Hello from the UK

[piginapoke]

H everyone,

Wish I had found this website sooner

Im Robin, former staff writer on Zzap! 64 magazine and keen fan of shmups. Favourite commodore 64 game is a shooter, the classic Armalyte.
Favourite in arcade is Salamander, an oldie but fond memories of it
Favourite on console? That would be Gradius V at the moment.

Excited to see that I dont know half of the top 25 shmups, so its going to be fun finding them and playing them on MAME. Im planning to build a arcade cabinet running MAME too. Wish me luck!

[GaijinPunch]

Hi.

[heisenbergman]

Good luck!

[Skykid]

Im Robin, former staff writer on Zzap! 64 magazine

Blast from the past, I was thumbing through a few old copies of Zzap! a couple of weeks back. Glad to have you board, good luck building your cab and watch out for the regular shit storms - this forum has a turbulent weather schedule.

[shmuppyLove]

Hello from Canada!

a.k.a. America's hat

[alpachinko]

Hello,

Also new to the forum from the UK, been lurking for an age though. Been meaning to join for a while..

Good luck with the arcade machine, theres so many options to go for. I was looking into one for a while but never got further than buying an ArcadeVGA card for my PC allowing me to play on a CRT, did that for a while until it broke Still never got round to replacing or doing anything further.

We used to have a Commodore 64 when I was growing up, good machine, but I was always a sucker for the Amiga which I still run today.


AL

[BobbyNewmarkiii]

Excited to see that I dont know half of the top 25 shmups, so its going to be fun finding them and playing them on MAME. Im planning to build a arcade cabinet running MAME too. Wish me luck!

Hi Robin

Hope you can splash the cash and support some current shmup devs at retail as well.

[Stevas]

Fellow UKer here (and also a once near-religious follower/reader of Zzap).

Good call on Armalyte. Loved the Thalamus stuff (Sanxion, Delta). If I recall, the music was teh awesomes on these titles.

Interesting fact (no, really): Armalyte was developed by Cyberdyne Systems.

Dunno what's gone wrong, but they're taking their sweet fucking time developing Skynet.
Maybe they got sent a kinect back instead of a series 800.

[piginapoke]

Fellow UKer here (and also a once near-religious follower/reader of Zzap).

Good call on Armalyte. Loved the Thalamus stuff (Sanxion, Delta). If I recall, the music was teh awesomes on these titles.

Interesting fact (no, really): Armalyte was developed by Cyberdyne Systems.

Dunno what's gone wrong, but they're taking their sweet fucking time developing Skynet.
Maybe they got sent a kinect back instead of a series 800.

Lol. Skynet wont be done by Cyberdyne because theres already a UK military network system in place called Skynet.
Looks like Her Majestys Government has beaten them to it.
Cyberdyne and Apex (fellow developers of Retrograde) were great bunch to work and socialise with. I interviewed Cyberdyne when they were working on Deadlock (cancelled), but System 3 got involved and things got messy. I did work for Thalamus on Armalyte 2 albeit briefly.

Thalamus had a great beginning but ultimately couldnt survive the 8 bit decline which led to the Newsfield collapse. Great shame all round.

On a slightly different note i was seriously impressed by Salamander conversion on C64.

[R79]

former staff writer on Zzap! 64 magazine and keen fan of shmups. Favourite commodore 64 game is a shooter, the classic Armalyte.

Wow Grab yourself a cheap 360 mate, probably one of the best consoles for shooters since the Saturn & Dreamcast days (fantastic joystick support and netplay options too). Can't see much happening in the genre next-gen, so may as well go back and fill the gaps of the last 20 odd years!

Who remembers when Mean Machines reviewed stuff like Hellfire and Thunderforce on Mega Drive...? Screengrabs from a real camera with a blanket over the telly ahaha

[piginapoke]

former staff writer on Zzap! 64 magazine and keen fan of shmups. Favourite commodore 64 game is a shooter, the classic Armalyte.

Wow Grab yourself a cheap 360 mate, probably one of the best consoles for shooters since the Saturn & Dreamcast days (fantastic joystick support and netplay options too). Can't see much happening in the genre next-gen, so may as well go back and fill the gaps of the last 20 odd years!

Who remembers when Mean Machines reviewed stuff like Hellfire and Thunderforce on Mega Drive...? Screengrabs from a real camera with a blanket over the telly ahaha

Thanks. Already got access to most games as my partner has a massive collection of games to dip into (700+) on every current and lots of previous console formats. I am a lucky lad. She got me Ikaruga, Deathsmiles and Akai Katana on xbox 360. Excellent stuff.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

H everyone,

Wish I had found this website sooner

Im Robin, former staff writer on Zzap! 64 magazine and keen fan of shmups.

