Non-shmup score threads in here?

[Despatche]

I remember a very very very old thread from a respected member pointing out that it'd be a good idea to put non-shmup score threads either in Off Topic itself, or have a separate subforum right under Off Topic for it. Either way, I'd totally be down with this, and I was wondering if anyone else feels the same way? Support your local Zuma scoreboards!

[Hagane]

I'd love to see a subforum for strategy and scores of other arcade genres.

[KAI]

Rolling Start!!

[Despatche]

Rolling Start's great... for racing games. We need a place for all those games we can't label shmups that tend to go hand in hand with them anyway... for every Galaga, there is a Pac-Man, and so on. We don't really have a place like this anywhere... Arcade Otaku would handle every arcade game but they have even less activity than we do, and I was hoping Restart Syndrome would turn into something for any game but right now its sole purpose is to replace Shmups->Hi Scores wholesale.

Clearly, it needs to be here. On the other hand, the obvious next step is to just duplicate all those shmup subforums but for non-shmup games (Hardware and Trading Station are anything goes already, and Shmupmeets is fine as is), which would probably drive The Powers That Be crazy (and is probably why they haven't done it).

[Eno]

We need a place for all those games we can't label shmups that tend to go hand in hand with them anyway...

Would that include, say... Highly Responsive to Prayers?

[Ed Oscuro]

We need a place for all those games we can't label shmups that tend to go hand in hand with them anyway...

I agree with this, although I understand that Shmups needs more funding before it could try to be a big tent for everything, probably. But yeah I've often shared your thought - why let other types of games go by the wayside all these years? There was Ceph's forum but it didn't really take off.

[Despatche]

Of course. It just bothers me that the likes of Pac-Man and Metal Slug get pushed to the side over this; we can only really talk about how much we like them usually. In the meantime, would anyone participate if I started opening boards in Off Topic? Maybe get some kind of index going eventually, too... Thing is, I don't want to clog up Off Topic with a billion boards, though it'd definitely do the place some good.

We need a place for all those games we can't label shmups that tend to go hand in hand with them anyway...

Would that include, say... Highly Responsive to Prayers?

Obviously. Pang is a shmup, but Puzz Loop and Arkanoid aren't (though I'd love to hear a case, especially for Puzz Loop).

[Ruldra]

Well, since bloodf even considered removing Off-Topic to cut down all the noise and stimulate more talk about shmups, I don't think he'd agree with this. I think he wants to keep this forum exclusively for shmups.

But if this idea kicks off, I'd be all over it.

[CStarFlare]

I love the idea of scoreboards for other games, but I think they'll die fast here. Shmup boards work here because they're the type of games everyone came here for - and there's still plenty of boards that lie forgotten with one or two entries. I doubt there's a place where scoreboards for anything and everything can flourish.

I was hoping Restart Syndrome would turn into something for any game but right now its sole purpose is to replace Shmups->Hi Scores wholesale.

I had given it some thought back at the very beginning, but that would take an ungodly amount of effort on my part. And while I'm by no means an expert on shmups, I don't know enough about all those other arcade games to try to set up a meaningful system for tracking progress in them. Do sidescroller players really care about score, or are they all about the clear? How many revisions of Makaimura are there? Do they all need to have separate boards? And there's the issue I raised above - will these games see any activity at all? To be worth anything scoreboards need to have other entries to compare yourself with.

As I think about it, it would be neat to have a collection of sites that served a similar function - one for shmups, another for sidescrollers, another for lightgun games, etc - that were related so that they shared a similar mission, system and login credentials, but were still able to maintain their own identities. But I don't know that the interest exists to make such an effort worthwhile, and I'm damn sure I'm not the one to build it.

[drauch]

Yeah, it won't happen. As CStarFlare mentioned, Off Topic in general is frowned upon by some. I'd still love to at least see an "Other Games" section or something similar, which other high score threads would be welcome, and which would probably solve the entire Off Topic hate in the first place. I mean, we've got a Review section with 84 topics and 86 posts. Hell, I forgot we even had one, and for good reason. All other sub-forums have well over 10,000 posts, and Off Topic alone has over 300,000. It'd be nice to not have to filter through the site's awful search function for other arcade game discussion, or likewise for an older thread where we all talked about something non-video game related. But yeah, I highly doubt that ever happening.

[Ghegs]

If there's interest, I can add a "generic" score attack subforum to Rolling Start. There's already an "Other Games" there, so the subforum would fit under that nicely.