The school of old versus manics

[CMoon]

Man, I just want to get this out of my system (let's see how long before this thread gets locked).

The more I heard 'old school', 'classic', 'modern' and 'manic' getting used, the more I grow sick of the terms, especially since they are gettiing used as large catagories instead of as basic descriptions (which is the only real appropriate way to use them.)

Terms like 'modern' and 'old school', if thought of as catagories are completely misleading and in truth illusory. If one were to apply cladistics (trait analysis in evolution) to the history of shmups, they would find that find that we are still looking at one 'monophyletic' group. There is no MAJOR branching off (actually horizontal and vertical is probably the most sigificant variation), no traits that only belong specifically to one group, and there is no meaningful point in the diversification of shmups that you could draw a line and say 'modern shmups begin here'.

Although I know that most users here have their favorite developers and variety of shmups, I think it is an absurd notion to pretend like the first shooter that ever appeared was Dodonpachi (especially since it shares nearly every trait with dozens upon dozens of other shmups, many of which appeared in the 80's.)

I honestly feel like most of the distinction (and exclusivity (and sometimes elitism)) springs from playing games only at certain points, where the development of shmups can clearly be seen as a continuum or a gradiant. If you only play a game from point alpha and gamma, it might seem like a huge leap unless you've actually played somthing from point beta and delta. You might even coin special phrases to describe each, and start making generalizations about why such and such kinds of games are better than these other games.

I think there is a time I would have agreed with terms like 'old school' as a classification, but the truth is, the more I play, the more I do not see these distinctions at all. Rather there is just theme and variation, and of course the varrying quality of execution.

I would also add, the more I play a wide variety of shmups, the more I appreciate ALL of them.

[Accutron]

If one were to apply cladistics (trait analysis in evolution) to the history of shmups, they would find that find that we are still looking at one 'monophyletic' group. There is no MAJOR branching off (actually horizontal and vertical is probably the most sigificant variation), no traits that only belong specifically to one group, and there is no meaningful point in the diversification of shmups that you could draw a line and say 'modern shmups begin here'.

It's interesting that you mention cladistics in relation to video games, because it does seem that video games in general do follow basic rules of evolution. They change and diversify based on selective pressure, exhibit both gradualism and punctuated equilibrium, and go about filling 'ecological' niches, just like organisms. In that sense, shmups would be monophyletic ever since Xevious broke off from the Space Invaders clones, and there's even transitional 'species', such as Scramble and Centipede, which allow 2D movement, but only in a limited portion of the screen.

Though shmups are monophyletic, further divisions can be made, with increasing levels of subjectivity being applied. The very same problem arises when trying to determine the relationship between two related organisms. I guess this comes down to the either-or of evolutionary biology....are you a lumper or a splitter?

[CMoon]

I guess this comes down to the either-or of evolutionary biology....are you a lumper or a splitter?

Well some will no doubt argue I'm a lumper, but let me give a biology example:

Now that we have found dinosaurs with feathers (not the transitional archaeoptyrx), many have begun to say, simply, that birds ARE dinosaurs. The issue is, even if birds could be call dinosaurs, all birds have traits that did not exist in any other dinosaur, period. Because of these unique traits, I don't think there is any issue referring to birds as their own group (a subset of dinosaurs?)

What I'm looking for are those unique traits which set 'manics' apart from 'non manics', or similarly 'classic' from 'modern'.

I do like the term 'proto-shmups', because it can be objectively definited as shmups that do not allow free movement along the x-y plane.

There is no such distinction I can find for terms like modern, classic, manic, etc., which is why I think the terminology is bogus.

If we can't actually define the terms, and they mean different things to different people, how useful can they actually be?

[FatCobra]

It's also a well-known fact that shmups are an endangered species in the country known as "North America." There are no known reasons why a once-dominate species is now struggling to survive. Theories suggest that they are being pushed out of their habitat by bigger, more mainstream species that have evolved an adaptation most commonly known as a "third dimension." Apparently, this new mutation allows the newer species to out-compete the shmups in catching their prey: the money of gamers. It may be a matter of time before shmups are extinct in North America altogether, unless a drastic change in gamers' tastes in which shmups are once again favored over their 3-D competitors. It is true that shmups have begun to adapt and some have even adapted the "third dimension" in hopes of attracting the American dollars, but more dominate species such as "Free-Roamers" like GTA and "First-person-shooters" like Halo seem to be doing a better job of raking in the money.

