The WORST Shooter you have ever played...

[stryc9]

There is nothing wrong with Gates of Zendocon. NOTHING.

Have you played it recently?

Yes.

Well then I guess there's no accounting for taste.

[Kollision]

horrid piece of shit called Magmax
(...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBS8GJKjBqI

OMG, another NES shmup!
They keep popping up like bunnies!!!!

[lgb]

(SNK was so fucking horrible on the NES)

Iron Tank and the NES version of Guevara weren't bad at all. Bad ports can generally be blamed on Micronics, and even today people play the shit out of GnG NES.

Let's not forget Japan, home of Touhou and *spit* Cave.

...what?

[indutrial]

(SNK was so fucking horrible on the NES)

Iron Tank and the NES version of Guevara weren't bad at all. Bad ports can generally be blamed on Micronics, and even today people play the shit out of GnG NES.

To be fair, I really liked Baseball Stars a lot when I was younger. Iron Tank is a nice-looking game, but it makes me lose my patience whenever I try it. I'll usually stick it back on the shelf and play Jackal to regain my composure (and sense of fun). The SNK games that are really burned into my memory in a bad way are the Ikari Warriors ports I've tried. I'm not sure how the arcade versions are, but the NES games are junk.

[Herr Schatten]

anything made in Europe

(nothing personal, guys)

While there's a ton of crap shmups from Europe, and some of them easily qualify as the worst shmups ever, there are a still a few gems worth playing. (Apidya, Z-Out, Uridium 2, Katakis (C64 version), to name but a few.) Even if you don't count them among the best of the genre, your above statement is too broad a generalization. On the same assumption basis I could look at Curse and X-Dazedly Ray (which are, in fact, two of the worst shooters I've ever played) and state that Japanese shmups in general are the worst of their kind.

[Alec44]

X-Dazedly Ray !

this one amazes every time i try to play with....
and divine sealing as well


And for the "euro shmups"...........just give me some good "USA shmup" for fun !
-desert strike
-urban strike
-jungle strike
-call of duty modern warfare

"generalization", who ? me ?

[lgb]

To be fair, I really liked Baseball Stars a lot when I was younger. Iron Tank is a nice-looking game, but it makes me lose my patience whenever I try it. I'll usually stick it back on the shelf and play Jackal to regain my composure (and sense of fun). The SNK games that are really burned into my memory in a bad way are the Ikari Warriors ports I've tried. I'm not sure how the arcade versions are, but the NES games are junk.

Yep, the first two are dumb Micronics. I think SNK hired some other dev for stuff like Iron Tank, Ikari III, etc.

[bulletcurtain]

I apologize if this has already been mentioned, but I thought that the XBLA game "1942: Joint Strike" was really awful. Apparently the game got some ok reviews, but I get the impression that the reviewers haven't played a shmup since the original 1942. Another recent game that I was really disappointed with was "Cho Aniki Zero" on PSP. Usually graphics aren't a big deal for me, but that game looked pretty terrible. Even the overall art design felt weak, at least IMO.

[Shatterhand]

anything made in Europe

(nothing personal, guys)

While there's a ton of crap shmups from Europe, and some of them easily qualify as the worst shmups ever, there are a still a few gems worth playing. (Apidya, Z-Out, Uridium 2, Katakis (C64 version), to name but a few.) Even if you don't count them among the best of the genre, your above statement is too broad a generalization. On the same assumption basis I could look at Curse and X-Dazedly Ray (which are, in fact, two of the worst shooters I've ever played) and state that Japanese shmups in general are the worst of their kind.

I was playing Uridium 2 yesterday for some random reason after years of not touching it.

Boy, I had forgotten how this game is EXTREMELY AWESOME indeed. It's so fast-paced and frenetic and lotsafun.

And of course, Apidya.

[indutrial]

I apologize if this has already been mentioned, but I thought that the XBLA game "1942: Joint Strike" was really awful. Apparently the game got some ok reviews, but I get the impression that the reviewers haven't played a shmup since the original 1942.

Why the hell did that game even have to come out.....as if Backbone Entertainment hasn't done enough dirty work towards helping Microsoft make XBLA look like a shitstained American arcade full of the same games that have been ported over and spit-shined ten million times since the advent of CD-based gaming. Any grouping of titles that keeps Ikaruga at the top of the pile amounts to a fucking epic shame.

[sunburstbasser]

I've been on a Taito kick lately. While they did release some awesome stuff over the years, they also put out Dr. Toppel's Tankentai which maybe I just don't understand, but I think it really is a bad game.

[Horacechin]

I hate Giga wing

[Illyrian]

Radiant Silvergun.

