Collateral Damage in Shmups

[genjuro]

I've always been fascinated by the collateral damage you do in shmups while trying to destroy the evil enemy and save the world. I mean there's always some environmental destruction going on (buildings filled with powerups, tank closets, etc.) but some games seem to have you breaking an awful lot of eggs to make the world-saving omelet.

I thought it would be interesting to list all the of the scenes in shmups that we could think of that involve doing seemingly unnecessary damage to innocent people and things. Here's what i can think of right now...

Dodonpachi
Kind of the classic example in my mind. I think it's the third or fourth level. Before you engage the enemy you fly over a highway filled with traffic, and you can destroy the civilians' cars and trucks with your death machine. Imagine you're just driving along on the interstate, trying to get your family out of town to safety after this huge fucking air battle starts going on overhead, and the one guy the whole world is counting on to stop the evil onslaught happens along and just fucking incinerates you arbitrarily. War is hell i guess. The interesting thing about this one is that you could choose to just fly over the highway without firing your weapons, and spare the lives of all those innocent people, but we just fuckin destroy all of them anyway everytime.

Aero Fighters / Sonic Wings
Not sure if it's the first game, or the Special version or whatever, but there's a crazy amount of mass murder of civilians in their cars. I just played it a few days ago, and I blew up like 30 buses. And there's no way to really avoid it here. Like in order for your weapons to be powerful enough to take on the enemy, your stray bullets have to just fuck up every car on the road. How does one measly pilot manage to save the world from an insurmountable enemy onslaught? Apparently by murdering anyone dumb enough to be on the streets.

Batrider
Shitloads of collateral damage in this game. Parked cars, moving cars, buildings, etc. Nothing is safe. Seems to make more sense here though. It is Violent City after all. You should probably have moved away if you didnt want to get murdered by flying race cars or whatever. Plus, there are semi trucks that have turrets hiding in their trailers, so some preemptive destruction of vehicles is acceptable.

Anyway, add any other examples you can think of...

[rancor]

Only one I can think of at the moment:

Battle Garegga
On stage two there are two opportunities to make the innocent suffer. First off we have the infamous birds in the trees - live and let live? Nah - light up as many of 'em as you can for an extend. Second part is where the tanks are rolling through the village. Should you intervene and save some poor civilian from being homeless? You could, but you're not going to get any extra points that way - you gotta wait until the tank treads are rolling over the roof before you smoke 'em. For extra points, of course.

[ciox]

ESP Ra De
Right before the boss in Shopping Mall at Night, you can quickly blow up some moving cars to show how much of a fuck you don't give, orrr it might allow you to continue a chain, I'm not good enough at this game yet to tell. This doesn't really repeat itself in the game, unless solar panels count.

Kinda thinking about it, all the extra cars in Dodonpachi and other games might be there to help you keep chaining, so you're pretty compelled to blow them up.

[azinth]

You can kill the fairies that are released in the Raiden Fighters games if you don't watch where you're shooting. In Jet, you can even perform some really valuable bonus chains by releasing and slaughtering them at the right moment ;_;

[drunkninja24]

Raiden

I'm sure all the townfolk appreciate it when you set off a bomb in the middle of their town.

[Op Intensify]

You can kill innocent people driving down the freeway in the first stage of Last Resort for some minor points.

Twin Eagle 2: The Rescue Mission has tons of buildings, parking lots and the like for you to raze that have nothing to do with the opposing force. It even ties into your score multiplier.

I think the ultimate example would be blowing up the World Trade Center in Aero Fighters 2.

[Observer]

You want Collateral Damage? I will give you Collateral Damage! *raises baseball bat like Governator*

Welcome to Violent City!

RayStorm is pretty much the epitome of this: you fight through dozens of landscapes only to end up in a space colony where they fiercely try to defend against your attacks and, ultimately you end up destroying the entire motherfucking place, killing like several dozens of millions of people in the process. Talk about genocide.

Touhou lets you gently murder millions of fairies who just happened to pass by. Jets 'n' Guns let you kill a bunch of vehicles and people too.

Can't think of more now but the upcoming Heaven Variant is definitely going to put this feature in the front.

[Jeneki]

Wasn't it Aero Fighters 2 where you can shoot the statue of liberty and the world trade center? For some reason I don't think we'll see that in any new games.

Raiden

That's probably my favorite for trashing the scenery, especially the second one. Every time a plane crashes it takes out a clump of trees or half a building, sending shrapnel flying everywhere. So much awesome destruction.