Please, don't let these majestic games die in a country that they once over-populated years ago. Adopt a shmup now and save the species.



Please don't take this seriously, I'm just making fun of the Darwinism that has suddenly popped up in this thread.

[SheSaidDutch]

Fatcobra- Will the SHMUPS write back to the adoptee's telling us of how my money has helped change their lives

[FatCobra]

Fatcobra- Will the SHMUPS write back to the adoptee's telling us of how my money has helped change their lives

I dunno...I thought of them more like pets. They can't tell you how much it meant for you to save them, but they show it through their affection.

[SheSaidDutch]

Fatcobra- Will the SHMUPS write back to the adoptee's telling us of how my money has helped change their lives

I dunno...I thought of them more like pets. They can't tell you how much it meant for you to save them, but they show it through their affection.

Okay pets it is

*Fetch the Stylus*

[CMoon]

Being the geek that I am I'll ask you to refrain from referring to cladistics (or any post 'new synthesis' evolutionary talk) as Darwinism; that said though, the humor of your post already occured to me since even the most fit 'manics' are hardly holding their head above water.

Fortunately, even if extinct in the wild, many specimens are currently being preserved and cared for in private collections, and a record of their genemoes has been cataloged and made widely available over the internet.

[BulletMagnet]

They can't tell you how much it meant for you to save them, but they show it through their affection.

...by killing you repeatedly and mercilessly!

[scrilla4rella]

I would agree w/ CMoon. In my opinion, Shooters of new and old are supprisingly simillar in more ways than not.

I only really started seriously collecting and playing shmups after being floored by Radiant Silvergun and Dodonpachi. After getting my hands on RS I wanted to play more shooters.

After going to Japan and similarly being floored by DDP, ESP, and Progear in the arcades, I became more interested in Old-school stuff. I wanted to see where these games came from. What traditions they evolved out off.

Of course, I loved games like Gradius, Raiden, and Life Force back in the day but I had no idea of huge number of great games that never came out in the US on PCE, MD, Saturn, and especially Arcade.

I am not really sure where i'm going with this, but i guess as a shooter fan I love playing old school stuff in comparison to new "maniac" shooters. I play both.

Evolution HAS taken place in the Shmup genre, but compared to many other genres (platformer, RPG(maybe?), sports) shmups have changed very little. the fact that their are many people like me, and maybe you, who are shelling out $200+ for both new/old PCB games and older PCE and Saturn games makes this minimal evolution of the genre facinating.

Sorry, I only have time to write coherintly for school right now

[Edge]

First of all I want to tell you that I really like "Oldschool Shoot'em Ups" and "Maniac Shoot'em Ups".

But I think there is a difference betweem these two. Not because of their release years. I mean in gameplay matters.

My opinion about the difference:
The primary difference is that in Maniac Shmups you are mainly dodging lots of bullet patterns. Really hard patterns of bullet fire which. These games you have to play very cautious. While in Oldschool Shmups the bullet doding is not THAT important. You have to be more concerned about obstacles or your extra-weopons. And this has nothing to do with vertical or horiziontal.

Oldschool Shoot'em Ups are: R-Type 1-Final, Gradius 1-5, Thunderforce 3-5, Einhänder, Musha Aleste...

...and Maniac Shoot'em Ups are: Giga Wing, DoDonPachi, Gunbird, Progear, ESP Series...

In general they are all Shoot'em Ups. But I can understand why some people prefer the one or the other kind.


Interesting topic, CMoon

[TVG]

First of all I want to tell you that I really like "Oldschool Shoot'em Ups" and "Maniac Shoot'em Ups".

But I think there is a difference betweem these two. Not because of their release years. I mean in gameplay matters.

