Searching for a SHMUPS GAME

[minisizekev]

What I Remember from my childhood.

The SHMUPS was a horizontal game.
It was 2 player co-op game, one was a red spaceship and one was a blue spaceship.
There were power ups.

IF I remember anything else i will post. if you have any information please let me know.

[Blackbird]

Do you remember which year (approximately) you played this game?

[minisizekev]

the spaceships kinda look like the ones on stardefender 4. but they were red or blue.
but i know for sure the gameplay was a horizontal shoot em up.
i remember it being on the sega genesis console.

[Drake]

Man, I loved the SHMUPS. I completely forgot it existed, thanks for bringing it up. My brother was the red spaceship all the time but he wasn't very good. I remember there being some enemies. I think they were robots. Wait no, they were aliens.

[minisizekev]

i think they were aliens as well, but it isnt gradius, star defender, or raiden.

i used to play with my brother all the time as well.
we were the red and blue spaceship team.

if there are any co-op or 2 player shmups that come to mind, lemme know.

[RNGmaster]

And he will never post again.

[tinotormed]

Air Buster aka Aero Blasters?

Or lemme guess: Darius 2 aka Sagaia?

[Captain]

Air B/Aero B's player 2 ship is YELLOW!

[minisizekev]

it might have been on pc instead, im not really sure now, after watching a million shmups on youtube trying to find it, my memory is kinda hazy.

it wasnt a split screen 2 player game, it was 2 ships sharing the same screen blasting at enemies.
i dont think there was anything revolving around them like aero blasters.

perhaps 1st player would use keyboard, 2nd player would use mouse?

[Ruldra]

Sounds like Hellfire.

[apatheticTurd]

it might have been on pc instead, im not really sure now, after watching a million shmups on youtube trying to find it, my memory is kinda hazy.

it wasnt a split screen 2 player game, it was 2 ships sharing the same screen blasting at enemies.
i dont think there was anything revolving around them like aero blasters.

perhaps 1st player would use keyboard, 2nd player would use mouse?

... Star Control? Not a shmup, but eh.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

For minisizekev,

After re-reading your post, you narrowed the shmup category to the Genesis platform. That definitely narrows the list of titles to choose from that might "ring a bell" as to finding the proper game title of the long lost shmup game that you & your brother used to play.

Can you remember anymore specific details lilke the mid-stage bosses and/or end-stage bosses? The more details and clues provided to us, the better chance that it will a game that someone already has in his or her Genny shmup collection. To be honest, there really aren't that many Genny horizontal side-scrolling based shmup titles with co-op capability to choose from.

The Genny shmup of Air Buster (that was re-named as Aero Blasters for the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 gaming platform to avoid name infringement in both Japan & the USA) seems to be a dead ringer but the colors of the fightercraft are quite different indeed. Hmmm.....

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[minisizekev]

Eh, it's okay. I've spent enough hours searching the web.

I think Blue Wish Resurrection, Blazing Lazers and DoDonPachi are pretty close.
This site has a good list too http://www.racketboy.com/retro/sega/sat ... d-shooters

Anyone ever play Jamestown? is it any good?

[RNGmaster]

I think Blue Wish Resurrection, Blazing Lazers and DoDonPachi are pretty close.

The SHMUPS was a horizontal game.

MAH BRAIIIIN

[Ruldra]

Dude, did you check Hellfire? I'm sure it's the one.

[minisizekev]

no its not hellfire, the ships are fully colored, not partially. and i dont think you can change colors or shoot all directions.

[BulletMagnet]

You're sure it was horizontal? Whenever I hear "red and blue player ships" I think Raiden, which is vertical...

[emphatic]

How 'bout Salamander?

[Captain]

It's a Darius game.

-Horizontal
-Old
-One red and one blue ship

[BrianC]

I'm a little confused here. Vertical games keep being mentioned, despite asking for horizontal ones. The platform is either Genesis or PC? Aside from red and blue ships, what else do you remember about it? Was the theme serious or cartoony? On Genesis, the horizontal games I know of with red and blue ships are Sagaia (aka Darius II) and Gadget Twins (shumpish, but focuses mainly on melee attacks). Darius II/Sagaia is 2 players for the arcade, but not on Genesis. One other horizontal 2p game on Genesis is Bio Hazard Battle, but that doesn't fit red and blue ships. Ordyne on the arcade and TG-16 also has red and blue ships, if I remember correctly.

edit: Checked Ordyne. Pink and Green, not red and blue. doh!