Crash and Your Sinclair were better mags:P

There's aload of PC indie shmups (doujins) some of which are localised on stores like Steam. Jamestown makes a good noobie shmup, 4 player local co-op too. Nyu Media and Rockin Android has published many doujin shmups. I'd highly recommend you hunt down [yotsubane's] Crimson Clover, it's not localised so you'll have to import if you want a legit version. Touhou is a series worth checking out since they are rather unique in their gameplay mechanics. Blue Wish Resurrection, Eden's Aegis, Hydorah & Cho Ren Sha, Nomltest & Kento Cho's STGs are very good PC freeware.

[hoopy]

Im Robin, former staff writer on Zzap! 64 magazine

Hi Robin, I used to subscribe to Zzap! 64 back in the day, great mag.

Like you I have great memories of playing the old classic 2D shoot-em-ups. I still enjoy playing'em from time to time on MAME.
Be warned though, once you get hooked on modern bullet hell shooters, going back and playing the old classics can seem a bit tame.

My recommendation is to get yourself a PAL 360, quality arcade stick, and all Cave's 2D shooters, including the region free Jap imports. Then I look forward to seeing your scores up on the leaderboards.

Good luck with the arcade cabinet.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

Pig in a POKE. Now that takes me right back!

Salamander C64 was pretty good! Nemesis wasn't bad either. One of the most technically impressive shooters in c64 was X-Out. Lots of options and weapon types on screen at the same time, parallax scrolling and the music was amazing. Makes me wonder if a Xenon II port would have been possible.

[Ed Oscuro]

Hello there, I enjoy reading those magazines from time to time!

[yorgje]

Hi

[piginapoke]

Hello there, I enjoy reading those magazines from time to time!

Nice one. Hope they were issues with me in them

[spadgy]

Zapp 64! Always good to see fellow games press here, and in your case, somebody from a legendary title rather than an upstart like me. (I say upstart - I'm only seven or eight years full time into the career, but these days at games press events I'm starting to feel like an old man compared to all the younger press there, and I'm only 33! You, piginapoke, however, come from a legendary games mag, and thus I can once again feel like the fresh faced newcomer. Thanks!

Anyway, donning my mod's hat for a moment, I'll just move this thread to Off Topic, as it's not a core 'Shmups Chat' topic. [EDIT: Done!]

And welcome, Robin/piginapoke! Great to have you here.

Oh - and as this thread has brought some UK shmupers together, if you're based in or around London, the London shmups crew meet near weekly in London to play shmups. Want to join us? Get on this thread over in the Shmupmeets area of the forum (no need to read it all. We all just post there to arrange meeting up, so join in straight at the end).

(A very brief history. In London for decades there was an arcade near Goodge Street station called 'Casino'. Members of this forum used to meet there weekly, and loan our shmup PCBs to the place. Thus, we were called the Casino Crew. The arcade closed this year, so we now meet elsewhere. But we're no clique, and always welcome newcomer, and passers by, so if you're in the UK, join us!

[DEL]

I used to read Zzap 64 also.

Make a trip down to HoG arcade in North Acton London if you can.

[evil_ash_xero]

Welcome to the board.

Awesome that you haven't played so many of the top 25. That's how it was for me when I first got here.

Tons of great discoveries!

[louisg]

Hi Robin! Glad to have you on the forums! I'm from the US but I love reading Zzap! 64; The C64's my favorite 8-bitter by far, and Zzap! 64 is a different perspective on that machine from something like Computer Gaming World or Compute!.

[piginapoke]

Thanks for the welcomes. Looking forward to discovering more shmups. Im a fan of Treasure productions and also want to check out Battle Garegga and Strikers series. See what fuss is about.

Partner has bought me for Xmas the BYOAC manual. Just need funds to buy the pack of parts now.

Just seen Retro Gamer magazine is out with Salamander as main image on the front. Awesome!

[system11]

Im Robin, former staff writer on Zzap! 64 magazine

I used to read that

[Udderdude]

I'm fairly sure I had some C64 magazines lying around my house as a kid .. :3

[DocHauser]

Used to read Zzap64 regularly back in the day. Were you one of the Golden Axe reviewers? I'm still mad about paying money for the C64 version! The music was good, though, I suppose.

[charlie chong]

I was about to mention the review on narc for c64 as well
dat game sucked

[Skykid]

Fairly sure I read an interview with Julian Rignall that said all the zzap64 staff spent their time pissing about in the office out of their heads on class A drugs. Sounded like a dream job! Any stories to add for the sake of UK games mag lore?