The critical discussion of Namco shooters!

[Ed Oscuro]

Namco seems to have had its own little culture of making shooters. When Toaplan and other companies were off taking the genre in new directions, even though those other companies borrowed liberally from each other, sometimes Namco games feel like throwbacks to the early days of the genre, which Namco helped shape but didn't try to throw off. I don't mean this as just criticism though. Blast Off is a nice little reminder: "Hey you guys, we made Bosconian, and you loved it. Here's a new game with what Sony will later try to call Real Time Weapon Change. It's unique, it's exciting to change your weapons!" And so it's pretty competent. They made lots of games with unique hardware that bend the conventions of the genre: Metal Hawk, Assault. Fun and even groundbreaking games but without home ports (a shame, maybe Namco was reserving them for a Namco home system).

Recently I messed around with both versions of DANGEROUS SEED, which as you can guess has a seed filled with danger at its core, but you probably wouldn't have guessed that the seed didn't look like a harmless little mustard seed. No, that would have sounded too much like an Anne McCaffrey novel. No specific spoilers here, but I have to say I was absolutely shocked how hard it was to crack that thing in the Mega Drive here! I was also a bit surprised comparing the Mega Drive port of this to the Famicom port of Dragon Spirit: Dragon Spirit makes good use of the home console format by giving you a little branching path thing that opens (or closes, depending on your viewpoint) the game intro with the normal game intro if you are a good player, but gives players having trouble some help in the form of a stern warning and a powerful ship. It wouldn't have made sense to have this assistance in a coin-op where you have less sympathy for the bad player; if they suck, you still have their quarter and you just want to give them the bare minimum of hope they will do better on their next, without giving the feeling of stacking the odds too horribly against them. It also keeps the playing field even; kids at home can smack talk about playing on different skill levels but in the arcade you often only see the feedback of the score right above yours (the one you are using as the first word of a naughty phrase, something like "SUX" or "ISA BIG ...")

Dangerous Seed seems to pay homage to the ideas of early games, where there was as much emphasis on special scoring systems and continuous powerups as on changing the ship's actual appearance like in a Nichibutsu game. It goes beyond Terra Cresta or Mag Max, though (and possibly Moon Cresta; I don't remember if you get bonuses for survival of all parts in that one...), by giving you a good reason to keep everything alive. One, each part of the ship is your next life. Two, the next part has more shooting power and life than the last (the second seems faster than the first too), so if you can't hold on to the first ship you don't necessarily hit a wall for a while. The obvious downside is that you have to play the first batch of stages with a relatively lousy ship crippled by slow speed that has difficulty dodging or catching up to anything. It's nice when the parts finally combine, though; the difficulty ramps up significantly as well but it all seems well in hand. And operators love it because people who can't keep the first lousy ship alive are missing a fair amount of firepower for the next set of stages.

However, the differences between the MD and arcade versions of Dragon Seed are greater than those between Dragon Spirit versions. For starters: You can't stock as many bombs in the arcade, but they give you regular points plus a bar of life as an extra incentive for accepting the stimulus packages. On the Mega Drive side, I had about two dozen bombs sitting around unused late in the game: once in a savestate practice session, and again in a straight playthrough where I had lots until very late (where I started using some just to be on the safe side). They were really a get away from the boss free card in the home version, unless there is some kind of end of game bonus waiting for really obsessive players.

While I haven't gotten to the end of the second mission in the arcade version, it is clear there are fewer elements to keep track of. Still, I would've one-lifed the game if I hadn't died a few times and appeared at the end without enough bombs (I think the final boss is one of those stamina battle ones), and all with no apparent cost. On the other hand, almost everything else on the Mega Drive version gives you points, and also feels copped from some other game system. Like Truxton or Fire Shark, you get bonuses from picking up the same color shot powerup multiple times in a row. In the arcade version weapon powerups are a bit mysterious and appear linked to time or perhaps to picking up bomb icons. At home you get a bonus from picking up speed icons; in front of the cabinet you don't have speed up icons to worry about and the playfield feels that much bigger as a result (not to mention the game additionally more focused). In the arcade you can change the order of ships, which in turn changes shot patterns and even direction. This feels like a page out Blast Off or from a future game's handbook, like controlling options in Armed Police Batwider, except that it also feels a bit less useful when your options do a bit less damage - so maybe a bit more like ship edit in the Famicom version of Terra Cresta.

