horizontal. ALL THUNDER.

[BIL]

Aha, reminds me of a recent find. Nichibutsu's Itazura Tenshi. (1984) Came out of nowhere on Arcade Archives a couple years back.



From screenshots, I'd assumed it was a Time Pilot affair - 360' arena shooter. It's actually more of a bizarro Bosconian. Don't seek and destroy bases, seek and repair constellations. Quite charmingly drawn! I can't quite put my finger on the comic/cartoon it reminds me of. Something 1970s and PBS, maybe.

Like a few other Nichibutsu titles - Armed F, MagMax, Mighty Guy - it's somewhat mild by AC standard. Busy yet controllable. I suspect their games, while admirably solid, tended towards department store accessibility over ge-sen SPEEDSHOCK. This culminating in the almost singularly generous Terra Force. OTOH, Moon Cresta and Terra Cresta don't mess around, so it's not like they didn't have balls or nothin.

---

Would Metal Hawk count? On one hand, it's decidedly Assault's spiritual and technological sibling. Same rotating/scaling topdown, with an emphasis on Time Attack ala Seek/Destroy. Being air-based, though, it strongly recalls Bosconian, too. Even has a stage where you take down a flying fortress defended by scads of support zako.

Spoiler

Big differences are the Z-axis altitude control, the ability to hover in place (typically not a great idea, with its enemy aggression), and the Xevious ground shot. Perhaps best described as the Assault to Bosconian's Granada.

[Turrican]

Nice finds, Itazura Tenshi would fit the Bill if only its focus were on blasting stuff. Seems more like a puzzle game where you connect stars. So I'd say it's this subgenre's peculiar Quarth...

Metal Hawk would fit the bill of a branch of this subgenre... Which would then call Raid on Bungeling Bay and Red Zone into the fold, I guess. No problem whatsoever with the ground shot, that's a Thunder Force staple as well.

However, I'm thinking the exact combo of "multidirectional scrolling + ship with no brakes" we have basically exhausted, not many games must have followed suit.

I guess the biggest divide in these titles is that some of them out an emphasis on the map, as per Bosconian/Rally X, while others discarded the map entirely, often giving hints via flashing arrows.

Oh well, then there would be Herzog Zwei But that's another story...

[Despatche]

I imagine that at least a lot of these are modeled after Bosconian to some degree. Some devs will even admit to it. But it's yet another example of a trend-setting Namco game that nobody outside Japan is willing to care about, like with most Namco games made around/after Galaga. It still distresses me that Sega fans have gotten people to genuinely believe that Virtua Racing is a trend-setter, and not simply an attempt to stand up to Winning Run.

Rally-X is not a shmup, but it should probably be mentioned somewhere because Bosconian can easily be described as "Galaxian and Rally-X fused".

XKobo is an old Japanese homebrew game for Unix (yes the X means what you think it means) that was clearly modeled after Bosconian. You probably know it better from the unofficial remakes, Kobo Deluxe and Kobo Redux, which mention Bosconian in various places.

I guess Thunder Force II should be mentioned simply because about half of it is this kind of gameplay, which is the only trace of its pedigree left.

[Turrican]

I sometimes wish an hidden option in Thunder Force II let you play in succession just one type of stage. A bit like when they did the Golden FC Z-Gundam without the Thexder parts...

[BIL]

Reviewing the ACA directory thread reminded me of a bizarre mini-episode... Konami's 1988 Xeviousesque Flak Attack, aka MX5000, which pulls the ol' BOSCO SURPRISE during bosses. Your F-16 busts out a rather comical-lookin 8way blaster mode. No scrolling, but god damn can you move.

Weird game. Seems quite superunknown for a Konami STG. I try to like it, but the bullet visibility can be truly tiring, and those lightning bolt memoriser bits are shockingly cynical. At least I thought they were... maybe I'd missed a trick. Seemed like a literal "LMAO DON'T BE HERE NEXT TIME" instakill.

God damn though, as usual with Konami's late 80s AC stuff, the BGM makes it hard to turn away entirely. COUNTER BLOW blows me fookin socks off m8! Spirited martial tune emblematic of its scuffed yet indomitably brass-balled epoch. Has an affecting reedy sound I associate more with Zuntata actually.

[Bassa-Bassa]

Stretching it even further, there's the Zero Gunner series, which feels like if it wanted to be another alternate take on Bosconian's/Time Pilot's concept applied over the orthodox STG basis (or Silpheed's, specifically) after all those years of evolution. But yeah, its forced scrolling/the enemies' appearance is not determined by the player's movement and the control is its very own thing, so I guess it even was excluded beforehand.

[Turrican]

Despite owning a still functional CDTV, I stumbled into Battlestorm literally while doing this thread. Who played it back in its days? It's also OCS/ECS of course. I just was amazed to discover that it got a CDTV release.

[Shatterhand]

Zugya is a doujin remake of Bosconian for the x68k. Worth a go.

It's on PC too.

[Lord British]

Sinistar maybe? Or is that inertia based where your speed changes? I forget.

[Turrican]

Sinistar maybe? Or is that inertia based where your speed changes? I forget.

Originally I just wanted a list of games with Pac-Man/Rally-X/Thunderforce II controls. Ie you push in a directions and you can't brake. However, this particular subgenre proved to be so minuscule that I allowed some deviations from that control style. Sinistar could be one of them. Although it's really a parallel evolution from a different template.