Shmup Possibilities: Likely to happen or not?

Shelcoof · Post by **Shelcoof** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 4:36 pm

Hey all

We're seeing a lot of love for the 360 with upcoming (current) ports such as Raiden VI, Raiden Fighter Aces, Otomedius G, Ketsui, DoDonPachi DOJ and many more.
You also have great shooters released for the PS2 such as Mushihimesama, Ibara, ESPgaluda, Gradius V and many others as well.
Plus you have all those great retro games such as Thunder Force IV, Parodius and many more available too.

So my questions are what are the chances of North America and Europe getting these releases? (Japan only games at the moment)

I can't even remember the last release of a good Shmup here in North America (R-Type Final was the last one I could remember that was ages ago)
Or the chances of seeing for example a Raiden Fighter Aces or Otomedius G ported to either the Playstation 2 or 3? Vice versa Mushihime or ESPgaluda ported over to the 360? DoDonPachi has already been planned. Will we see more?

Or more compilations? We've had Parodius compilation before along with a couple of others like the Thunderforce Goldpacks but those were released only in Japan

Post in your thoughts opinions on what you think may happen. The future is looking bright so far but still I'm not experienced enough to make any good predictions.

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 5:06 pm

We'll probably get a handful of them eventually (which ones, I wouldn't venture to guess), but most will likely remain Japan-only. That's about as specific as I'm willing to get - I will also predict that the sun will rise in the East tomorrow and that breathable oxygen will continue to be required for human survival.

tommyb · Post by **tommyb** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 5:38 pm

BulletMagnet wrote:We'll probably get a handful of them eventually (which ones, I wouldn't venture to guess), but most will likely remain Japan-only. That's about as specific as I'm willing to get - I will also predict that the sun will rise in the East tomorrow and that breathable oxygen will continue to be required for human survival.

HAHA that made me laugh.

And, us American gamers love our flashy and violent graphics and simple, health regenerating first-person-shooters. The fact is, most people in America just have no idea WHY these games would even come out, let alone on the 360. And American publishers would probably think them to be too difficult for American gamers, as well.

doctorx0079 · Post by **doctorx0079** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 6:26 pm

I think UFO wants to release Raiden IV. It remains to be seen if it will actually happen.

Shelcoof · Post by **Shelcoof** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 7:28 pm

I'm just thinking if they are going to port shmups in Japan why the 360? It's not that popular there in Japan, but why not the Wii?

Wii so far has the most install base out of the three systems. It would make more sense to port it to the PS2 or the Wii as there are more people in Japan who have one of those systems.

It wouldn't be wise for a publisher to take a risk like that and publish a game for a system with a small install base. If they were to take a chance why not port it over to the PS3?

My Guess is the 360 worldwide sales is the reason. They know even if Shmups aren't popular, can be made a profit on when released outside of Japan due to the large instal base the 360 has. Shmups are for more hardcore gamers and thus not a risky bet when releasing overseas.

You can't say the same for the Wii because the target audience is different. Shmups are for hardcore and the 360 has that type of audience that would be interested in these games

FIL · Post by **FIL** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 7:55 pm

Development costs could have something to do with it. Is it cheaper to develop for the 360 or Wii?

RackGaki · Post by **RackGaki** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 8:16 pm

I would think that development costs would relatively similar between the 360 and the Wii, especially when compared to the PS3.

Judging by the perpetual delay of Söldner-X: Himmelsstürmer, it's not a bad decision for smaller devs to steer clear of the system. Sucks, too, since Sony had the foresight to keep all discs region-free (while curiously not requiring devs to use their online service like MS does).

Milestone seems to be pretty consistent with publishing on the Wii, but almost everyone else prefers the 360 so far. I could only guess that it's either cheaper or easier to work on. A cohesive, functional online service has to be helpful, too.

Shelcoof · Post by **Shelcoof** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 8:16 pm

FIL wrote:Development costs could have something to do with it. Is it cheaper to develop for the 360 or Wii?

Possibly. I'm assuming that the 360 was made easier to program for. The Wii is based off of old hardware like the GC so guessing it's easier as well.

PS3 I read that it's too complex but considering how simple Shmups are I feel that it has more than enough power to compensate for it.

I believe those Development kits are extremely expensive for the PS3 while the 360 Dev kits are much cheaper. Remember reading an article that MS had slashed their prices on the Development kits.

Post by **spadgy** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 8:55 pm

Shelcoof wrote:
FIL wrote:Development costs could have something to do with it. Is it cheaper to develop for the 360 or Wii?
Possibly. I'm assuming that the 360 was made easier to program for. The Wii is based off of old hardware like the GC so guessing it's easier as well.