[nZero]

Raiden

I'm sure all the townfolk appreciate it when you set off a bomb in the middle of their town.

They've got it even worse in Raiden II with the fully destructible backgrounds. Also Raiden has the sports cars speeding across the bridge to destroy for points.

[KAI]

Raiden 2 stage destruction is art.

[genjuro]

Working Raiden II in MAME would be so amazing...will it ever happen?

I hate having to play the psx version to see that awesome destruction.

[genjuro]

Also, i LOVE when shmups have big planes that take damage then fall out of the sky. It looks so cool. Scaling effects of any kind are cool, but that is the best use of them.

Shienryu has good planes falling out of the sky effects too, IIRC.

[Drum]

Been playing Strike Force http://gamesdbase.com/game/arcade/strike-force.aspx and there is a fair amount of civillian murder there, though you're *supposed* to save them. It's very easy, and hilarious, to incinerate them with your rocket fire when trying to pick them up as the game is so hectic. I guess that's why your strike commandos are there to pick them up.

[Jeneki]

doing seemingly unnecessary damage to innocent people

I play Dangun Feveron that way. Screw the disco men, have a nice journey floating off into space. If your 1cc score has more than four digits, you fail.

[Obiwanshinobi]

In Raiden III (possibly other Raidens as well) there's a car on the highway in stage 1 you can shoot for extra points.

[dunpeal2064]

Raiden 2 stage destruction is art.

True dat!

Shooting Love 200X has a little grouping of cows you can shoot. Under Defeat has a lot of unnecessary destruction too.

[Ed Oscuro]

Sengeki Striker sort-of has collateral damage. Anybody playing the game for score right now (as they should!) knows what I mean.

A better example are the little vignettes in various Toaplan games, arguably, like the doofus who crashes a plane in Fire Shark.

You can prevent lots of house destruction in Battle Garegga and Raiden Fighters, so I guess you could say it's "collateral damage" if you choose to sacrifice them.

There's plenty of buildings to destroy in Master of Weapon (and many people noticed that the game start says it's September 11, 20XX or something like that).

Nichibutsu's 1987 "vertizontal" game Terra Force lets you put gigantic holes into most of the landscape at will.

Even more directly topical:

Twin Cobra II (Takumi) - after the first stage, a car shoots over the broken edge of a freeway bridge and splashes into the water after the bridge is destroyed by the crashing enemy plane
In The Hunt - I'll teach you train-riding bastards to cheer and wave when I'm around!

[mesh control]

You can ignore civilians in Prehistoric Isle II and hope they get eaten by velociraptors.

[trap15]

A better example are the little vignettes in various Toaplan games, arguably, like the doofus who crashes a plane in Fire Shark.

I think that's by far my favorite little detail thing in any STG. You take off and some idiot crashes a plane right next to you

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Mushi Futari's 4th and 5th levels are basically both towns that are part of Palm's country that get razed as a result of the war his mother, the psychotic Queen Larsa, started with the insects (for completely the wrong reasons, convinced Reco murdered her other son Aki when he actually gave up his life willingly to save Reco). Palm literally begs everyone to stop fighting and realize that his mother's been deceiving them at the stage 5 midboss, though you're encouraged to destroy lanterns and buildings to get a huge number of points and the 1UP. Most of the game consists of killing innocent insects/dragons that are involved in a stupid war that should have never begun in the first place. Rather tragic, really.

In Mystic Square, during the last attack phase of the final boss fight the background changes to show burning buildings, an entire Makai city set ablaze as a result of the fighting.

[Austin]

Tiger Heli. You blow the rooves off who knows how many houses in that game.

[apatheticTurd]

Hydorah has a bunch of civilian building in the 2nd (?) level and IIRC, it actually deducts points if you destroy them

[powersoul]

Star force. You break gazillions of pods in space, even one of Cleopatra images, not to mention the game takes place in space, so expect the tab to be astronomical (no space pun intended)

[Gespenst]

IIRC in the very first part of the first level of R-Type Delta, you can also destroy some hopeless civilian cars.

In R-Type Final, you can destroy some buildings in stage 3.

[Ed Oscuro]

Thundercade - it's all dbout demolishing stuff. The Twin Eagle games (especially #2) have more destruction than Blast Corps / Dozer. Seta shmups in general like destructible scenery ("gardening by helicopter")