My least favorite change, aside from the ugly sardine can shape and color of the whole game, is the way bosses have been simplified. There isn't any strategy in blowing up the first boss piece by piece for maximum points; in fact, there's no parts to dismantle at all. You either blow up the boss or you don't. Bosses seem able to time out still, but that's it.

Overall I would give the original arcade release a "hey this is cool how you did the lives and stuff except for the first ship being garbage" and the console release a "thanks for emulation to let me understand I don't want to buy this after all!" My advices are Save for PCB!

[Obiwanshinobi]

They made lots of games with unique hardware that bend the conventions of the genre: Metal Hawk, Assault. Fun and even groundbreaking games but without home ports (a shame, maybe Namco was reserving them for a Namco home system).

Probably perfect ports of Assault and Ordyne - two very first games sporting sprite rotation - are on Namco Museum Volume 4 for the PSX. Those collections would be in-your-face fantastic if only you could map the buttons to your liking. The US versions are safe buy (Ordyne and Valkyrie no Densetsu got translated to English, even though western arcades never saw those machines).
I'd say Ordyne was pretty innovative. Magical Chase and Trouble Witches owe it quite a few things.

[Ed Oscuro]

They made lots of games with unique hardware that bend the conventions of the genre: Metal Hawk, Assault. Fun and even groundbreaking games but without home ports (a shame, maybe Namco was reserving them for a Namco home system).

Probably perfect ports of Assault and Ordyne - two very first games sporting sprite rotation - are on Namco Museum Volume 4 for the PSX. Those collections would be in-your-face fantastic if only you could map the buttons to your liking. The US versions are safe buy (Ordyne and Valkyrie no Densetsu got translated to English, even though western arcades never saw those machines).
I'd say Ordyne was pretty innovative. Magical Chase and Trouble Witches owe it quite a few things.

Oh sweet. Well, a giant +1 for Assault then!

The point I was kind of dancing about (awesome steel toed tapdancing shoes here) but didn't quite cover: Namco had no problem adapting cool ideas, and especially with inventing totally new ones. But how successful have they been making franchises out of things? It gets scary at times looking at how much of their stuff is either "too Japanese" (reroute to other thread in OT about that stuffs) or simply didn't get a chance to bloom. Like the shooting games stable. Then again, maybe they read the tea leaves and quit earlier than everyone else. It's a secret to everybody.

[lgb]

nebulasraaaaaaaay

all it needs is a destruction bonus

[05pro]

They created Xevious which is pretty much the 1st vert STG. Without Namco the STGs we know today may never have existed. The end.

[emphatic]

I've always had a secret love affair with Baraduke. Don't know if ya'll call it a shmup though.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Ed, have you given Namco's Tenkomori Shooting a spin on Mame/Mame32? Quite an excellent game with a bunch of cool mini shmup-themed games to play. Even owning/playing the actual PCB of Tenkomori has it's charms.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Obiwanshinobi]

Baraduke is pretty playable for a game of this kind devoid of a hold button. A bit like Twinkle Tale, makes me think how better it'd feel if I could shoot in one direction whilst moving in another. UPL understood that in 1983 (Nova 2001) and 1986 (Atomic Robo-Kid).
Still, you have to admire Baraduke's artistic direction. The sequel tried a bit too hard to emphasise further both cuteness and splatter, only to end up sporting literally blue blood.
Say what you will about the eighties, but back then quite often games looked like anything else (Super Mario, R-Type - just how much personality this few pixels can possibly have?), whereas these days they usually look like some other games.

[MathU]

The only Namco shooter I've ever really enjoyed is Galaga... But I am a complete Galaga nut.

[Ed Oscuro]

Nebulasray looks great, and I think maybe (no definite opinion yet) you have to wait a couple years for that other Rays series to compare with it for gameplay and charmingly ugly 3D graphics effects.

Ed, have you given Namco's Tenkomori Shooting a spin on Mame/Mame32? Quite an excellent game with a bunch of cool mini shmup-themed games to play. Even owning/playing the actual PCB of Tenkomori has it's charms.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

Doh, I wrote out an answer thinking you meant Game Tengoku. Nope, I haven't even heard of this game before, nor saw any footage until a few seconds ago.

To be honest, if it's not an Exidy lightgun game (Who Dunit), or Konami's "Crypt Killer" / "Henry Explorers," maybe Sammy's "Zombie Raid," it's got a tough battle gaining favor from me! I promise to look into it though.

