Why shmups are such a niche genre

[david peterson]

Been reading this thread a little while now, debating if its even worth it to say anything.

The issues with the current Shmups and the industry:

• Since when has any Shmup got any real promotion? The NES and SNES barely promoted shmups back in the day, and sadly people are sheep.
• Most shmups lack interesting stories in this day and age. Start making shmups that have deeper stories to keep people interested.
• Make the Pilots interesting, show lots of they character in play. Put a human face on that ship.
• Make enemies that are looking to start a fight. Have them hail them like in Star Trek. Give them some one liners to say. Make them a jerk all the way.
• Ok cut the anime out! Most in the USA are playing FPS cause they look real. Time to give the same faceleft to Shumups.

God no dont ever propose your ideas to developers , shmups with extensive stories? da fuuu the last thing i want in my skill driven adrenaline pursuit is to be paused and sent out of flow but god damn stories . Make shmups realistic!! bullet hell can never look realistic thats part of the attraction , the escapism the above reality idea of against all odds.

[doctorx0079]

Points 2 3 and 4 have already been done in Gunbird 2. And Gunbird 2 does them exactly right too. Go play it RIGHT NOW.

[Obiwanshinobi]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLpO9yvMFiw

[Kollision]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLpO9yvMFiw

oh nooooooo the horrooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

[Estebang]

Most in the USA are playing FPS cause they look real

Explain the widespread American popularity of Borderlands and Team Fortress 2, my good sir.

[Drum]

Most in the USA are playing FPS cause they look real

Explain the widespread American popularity of Borderlands and Team Fortress 2, my good sir.

Wellllllll he did add 'most' as a wishy-washy get-out-of-jail-free qualifier, so a couple of counterexamples aren't going to cut it. Of course he's waaaaaay off anyway - the shmup genre is very abstract and that's a strength, not a weakness. But because of that I think people shouldn't expect more than the occasional breakout hit - there is still a big market for abstract games and FPS are by no means the closest analogue to shmups (it's odd to see that resentment/envy come up so often on the board when they have so little in common). My question is: Where are these breakout hits? No reason shmups can't have their own Peggle/Plants vs Zombies/Braid/Limbo/Trials HD/Super Meat Boy/New Super Mario Bros etc. I think a massive part of the problem is how incestuous the genre has become - not just catering to a handful of players, but pandering to them. It's fine that there are games that do this of course, but that's practically all there is that's coming out. There are a ton of cool ideas and stuff, but they're pretty narrowly focussed.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, there have been a few breakout hits. Geometry Wars, Espgaluda ... I'm guessing Ikaruga did well on XBLA.

EDIT 2: Bah, I'm probably just repeating observations that have already been made, teach me to be late to the thread.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Tumiki Fighters and Gunroar are kind of known outside of the ghetto. Kind of. Maybe Warning Forever too. Most recent shooters by Jeff Minter got noticed as well. Sadly there are people out there who REFUSE to give Gridrunner Revolution a go BECAUSE it ended up as a PC exclusive. Funnily enough, Gridrunner Revolution is clearly designed with mouse controls in mind (no pun intended) and the demo couldn't have made it any clearer.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Personally I think its almost impossible for a shmup to become a runaway hit atm, Allot has to do with the fact that theres no real mainstream marketing, no hype and no reviewers and fellow gamers telling everyone X shmup is going to be a must buy game. Still imo the profile of shmups is slowly getting better, and there been less shmups suck reviews and more half decent and slightly better informed reviews about simple gameplay mechanics.

Im not to sure whats brought about this change but if I was to guess I would say its ppl from this forum and the wider shmup community who buy making threads like this and commenting on bad reviews that some gaming sites are starting to realise the error of their ways. Plus sites like shmup theory (Great blog I hope the auther returns to writing for it) and fan reviews have helped aswell. Hopefully if more quality AAA shmups are released in the west we might start to see a few of the more high profile game jounalists become shmup fans who will start to create a buzz about new games and tell all the sheep that its a must buy game. (Still it doesnt help when western released shooters are few and far between.)

It would be great if we could get Jim Stirling into the shmup cult but unfortunatly due to him having the gaming skills of a 5 year old he only like easy games

[drunkninja24]

Yeah, I feel like the reviews I see now, even if they tend to be light and a bit misinformed sometimes, generally try a lot harder than in the past. I mean, we've gone from IGN giving Gigawing a 4.5 because "this game is impossible" to several sites giving great reviews to Deathsmiles and Guwange. I think things are getting better, but I don't think the shmup community will ever see a game that just makes the whole shmup market explode like say, SF4 did for the fighting game community.

[Despatche]

Ikaruga was the closest you can get to that.

...Notice how the communities behind those games seem to dislike both at times?

