Dadshmup design vs Danmaku shmup design

[Hani]

I was thinking on the differences in game design style between older dadshmup games and more modern danmaku/bullethell shmups. It has me curious — for people who prefer one style over the other, why is that? What about that style of shmup do you prefer over the other, and what about the other one dissuades you? I suppose since this encompasses the general old versus new debate, you can also include reasons for generally preferring older shmup styles or modern shmup styles as well.

This isn't necessarily saying there's some massive community divide, rather I think it would be neat to see some of the reasons behind personal preferences.

Thanks!

[Jonpachi]

Shooting as the focus VS Dodging as the focus

I like both but tend toward the latter.

[BulletMagnet]

I usually prefer less mandatory memorization in my shmups, at least when it comes to basic survival, and "modern" titles tend to cater more to that; admittedly, though, this state of affairs could likely be chalked up to a more general focus on accessibility from game designers across the board in recent years, as opposed to any inherent characteristic of the danmaku shmups which happened to come to prominence around the same time.

[Steven]

Bullet hell sucks because

• Vaguely defined, tiny hurtbox that results in a lot of both "how the fuck did I die, there was nothing anywhere near me!" and "how the fuck did I not die, I should have gotten annihilated!" but is necessary to survive the enemy bullet vomit

• Too much focus on awful, needlessly complex scoring systems that only a handful of people understand or chaining, which is boring/annoying and not fun

[pablumatic]

I don't know what a "dadshmup" is, but I'm not big on bullet hell. The games are more like manic mazes when they get to be at their worst, and I don't really care for the tiny hitbox stuff. I prefer the idea that any hit to your player will result in a death, not a vague smaller spot in the center.

I'm in these games to (generally) play as a pilot in a spaceship against overwhelming odds. Not looking to dance around pink or purple bullets the entire time.

[Hazuki]

I also prefer oldschool shmups like Gradius series, R-Type, Zanac, Sonic Wings, etc. Partly due to growing up with them so there's some nostalgia involved, but it's not only that. I just prefer the simplicity and straightforwardness of older titles. Convoluted scoring apart, with danmaku there's so much shit flying on the screen at the same time you could probably build a whole planet out of it. Can't even enjoy the game's graphics either since they're constantly covered.

[Sima Tuna]

I like dadshmups where you have very generous shot power. The thing about shooting focus vs dodging focus is there are definitely dadshmups that require you to do a lot of dodging, like Gradius and R-Type. You fuck up once in Gradius and your ass is gonna be doing nothing but dodging for the next two stages because you don't have shot power. R-Type has plenty of situations where you cannot shot power your way through and you need to memorize and dodge what's coming at you. There are attacks that will go through your force no matter how much power you have.

I prefer a slender-ish hitbox with a high firepower ship. I really like Giga Wing, even if its gimmick is pretty unique and weird. Also really love Blazing Star. Maybe Blazing Star is the best example of the kind of shmup I love most. That or Gekirindan. A game that is influenced by the older style of shmups but which upgrades the crap out of your ship's firepower. I also really enjoy Aleste, Zanac, RECCA and those kind of games. I like the idea of certain weapons having the ability to clear enemy spreads. It can be a risk-reward system if the weapons are balanced well. Dragon Blaze owns.

Oh, actually the best shmup example for what I love is ESCHATOS. Pure old-school influence but completely modernized in its own direction. The firepower feels great and it's innovating with visuals and sound, but at the core, this is still an older style of shmup and not danmaku. Also ESCHATOS is a vert and I prefer verts. Judgment Silversword is pretty much perfect too, considering its technical limitations. Zanac, Silversword, Eschatos, Gekirindan, Shienryu... This is the kinda shit I love.

Mushihimesama too, that's one which straddles the line between Dad and Dan. You've got the alternate modes which are definitely danmaku, but the default game is pretty toaplan influenced, despite a smallish hitbox.

I love CAVE games but I would say that's more a case of loving CAVE more than loving danmaku. Danmaku Unlimited 3 was dope though. Espgaluda 2 is another favorite of mine, but it's purely on the Dan side.

[Lethe]

Yeah, it's more useful to think of design archetypes as "aiming games", "dodging games", "movement games" and such instead of "danmaku = dodging" vs. "non-danmaku = shooting". Plenty of games in either category have many more practical commonalities with the other than you might think. The real divisions between the two clades are attitudinal and aesthetic. Anyone who throws their lot in entirely one way or the other and claims it's all about the gameplay is either kidding themselves or plain lacking in perspective.

