Collect em ups - The hardest shmups

[szycag]

I'm talking about games like Dangun Feveron where you must keep your eyes not only on the bullets but also all the disco men you must collect. To me this is harder than even DDPDOJ because it seems to be asking your eyes to be everywhere at once. There's a cluster of disco men glowing yellow (already hit the bottom), but also three waves of bullets, THINK FAST! Granted, I'm a novice and I haven't really tried playing DOJ for score, but isn't it like patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time to ask both things of you? Scoring and survival are two totally different things, but you can memorize Dangun Feveron and you still have to fly into the face of bullets to swoop up disco men. Imagine having to do that in Psyvariar 2 or something. Nuts! Well, discuss if this is a big issue for you or not.

[P_HAT]

Freeeee Loveee (er... RAPE really)...

[Icarus]

Try playing Great Mahou Daisakusen to any real proficiency.
And I'm not talking about getting through the game in one credit.
I'm talking about scoring more than 20mil.

[CIT]

At least in Dangun Feveron your score is not completely fucked if you miss a disco man, and since they usually appear in huge clusters, they're easy to spot.

The Raizing games are a lot more hellish in that respect, you'll be in the left corner and see a single max value medal drop down the right side of the screen with no chance to grab it in time. Argh, there goes the chain! (and with it usually your last chance to get another extend -_-" )

[Icarus]

At least in Dangun Feveron your score is not completely fucked if you miss a disco man, and since they usually appear in huge clusters, they're easy to spot.

I dunno. Like the other Cave, the perfect run is required to score high, and score increases exponentially. If you miss just one disco man in the early stages, then yeah, score isn't really dented as much, but miss one or two disco men in st3, 4 or 5, and you stand to lose a couple of million at least.

The primary difficulty with Feveron is with the speed of the game. It forces you into a "catch everything quickly" mentality, which more often than not sends you flying into bullets.

Something that Parsec47 shares.

The Raizing games are a lot more hellish in that respect, you'll be in the left corner and see a single max value medal drop down the right side of the screen with no chance to grab it in time. Argh, there goes the chain! (and with it usually your last chance to get another extend -_-" )

Standard Raizing isn't too difficult as there is usually an item drop order you can follow to anticipate Medals from falling. The only truly evil Medal Raizing is Brave Blade (which likes to send about fifty Medals at you at once), and the aforementioned Great Mahou, which requires some serious mechanical play to score decently in.

[Kiken]

If you're going for a positive score in NightRaid, constantly catching the falling bonus tetrahedrons can be quite a challenge... coversely, if you're going for a record negative score, constantly avoiding them can also be problematic.

[BulletMagnet]

I dunno. Like the other Cave, the perfect run is required to score high, and score increases exponentially. If you miss just one disco man in the early stages, then yeah, score isn't really dented as much, but miss one or two disco men in st3, 4 or 5, and you stand to lose a couple of million at least.

This is true, although in its favor at least you can use a bomb to save your score as well as your life if you need to. However...

The primary difficulty with Feveron is with the speed of the game. It forces you into a "catch everything quickly" mentality, which more often than not sends you flying into bullets.

...this I heartily agree with. Seriously, some way of slowing down your craft would have been very much appreciated.

[Turrican]

Like many innovations in shmups, this one too started with good intentions and ended into a mess. Finding a couple of SOL towers in Xevious was definitely a fun way to improve you score / get more from the game.

Forcing the player to collect every single bee in Dodonpachi if he wants to seriously compete in highscore isn't, imho at least. It could be argued that like chaining it adds a whole new layer of depth for experienced players, sure. But definitely is not my cup of tea.

[Ayanami]

Chain em ups like DDP are way harder to me.

[kengou]

I love collect-em-ups. In fact I love any scoring mechanic that forces you to take bigger risks for bigger scores. it forces you to use more skill. Dangun Feveron for example makes you fly into waves of bullets to collect the disco men. Chaining in DDP forces you to hold off on killing some enemies immediately, thus adding that many more bullets. In color chaining like Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga, getting every chain always seems to put you in a dangerous and tight spot. That's the fun of the scoring mechanic. You can make the decision to get a crap score and possibly survive more easily, or you can decide to go for the awesome score (and more extends) at greater risk of deaths. That's one of the things I love about shmups in general.

[Rob]

Yeah, I thought this was going to be about Dimahoo. Worst scoring system ever (dethroning TF5).

[Frederik]

The score system in Dimahoo (which is Great Mahou Daisakusen, right?) seemed always WAAY too complex for me to get into. As for Dangun, this collecting while dodging is extremely satisfying, it has some sort of "two layers" like Ikaruga. I have more problems keeping up with the extreme speed this game throws its bullets at me.

It´s a very easy to learn, but extremely manic system if you really know what you´re doing - watch a superplay and you see that 90% of the time the player is staying at the upper third of the screen. The point about the system in Dangun is not so much just collecting all the disco men, but killing enemies fast enough to trigger bonus enemies for EVEN MORE disco men.

In Dimahoo, however, you need a goddamn guide to even know what´s going on. It´s just overly complex to me.

EDIT: As Icarus mentioned, Parsec47 is similar to Dangun, which makes it so great IMHO.

[shoe-sama]

Collection is easy in Dangun lol.

I get pwned by the high speed cutback playstyle though.

