I have a confession : I Suck at Shmups and a complete n00b.

[dtdg]

I really suck at shmups and I have never ever ever ever played Ikuraga, Dondonapachi. I have never owned a Sega Saturn.
The only Shmups I own for my Gens is:

Lightening Force
Contra: Hard Corps
Steel Empire
Ranger X
Sub-Terrania

And that's it. I did own MUSHA, but decided to trade it in.

When I say I suck at Shmups. I don't plain old suck at them. I suck with the force of a hoover vaccum cleaner the size of the Hoover Dam. Well I don't suck that badly, but you get my point, that I'm basically a 'tard at it.
I played Super R-type and I liked it, but some of those levels made me think "WTF where the developers smoking?"
So why I'am even on this forum if I'm not teh 1337 shmupper? Well, because I wanna make myself somewhat decent in the Shmup genre.
So I have a couple of questions:
How rare is Einhander for the PSX and Ikuraga for the GC?

[BUHA]

Neither are too rare but you might have to get them online. I'd try ebay. I think Einhander is going up in price lately, which is unfortunate

And good luck! I haven't been playing shmups for too long, but I've made so much progress this past year. I feel I'm better at games than ever, which isn't a huge deal or anything, but it's fun.

[BulletMagnet]

Bah, we lousy shmuppers need to embrace our "questionably talented" status...if nothing else sooner or later someone's bound to complain about all the "I'm lousy at shmups!" threads that keep popping up, heh. Just keep practicing, everyone has their own pace of doing things, no need to feel guilty about it.

Besides, we always have our battle cry: "I can't 1CC anything because...um...I have other priorities! A social life! Uh, yeah, that's it!"

[Specineff]

In my case, I get my ass kicked by Ikaruga sometimes, then I fire up Power Strike on the SMS and PWN it by 1-life it. Sometimes it's like you were "made" to play some types of shmups better than others.

[scrilla4rella]

First step to becoming a better shmuper: Buy another copy of MUSHA. Your Karma will go up!

c-

[visuatrox]

So I have a couple of questions:
How rare is Einhander for the PSX and Ikuraga for the GC?

Both are common games, but still you would probably have to hunt them down online. Also shmups rarely drop in price (especially the Japanese versions), so expect to pay full price, see it as an investment

And if you need a good PSX shmup to train on, get R-Type Delta (R's Best release still avaible new at some places).