Vaguely defined, tiny hurtbox that results in a lot of both "how the fuck did I die, there was nothing anywhere near me!" and "how the fuck did I not die, I should have gotten annihilated!" but is necessary to survive the enemy bullet vomit

That's mostly just Cave dogshit though. Your hitbox in Dangun is double the size of its peers (bigger than DonPachi and 3 times the size of DOJBL/Ketsui!) but you can still randomly slip through bullets, or die to seemingly only getting grazed, because it's still a Cave game. I don't know any other serious developer that has this problem to such an extent. Smarter pattern/visual design and functioning collision detection > raw hitbox size difference.

The ur-example is DOJBL Hibachi where the blue bullets are going so fast, they enter a quantum state with 50/50 odds of collisions being harmless. I had a practice run where I wanted to suicide to the washing machine but I couldn't stop failing to get hit, and only died after flying up the screen and ramming the boss. Then contrast that with the later Psikyo games for instance where, while I don't generally like them, I've never felt like I got a disproportionate response out of anything: if it looks like you can micro it, you can, if it looks like you should respect it, you should.

[eksratu]

I lean more towards danmaku games---I like how I spend a higher proportion of my time either reacting to something or making decisions. Older shmups often demand a lot more memorization and scripting.

[Steven]

Vaguely defined, tiny hurtbox that results in a lot of both "how the fuck did I die, there was nothing anywhere near me!" and "how the fuck did I not die, I should have gotten annihilated!" but is necessary to survive the enemy bullet vomit

That's mostly just Cave dogshit though. Your hitbox in Dangun is double the size of its peers (bigger than DonPachi and 3 times the size of DOJBL/Ketsui!) but you can still randomly slip through bullets, or die to seemingly only getting grazed, because it's still a Cave game. I don't know any other serious developer that has this problem to such an extent. Smarter pattern/visual design and functioning collision detection > raw hitbox size difference.

The ur-example is DOJBL Hibachi where the blue bullets are going so fast, they enter a quantum state with 50/50 odds of collisions being harmless. I had a practice run where I wanted to suicide to the washing machine but I couldn't stop failing to get hit, and only died after flying up the screen and ramming the boss. Then contrast that with the later Psikyo games for instance where, while I don't generally like them, I've never felt like I got a disproportionate response out of anything: if it looks like you can micro it, you can, if it looks like you should respect it, you should.

I suppose that may be true. I generally feel that with things like Crimzon Clover, if I die it's my fault for not knowing what to do.

Funny that you should mention Dangun Feveron, though; it's one of the few bullet hell games that I can actually tolerate, mostly because it doesn't have a dumb scoring system and has a good one instead. It's still way too difficult for me and I usually game over on like stage 2 boss~first third of stage 3, but I do like it and want to get better.

Maybe it's just me and I'm completely insane or my brain is broken, but I find that Same! Same! Same! 1P version is significantly easier (and better) than most bullet hell games, at least the ones that I've played, and I'd much rather play that than any bullet hell that I can think of. Daioujou? Mushihimesama Futari? Crimzon Clover, a game that I actually rather like? Nah, fuck all of that shit and give me Same! Same! Same! 1P version instead. I also do kind of like Guwange, though.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

This is kinda two questions in disguse

The first is 'what's the difference between modern and old shmups' which has been answered so many times it's not funny.

The second is 'what's the difference between bullet hell and classic shmups' which, while not as common of a question, has also been established by now.

For the former, you have to keep in mind that claiming that all modern shmups are bullet hell is total bogus, danmaku is more popular than it was back then, not to mention it didn't even exist as a real genre at first, but people still make classic shmups to this day. So the differences just boil down to the amount of polish, more or less. Of course older titles are more crude, and often you can see the inspirations for modern concepts in them.

For the latter, a classic shmup tends to give the player meaningful weapons or abilities, stage layout usually matters in horizontals (even some verts), and the game tends to be slower paced and often has gotcha segments/attacks that you gotta memorize. Bullet hells are really streamlined, faster-paced, focused almost entirely on enemy patterns, and player weapons tend to be boring, with abilities usually revolving around cancelling, bombing, etc instead of having a direct physical presence. Some popular entries might as well just be dodge-em-ups. Note that there are exceptions to everything that I've said here, with statements only applying to most entries.