[Ceph]

And I thought this topic was about those annoying bells from Twinbee.

[Turrican]

And I thought this topic was about those annoying bells from Twinbee.

Gotta give credit to those:

If you're going for a positive score in NightRaid, constantly catching the falling bonus tetrahedrons can be quite a challenge... coversely, if you're going for a record negative score, constantly avoiding them can also be problematic.

At least it's easy to miss bells if you want

[Rob]

Night Raid needed another 6 months of development.

AND STILL >> TWINBEE.

[szycag]

That's another thing about DF, the bullets are way too fast!

[Damocles]

God I hate bells...

In Twinbee, in Parodius, in everything.

[szycag]

Signed twice for the bell hate.

[-Bridget-]

That's another thing about DF, the bullets are way too fast!

I just played that game for the first time, myself.

Holy CRAP is that a fun one.


I absolutely love the scoring system; I tend to like scoring systems based on that type of idea (Giga Wing is good at that as well).

And the general SPEED of the game just makes it all that much more fun.

[szycag]

Yeah it's way fun. It's just real tough.

[cigsthecat]

Yeah, I thought this was going to be about Dimahoo. Worst scoring system ever (dethroning TF5).

Seriously- I'm hyper pissed at Raizing for making a game with awesome bosses and stages that I can't play. Although it also suffers from the doujin boss problem- "I'll just go ahead and take a dump on your head and call it a bullet pattern."

[EOJ]

Mushi Futari 1.5 is a collect'em up, particularly Original Mode. The best one ever made too, IMO.

[Frederik]

(dethroning TF5).

Can you or anyone else give a short description of its scoring system?

[Icarus]

(dethroning TF5).

Can you or anyone else give a short description of its scoring system?

Kill stuff at speed for a multiplier, up to 16x.
Problem being, the only weapon worth using for scoring is the Free Range. Every other weapon is useless.

Great Mahou's scoring system is pretty good once you get used to the little quirks. The first four stages have to be played mechanically, which does throw a lot of people off the game once they learn how the medalling system works. It's not a game that can be picked up and quickly learned, that much is certain.

[zinger]

Try playing Great Mahou Daisakusen to any real proficiency.
And I'm not talking about getting through the game in one credit.
I'm talking about scoring more than 20mil.

I love the scoring in Dimahoo, despite the complexity. But after watching the CLOVER relpays, I'm not so sure an 1CC is easier than a decent score. Gigaface has some really sick patterns.

[-Bridget-]

I'm talking about games like Dangun Feveron where you must keep your eyes not only on the bullets but also all the disco men you must collect. To me this is harder than even DDPDOJ because it seems to be asking your eyes to be everywhere at once. There's a cluster of disco men glowing yellow (already hit the bottom), but also three waves of bullets, THINK FAST! Granted, I'm a novice and I haven't really tried playing DOJ for score, but isn't it like patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time to ask both things of you? Scoring and survival are two totally different things, but you can memorize Dangun Feveron and you still have to fly into the face of bullets to swoop up disco men. Imagine having to do that in Psyvariar 2 or something. Nuts! Well, discuss if this is a big issue for you or not.

After playing that game alot, I have to disagree with it being harder (or at least more of a pain in the ass) than DDPDOJ.

I've no trouble at all dodging crap in Dangun Feveron AND grabbing all the disco dudes.

But DOJ, I *will* run into things, with great stupidity.

Get me to the 2nd boss, and I promise you I'll crash into something there.....

I'll just stay within the safer confines of Mushihime for now.......

[szycag]

I'm doing better with the Type C shot, max speed, charge shot... also I played a bunch with the cat, and now all the ships seem slow in comparison (thanks for the tip jef, haha)

Still, I think maybe people's eyes are just trained differently. Or, maybe I'm getting my priorities mixed up and diving for stuff too early instead of letting it float back up.

I hit the same wall with Battle Bakraid too, diving for medals. Eh, what's to say what's harder, it's probably different for everyone. All I know is I won't be trying Dimahoo anytime soon based on what you guys said @_@

[-Bridget-]

I'm doing better with the Type C shot, max speed, charge shot... also I played a bunch with the cat, and now all the ships seem slow in comparison (thanks for the tip jef, haha)

Still, I think maybe people's eyes are just trained differently. Or, maybe I'm getting my priorities mixed up and diving for stuff too early instead of letting it float back up.

I hit the same wall with Battle Bakraid too, diving for medals. Eh, what's to say what's harder, it's probably different for everyone. All I know is I won't be trying Dimahoo anytime soon based on what you guys said @_@

Yeah, I'd say the same, it's different for everyone.


I can do really good in Mushihime, DF, ESPRaDe, Progear, and similar games....


But right now, DDPDOJ and also Raiden 3, oh, and Gradius 3 (arcade) will eat my face.


For me, it's easiest when bullets actually STAND OUT enough.

In DOJ and Raiden, they DONT. There's way too many times where I'll run into something, not entirely knowing it was even there. Raiden's bullets are too dinky that I might not notice them, and DOJ has the obnoxious habit of placing blue bullets/lasers against a blue sky or against water.

No trouble in noticing Mushi's endless purple cloud, or Daigun Feveron's crazy multicolored loopiness.

[szycag]

It doesn't help that the background in the second stage of DF has this pink tint... I'm usually looking for pink bullets and now I'm looking at pink space... what's Cave thing with that color