IMO it's the most overrated piece of crap that's ever been made. The weapon system is interesting but it focusses way too much on avoiding the terrain around you.

It's also far far too long, and after all of this ridiculous crappy platforming you fight all the way to the final boss who uses bullet patterns comparable to the easy difficulty patterns in a touhou game.

A massive letdown, the support of which I cannot understand in the slightest. Utter, utter trash.

It also looks absolutely arse, even for a game released in 1998 and the graphical design is unbelievably bland.

[ChainsawGuitarSP]

Genesis port of Twin Cobra. I tried to like it, but it's just such a mess compared to the arcade version.

[Kollision]

Twin Cobra on the MD is awesome. Definitely the most underrated shooter for the system.

[ave]

It sounds and looks good, but the playability is horrible compared to about any other version of the game. I played the PCE-Game a lot but couldn't get used to the MD's flaws. I died to many times because of unfair situations, situations that would have never occured in the PCE/Arcade version of the game.

[Kollision]

It's indeed tougher than other versions.
But IMO it's not broken, horrible or *bad* in any way.

[Naglfar]

I love this thread. Nobody pays attention to the title.

[BPzeBanshee]

Battle Garegga, of course.



1942: Joint Strike was in my opinion good idea, poor execution. Tyrian isn't nearly as bad as what people say it is, and neither was Broken Thunder (problem lying in being half-finished and made by a programmer under an impression he was doing bullet-hell but Thunder Force). Baryon (not the arcade version which Haze recently got working in MAME) was worser still.

Actually I think the worst one was that "secret Dodonpachi 4th loop" that showed up here in April, if that even counts.

-desert strike
-urban strike
-jungle strike

Jungle Strike is the best one out of the series. Just don't bother with the PC versions, avoid Desert Strike if you dont like seeing sand over and over again, and know that Urban Strike has inferior music to Jungle Strike which rocks. Nonetheless, these are NOT bad shooters by any means.

Ey, Sölder-X is quite awesome. On a related note, what about american shmups? The only decent ones I can think of is Tyrian and Raptor.

Phoenix by Taito is pretty good for its time, and was developed by American developers at Phoenix, Arizona. Hard as nails as far as I'm concerned though.

[Zeron]

shitshmup the flash game

[Observer]

I mentioned before somewhere else but for the worst of the worst, I think Prötothea and Razor2 Hidden Skies compete for the first place. One being a terrible Xevious clone with inertia and bad controls (with pretty much 2 music tracks for 8 loooong stages) that has enemies attacking offscreen half of the time. The Wii port being the worst offender of all. The PC one is barely passable. The other being a god awful attempt at copying RayStorm but failing in all fronts aside from customization. Terrible enemy waves and placement (they have like 3-4 wave patterns repeating over and over, forget of the finesse and stylish waves of Ether Vapor or Alltynex2nd and, obviously, RayStorm+RayCrisis), bad sound, generic enemies and bosses, unavoidable flak, repetitive patterns, choppy performance, this is a disgrace to brazilian devs and what makes it worse, the guys disappeared after the release. Not even worth the $2.50 it was during the Steam summer sale. And I bought it god dammit! Razor2 probably has part of the fault of Valve not wanting more vertical shooters as well. The other half being their animu-weeaboo hatred.

ARGH! Terrible, terrible. Even some of the most awful doujin ones play better than these two! The worst is that Razor2 looks somewhat decent at a first glance but once your start playing, the illusion falls down so soundly that you can hear the noises in the moon.

[louisg]

http://www.pcengine.co.uk/HTML_Games/Rock_On.htm

[Skykid]

I love this thread. Nobody pays attention to the title.

Shouldn't bump this one anyway, bump this one so I can update it.

[Emuser]

Gotta say Protothea as well. I feel deep remorse to those who actually bought it and kept getting sniped by enemies off screen and having to restart over and over.

[jp]

Planet Joker.

The full extent of that jam isn't realized until you get to the final boss and the camera angle changes. So for the final two battles the camera is behind your mech, but the game is still controlling like a top-down shooter.

So you're basically sitting there for 40 or so minutes thinking, "Can this possibly get any worse?" and then, somehow, it does.

Pictures in the review:
http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=21020

1CCing that game was just painful.

On a different note, I truly envy those who said things like Blast Wind and Radiant Silvergun. It must be incredible to have only played shmups of higher caliber than those for your entire life. At the same time, I somewhat pity your lack of adventurous spirit. Sometimes ya just gotta try the Planet Jokers and Terra Cresta 3Ds so that you can appreciate... well, almost everything else.