Some lesser tropes you can find in non bh are: bombs being good for damage, powerups changing which weapon you have instead of having different ships, scoring being based on killing enemies quickly or killing full waves without missing enemies, etc.
Some lesser tropes from danmaku are: smaller hitboxes, focus mode, bombs used to clear bullets instead of damage, wide/narrow shot ships, loop 2 for 1ccs (or other requirements), TLBs, scoring for chains or tied to game's specific gimmick.

Also notable are early "bullet hells" which I've also seen people call manic shmups, which people usually, and rightfully, cite batsugun as a representative for. These are pretty much just a stepping stone before danmaku was a full genre and land somewhere inbetween

[Steven]

I don't see why Batsugun can't be a bullet hell game. It's got a small hurtbox, bullet diarrhea, and a dumb scoring system that nobody likes (milking stage 4 boss, in this case. Boring!). Everyone acknowledges Saidaioujou as a bullet hell game and it doesn't loop, so Batsugun doesn't fail any requirements there. Is a true last boss necessary for a game to be bullet hell? If it is, that's kind of weird, I think, but that's the only thing Batsugun lacks. I don't know if every bullet hell game actually has a true last boss, now that I think about it, so maybe someone who knows more than me can figure it out.

I'd honestly like it to be bullet hell because I just ALLed the damn thing 20 minutes ago and I want it to be a bullet hell game because it being so would make it the only arcade bullet hell clear I will probably ever get.

This is of course completely disregarding that bullet hell doesn't even have a formal definition anyway, and even IKD just calls them shooting games and does not differentiate between bullet hell and not-bullet hell.

[sunnshiner]

Bullet hell sucks because

• Vaguely defined, tiny hurtbox that results in a lot of both "how the fuck did I die, there was nothing anywhere near me!" and "how the fuck did I not die, I should have gotten annihilated!" but is necessary to survive the enemy bullet vomit

• Too much focus on awful, needlessly complex scoring systems that only a handful of people understand or chaining, which is boring/annoying and not fun

This forum needs a 'like' button.

[Jonpachi]

I like dadshmups where you have very generous shot power. The thing about shooting focus vs dodging focus is there are definitely dadshmups that require you to do a lot of dodging, like Gradius and R-Type. You fuck up once in Gradius and your ass is gonna be doing nothing but dodging for the next two stages because you don't have shot power.

This speaks to shooting still being the core focus, as the way you get out of trouble is to accurately shoot key targets to gain power-ups and get back to the desired state.

[bobhasashotgun]

Bullet Hells can get very creative with the bullet patterns, whereas classic shumps were more open to experiment with other aspects of level design.

Like in R-type 3, the last level has a dimensional portal you need to jump into to avoid stage hazards.
Or, in Gun Frontier, if one of those big tank things make it to the bridge on stage 1 you can bomb the bridge and sink the tank.
Gradius is filled with all sorts of wacky ideas, like shooting through regenerating cell walls and speed zones.

The only Bullet Hell I can think of that does things like that is Ikaruga, and there are many people that argue that Ikaruga isn't a proper bullet hell because it experiments with these ideas.

Also, there is also the issue of aesthetics. Military themes are more common in classic shmups just as anime girls are more common in bullet hells. It's not too uncommon for a fan of one theme to hate the other.

[Sengoku Strider]

I know you didn't come up with this distinction OP, so I'm not criticizing you, but I personally hate the term dadshmup. The idea that bullet hell is the young hip 'modern' paradigm is kind of ridiculous, given that the time span between Xevious and Batsugun is 10 years, while the time span from Batsugun to today is 33 years. Yes one preceded the other, but they're both venerably ancient in gaming terms.

It also carries the connotation that one is a simpler, slower, chubby and balding template, the sedate but comfortable Ford Focus to danmaku's virile Ferrari. But anyone who plays these things knows the differences don't split down the middle like that, a look at any comprehensive difficulty ranking list will confirm it.

