Games by companies that are less known than others

[SheSaidDutch]

Basically wanted to know what title you normally associate when you think of a company. while we remember these titles how about listing some of the lesser known/less popular titles inthe companies listings.

Irem game most associated with R-Type

Image Fight- lovely vert shmup rather difficult but I like it

X-Multiply- Haven't played much but it has it's appeal


I would love to hear what everyone would list etc

[BulletMagnet]

When I think of Cave I think of DoDonPachi...a lesser known title of theirs might be Uo Poko. Personally I'm not nuts about it, but others seem to like it.

With Raizing it's Battle Garegga that first pops into my head...Battle Bakraid is more obscure, I guess, and it's also my personal favorite of theirs.

Psikyo makes me think of Gunbird, though as far as less popular games go Space Bomber (imo) deserves more recognition than it gets.

[SheSaidDutch]

Space Bombomber thats the one with the rather strange graphic and art content

[iatneH]

Psikyo makes me think of Strikers 1945... Maybe because I've never seen a Gunbird cabinet, yet Strikers cabs are everywhere.

Konami -> Gradius & Contra, Crisis Force probably isn't the first thing that comes to your head...

[Darkcomet72]

Well... Irem has many quality shmups... R-types are just a few of them.

[alpha5099]

Success isn't what most people immediately think of when they think of shmup companies. What most people associate Success with are the Cotton and Psyvariar series. Guardian Force is their best work, I think. It's not super obscure or anything, but it certainly isn't a big name title, either.

Not quite what we're talking about: Zero Wing is arguably Toaplan best known game in the mainstream, yet alot of people try very hard to consciously keep it apart from their conception of Toaplan. Many people deride it as absolute crap, a glaring blemish on Toaplan's reputation, pretty much just because it gets attention for all the wrong reasons. I even saw one person describe it as "legendarily awful". That's really unfair. It's certainly not Toaplan's best, hell, it might even be their worst game. But if so, it speaks loads to the quality of Toaplan's output, as it's only average, nothing awful.

Taito released a buttload of shmups, I'm sure a lot of them have gone unrecognized.

[BrianC]

Well... Irem has many quality shmups... R-types are just a few of them.

Also, as far as non shmups go, I always think of Kung Fu Master/Kung Fu/Spartan X when I think of Irem. Also, up until recently I didn't know that Moon Patrol is from Irem. I think of that game when I think of Irem now too. It's not a shmup, but it is a semi-borderliner. It actually got a good Atari 2600 port too. Oddly enough, so did Kung Fu Master, though I prefer the NES port since it has all of the moves intact.

One more obscure company is Seibu. Their most well known game is Raiden, but they don't seem to be known for much else. It seems like that Seibu doesn't always get proper credit for Raiden either. I tried this early Seibu shmup named Scion via emu and I liked it quite a bit.

[iatneH]

Yes, I'm quite sour about the whole Zero Wing deal also... so many people know about it...
So many people proclaiming its awesomeness haven't even played it.
The few non-shooter-players who have played it, synonymise it with Shaq-Fu.
And none of them care that it's made by Toaplan, fewer (is it possible to have fewer than none?) care to try out better games made by Toaplan.

Maybe that's one reason why I hate the foolish masses... Maybe I ought to make a flash movie using DoDonPachi footage....

[Thunder Force]

Success isn't what most people immediately think of when they think of shmup companies. What most people associate Success with are the Cotton and Psyvariar series. Guardian Force is their best work, I think. It's not super obscure or anything, but it certainly isn't a big name title, either.

So did Success actually co-develop the Psyvariar franchise with Skonec, or did Success only act as publisher?

[alpha5099]

Success isn't what most people immediately think of when they think of shmup companies. What most people associate Success with are the Cotton and Psyvariar series. Guardian Force is their best work, I think. It's not super obscure or anything, but it certainly isn't a big name title, either.

So did Success actually co-develop the Psyvariar franchise with Skonec, or did Success only act as publisher?

Hmm, I do not know. I thought Success was the developer, but maybe they just published. Dang, that sort of derails my earlier point, as now Success would only have one well-known developed series.

[incognoscente]

So did Success actually co-develop the Psyvariar franchise with Skonec, or did Success only act as publisher? :?

If I'm understanding their website correctly, Skonec was founded after the release of Psyvariar Medium Unit and Psyvariar Revision. [2002 April 16th]. All staff for Psyvariar Medium Unit and Psyvariar Revsion would later become Skonec staff or contracted by Skonec (I'm not sure exactly if musicians Misako Adjumy Sekiguchi and Yuki Yoshino are technically Skonec staff.)

Psyvariar 2 SUCCESS staff are:
Makoto Fukuda: one of two project managers
Takato Yoshinari: one of two executive producers
Takeshi Takahashi: special thanks


That is, Psyvariar Medium Unit and Psyvariar Revision were both developed for Success by a group who would later become Skonec (no Success-exclusive staff credits).
Psyvariar 2 was developed by now-officially Skonec for Success, with 2 Success staff members co-supervising.