My opinion about the difference:
The primary difference is that in Maniac Shmups you are mainly dodging lots of bullet patterns. Really hard patterns of bullet fire which. These games you have to play very cautious. While in Oldschool Shmups the bullet doding is not THAT important. You have to be more concerned about obstacles or your extra-weopons. And this has nothing to do with vertical or horiziontal.

Oldschool Shoot'em Ups are: R-Type 1-Final, Gradius 1-5, Thunderforce 3-5, Einhänder, Musha Aleste...

...and Maniac Shoot'em Ups are: Giga Wing, DoDonPachi, Gunbird, Progear, ESP Series...

In general they are all Shoot'em Ups. But I can understand why some people prefer the one or the other kind.


Interesting topic, CMoon

yet another flawed description.

so truxton, raiden etc arent about dodging? nonsense.

the term "manic" is overused and broad, ive read people rant about how robotron was the first manic, what the hell?

id rather use the term "swarmer", it describes well what you want to say, but then again, there's no clear distinction if the psikyo games (not counting dragon blaze) count as swarmers and if there is, its some arbitrary rule out of someone's ass (different with each person)

[raiden]

ok, I´ll give it another go and try to list a few phenomena typical for both categories. That´s not to say every game has to belong to one or the other, but just to make clear where I think the differences are

oldschool:
- respawn points
- hitzone roughly equal to sprite size
- bullets faster than ship
- collidible background
- speed-ups
- infinite loops

manic:
- score independent from survival
- most bullets slower than ship
- small hitzone

there´s probably more, this is just what I could think of quickly.

[sffan]

Man, I just want to get this out of my system (let's see how long before this thread gets locked).

The more I heard 'old school', 'classic', 'modern' and 'manic' getting used, the more I grow sick of the terms, especially since they are gettiing used as large catagories instead of as basic descriptions (which is the only real appropriate way to use them.)

Terms like 'modern' and 'old school', if thought of as catagories are completely misleading and in truth illusory. If one were to apply cladistics (trait analysis in evolution) to the history of shmups, they would find that find that we are still looking at one 'monophyletic' group. There is no MAJOR branching off (actually horizontal and vertical is probably the most sigificant variation), no traits that only belong specifically to one group, and there is no meaningful point in the diversification of shmups that you could draw a line and say 'modern shmups begin here'.

Although I know that most users here have their favorite developers and variety of shmups, I think it is an absurd notion to pretend like the first shooter that ever appeared was Dodonpachi (especially since it shares nearly every trait with dozens upon dozens of other shmups, many of which appeared in the 80's.)

I honestly feel like most of the distinction (and exclusivity (and sometimes elitism)) springs from playing games only at certain points, where the development of shmups can clearly be seen as a continuum or a gradiant. If you only play a game from point alpha and gamma, it might seem like a huge leap unless you've actually played somthing from point beta and delta. You might even coin special phrases to describe each, and start making generalizations about why such and such kinds of games are better than these other games.

I think there is a time I would have agreed with terms like 'old school' as a classification, but the truth is, the more I play, the more I do not see these distinctions at all. Rather there is just theme and variation, and of course the varrying quality of execution.

I would also add, the more I play a wide variety of shmups, the more I appreciate ALL of them.

I agree with you. It's a continuum. If it were possible to play every shmup from Space Invaders to the most recent, in chronological order, the differences would be extremely small from game to game. It's only when you play two shmups consecutively which are from widely separate time periods that you may be inclined to assign different categories to shmups. I agree that they don't really need to be categorized, other than hori or vert.

[Andi]

Term warfare in the shooter community? Must be a slow news day.

[professor ganson]

Oldschool Shoot'em Ups are: R-Type 1-Final, Gradius 1-5, Thunderforce 3-5, Einhänder, Musha Aleste...

...and Maniac Shoot'em Ups are: Giga Wing, DoDonPachi, Gunbird, Progear, ESP Series...