Now if you were talking about Game Tengoku (which is not a Namco game after all):
Some rascal by the name of Arasoi has a copy of the PCB, I believe, and I'm twirling my moustache thinking about how to steal it from him.

Might be a good time to give up the dream and do the legendary Edward Randy swap...Well...I hate to concede defeat but I just have trouble with that game.

But anyway, yes, that's a little gem of a game. It's a nice companion to Cybattler too.

[gameoverDude]

Fighter & Attacker isn't too bad for a throwback type shmup, albeit more manic than something like Xevious which clearly inspired it.

You have about 16 planes to choose from. The Harrier plane is a good choice, since you'll need speed in this one. There are NO powerups to chase, but most of the planes carry decent weapons already. Sometimes I do wish F/A had a smart bomb to use when things get messy. Prisoners are rescued by bombing certain places or targets, similar to the Sol Citadels in Xevious (you have to pick them up for it to count toward your end stage bonus, like Twin Cobra). It's somewhat textbook and has a few flaws (a lifebar instead of three ships? Yuck), but still fun. I'm shocked it didn't get a Genesis port- Sega's 16-bit could easily have handled a graphically downgraded 20 Meg cart version.

The soundtrack by Shinji Hosoe and Takayuki Aihara is awesome- namely, some hot techno tracks with killer bass that wouldn't sound out of place in Ridge Racer. "Rave War" (from stage 3) rocks. The song breaks at about 0:30 for about 20 seconds, letting its bass line get stuck in your head. IMO, the soundtrack destroys even Streets of Rage.

Too bad we didn't see the Namco PC-Engine 2 instead of the Super Grafx. Their machine was about comparable to Super Famicom, but I'd guess they probably planned to use a 68000 in it. As for the wait for PS1 to port Assault, Namco probably was afraid to try doing a SNES version- who can blame them?

[Ed Oscuro]

Fighter & Attacker is probably the model of what I consider to be Namco making a game that should be excellent somehow disastrous. Its flaws are almost too many to number.

I played it in 2007 for the poorly named (that week, anyway) "Just for Fun" tourney (and just put 185K more in after 20 minutes of practice) but I wasn't very good at it then. Still am not. My memories didn't fail me: Useless planes, boring but picky first stage, music that will give your ears a rash, and generally not a lot of fun. The second stage looks a fair reward for suffering the terrible first stage if only you can squeeze through the slow-moving bullet patterns. The F-15 seems like one of the more useful planes actually, except for its size and useless secondary attack (still can get you past areas in a pinch) - but the extra bar of speed and the spread shot puts it above trying to chase stuff around the screen with the F-117. Of course the F-117 is really the best plane, if you aren't bothered by missing tons of enemies that would rather skate by you, and needing to chase all over the place to hit things that don't flee. If you love this game made by people who hate the thought of you enjoying their game, you must have the patience of a saint. It's an odd mix of perpetual boredom mixed with sudden sharp movements. Oh, and the lifebar system strikes me as far worse than Dangerous Seed's. Perhaps that's surprising: the F&A F-117 is a lot like your starting ship in Dangerous Seed, without any powerups.

There also is a game which I thought was kind of a sequel to F/A - hmm, can't find it now. Came out around 1994 I think.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Baraduke is pretty playable for a game of this kind devoid of a hold button. A bit like Twinkle Tale, makes me think how better it'd feel if I could shoot in one direction whilst moving in another. UPL understood that in 1983 (Nova 2001) and 1986 (Atomic Robo-Kid).

I take some of it back; just realized how prominent the recoil feature in Baraduke is (think certain weapon in Cave Story...), so you actually can move backwards whilst shooting. It's a nice balance between tight shmuppy controls (well, not so tight in MAME where Baraduke is rather laggy) and a touch more "realistic" physics. Now if you ask me, Bangai-O and Exile seem to be indebted to it.
The atmosphere is as gripping as in Atomic Robo-Kid, easily.