[Randorama]

It also carries the connotation that one is a simpler, slower, chubby and balding template, the sedate but comfortable Ford Focus to danmaku's virile Ferrari

Oh, do you interpret dadshmup as coined from the same template of dad bod? Connotations are by definition context-sensitive and flexible (here is an introduction to the topic), so I was reading "dadshmup" as short for "shmups for old and possibly out-of-the-loop guys" (e.g. my father, who played Flying Shark when he was 38-39 and I was 7-8).

OP, this thread is terrible, sorry. I see that you only have 2 posts, but could you please reflect a bit and read other posts and sources before opening a "right hand vs. left hand" thread, i.e. a thread based on unsubstantiated opposition?

[Hani]

Completely reasonable criticisms of the thread that I’ve been reading. I probably should’ve worded it better in a manner more so making it explicit it was more of a general inquiry as to which genre people preferred, with emphasis on the ‘preferring’ aspect of it, rather than questioning differences between the two. I just wanted to know what people preferred, and why. Of course, there’s also nuance to it, obviously not every modern shmup is a danmaku, and not every old shmup is a ‘dadshmup’. Made generalizations to make it more simplified, which in retrospect also shouldn’t have been done. ‘Versus’ as part of the title probably shouldn’t have been a part of it. Overall, many errors in wording on my part. My apologies!

Still, on the topic, been pretty interesting reading some of these responses. If I may add my own sentiment to it, maybe it’s just shifting preferences but after playing some explicitly marketed-as-danmaku games, I really haven’t been enjoying the sheer amount of bullets as I once did in the past. It just kind of hurts my eyes now. Compared to when I tried what I would call a dadshmup the other day, and it was notably more pleasant to play given how much less bullets there were on screen. Interesting stuff.

[Steven]

I think it's worth noting that the industry was trending towards bullet hell by the mid-80s anyway. Slap Fight, of all things, unexpectedly blankets the screen with enemy shots in its second half if you don't kill every enemy as soon as they spawn, making recovery in that part very interesting on later loops when sealing goes away and enemy shot rate and bullet speed increase, and like most bullet hell games, it also offers the player a ridiculous amount of firepower that was probably largely unheard of in 1986. A young IKD was extremely impressed by Slap Fight's awesomeness upon finding it in an arcade for the first time and it had a big influence on him when he made its sequel, V-V, and later Batsugun and what followed. I've said this before a few times, but Slap Fight is secretly one of the coolest, most important, and most influential games in the genre and we wouldn't have this discussion, or at least IKD's idea of game design, that which is generally called bullet hell or whatever else, without it.

That's just on Toaplan's side, of course, and I'm sure there are more and earlier examples that aren't coming to mind right now, but the point is that the general idea of filling the entire screen with enemy bullets isn't something that started with Batsugun, or even in the 90s, and has been around for a long time.

[Randorama]

I acknowledge that my post was vitriolic though I was directing my criticism at the post itself; everybody makes initial mistakes, and I surely posted a lot of nonsense back in the early noughties. Apologies: we dad players have reached an age by which we get annoyed easily

Regarding what Steven says I would add: I remember the first two Gradius as being danmaku-ish once players start looping the games, since many enemies simply shoot continuous streams of bullets due to rank skyrocketing (...and this is a topic we probably have mentioned tons of times). I concur with Steven Slap Fight's description in its entirety, too, as I did grow up playing this and other Toaplan games and always getting the impression that their games offered quite different experiences once players would reach loops. I would also add Omega Fighter in the mix, since it features slowdown as a specific game mechanic.

Personally, I still think that certain early 1990s "danmaku" games aimed at giving players the chance to directly play the "second loop" of early 1980s games. My own ultra-biased example is that Capcom's 1943: The Battle of Midway might involve "Euro shmup" mechanics (e.g. an energy bar), but enemies in the last two stages flood the screen with bullets.

The concept of "bullet hell/labyrinth" might simply have old but not so obvious roots; marketing departments and, apparently, a few users around here may need to study the history of the genre more (sorry, this is Xenomorph-level acidic commentary, I know). Personally, I do not like games with tons on-screen information about score, multipliers and so on: I want to see bullets and beautiful backgrounds clearly. Other than that, "good flow is king", dad- or chid-shmup alike.

At any case, I swear that one day I will simply sit down, prepare an excel sheet, and carry out a Formal Concept Analysis of the evolution of shmups' concepts and mechanics over the decades. Hopefully it might even turn into a publishable endeavour.

