Shooters with "friendly targets?"

[BIL]

Vasara made me wonder about this (shortly after I'd obliterated some poor saps' water wheel). Have there been any shooters where the player's score is directly penalised for hitting friendly ships / buildings, etc? Not talking about indirect penalties (eg, blindly shooting crates in Raiden DX and reaping lead). Rather, a game that directly punished the player for just letting rip and killing everything in sight, oppressed cities / bedraggled allies and all.

Not a mechanic I'd care to see become common, but I'd be interested to know if a shooter ever threw this wrench into the works. Just from messing with Vasara, it feels interesting to go for 100% kills without blowing up peoples' houses.

[incognoscente]

Gyrodine.

Toward the beginning of the game, you see some people enjoying a holiday at the beach. If you kill them, you lose points.

[The Eidolon]

Area 88 has a bonus mission where you have to shoot the mines off
of a commercial airliner. Hitting the airliner (which is easy to do
accidentally) lowers your health directly as a penalty. No point
penalty unless you take too long and fail the mission entirely.

[lgb]

Lots of SNK shooters have some of score penalty for killing prisoners.

[louisg]

This probably isn't shmuppy enough, but I immediately thought of Spy Hunter

[BIL]

Gyrodine.

Toward the beginning of the game, you see some people enjoying a holiday at the beach. If you kill them, you lose points.

Damn. Brings to mind 1944's second stage, only, you can't harm the woman doing some warzone sunbathing there (she'll run off on her own, though).

[Elixir]

Fairies from the Raiden Fighters series.

[Udderdude]

A game based entirely around this idea might be interesting. Keyword "might" .. >_>

[BIL]

Yeah, I could imagine it being interesting as a one-off (maybe a secret mode / minigame). But selective destruction is part of countless great shooters' scoring anyway; probably a bit superfluous to actually mark targets off-limits. And blowing up large structures is just too fun to resist anyway. Everyone loves it when a helicopter lands on a house in Raiden II!

[null1024]

I'm pretty sure someone made a PC shmup where the whole premise of it was that you had a ship with a gun that wouldn't stop shooting, and you had to avoid blowing up all the buildings and stuff.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Everyone loves it when a helicopter lands on a house in Raiden II!

It's all part of interactive destruction that is a hallmark of Raiden II...you can choose to kill small fry or not. If you don't, then you probably will spare some lives inside them houses with a smoking chimney to boot. ^_~

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[BiQ]

Some level (forgot which) in Deimos Rising (honestly, a rather crappy xevious clone with eyecandy) has a ground target which is resembling a battleground hospital. Blowing it up gets you like -5000 points, which is so laughable little I do it anyway for shits'n'giggles whenever I play that game... which isn't so often nowadays.

[Koa Zo]

Trizeal has some friendlies on a few stages.

PC-Engine Spriggan has friendlies too, but I don't remember if they can be destroyed by the player or not.

[ZOM]

If you count Choplifter as "shmup", then well, yeah, you can be pretty mean in that game.

Also, how's that vertical doujin STG called, the one where you have to save people with the hook? I think you can kill them too.

[Ghegs]

If you count Choplifter as "shmup", then well, yeah, you can be pretty mean in that game.

Also, how's that vertical doujin STG called, the one where you have to save people with the hook? I think you can kill them too.

Isin Denshin Zero? Yeah, you can kill them, but doing that replenishes your energy a bit. I'm not sure if it's even detrimental to your score, I haven't played it far enough to find out.

[ZOM]

Isin Denshin Zero? Yeah, you can kill them, but doing that replenishes your energy a bit. I'm not sure if it's even detrimental to your score, I haven't played it far enough to find out.

That's exactly the one. Don't remember too much about it either since I pretty much dissed it after trying it out the first time. heh

[undamned]

Lethal Enforcers
-ud

[toaplan_shmupfan]

If gun games are going to be included into the mix, then Sega's L.A. Machine Guns has lots friendly targets that can often be hard to determine with all the enemy action. Hitting the friendly targets doesn't result in a loss of life (when compared to Lethal Enforcers, Virtua Cop, etc. that cost one life for an innocent target hit), but it's definitely a -5000 score per friendly target hit (and by extension, -5000 per hit if a friendly target is not destroyable) and so it's possible to even have a negative score due to too many friendly targets being hit.

[ZOM]

^^If gun games are going to be included into the mix , I can see this thingy growing into a 30 pages thread

[BIL]

I was thinking more of hori / vert shooters. I've "accidentally" shot Dr. Dan in the face enough times to know gun games have this covered!

[it290]

Defender seems like the obvious answer.

[undamned]

I was thinking more of hori / vert shooters.

I know, man, I just couldn't resist (and I'm quite surprised I was the first )
-ud

[Ed Oscuro]

I'm pretty sure someone made a PC shmup where the whole premise of it was that you had a ship with a gun that wouldn't stop shooting, and you had to avoid blowing up all the buildings and stuff.

Didn't Hollywood make a movie based on that game?