[defected78]

Xevious nuff said to immortalise themselves in the genre

Shoutouts to Dragon Spirit and Galaga 88.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Baraduke kicks ten thousand butts.
I wish I could map the fire button onto R2, but sticks users shouldn't have even this complaint. It's like The Velvet Underground - maybe not massively successful back in the day, but delightfully bulshitless and humbly seminal. Wasn't it, like, the first jetpack game ever?
I wonder why wasn't it at least as genre defining as Bubble Bobble. The controls are a bit unusual, but it's much more accessible than, say, Defender if you ask me. Everybody should play it. It's neither a shmup nor a platformer, but sports, dare I say it, the essential features of both genres (a moot point, I know - you don't really jump here after all - but I mean it). Just everything about it makes some kind of sense. The randomisation does what randomisation should do in this kind of game - keeps things fresh rather than substitutes the level design. I could go on and on about its qualities, but there's no need for any bedroom gaming journalism if only you can try out the PSX version (in MAME, as mentioned before, it's got quite a bad input lag). Trust me, you'll want to perform some tricky dodging in this one.

[Drum]

Baraduke is probably the best game ever. KISSY. I'm your friend! I love it so much.
Xevious may be the shooter Namco gets the most credit for, but Baraduke arguably had more influence on the most important aspect of the genre: giant purple bullets.
Speaking of Xevious - really don't see why this gets so much credit. It wasn't the first and it wasn't any fun. The bomb mechanic was a misstep and a dead end, and its mystifying influence had a pretty toxic effect on the genre for a while. Red Clash was a waaaaay better game (history lesson: it was licensed to genre masters Kaneko who went on to make Explosive Breaker, still the best vertical shooter ever).
I really like Xevious 3D for some reason though.

[Slump]

The only Namco shooter I've ever really enjoyed is Galaga... But I am a complete Galaga nut.

[robivy64]

Phelios, Dragon Saber, and Nebulasray are some of my favorites.

[Zeether]

Is it Nebulasray or Nebula's Ray?

[emphatic]

KET is playing Gaplus right now @ http://www.ustream.tv/channel/garelab#u ... ium=social

Seems kinda rad.

[toaplan_shmupfan]

Speaking of Xevious - really don't see why this gets so much credit. It wasn't the first and it wasn't any fun. The bomb mechanic was a misstep and a dead end, and its mystifying influence had a pretty toxic effect on the genre for a while.

Xevious can be a lot of fun but it is also quite a challenge even for an early vertical shooter. Doesn't matter if it wasn't the first vertical scroller--if I recall correctly the first should be Activision's River Raid for the Atari 2600.

The fun part of Xevious was that instead of flooding the screen with bullets like modern games try to do now, the enemies entered, took their aimed shots, and then exited (with a couple of exceptions such as the gear shaped enemies that would back up a bit and try to hit the ship before exiting). The better one played, more difficult enemies also showed up (i.e., the game had rank). The only real BS enemies I found in the game were the larger black balls exploding into spread shots, that happens only once just before the second mothership (and that spread even has a few homing shots) and then more frequently after the second mothership (so I've not yet made it further than that). Except for the black balls, the game didn't have any other BS such as unexpected behind the ship type of attacks (although an enemy leaving the screen could also shoot up and back at the ship but that could be predicted and is not unfair).

The bomb mechanic was used for taking out visible ground targets and finding secret ground targets such as flags and Sol Citadels. It couldn't have been simpler--crosshair over the target, hit the bomb button, bomb drops and hits the target. Hidden targets were slightly more challenging, but the crosshairs still flickered red when they were over the target. I don't think had a toxic effect on the genre since games like Dragon Spirit (Namco) and Ajax (Konami) stand out to me as good games that also used the separate bomb mechanic. It's entirely possible to ignore using the bombing mechanic in Xevious up to a point--the stationary round sphere type emenies that shoot will still shoot, the mobile ground bases will still shoot, and it's bombing is still needed to take out the mothership for score.

[Drum]

Speaking of Xevious - really don't see why this gets so much credit. It wasn't the first and it wasn't any fun. The bomb mechanic was a misstep and a dead end, and its mystifying influence had a pretty toxic effect on the genre for a while.

Xevious can be a lot of fun but it is also quite a challenge even for an early vertical shooter. Doesn't matter if it wasn't the first vertical scroller--if I recall correctly the first should be Activision's River Raid for the Atari 2600.

The fun part of Xevious was that instead of flooding the screen with bullets like modern games try to do now, the enemies entered, took their aimed shots, and then exited (with a couple of exceptions such as the gear shaped enemies that would back up a bit and try to hit the ship before exiting). The better one played, more difficult enemies also showed up (i.e., the game had rank). The only real BS enemies I found in the game were the larger black balls exploding into spread shots, that happens only once just before the second mothership (and that spread even has a few homing shots) and then more frequently after the second mothership (so I've not yet made it further than that). Except for the black balls, the game didn't have any other BS such as unexpected behind the ship type of attacks (although an enemy leaving the screen could also shoot up and back at the ship but that could be predicted and is not unfair).