[MJR]

None of this matters anything. Tastes come and go.

When I played Dodonpachi for the first time back in 1999, it felt fresh and incredible, making all previous shmups feel dated in comparison. I felt the same for all subsequent Cave shmups; Guwange, Deathsmiles.. I just lapped it up.

26 years later you could just as well call danmaku's dadshmups.. they are not exactly new or fresh genre.

These days, I much prefer older, "Toaplanesque" (lol) shmups. So if I play something, it's probably Tiger Heli, or KK Tiger, or Truxton 2, or R-type, or Raiden DX, or Viper Phase 1.. I haven't really touched any Cave game in years, and if I do, I find myself turning it off after one run.

So to answer your question "why is that";
I guess I am feeling bit burned out at them. What comes around goes around. I still think Danmakus are great, but I'm just not enjoying them like I used to. I enjoy simpler and less stressful gameplay now.

[Sengoku Strider]

Oh, do you interpret dadshmup as coined from the same template of dad bod?

Yeah, my introduction to this was from Destiny 2, where the community spans people who've been playing Bungie stuff since Halo CE or earlier, to kids who've just picked it up as free to play. The term 'dad gun' is used to describe weapons that are more forgiving or don't require precision, the implication being they're for people whose reflexes are gone or can't dedicate the time to play seriously. Other things too, like the title of Dredgen being one of the less onerous to earn being portmanteaued (not an actual verb but I kind of love the 4 car pileup of vowels at the end) to 'Dadgen' etc. But I see what you're saying, I could just read it in the same sense as the term 'boomer shooter,' which doesn't seem to be deployed pejoratively.

introduction to the topic

From here on out I am going to try and find some excuse to drop the term "locution-overriding illocutionary meaning" into a sentence at least once a month IRL.

Incidentally I googled the author and it seems he's professor emeritus at Leeds, and the university has tried to strip his status for things he was accused of but didn't actually seem to say or do regarding protests around the Israel-Palestine conflict. Wild times we live in.

Completely reasonable criticisms of the thread that I’ve been reading. I probably should’ve worded it better in a manner more so making it explicit it was more of a general inquiry as to which genre people preferred, with emphasis on the ‘preferring’ aspect of it, rather than questioning differences between the two.

Don't worry too much, I don't think you did anything wrong. Looking back at the history of top 25 voting on this forum there was a long period where danmaku absolutely dominated and previous games weren't taken quite as seriously, so for many there has been a clear preference.

For me I love both, give me Ketsui and give me Super Star Soldier.

[-Fish-]

Classic style for a sense of adventure, multiple weapon pickups, changing landscapes / set pieces, and environmental hazards.

Bullet Hell if I'm bored maybe but for some reason it just doesn't hold my attention as well.

I'm not going to pretend to know all the categories and sub-categories but if I sat down in front of 2 machines, one running Zero Ranger and one running DoDonPachi, I know exactly which one is going to hold my attention.

[Randorama]

On topic:

Our own Chronology of shooting thread is very thorough but not complete. Life is complicated, so the thread is certainly useful as it is.

I would say that Slap Fight should be the first TATE shmup that veers towards the danmaku model once players reach the second loop. I had a brief look at Moby Games's arcade section, too, and I do believe that the result is the same. Again, I would also say that Gradius' loops at higher rank levels may qualify as proto-danmaku, given the way how certain enemies can create wall-like streams of bullets on screen.

Personally, I believe that Slap Fight and Taito's Darius introduced ageless formulas: they have a blistering pace, may feature lots of bullets on screenon later stages (loops, for Slap Fight), and can give players some massive firepower if they perform strongly. Darius also introduced a neat score system at an age in which platforms were the score-driven genre (cf. Sega's Teddy Boy Blues, Taito's Rainbow Islands).

Besides, both can potentially offer fast 1-CC's: a loop in Slap Fight should be 20 minutes or so, and Darius has a very exact pacing of three-minutes stages, for seven stages. As I grow old and lack time to play games, this "fast, immediate, (surprisingly) deep" formula appeals to me over any other gaming formulas. Some dads are quite busy, I guess!

Completely and obscenely off-topic...