[BPzeBanshee]

Speaking of characters, all I can say is: Sonic Wings series.

I should get that game, just for the dolphin.

[Drum]

Spanky should get his own spinoff.
Hey, maybe if they put it on Facebook it could be a mainstream hit! I'm thinking: pay real money for power-ups that in true Sonic Wings style power down after a while. Fiendish.

[Taylor]

Alienating your existing audience is never a good move.

[Drachenherz]

As long as there are companies and/or free-lance programmers/doujin-programmers which still produce high quality shmups, I don't see it as a problem that shmups are a niche genre.

Personally, I like the shumps just as they are. I love them because you can play them for a short period of time, or hours and hours on a session. I love the steep difficulty, the challenge that they offer. I love the deep and intricate scoring systems.

Innovations are a good thing, but as has been mentioned in this very thread before, you cannot simply change things which are defined by genre conventions. Shooting, dodging, surviving, scoring and memorizing some parts - those are the basic fundamentals a shmup MUST fulfill, otherwise it wouldn't be a shmup for me anymore - IMHO.

Giving up those fundamental elements of a shmup in order to cater to a larger audience... I think that would be shooting oneself in the knee. Yeah, maybe such a game would draw in new players and open up the genre for a larger, non-niche audience.

But would those still be games deserving of the name "shmup"? And would those people drawn in by such a non-niche game really like the "classical", genre-abiding shmups? Or would they suddenly be appaled, seeing what a "real" shmup is, thinking like "Oh, this game XXX was soooo cool, I didn't know that shmups were so cool! I want to try another shmup... *pops in Espgaluda II* Oh Eff this, that's not a shmup, how can you even play this? It's so hard! It has no story! It just constantly rapes me until my ass is torn apart!"


Trying to change the fundamentals of a genre, that simply cannot work.

Yeah, just my 2 Rappen...

[devilmanozzy]

God no dont ever propose your ideas to developers , shmups with extensive stories? da fuuu the last thing i want in my skill driven adrenaline pursuit is to be paused and sent out of flow but god damn stories . Make shmups realistic!! bullet hell can never look realistic thats part of the attraction , the escapism the above reality idea of against all odds.

Stop proving why shmups are a niche genre. This is why new ideas are not happening. Most games use a button such as the "X button" to skip a cutscreen. I don't think I need to waste anymore of my time on your BS.

Speaking of characters, all I can say is: Sonic Wings series.

Cool beans.

[david peterson]

God no dont ever propose your ideas to developers , shmups with extensive stories? da fuuu the last thing i want in my skill driven adrenaline pursuit is to be paused and sent out of flow but god damn stories . Make shmups realistic!! bullet hell can never look realistic thats part of the attraction , the escapism the above reality idea of against all odds.

Stop proving why shmups are a niche genre. This is why new ideas are not happening. Most games use a button such as the "X button" to skip a cutscreen. I don't think I need to waste anymore of my time on your BS.

Speaking of characters, all I can say is: Sonic Wings series.

Cool beans.

Cool enjoy your dumbed down easy ass western shmups complete with garbage extras to help you feel the sense of achievement without actually achieving .

[Obiwanshinobi]

This is why new ideas are not happening.

Er, new ideas do appear every now and then: Psyvariar, Warning Forever... Shmups with characters, stories and one-liners are nothing new: Sonic Wings, Mahou Daisakusen, Shikigami no Shiro...

Put a human face on that ship.

Enough faces for you? Just in case YouTube quality didn't make it obvious, faces and masks are omnipresent in that game.

[DragonInstall]

I thought UN squadron was pretty cool for having a visual on your char in the cockpit.

[Despatche]

Cool enjoy your dumbed down easy ass western shmups complete with garbage extras to help you feel the sense of achievement without actually achieving .

even though a lot of "cool" games end up having some semblance of stories/nice characters and pretty darn good extras

ketsui

[david peterson]

Cool enjoy your dumbed down easy ass western shmups complete with garbage extras to help you feel the sense of achievement without actually achieving .

even though a lot of "cool" games end up having some semblance of stories/nice characters and pretty darn good extras

ketsui

Ketsui ftw, the right amount of everything .

[doctorx0079]

um i still like gunbird 2

[Exarion]

I just realized this, but I tend to view scoring as a puzzle. That would probably explain why I like games with ultra complicated scoring systems (ESPGaluda 2), and there are probably other people out there that would do the same thing. Maybe we could draw them in?