The bomb mechanic was used for taking out visible ground targets and finding secret ground targets such as flags and Sol Citadels. It couldn't have been simpler--crosshair over the target, hit the bomb button, bomb drops and hits the target. Hidden targets were slightly more challenging, but the crosshairs still flickered red when they were over the target. I don't think had a toxic effect on the genre since games like Dragon Spirit (Namco) and Ajax (Konami) stand out to me as good games that also used the separate bomb mechanic. It's entirely possible to ignore using the bombing mechanic in Xevious up to a point--the stationary round sphere type emenies that shoot will still shoot, the mobile ground bases will still shoot, and it's bombing is still needed to take out the mothership for score.

I think I just got schooled - I had no idea Xevious had rank or hidden targets. I sorta stand by the bomb comment, tho the 'toxic' thing was just dumb hyperbole. But it was definitely a dead end and that button could have been put to better use.
Red Clash did precede River Raid, though it's probably better described as a hybrid vert and space invaders-type game. Phantom II came out in '79 and that is a vert, though it looks like the clouds are going backwards. Awesome radar gimmick though!

[Obiwanshinobi]

This necro Pac-Man thing in Baraduke freaks me out.

The bomb mechanic was a misstep and a dead end, and its mystifying influence had a pretty toxic effect on the genre for a while.

Bombing ground targets is fun in Task Force Harrier, because you do Raiden things down there (buildings twattage), before Raiden even came out to boot. Nice illusion of depth despite the hardware being not quite up to the job (RayForce arcade machine it was not). By this I mean that you were doing missions on different altitudes, which was more convinvcing than usual thanks to the bombs varying effects.
While I'm not a massive RayForce fan, I can't think of a single game where I would dislike this kind of bombing.

[Drum]

Rayforce gets a pass, but that totally doesn't count.

[Ed Oscuro]

Rayforce gets a pass, but that totally doesn't count.

It doesn't count because it's a ThaiToe game and we need a Critical (TM) Discussion thread for the likes of them.

Nebulas Ray, sure!

[BrianC]

While it doesn't scroll automatically, Strategy X predated River Raid and plays very similar to it, right down to having to move over fuel spots to refuel.

I like Xevious quite a bit. I like the 7800, PSX, and NES ports of the game. It's interesting how the Namco Museum v. 2 and Xevious 3D/G+ ports are different. The former has a better yoko mode, but the latter is more accurate to the arcade. Also, best Xevious ever!

[ZOM]

Love namco's pew pew stuff. I grew up with the two Dragon games & Dangerous Seed. Fond memories, but it's not just a nostalgia thing - to this day I'm still surprised by the amazing soundtracks found in those games(and those tracks are looong too!). They created a unique atmosphere in Dragon Spirit and Saber that is hard to find in this genre. Not to mention that Dragon Spirit is THE iconic "Dragon Shmup" out there, classic status.
Also, I do really like what they did with the famicom port, if you want to call it that. More like an alternate version.

As for Dangerous Seed, always played the arcade version in the past and just recently hunted down the mega drive copy; boy was I disappointed. The Arcade version is already easy enough, but on the megadrive the game is almost sleep-inducing. It just doesn't work. Add the typical shoddy-port features in the graphics&sound department to it and you have garbage.

Xevious is Xevious. Love it, hate it - doesn't change its big contribution to the genre.

Fond memories of Metal Hawk too. I really need to play this one again, but It probably just isn't the same in mame.

[lgb]

Is it Nebulasray or Nebula's Ray?

seems to be the one word like dariusburst

There also is a game which I thought was kind of a sequel to F/A - hmm, can't find it now. Came out around 1994 I think.

the only game I can think of is uh nebulasray

This necro Pac-Man thing in Baraduke freaks me out.

I'M YOUR FRIENDO

[Obiwanshinobi]

Not THAT one. This one:

[ToiletKid77]

Baraduke is alot of fun and has a creepy atmosphere. The PSX Namco Museum 5 has a weird little commerical for it hidden somewhere. The evil Pac-Man's name is "Bagan" if I remember correctly.