SenStri:

Spoiler

(<--[url=ttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781119693604.morphcom01]clipping[/url] of your nick, as the acronym has some...unpleasant political connotations but also some cool gaming connotations):

This is all hilarious stuff, as the rise of Computer Mediated Communication has also seen the vast increase of people portmanteuing words in very creative manners and often with very unpredictable connotations (in the province of "sociolects used by 5 people on a discord channel and no other human being on the planet"). I tend to be blissfully unaware of gaming communities outside this forum, so I had only a vague intuition about your aforementioned connotations.

Dadgen and Boomer Shooter are two "genre names" I will mutter to myself before sleeping and while chuckling, I guess I also do think that "dadling(uist)s" love their overtly verbose and opaque technical terms, but I am guilty of using eyebrow-raising terms at least once per day. Professional bad habits die hard, I guess!

N.B. I am also for the introduction of the verb "to portmanteau" in English, but an average lexicographer would say "use it or lose it": words that do not have stable use over time tend to fade away and disappear from people's lexica (and dictionaries , too: here is a simple introduction).

[Light1000]

I know you didn't come up with this distinction OP, so I'm not criticizing you, but I personally hate the term dadshmup. The idea that bullet hell is the young hip 'modern' paradigm is kind of ridiculous, given that the time span between Xevious and Batsugun is 10 years, while the time span from Batsugun to today is 33 years. Yes one preceded the other, but they're both venerably ancient in gaming terms.

It also carries the connotation that one is a simpler, slower, chubby and balding template, the sedate but comfortable Ford Focus to danmaku's virile Ferrari. But anyone who plays these things knows the differences don't split down the middle like that, a look at any comprehensive difficulty ranking list will confirm it.

I think the main reason for the term "dadshmup" is because there's a lot of nostalgia by older people for these type of console shmups like Gradius 3 SNES / Thunderforce 3 etc. whereas danmaku games were radically less popular / accessible (at least in terms of America) so people can't have nostalgic feelings for them
So games like for example Axelay have the connotation of being "old" or "retro" much more because they have that backing of nostalgia. Not to say that these games are bad or that you'd need nostalgia to enjoy them, but the primary source of love regarding them in mass discussion (i.e. by "normies") is people talking about how they played them back in the day, which creates that connotation.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

I know you didn't come up with this distinction OP, so I'm not criticizing you, but I personally hate the term dadshmup. The idea that bullet hell is the young hip 'modern' paradigm is kind of ridiculous, given that the time span between Xevious and Batsugun is 10 years, while the time span from Batsugun to today is 33 years. Yes one preceded the other, but they're both venerably ancient in gaming terms.

It also carries the connotation that one is a simpler, slower, chubby and balding template, the sedate but comfortable Ford Focus to danmaku's virile Ferrari. But anyone who plays these things knows the differences don't split down the middle like that, a look at any comprehensive difficulty ranking list will confirm it.

I think the main reason for the term "dadshmup" is because there's a lot of nostalgia by older people for these type of console shmups like Gradius 3 SNES / Thunderforce 3 etc. whereas danmaku games were radically less popular / accessible (at least in terms of America) so people can't have nostalgic feelings for them
So games like for example Axelay have the connotation of being "old" or "retro" much more because they have that backing of nostalgia. Not to say that these games are bad or that you'd need nostalgia to enjoy them, but the primary source of love regarding them in mass discussion (i.e. by "normies") is people talking about how they played them back in the day, which creates that connotation.

The very first Cave stg of Donpachi pcb was sold/distributed in the USA by Atlus USA arcade subsidiary back in 1995 as a jamma conversion pcb kit complete with a full-sized marquee (that's back-lit if you have a mini compact florescent light bulb setup for arcade cabinet marquee purposes). My local arcade joint, The Electric Underground, had gotten in Donpachi back in 1995 housed in a traditional Dynamo upright cab -- so yes, I was quite familiar with DP at that particular point in time.

----------
Fast forward to 1997-1998, both the JPN & International versions of DoDonpachi pcbs were released in 1997 but sadly, DDP wasn't sold nor distributed in America by Atlus USA arcade subsidiary (despite the International version of DDP being presented entirely in English) -- why wasn't it?

