easy shooters to play with your casual gaming friends

[BuckoA51]

I'm looking for some more easy as pie shooters to play in local co-op. The benchmark title at the moment is the PC shareware game Warblade (http://www.warblade.as/index.asp). Playing this shooter with some trance music on is actually quite relaxing. Are there any other similar games to this?

[njiska]

Not similar to it, but I find Mushi Futari's Novice mode is great for playing with your casual friends. Basically it's just an easier version of the main game with less bullets in all modes and auto-bomb. Great introductory game as it allows a casual player to have fun and to ramp up if they decide they really want to learn it. Plus Mushi has some great visuals and music that's quit appealing.

[gennss]

Gunbird 2 was pretty comfy as a newbie.

[louisg]

I like the two DC helicopter shmups. They're not too hard, not too crazy, and are crowd pleasers. Strikers 1945 II is pretty cool 2p also, and you can set the difficulty way down on that one (and all the Psikyos actually).

[Ed Oscuro]

Task Force Harrier beckons you

You should also play Giga Wing / Mars Matrix, they good

Major Stryker

[ShmupSamurai]

Gunbird 2 is definatly a good start for newcomers.

I remember it being the first "maniac" shmup I ever played

[BuckoA51]

Some good suggestions and thank you everyone, but when I said easy, I meant VERY easy, I think Gunbird 2 would be too hard, Giga Wing and Mars Matrix are WAY to hard for what I'm looking for.

I think the helicopter one louisg means on the Dreamcast is Zero Gunner, I really like that one and it is pretty easy, maybe I'll try that, what I really want is something we can sit down to and play for a half hour or more, most of the Jap shooters are very much quick play/repeat and improve, not what casual players like sadly.

[MathU]

R-Type Leo

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

Old faithful, Gradius Gaiden.

[chempop]

Dodonpachi DOJ



On no bullet mode of course

[Kollision]

Not similar to it, but I find Mushi Futari's Novice mode is great for playing with your casual friends.

Seconded.

Also, great for co-op fun:
- on PSN: Heavy Weapon, Söldner-X 2 - Final Prototype and borderliner Pixeljunk Shooter.
- on XBLA: Heavy Weapon, Aegis Wing and Shoot 1UP.

[evil_ash_xero]

DeathSmiles. Just choose the 1 path, and it'll be a breeze.

[BuckoA51]

DeathSmiles. Just choose the 1 path, and it'll be a breeze.

I think you guys over-estimate my friends, I did get one of them to play through Cotton 2 with me on the Saturn, but probably never again

[clp]

giga wing is brilliant 2 player , you really get a decent co op experience learning to time your reflect barrier one after the other or at seperate times .

[Domino]

Task Force Harrier beckons you

Fuck no.....

[MathU]

Blast Works is really easy AND it supports up to 4 players.

[t0yrobo]

Second on Zero Gunner 2, getting through the first couple levels shouldn't be to difficult for most people on coop. There's a ton of difficulty levels if I remember right.

[agustusx]

I think Cannon Spike would work, its like Zero Gunner 2 in the sense you get to set the difficulty to BABY if you really want to.

It's the old school version of Novice

[BuckoA51]

Oh Blastworks that's a good idea, also Zero Gunner I haven't actually tried on the really easy setting, ta for all the suggestions I'll look into them

[Nick420]

Harmful park. Has loads of dificulty levels. Starting at very easy try that 1 its great. Mite take a while to get used to the powering up/switching weapons mechanic tho :-/

[Zetzumarshen]

Of course Change Air Blade! I had a good time with my friend cornering him into walls then blasting him using afterburner!

[ED-057]

Sengoku Bla(e)de should be a good one, with easy difficulty mode and optional credit feeding. Also there is some cute dialog depending on which characters are being played.

[captpain]

Just don't play shmups with your friends unless they're mega-nerds who want to play the good stuff.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Me and my pal who isn't "retro" had a good time playing Raiden III on a PC. It's not an easy game (maybe "arcade easy"), but doesn't look all that hard (unlike most recent shmups which look harder than they are). If this won't work for your people, maybe shmups just aren't their thing.

[BuckoA51]

Me and my pal who isn't "retro" had a good time playing Raiden III on a PC. It's not an easy game (maybe "arcade easy"), but doesn't look all that hard (unlike most recent shmups which look harder than they are). If this won't work for your people, maybe shmups just aren't their thing.

Well see my friend absolutely loves that Warblade game, so much that he always wants to play it and I'm kinda getting bored of it. I have tried with other shooters but nothing hits the spot just quite the same, I'll try some of everyone's suggestions though

[Aguraki]

parodius games and star parodia(does it have 2 players?) are fun and friendly.

[Slump]

I'll throw in my vote for the Giga Wing duo. Especially the second one, my friends seem to get a kick at the overall absurdness of it (ie. score, medals, story, etc.) It's just fun to fool around with as even I really only play the first one if I'm looking to play for score.

[Veran]

Definitely *NOT* Gunbird 1 or 2. This game kicked my ass up and down the street when I was getting into SHMUPS a couple months ago. The same night I started with Mushihimesama, so much easier. Incidentally, starting on easy is a *bad* option on the PS2 version, I found, when I was still playing on novice I had to turn the difficulty up to at least Hard to do any good O.O

Then again, casual gaming friends either get it or they don't. Most people don't want to play levels over to learn basic parts of patterns, or don't think they could ever be any good at the genre.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

The Raiden games are always good to play with 2 players, one player collects the red power ups and the other player the blue or purple.
I would love to play co-op DDP. Change air blade or even Twinkle star sprites.

BTW Ive yet to try out Kaillera or simlar programes for playing local emulated games as online co-op. Are these programmes any good? do they lag badly? and which are the best programmes / emulators to use? as i know Mame doesnt support online co-op (Ive always wondered why the Mame devs are Kaillera haters)

[MathU]

If you want to play arcade games online you need either MAME32k or MAME++. MAME++ has a lot more features and game support, but it often desyncs playing shoot 'em ups (you can play games with really few random factors, like In The Hunt, just fine though). MAME32k is based on a very old version of MAME, but it has much stabler netcode, so it rarely desyncs. The problem is it doesn't emulate some games very well, or not at all, like the Raiden Fighters series.