PS3 I read that it's too complex but considering how simple Shmups are I feel that it has more than enough power to compensate for it.

I believe those Development kits are extremely expensive for the PS3 while the 360 Dev kits are much cheaper. Remember reading an article that MS had slashed their prices on the Development kits.

I've heard that too. Wasn't the cost of dev kits and ease of programming mentioned in the recent Bullet Hell feature in Edge magazine? You make very little on a modern shmup release, so costs have got to be kept super low.

No_not_like_Quake · Post by **No_not_like_Quake** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 11:45 pm

I'd like to see some more horis for PSP as I just got one (and hence, give a shit about it now) and the screen dimensions work well for them, imo.

Shelcoof · Post by **Shelcoof** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 12:35 am

No_not_like_Quake wrote:I'd like to see some more horis for PSP as I just got one (and hence, give a shit about it now) and the screen dimensions work well for them, imo.

I'd buy the Parodius Collection if I owned the PSP. It cost me like 4 times the price of the PSP version just to get it all for my Saturn.

gigadrive32 · Post by **gigadrive32** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 4:59 am

Wii has got to be the least expensive to develop for, maybe less than even PS2. Coding for the Wii is really easy since its hardware is based on decade-old GameCube chipset. GameCube's Gekko CPU & Flipper GPU were developed in the late 90s. I hope 'we' see more shmups on Wii.

Taylor · Post by **Taylor** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 7:07 am

The 360 is a PC.

Anyway, a Wii shmup would sell even worse than a PS3 or 360 one - the install base doesn't really matter. Any game on the Wii without Nintendo on the box, except a few special cases, has done really badly - even if aimed at the casual audience, they just aren't interested.

MathU · Post by **MathU** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 7:09 am

I think the 360 ends up cheaper in some instances, if only because it's similar to a PC, which is what the popular Taito Type-X arcade board pretty much is.

Taylor wrote:Any game on the Wii without Nintendo on the box, except a few special cases, has done really badly - even if aimed at the casual audience, they just aren't interested.

No More Heroes did well enough to warrant a sequel. I think there is a reasonably large pool of "hardcore" gamers who own Wiis that has been fairly untapped. Maybe if more games received anywhere near the commercial funding big budget [mediocre casual] 360 games have gotten things would be a little different.

Taylor · Post by **Taylor** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 7:21 am

Yeah, and bad enough for Suda 51 to complain about Wii owners only buying casual games.

I don't know about X, but Taito Type X2 is more similar to the PS3 than the PC.

Shelcoof · Post by **Shelcoof** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 7:31 am

Taylor wrote:The 360 is a PC.

Anyway, a Wii shmup would sell even worse than a PS3 or 360 one - the install base doesn't really matter. Any game on the Wii without Nintendo on the box, except a few special cases, has done really badly - even if aimed at the casual audience, they just aren't interested.

Chuka Taisen (aka monkey king, cloud master) good example of Nintendo trying too hard to cater to casual gamers.

Great idea, poor product

MathU · Post by **MathU** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 8:40 am

Shelcoof wrote:Chuka Taisen (aka monkey king, cloud master) good example of Nintendo trying too hard to cater to casual gamers.

Great idea, poor product

What makes you think Nintendo had anything to do with that? Starfish developed that and they were lazily cashing in on an IP.

Post by **spadgy** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 10:57 am

Taylor wrote:The 360 is a PC.

That's certainly why the Raiden games went to 360, as they've typically made for easy PC ports. In fact, Type-X hardware is the reason Raiden III got a PC port.

On the subject of Wii shmups, Blastworks bundled with some other Kenta Cho/ABA studios shooters is getting a PAL Wii release. Anybody heard how it is yet?

Jockel · Post by **Jockel** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 11:13 am

spadgy wrote:On the subject of Wii shmups, Blastworks bundled with some other Kenta Cho/ABA studios shooters is getting a PAL Wii release. Anybody heard how it is yet?

Played the US Version.
Not my cup of tea.
rRootage was the only one that was actually fun for me.
But i dunno, the US Version costs like 30$ so you could always import it ^^

antares · Post by **antares** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 11:13 am

No_not_like_Quake wrote:I'd like to see some more horis for PSP as I just got one (and hence, give a shit about it now) and the screen dimensions work well for them, imo.

