Since I work at a publisher of mobile games I might as well ask the question, never created a poll so I hope it works ok.
I'm also interested in opinions beyond the poll questions, anything related to what you'd like to see in a mobile shmup.
For instance is multiplayer interesting at all to anyone? It could take on interesting forms to work around the latency of the network.
Is branding important? Obviously a Cave shmup on a phone is going to be snapped up more readily than a Mario branded one
Thanks for your thoughts. Word of warning, realistically speaking we're not likely to publish one soon. But, I wouldn't mind putting a team together and trying to develop something first... who knows if we've got a game what might happen?
I bought Raiden because it was available for my phone, and a game I'm familiar with (and enjoyed quite a bit in its other forms). I also bought Square-Enix's Brave Shot, because I was bored and I recognized the name of the publisher. In both cases, I only bought because they were readily available for my model of phone, and for a one-time license fee instead of a crappy monthly subscription.
For what it's worth, I would never upgrade my phone just based on mobile gaming, because quite franky it sucks compared to a true handheld gaming system. I buy the games to play as a distraction-- a convenient mobile time-killer. More shmups are certainly welcome, as my experience is that they are generally playable. Still behind puzzle games though... mobile Tetris is the shiznit mofo a-number-one.
I haven't tried any of the multiplayer stuff. Never really seemed that exciting to me. I can't really stand playing online with people I don't already know somehow.
Well, I'm now working on a PocketPC game (http://www.claygun.com/), and this game basically sums up what I'd like to see in a mobile shmup, heh.
(Technically, the game also works on the CE/PhoneEdition platform, so it's a phone shmup also, but I'm not sure if this will be ever "officially" supported).
I don't see phone games getting hot in the US until people start buying phones with extraneous features and technology to play better games. Everybody I know uses their cellphone to just talk and most didn't want a more expensive graphical phone.
But if you must, shmups would certainly be simpler fun than, say, a war sim. No clue on branding although the number of people who would care it's a Cave shooter in the US numbers about 0%...
Not sure how to answer this one. To me, the control issues inherent to the cell phone form factor seem to bring the playability of such games into question right from square one. On the other hand, the cellphone Gradius floating around out there is more or less a surprisingly accurate version of the Gradius we're all familiar with, albeit scaled down a bit. My phone (a Samsung VGA1000 on Sprint PCS) just isn't up to the task of running games, and is slow even on phone functions. If someone would actually put usable controls into one of these devices, I'd definitely give any shmups that show up for it a try.
Just to stir the pot... 10 people so far have said they wouldn't buy a shmup on a phone. You realize the games are $5? Heh... I took a much bigger chance on Trizeal than that!
Fair is fair, I thank everyone for their opinions. I love shmups as do you all and feel the need to create.
But I don't think that games price is an issue.
What's the point in spending even $5 or less, just to suffer through horrible controls and pathetic refresh rate? (Assuming the game itself is actually good).
The problem is that platform itself is not adequate for shmups (at least the majority of devices).
serge wrote:But I don't think that games price is an issue.
What's the point in spending even $5 or less, just to suffer through horrible controls and pathetic refresh rate? (Assuming the game itself is actually good).
The problem is that platform itself is not adequate for shmups (at least the majority of devices).
Just provoking more discussion here... so those that voted "no-way" would ignore positive reviews found here? Someone you trust says the game plays well on phone "A", you own that phone, and you wouldn't spend $5?
This is curious indeed. Perhaps a problem with my poll choices.
Personally, I'd be more interested in higher-end games, like Symbian-native shmups (say, $10-$20 price range) rather than J2ME or Mophun stuff. What's currently possible with low/mid-end phones is basically Famicom-era shooters, and I'm not very interested in that.
Well, speaking of a hypothetical phone shmup that gets good reviews or simply looks interesting I'd buy it of course, but that's largely because I'm generally interested to see what other people are doing in this area, and I don't have problems with upgrading hardware if needed, things like that.
But realistically I think most shmup fans wouldn't bother, because they already have bad experience with controls on a phone, or simply because they don't take phone gaming seriously (the same is true for PocketPC to an extent). This assumes that shooter fans are actually your target market, I don't think this is true for most phone shmups (I remember there was an ad for one of the games which said something about "destructible polygons" and other funny stuff like that).
That said, I'm not trying to discourage you! But, creating a modern shmup from scratch is still a sizeable task, so if you have resources to put a team together, I'd consider targeting a higher-end platform with better controls at least, so that effort is not wasted.
serge wrote:But I don't think that games price is an issue.
What's the point in spending even $5 or less, just to suffer through horrible controls and pathetic refresh rate? (Assuming the game itself is actually good).
The problem is that platform itself is not adequate for shmups (at least the majority of devices).
Just provoking more discussion here... so those that voted "no-way" would ignore positive reviews found here? Someone you trust says the game plays well on phone "A", you own that phone, and you wouldn't spend $5?
This is curious indeed. Perhaps a problem with my poll choices.
Bill
Phones are primarily made for making phonecalls (well..for arguments sake let's forget about N-Gage right! ).
Controls are therefore only an extra added feature and not the premier focus when designing the phone. This means that almost all shoot em ups on mobile phones at this moment will have to be played on a platform not designed for games in the first place.
That...screams FAILURE and as long as phones aren't designed with at least the thought of games being played on it in mind, they will always be an second/third rate platform for games, let alone shmups!
The only cellphone game I've actually enjoyed is the Ys 1 port. Mainly this is because the game only requires using the movement buttons and no ok/cancel/etc (Well aside from the menus).
The Gradius 1 port is nice although due to the nature of the game it's hard to control even with autofire enabled. Aside from that the hit detection is sort of crappy and yeah the refresh rate is messy.
I'd probably like the Tetris cellphone game though, but I seriously don't think shmups on a cellphone will work(Especially CAVE shooters)
I tend to agree, I'd much rather be playing on my SP or DS if we're talking mobile games. I think that brings me to a bit of a conclusion on this as well - most if not all here will have perhaps even multiple mobile *true gaming* devices. There's really no need to have one on a phone, since if you're thinking "I need a mobile shmup" you'll look to a dedicated device for it.
I think mobile games will be quite successful on phones, but that's if they capture the non-core gamer market.
