Slowest/fastest ships in any shmup?

[CMoon]

Yeah, nothing like a father-son talk about Gradius.

I wish I had had a father-son talk about gradius.

Although my dad did teach me how to extend your attach range in Sea Battle on the Intellivision. Woah!

[moozooh]

Do we count special circumstances? Because in PoFV, Youmu holding the slow button down while moving through overlapping slow fields from the... girl... who makes slow fields (I'm bad with Japanese names), moves pretty damn slow.

She stops moving completely in three overlapping fields, iirc. I guess that would qualify as slow enough, heh. But anyway, Youmu's focused speed in that game is about as slow as possible in a shmup even without the poison fields (the name of the girl who sends them is Medicine Melancholy, btw).
Not sure if Youmu qualifies as a ship, though.

Oh boy. NES port of Gradius. No matter how many powerups I pump into 'Speed Up', there doesn't seem to be an end to the madness!

I agree. :)

[dmauro]

The NES Gradius' Vic Viper can get ridiculously fast. So fast that I don't think it'd be possible to play effectively without doing a tool assisted run.

I'm surprised that video hasn't already been posted. I can't seem to find it on youtube though, and I don't remember where I originally saw it.

edit: too late! I missed the post above mine.

[kemical]

Nebulasray... very slow without speed powerups (you die on later levels without the S), and stupidly fast with too many speed powerups. A very love hate pcb.

[Frogacuda]

I swear in most Seibu Kaihatsu shmups the ship speed ruins the game for me.

Some of the ships in Raiden Fighters are the fastest ships I've ever seen in a shmup, too, though

If you get enough speed ups, though, Bomber Raid has the fastest ship ever. You have to be careful not to get to many or the ship is too fast to control.

[Mills]

Well if one would forget all the shumps titles that have unlimited speed up option/icons then its probably TRUXTON and RAIDEN FIGHTERS (USING Judge Spear ship) for vertical shooters and P51 MUSTANG for horizontal.

[J-Manic]

Your ship in Raiden III moves extremely slow, or so it appears that way.

[Klatrymadon]

The thing about Raiden is that the games are still quite obviously designed around your ship's sluggish handling, as much as some people detest it. Can anyone think of a game that's inexplicably broken as a result of the craft's (unchangeable) speed?

[bsidwell]

Can anyone think of a game that's inexplicably broken as a result of the craft's (unchangeable) speed?

Viper Phase 1?

[Shinichi Chiba]

The thing about Raiden is that the games are still quite obviously designed around your ship's sluggish handling, as much as some people detest it. Can anyone think of a game that's inexplicably broken as a result of the craft's (unchangeable) speed?

Was Raiden Fighters (1996) slow . I don't recall .

[Mills]

The slowest ship/craft i can remember playing is not Raiden, but in fact Aero Fighters using the Harrier jump jet fighter. but it had a wide and very powerful 3-way main shot weapon with missiles as its secondary weapon. its bombs were very powerful indeed (simular destructive power to Spitfire or Shinden bomb on Strikers1945). using this fighter jet was all about defensive postioning and no aggressive dodging.

[j^aws]

If you're measuring speed in pixels/ sec...


- Slowest

Any variable speed/ thrust based game where you can control your speed to a near standstill, i.e. ~0

E.g. Defender, Datastorm, Stargate, Asteroids etc...

- Fastest

Stargate: You can use the 'stargate' for instant warping across the playfield; in addition to using the 'hyperspace' button...