Do arcade shmup devs use ace shmup players for ideas?

PC Engine Fan X! · Post by **PC Engine Fan X!** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 8:31 pm

After seeing ace Superplay shmup player ZBL-NAI's intials on the classic Cave Dodonpachi PCB high score default screen upon being powered up, my question is this:

Do the current arcade shmup developers use/retain such professional Superplay shmup players for ideas, consulting, and fine tuning of such danmaku arcade titles before releasing them to market? Or is it the other way around with such info coming from Japanese game centers and general user feedback, that Cave and other arcade devs decide to create newer updates or revisions for their "buggy" arcade shmup titles like the infamous version 1.0 DDP-DFK PCB?

Such loke test locations do provide such valuable feedback as well.

I'm sure such arcade shmup devs would like to release such highly fine tuned arcade shmup and completely bug free PCB title on "day one" of release...but that would be at the expense of releasing it too late and not earning back such potential profits incurred from the long and tedious development timeframe standpoint.

I recall back in the early 1980's, Atari Games used to bring in such random folks to test and try out their latest arcade games in-house. Such feedback was quite valuable before such hyped-up release worldwide. You might recall some of the classic early 1980's arcade game magazines such as Joystick, Electronic Games, Blip, etc., that delved into the latest and greatest inside scoop of what was going on in the American arcade industry at the time.

At the 2005 California Extreme show, famed Atari Games ex-employee Ed Logg revealed that it was just a handful of 9 to 10 employees at the Atari Games in-house arcade games division (placed inside a forgotten huge Atari owned warehouse in Sunnyvale, CA) that really ran the show behind the scenes during the Great Video Game Crash fiasco of 1983-1984 and beyond. ^_~

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

hobbes8548 · Post by **hobbes8548** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 9:54 pm

I know this has been done with fighting games in the past recruiting top players for beta testing. Don't know if they still do now. No idea about shmups.

ZOM · Post by **ZOM** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 10:43 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezx4vMeQ ... re=related

Watch the last segment from 07:17 on...

Seems like cave likes to hire Ace players to do some testing.

PC Engine Fan X! · Post by **PC Engine Fan X!** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 12:02 am

Thanks for that informative youtube video, ZOM.

The future of danmaku arcade PCBs titles still hasn't been exhausted yet. There's still room for it to further evolve/advance. As long as there's still money to be made, arcade game developers will make 'em for their fans. Just like with the horror film industry, if the horror genre fans don't come out and see them, it will wither away & cease to exist (like that is gonna happen anytime soon). Same basic analogy applies to the shmup genre as well. ^_~

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

ZOM · Post by **ZOM** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 1:22 am

Interesting analogy there... ^_~

Anyway, I'm not afraid of Danmaku STGs dying because as things are going right now, I'm pretty sure that won't happen anytime soon.

As for advancing the genre, I can't think of how much more they could evolve... oh well, let's see what the future brings...