Though for RS, have you only played like, 3 other shmups in your life? And just happen to have Ketsui, Batsugun, and Battle Garegga as those other 3?

[Illyrian]

Planet Joker.

The full extent of that jam isn't realized until you get to the final boss and the camera angle changes. So for the final two battles the camera is behind your mech, but the game is still controlling like a top-down shooter.

So you're basically sitting there for 40 or so minutes thinking, "Can this possibly get any worse?" and then, somehow, it does.

Pictures in the review:
http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=21020

1CCing that game was just painful.

On a different note, I truly envy those who said things like Blast Wind and Radiant Silvergun. It must be incredible to have only played shmups of higher caliber than those for your entire life. At the same time, I somewhat pity your lack of adventurous spirit. Sometimes ya just gotta try the Planet Jokers and Terra Cresta 3Ds so that you can appreciate... well, almost everything else.

Though for RS, have you only played like, 3 other shmups in your life? And just happen to have Ketsui, Batsugun, and Battle Garegga as those other 3?

Radiant Silvergun is crap, for the reasons given in my previous post.

If you saw the number of xbox games and games i have on MAME you'd know I've played for than 3 shooters. Also I 1CC'd radiant silvergun and it was a painful experience in tedium, so I'd say I was as adventurous as I could be with that game.

[Zeron]

I can't comprehend how someone can find Radiant Silvergun to be the worst shooter ever, hell i dont even like the damn game but to trash talk its visuals is just silly you can do so much worse then Radiant silvergun its not even funny.

[Skykid]

Radiant Silvergun.

IMO it's the most overrated piece of crap that's ever been made. The weapon system is interesting but it focusses way too much on avoiding the terrain around you.

It's also far far too long, and after all of this ridiculous crappy platforming you fight all the way to the final boss who uses bullet patterns comparable to the easy difficulty patterns in a touhou game.

A massive letdown, the support of which I cannot understand in the slightest. Utter, utter trash.

It also looks absolutely arse, even for a game released in 1998 and the graphical design is unbelievably bland.

Jesus Christ, what madness is this. You and I will be having some debate next I'm in Casino.

I think Ruperth put it quite succinctly at the shmup meet: Radiant Silvergun defies nearly all conventions, yes, so more power to it! There are a thousand shmups that are all generally similar, if you want to play one of those there's no lack of choice.
I would rather applaud a developer/director for trying to be original than cut them down for not following tried and tested routines.

RSG is a sublime piece of work (and probably the most impressive looking 2.5D shmup ever) so no more of this nonsense, y'hear!

[Siren2011]

Aye, this is like when precious wee Ocarina of Time fans call The Wind Waker "the worst game ever". There's no sense of historical perspective.

All the Zelda games are awful (I'll explain why in a second), but Wind Waker remains to this day the one with the most sublime aesthetics.

As for why it's a stinker to everyone who isn't a child (and it is enjoyable to children, only because we were easily impressed back then), they added a feature that makes traveling with Epona seem like a luxury. I am of course speaking of the mundane sailing. Though they correct this later in the game with the Ballad of Wind (island warp), it's a huge drag getting there thanks to bosses that only take like five powerful jumping sword attacks or ten regular sword attacks to destroy, and enemies which pose very little challenge. Satisfaction-wise, it's like popping a mini muffin back when you could be having a succulent beef fajita meal. Plus, as with any Zelda game, the freakin' hearts and fairies nullify most of the challenge. Of course you could ignore the hearts and attempt to play without them, but the game is still boring as fuck compared to Ninja Gaiden on Xbox (think about it: Link can't slice from above, or have an obliteration technique, or jump on an enemy's head whimsically throwing a shuriken at it with grace. In other words, Zelda is restricting to what you can and cannot do in comparison. A greater variety of moves, so long as there are plenty of situations in the game which call for each one in a meaningful way, mean greater depth.). So why would you?

Anyone who has had prolonged exposure to the best games ever (especially those belonging to the genre this forum was made for!) should spit on games of this nature. I played Ocarina of Time a couple nights ago, just to see if that fight with Gannondorf/Gannon was still as difficult as I remember. LOL was the result. And the game looks like shit, too.

/Off topic rant.

[jp]

Also I 1CC'd radiant silvergun and it was a painful experience in tedium

And I'm sure you have a picture and a score to back this up. Because RS isn't something you casually pick up and 1CC, it takes a good bit of practice and dedication to pull that off.

Personally, I wouldn't spend much time trying to 1CC a game I did not like. My 1CCs of things like Planet Joker only took a couple of runs, but there's a reason I haven't 1CC'd many Cave games (maybe one or two).