One possible theory is, perhaps, DP pcb kits didn't sell well enough "sales-wise" and Atlus USA didn't want to incur a monetary loss in taking a chance selling such DDP pcb kits in the USA for the American arcade market/scene (sounds like the plausible and very likely the real reason "why" it wasn't sold stateside in the first place to begin with). American arcade gamers whom had the rare opportunity to try/play DP were denied the chance to try/play the sequel of DDP pcb as originally intended/meant to be. Strange but true within the American arcade lore in regards to DDP's obvious omission in the arcades as it was -- so be it.

This leads us to the all-important question: Just how many of the USA region DP pcb kits were sold in the USA by Atlus USA themselves? Hmmm.....I'd have to assume that an ex-Atlus USA employee or the ex-CEO himself would know the answer to this particularly pressing question -- inquiring minds want to know!
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As usual, the going rate for a "barebones" DDP pcb back in 2002-2003 was in the "$220.00 to $280.00" range -- of course, those days of buying such a "cheap-ass" DDP pcb are long gone. If you want one bad enough nowadays, be prepared to pay easily in the four figure range (assuming if you can find one for sale, that is, along with plenty of patience and some good ol' fashioned "lady luck" as well).

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[XoPachi]

I don't even know if I have a preference. I just like them.
I tend to play different kinds for different moods. If I want something with a sense of adventure, I play more classic works and danmaku when I really want to practice something and seriously challenge myself to push a game.

I've been enjoying a shitload of hard mode Natsuki Chronicles and Crimzon Clover Unlimited this month.
Danmaku DEFINITELY rekindled my interest for this genre in 2009 though. The joy hasn't gone away since.

[Sengoku Strider]

I think the main reason for the term "dadshmup" is because there's a lot of nostalgia by older people for these type of console shmups like Gradius 3 SNES / Thunderforce 3 etc. whereas danmaku games were radically less popular / accessible (at least in terms of America) so people can't have nostalgic feelings for them
So games like for example Axelay have the connotation of being "old" or "retro" much more because they have that backing of nostalgia. Not to say that these games are bad or that you'd need nostalgia to enjoy them, but the primary source of love regarding them in mass discussion (i.e. by "normies") is people talking about how they played them back in the day, which creates that connotation.

On the one hand I get what you're saying, but on the other anybody who got into Cave as a tween during its 00s heyday is in their 30s now and probably staring down the barrel of kids of their own, if they don't already have them.

[qmish]

I enjoy simpler and less stressful gameplay now.

Funny you say that, as for me environment danger/obstacle-heavy shmups like Salamander are much more stressfull than any bullethell. Checkpoint-based ones, too.

That being said, I've only came to genre overall around 2014 even though my gaming era started in 2000 or something.

P.S.

Yeah, I cringe from "dadshmup" slang as well.

P.S.S.

You will laugh, but "danmaku" and "bullet hell" have different meaning for me. In my eyes, stuff like Cave/Raizing/Psikyo is "bullet hell" meanwhile stuff like Touhou or Danmaku Unlimited is, well, "danmaku". I'm not sure how to formulate it, it's just how I feel it... maybe has something to do with approach to stage backgrounds, idk.

[Lemnear]

I enjoy simpler and less stressful gameplay now.

Funny you say that, as for me environment danger/obstacle-heavy shmups like Salamander are much more stressfull than any bullethell. Checkpoint-based ones, too.

That being said, I've only came to genre overall around 2014 even though my gaming era started in 2000 or something.

P.S.

Yeah, I cringe from "dadshmup" slang as well.

P.S.S.

You will laugh, but "danmaku" and "bullet hell" have different meaning for me. In my eyes, stuff like Cave/Raizing/Psikyo is "bullet hell" meanwhile stuff like Touhou or Danmaku Unlimited is, well, "danmaku". I'm not sure how to formulate it, it's just how I feel it... maybe has something to do with approach to stage backgrounds, idk.

I'm glad to know that I'm not the only person who finds them more stressful (not just Salamander but old shooters in general).
There are exceptions of course, but the fact of having to aim with precision and speed is not relaxing for me, after a while it makes my nerves hurt...
Anyway I would say:
- Old School: Proactive gameplay, you have to act first and you can even prevent the enemies from shooting. Whoever shoots first survives, a bit like in the Wild West. Playing Reactive in an Old School SHMUP is much more difficult and tiring.
- Bullet Hell / Danmaku: Reactive gameplay, you can't really prevent the bullet patterns from coming, you have to react to the shots fired by walking through them.