[Naryoril]

i admit i'v only read the first bunch of posts, so i don't know what the current topic in this thread acutally is

someone said that one of the issues is that shoot'em ups didn't evolve. i think this isn't true, they eveolved in a manner so the new ones are completely new genres. they went 3D like Star Fox/Lylat Wars but still on a fixed general path and throwing enemy ships at you from the front. and then they went on and removed the rail shooter part and you could move freely, for example the Star Wars: Rogue Squadron series. so imo the 3D space shooters or combat flight games (no idea what those genres are officially called) are an evolution of the shoot'em up genre.

a similar evolution was made by jump'n runs when they moved to 2D and 3D. The 3D ones are clearly an evolution of the 2D ones, but play so fundamentally different that they became their own genre. for a long time there were hardly any 2D jump'n runs anymore because everything was 3D, but recently the genre of 2D jump'n runs is experiencing a rennaisance. not only with the big franchises having 2D entries (New Super Mario Bros. DS and Wii, Donkey Kong Country Retruns, Sonic 4) but also with indie games (because they are much easier and cheaper to program). who knows, maybe the shoot'em ups will have a comeback too. Cave releasing their games on consoles and adding novice modes and the like certainly is a step in the right direction.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

While there is a bit of an rennaisance with many 2D retro genres. Imo many of dev teams behind the games (indie but more so fully commercial projects) in some cases dont seem to be learning everything from the past classics and instead of fully standing on the shoulders of giants and creating games that fully surpass the classics in everyway in both graphics and gameplay. For example the crap noob friendly physics of sonic 4 and the reports that megaman universe controls like shit, it seems that these old genres as an art have taken quite a step back from the standards of the 80s and 90s.

I just hope that this resurgence in 2d games isnt just a short lived fad and in time we can see some trully great games once the current genreation of pro devs have learnt their art.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Reportedly LittleBigPlanet 2 runs at 30 fps. By the power of the Cell, hail the progress of 2D platforming in high profile current gen exclusives.
Now imagine a 2D shooter with high tech, high concept presentation, massive hype, poor framerate and, um, controversial controls. "Input lag is realistic, framerate is cinematic, it was a design decision, the game is immersive..."

[RNGmaster]

Reportedly LittleBigPlanet 2 runs at 30 fps. By the power of the Cell, hail the progress of 2D platforming in high profile current gen exclusives.
Now imagine a 2D shooter with high tech, high concept presentation, massive hype, poor framerate and, um, controversial controls. "Input lag is realistic, framerate is cinematic, it was a design decision, the game is immersive..."

Attempts like this (to water the genre down and make it palatable) are never going to happen in the first place, because the only people who play and make shmups are those who enjoy how they currently are. Besides, no mainstream developer would make a game with the purpose of pandering to the shmup demographic, because they'd lose a lot of players and wouldn't gain that many new fans.

So all the 40 pages bawwwing about attempts to water the genre down and sully its heritage have been kind of pointless, since there really haven't been many games that have ever tried to do that. We buy what we enjoy from the developers, the mainstreamers do the same, and considering how well that works, integration attempts are kind of pointless.

[Obiwanshinobi]

So, anybody keeps playing that 0 day Attack on Earth thing? Wasn't it Square Enix' shot at 2D shooter for people who like their games looking "real" and who don't mind framerates below arcade standards?
They got the explosions right, but as a whole, compared to Zero Gunner 2 or Neo Contra (especially the bossfights) it looks like a step back indeed.
If anything, the likes of Shadowgrounds and Alien Swarm (originally a UT2004 mod, remade for Source recently) prove that developers keep trying to couple 2-dimensional gameplay with quite advanced technologies. The Source version of Alien Swarm isn't even too Brown & Grey™. It'd be surprising if nobody made an auto-scrolling shmup powered by such an engine sooner or later. Say, Tribes spin-off...

[ST Dragon]

So, anybody keeps playing that 0 day Attack on Earth thing? Wasn't it Square Enix' shot at 2D shooter for people who like their games looking "real" and who don't mind framerates below arcade standards?
They got the explosions right, but as a whole, compared to Zero Gunner 2 or Neo Contra (especially the bossfights) it looks like a step back indeed.
If anything, the likes of Shadowgrounds and Alien Swarm (originally a UT2004 mod, remade for Source recently) prove that developers keep trying to couple 2-dimensional gameplay with quite advanced technologies. The Source version of Alien Swarm isn't even too Brown & Grey™. It'd be surprising if nobody made an auto-scrolling shmup powered by such an engine sooner or later. Say, Tribes spin-off...

That 0 day Attack on Earth game looks great! Why does it remind me of Armada on the DC?!....

As for Alien Swarm & Shadow Grounds, they look like Alien Breed on steroids! What it would have evolved to, on a modern day AMIGA computer, if one existed today.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Oh, Team 17 remade Alien Breed for current gen platforms. Looks... greasy, but that's Unreal Engine 3 for you.

[neorichieb1971]

Trying to make mainstream gamers play shmups is like trying to get vegetarians to eat meat.


You might achieve it if you force feed them.