You might want to check out our top 25 lists. I believe you'll find them in the FAQ above. For me it's difficult to choose between Dragon Blaze and Shikigami no Shiro 2.
Considering that this is posted in the "Shmups Chat" section, do you mean our top choice for shmups specifically, or for video games as a whole? The title's a bit ambiguous. If the latter I'll move the thread to "Off Topic."
BulletMagnet wrote:Considering that this is posted in the "Shmups Chat" section, do you mean our top choice for shmups specifically, or for video games as a whole? The title's a bit ambiguous. If the latter I'll move the thread to "Off Topic."
spadgy wrote:I might go for Progear. There's others I love a little more, but I've possibly played them to death.
So in a 'desert island' scenario, I'd go for Progear right now
Yeah, that's an excellent choice for me as well, given how much room for improvement there is for me and how generally addictive it is. I do have a bit of a restart problem with this one, though. I love getting a high score on the first level, and if things don't go just so I can get a bit annoyed with myself.
It's probably a bit early in the day for me to be choosing desert island shooters, but two that I'd strongly consider right now are Raiden DX and Samidare. DX because, at the end of the day, I really like dodging fast bullets from enemies that are frothing at the mouth to kill me. The sheer aggression from DX's enemies on Expert + Arcade is always immediately engaging. I do like the lack of checkpoints too. As for Samidare, it's both very short and has a nerve-wracking scoring system, making it ideal for repeated high-risk runs. As an aside it's also got one of my favourite soundtracks, and a very nice sound test menu.
Darius Gaiden. It's an awesome game, plus it has tons of different paths so it's like ten games in one. Oh yeah, and the bosses are radical. And, actually, it's just perfect in every way.
Radiant Silvergun is, in my opinion, the best designed shmup ever made and is pure shmupping perfection. But on the other hand, I'm always down for a quick run through Blast Wind.
I would say Ikaruga because of how much I love it, except that once you've memorized the entire game, and gotten a theoretically perfect score, on every difficulty as well as Prototype mode, you're pretty much done with the game. That would take a long time, but not more than a few years of playing every single day (it's the only game you'll be playing, so I assume you'd be doing that). For this choice, a pure memorizer might not be the best choice.
Radiant Silvergun might be a possibility, even though it's also sort of a memorizer, it's so much longer and more complex that it would take even longer to memorize. Including Saturn mode and every difficulty, we're talking a LOT of gameplay. However, once again, after a number of years of constant play it could get repetitive, once you've memorized it fully.
So that leaves me with thinking of some Cave game, except that once again, once you perfect each stage and boss, there isn't all that much left to do. I can't think of any scoring systems in Cave games that I really like enough to try to learn intricately. While there would be some random stuff, enough to add some replayability, there isn't enough of it to really challenge, once you learn methods to deal with them. Pure difficulty might be a good factor here. Trying to master Mushihimesama Ultra, or Daioujou Death Label, could take a very long time, and remain fun for a long time once you get good at them. Still, after years of doing that, we're just talking about dodging bullets, however fun that might be, and after nothing but dodging for years and years it could get old. The game really needs some sort of deep scoring mechanic to last for so long being the only game to play.
So... after all that thinking out loud, I'm not sure. Leaning toward Silvergun.
I would say Ikaruga because of how much I love it, except that once you've memorized the entire game, and gotten a theoretically perfect score, on every difficulty as well as Prototype mode, you're pretty much done with the game. That would take a long time, but not more than a few years of playing every single day (it's the only game you'll be playing, so I assume you'd be doing that). For this choice, a pure memorizer might not be the best choice.
Radiant Silvergun might be a possibility, even though it's also sort of a memorizer, it's so much longer and more complex that it would take even longer to memorize. Including Saturn mode and every difficulty, we're talking a LOT of gameplay. However, once again, after a number of years of constant play it could get repetitive, once you've memorized it fully.
So that leaves me with thinking of some Cave game, except that once again, once you perfect each stage and boss, there isn't all that much left to do. I can't think of any scoring systems in Cave games that I really like enough to try to learn intricately. While there would be some random stuff, enough to add some replayability, there isn't enough of it to really challenge, once you learn methods to deal with them. Pure difficulty might be a good factor here. Trying to master Mushihimesama Ultra, or Daioujou Death Label, could take a very long time, and remain fun for a long time once you get good at them. Still, after years of doing that, we're just talking about dodging bullets, however fun that might be, and after nothing but dodging for years and years it could get old. The game really needs some sort of deep scoring mechanic to last for so long being the only game to play.
So... after all that thinking out loud, I'm not sure. Leaning toward Silvergun.
Its a good thing the question wasnt:
"If your house was on fire & you only had seconds to choose which game you were going to save..."