The PSP screen is terrible for fast action games (i.e. shmups). I don't know what the effect is called in english, I think it's ghosting ("nachwischen" in german). That's also the problem that all the emulators on the PSP suffer. All the 16 Bit emus work really fine and at a decent speed but suffer from this ghosting effect.
The screen of the new PSP3000 is even more worse.

Shelcoof · Post by **Shelcoof** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 1:13 pm

MathU wrote:
Shelcoof wrote:Chuka Taisen (aka monkey king, cloud master) good example of Nintendo trying too hard to cater to casual gamers.

Great idea, poor product
What makes you think Nintendo had anything to do with that? Starfish developed that and they were lazily cashing in on an IP.

Maybe it wasn't Nintendo's fault that the game was crap but that is something that typically is expected of games that are on Nintendo consoles. Trying to cater too much to the younger audience and adding in weird control schemes.

MathU · Post by **MathU** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 4:25 pm

Jockel wrote:But i dunno, the US Version costs like 30$ so you could always import it ^^

Blast Works is usually $20 actually, and last time I checked, Best Buy had it for $10. I think it's worth the $20 for the amazing level editor alone.

Shelcoof wrote:Maybe it wasn't Nintendo's fault that the game was crap but that is something that typically is expected of games that are on Nintendo consoles. Trying to cater too much to the younger audience and adding in weird control schemes.

I don't really want to get into a lengthy discussion over Nintendo's target audience, so instead I'll just point you to this. I gotta say I'm surprised this stereotype is still thriving. Is it just an anti-Nintendo crusade or what?

Enhasa · Post by **Enhasa** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 5:18 pm

That was easily the worst article I have ever read about anything and it will likely never be topped as long as I live. Please tell me who this guy is and anything or anyone he associates with, so that I never have to encounter anything related to him ever again.

Shelcoof · Post by **Shelcoof** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 5:47 pm

MathU wrote: I don't really want to get into a lengthy discussion over Nintendo's target audience, so instead I'll just point you to this. I gotta say I'm surprised this stereotype is still thriving. Is it just an anti-Nintendo crusade or what?

Man that is a long article...I'm not sure if I want to even finish reading it but I can assure you I am a Nintendo Fanboy or was a Nintendo Fanboy that had been disappointed over and over again to the point where I no longer am a Fanboy.

If you want to continue this discussion through PM that'd be cool, if not then we can leave it at that

Enhasa wrote:That was easily the worst article I have ever read about anything and it will likely never be topped as long as I live. Please tell me who this guy is and anything or anyone he associates with, so that I never have to encounter anything related to him ever again.

lol should I even finish?

gabe · Post by **gabe** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 7:05 pm

Taylor wrote:The 360 is a PC.

Anyway, a Wii shmup would sell even worse than a PS3 or 360 one - the install base doesn't really matter. Any game on the Wii without Nintendo on the box, except a few special cases, has done really badly - even if aimed at the casual audience, they just aren't interested.

+1

I'm a huge Wii fan. Also a huge shmup fan. Here's a list of Wii shmups that came out within the last year, along with what I paid for them (new):

Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy - $9.99 ($39.99 MSRP)
Geometry Wars: Galaxies - $12.00 ($39.99 MSRP)
Castle of Shikigami III - $19.99 ($29.99 MSRP)

Do you think the prices are being slashed because they are flying off retail shelves?

I think not. The sad thing is that all of the above games were reviewed reasonably well.

RackGaki · Post by **RackGaki** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 10:00 pm

How did you like Blast Works? I noticed that The Monkey King isn't on that list, so hopefully better than that game.

MathU · Post by **MathU** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 10:20 pm

I think Blast Works is pretty fun, but the campaign mode can be exhaustively long. The thing is chocked with content though (a bunch of other Kenta Cho games), and there are some really cool user-made levels already. Personally, I think it's worth the $20, but not much more. If you like making stuff though, it's awesome. I can't stress enough how deep the level editor is.

It's definitely a different kind of shoot 'em up. It's not for everyone, and I'm not sure how many people here would like it.

John845 · Post by **John845** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 10:42 pm

I'd kill for a Radiant Silvergun remake/port for the 360.

Shelcoof · Post by **Shelcoof** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 6:55 am

John845 wrote:I'd kill for a Radiant Silvergun remake/port for the 360.

A re-make with Ikaruga like graphics is fine with me and I'd shell out the cash for it as well.

Elixir · Post by **Elixir** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 8:55 am

doctorx0079 wrote:I think UFO wants to release Raiden IV. It remains to be seen if it will actually happen.

Raiden IV isn't even good.