Why is Vimana so often considered Toaplan's worst?

[ChainsawGuitarSP]

Just a passing curiosity. I honestly think the game looks pretty cool, and from what I've seen, there doesn't appear to be any glaring game play flaws to it unlike say... Twin Hawk where you shotgun with the squadron out to win forever pretty much.

[Drum]

No idea. The charge-up-to-shoot-everywhere thing is a bit pointless though. I like the graphics - they automatically put it above their war timey games.

[Damocles]

Probably because it's pretty easy. I personally enjoy it, but don't often come back to it.

[CIT]

I think it's because of the annoying fire mechanics. You gotta mash the button like crazy to get a good fire rate against the bosses, while the charge shot is pretty weak and pointless except maybe for one section in the final stage.

If you play with autofire it's a really fun game, but it becomes very easy.

In that respect it's a bit similar to Irem's Thunder Blaster, which was also based on button hammering, and becomes fun but easy with autofire.

[Despatche]

no idea, and i've never really heard this. game's fun enough, a true HOW LONG CAN YOU STAND moment. now something like zero wing or dogyuun is what i consider to be the "worst", if only because of weird bugs. speaking of which, play around with the speedup button in vimana and have fun~

nope, not daisenpu; yeah i guess it's easy and yeah maybe even a bit short but there's nothing really "broken" in that game; the music could get annoying, but it doesn't bother me because it's also quiet as it's repetitive (e.g. trance-like state), so that's kinda nice. otherwise, dogyuun has one of the best stage 1 themes ever ever ever.

on the topic of lethal thunder blaster, autofire is absolutely necessary.

[Ruldra]

Because it's boring as hell. Autofire makes the game really easy, you'll be looping the game and hoarding lives with little practice. No autofire makes it more challenging but the game is still boring. Just play it yourself and you'll see.

After looping the game 4 times I never touched it again.

[Dave_K.]

Regarding Thunder Blaster, its purposely centered around how fast you can manually tap the fire button, like a Hudson challenge. The game is exhausting, but still fun playing with two players. Using autofire pretty much neuters the game's difficulty and scoring, so IREM made some major revisions to the international version called Lethal Thunder. Its been awhile since I played this, so I may not recall exactly, but the button mashing element was changed, so you only have to tap rapidly to get your fire rate up - and can then hold the button down to maintain (unlike Thunder Blaster). Enemy placement and boss patterns were also changed, making it more difficult, like an arranged version.

[Krimzon Kitzune]

*

[RNGmaster]

Because it's a shitty Magatama. Seriously, Javelin Rain is terrible.
whoops wrong Vimana

On topic, I'd definitely consider Tiger Heli worse than Vimana. Sure Vimana is easy and your weapons are Euroshmup weak, but it's a nice step towards bullet hell.

[DEL]

Ruldra wrote;

Because it's boring as hell. Autofire makes the game really easy, you'll be looping the game and hoarding lives with little practice. No autofire makes it more challenging but the game is still boring. Just play it yourself and you'll see.

After looping the game 4 times I never touched it again.

I totally agree. We looped it for 5 hours and then never touched it again.

[ChainsawGuitarSP]

Because it's boring as hell. Autofire makes the game really easy, you'll be looping the game and hoarding lives with little practice. No autofire makes it more challenging but the game is still boring. Just play it yourself and you'll see.

After looping the game 4 times I never touched it again.

I dunno man... You'd be surprised by how easy I am to please. The only games I thought were a complete waste of time were Darius Twin, Gradius III SNES and Thunder Force III. And I can certainly tell Vimana is no-where near as bad as those. It's still glorious Toaplan after all.

[BulletMagnet]

The charge-up-to-shoot-everywhere thing is a bit pointless though.

This - maybe it's just all the "hold button=focused shot" games I've played, but the opposite setup feels off to me.

[Strider77]

I played it and thought it was pretty boring myself.

[Angry Hina]

As mentioned before: its because most people play it with autofire and degrade huge parts of the whole game to recource (powerups, lifes and bombs) gathering sections for stage 5 and the next/later loops and therefor have to play it for hours with many boring parts in it.

Even though fast shot mini spreads are a good way to play effectively through most sections many are not willing / a bit scared to play a manual shot-game. In the new release (Toaplan Collection) you can configure a slow autofire which can work as semi auto fire rate if you really dont want to tap. (I dropped that after I fugured out, short spreads work a bit better most of the time but I played autofire before so I did not had to learn the stages AND manually tap all the time)

After Playing it for some hours I want to share some thoughts about why this game is really great/or at least noteworthy in my opinion.

- Even though its the last game on Toaplans earlier Arcade Board 1 (Vimana was released in may or june 1991) before switching to the newer Board 2 for the rest of their output (like Dogyuun, Tatsujin Oh, Batsugun), it does many thing which sets it apart from the earlier Toaplan titles and drops many gameplay aspects from the real classical formular ala Kyuukyoku Tiger and Raiden, which Toaplan used as base for their other titles like Tatsujin and Fireshark.
--- like more bullet/shot types (not only just small to medium sized balls flying from A to B)
--- much more (>50?) bullets at once with clearly lowered speed. This is very different froms Toaplans verts before and starts its development from here over Dogyuun, V-Five (>80 bullets?) to Batsugun. So, the often questionable used term semi-Bullet Hell is not that wrong here. At least it starts Toaplans kinda new style between Fireshark and Batsugun.
--- cool Background deformation effekts (at the beginning of stage 2 and stage 3 and the destruction of the giant ship in stage 4). Toaplan never did this before.
--- possibility to use spread and focussed shot in some way without changing weapons through items, which will be the norm for many Danmakus (nearly all of Caves Titles)
--- dropping speed ups like Raiden did. Toaplan started without as well but includet them for Tatsujin and Fireshark, so they thought after Kyuukyoku that speedups are the way to go (wrong !)

- easy to get into, even with manual shots its easier to pick up and have fun than other Toaplan-STGs before
- interesting style and worlds, like Tatsujin had
- good music (sadly the shot sound is too loud and especially anoying with autofire). I really like the ending tune
- dropping checkpoints. Most modern verts don't have chackpoints
- GG Aleste 1 of the same year but released in december probably referenced the stage 5 section where you dive deeper into the bases architecture through massive doors on the ground (two times here, five times in GG Aleste)

[To Far Away Times]

Most of the difficulty comes from trying to stay awake while playing it.

[utsunderthesky]

I wouldn’t call it the worst, but it is definitely not fun to control iirc

[SuperDeadite]

Game is meh,
but the music is GOAT.

[Angry Hina]

Most of the difficulty comes from trying to stay awake while playing it.

So, don't use autofire?

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

Ddn't use autofire, played it for 15 minutes, never want to play it again. Boring.