[damakable]

Eh, it's okay. I've spent enough hours searching the web.

I think Blue Wish Resurrection, Blazing Lazers and DoDonPachi are pretty close.
This site has a good list too http://www.racketboy.com/retro/sega/sat ... d-shooters

Anyone ever play Jamestown? is it any good?

I got Jamestown with the Humble Bundle it was in, meaning I got it for like a dollar. Before that I wasn't willing to take the risk, but now I think it's pretty great. It's a pretty standard 5-stage shmup, and while it's a bit short (I think around 20 minutes from start to finish) it definitely challenges me on the higher difficulties. It's not like it's trying to compete with Mushi Ultra or anything, but it feels like a Cave game on Divine and Judgement difficulties.

Jamestown does a great job of introducing bullet-hell to unfamiliar gamers. It starts by having you play the stages individually to unlock the next one and earn gold for the in-game store, and gives you 3 credits to complete each stage. You don't "level up" or earn better weaponry or anything that forces you to grind before you can play the game properly, the store just forces you to unlock all the ship types and the hardest difficulty level, and I got everything bought pretty quickly. The first thing I got after trying all the ships was Gauntlet mode, which lets you play through the whole game in one sitting, and again you're given 3 credits to do it. So you can't just credit-feed to the end of the higher difficulties, and of course you'll need to 1CC to get on the leader-board. The 4th and 5th stages can only be played on higher difficulties, and Normal difficulty is worthless, so I would say just don't bother going below Legendary.

The scoring system is not terribly deep: basically you should be in Vaunt mode all the time by collecting gold to fill the meter because you deal 50% more damage and get 2x score, and you should keep Vaunt for the whole level to score the best bonus when your chain finally runs out, but if you need a panic bomb you can trigger Vaunt again to end your chain, at which point you need to collect more gold to charge back up again. Triggering Vaunt creates a bubble around you that absorbs bullets, and ending Vaunt does the same but with a smaller bubble. So it's not complicated, but does force you not to use your "bomb" in order to get the best score -- which is one of my favourite mechanics, ever since DoDonPachi.

The ships, on the other hand, are really quite varied and interesting. Each one has two fire buttons. The first ship is like the blue ship from DDP: primary spread shot, secondary laser. The second ship fires one shot straight forward and another that can be aimed with the secondary fire, and seems to be at the top of most of the leader-boards but requires a bit more coordination to use. The third is just a slow, straight-forward shot type of ship, and the 4th is really weird: only shoots straight forwards, but the secondary shot makes all its shots explode.

The DLC adds 3 new ships that also play quite differently (one with a close-range sword secondary fire, one with options you can jettison as explosives...) and one that switches to a random ship type every time it gets hit. Normally I'd say something like "Just new ships? But I'm just going to stick with Type A and B the whole time anyway..." but the ships in Jamestown are interesting enough that you might find it worth it, especially for more fun in multi-player.

There's also an entertaining set of challenges along the lines of surviving for X amount of time or getting a certain score in X amount of time, a couple that are particularly difficult stages, that kind of thing. I'm currently stuck at 19/20 challenges complete to unlock the last 4 bonus levels.

What I'm most happy about is that my gamepad and arcade stick both work well with it; meanwhile the co-op play is actually pretty fun. Everyone has one life, but as long as one player is alive they can collect 1ups to bring their friends back, or simply survive long enough (unless Hardcore Mode is enabled, in which case only the items bring friends back). The challenges also have multiplayer versions (higher scores to beat etc.).

Anyhow, I quite like it. It's definitely not a terrible health-bar-using, inertia-and-physics-puzzles shmup / RPG hybrid. There's obviously a lot of love for traditional arcade shooting behind it. And a lot of the music, like the final boss' theme, is quite catchy. For $10, or $13 with the DLC, I'd say it's worth buying.

[joeks]

+1 for Salamander. Had the cartridge for my MSX2 back in '87.