This is the first time I've noticed someone on this forum offer a list of manic shooters. Giga Wing, ESPGaluda, and Dodonpachi are among my very favorite games right now, so I guess I'm a manic fan. But, honestly, when I think about what Giga Wing and, say, Gunbird 2 have in common, I just think: they're both really freakin' hard. (Giga Wing is hard in a good way; Gunbird 2 is hard in a painful way.) I guess I still don't see exactly what these two games have in common with one another and with ESPGaluda. Yes, there are sometimes lots of bullets on-screen at once. But the same is true of Zanac Neo, and the latter is not, I take it, manic. One might say that Zanac Neo is different because there is more fire power and less weaving and dodging, but I don't find this true at all. ESPGaluda, Dodonpachi, Dragon Blaze-- they all give you pretty massive attack power. Indeed, success in DB is all about taking out the enemy with the powerful dragon shot before the popcorn flies. And for me success in Zanac Neo depends entirely on my weaving through those patterns of orange bullets. I agree that Zanac Neo is easier than the others, but difficulty alone is not what makes something manic. ESPGaluda is not that hard. So I'm obviously a bit confused about this distinction.

I apologize for these sophomoric remarks. I'm still trying to get a grip on the issues here.

[SAM]

ok, I´ll give it another go and try to list a few phenomena typical for both categories. That´s not to say every game has to belong to one or the other, but just to make clear where I think the differences are

oldschool:
- respawn points
- hitzone roughly equal to sprite size
- bullets faster than ship
- collidible background
- speed-ups
- infinite loops

manic:
- score independent from survival
- most bullets slower than ship
- small hitzone

there´s probably more, this is just what I could think of quickly.

Great generalization, I agree with most of your points. *Meow*

But I want to point out the "collidible background" used to be present in Horizontal Scroller and rarely seen in Vertical Scroller . But again you cannot collidible with background in Progear... *Meow*

In Gradius V you got a small hit box.. but you can collidible with background, speed-ups and have infinite loops... *Meow* I am confused...

[Damocles]

I always thought that the difference was that old school mainly relied on aimed shots, whereas manics relied on spreads or spam. Not that it really matters...just semantics really...

*shrug*

[Randorama]

Yes, i basically agree with the whole approach. Just to make some self-promotion, i am covering the issue in my journal...i usually try to post my essay on Friday, but since i'm a lazy cretin (and my stupid work always interferes), i'm usually late (i.e. Monday).

Just to add some elements on the subject, do consider that most of the programmers behind many games are still the same, after 20 years: ok, Tsuneki Ikeda started at Toaplan with Slap Fight, to my knowledge, but also the guys behind Dimahoo are mostly Compile ex-programmers...

Speaking of cladograms, the subgenre/company parallel is somewhat incorrect: in my latest cycle of essay ( ), i first proposed an brief history of sub-cycles (stating that are a lot of gray zones, overlapping among phases, etc), then i have tried, so far, to see how companies are related to these phases and 'why".

In this regard, shmups are more like languages' (or, in many ways, to models) evolution: technically, i still speak latin (as i am an italian native speaker), but the form i speak is quite different from the original one. You can easily make a cladogram of what has been introduced with the passing of years (smaller hitboxes, more bullets, patterns, etc) and compare it to what companies have proposed: for instance, Psikyo games are somewhat at the "periphery" of the core changing phenomena, while Cave and Raizing seem to had (Cave still has, to some extent).

The fact that parallels between dynamic models and evolution can be easily drawn, after all, shouldn't be surprising... in case, i suggest you all to read Thomas Kuhn's" Structure of Scientific Revolutions ", in case you haven't

[CMoon]

i suggest you all to read Thomas Kuhn's" Structure of Scientific Revolutions ", in case you haven't

I'm already there dude!

Anyway, since it has been said elsewhere, I still feel like the terms 'classic' and 'modern' and 'manic' are still useful, but useful in the way that general, common use terms are that only hint at the real thing, and they become problematic when we begin to think of them as REAL catagories, when all they really are is an agreed upon idea of a certain game, then lumping in every game with it that seems similar.

The problem is, these terms don't indicate any sort of relationship or even chronology (Trizeal is a great 'old school' shmup!) and need to be understood as little more than fuzzy 'place holders' to subdivide a pretty big group of games.