Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

[Lander]

I guess I'm getting serious-ish with Giga Wing, since I saw the TLB and put together no-death savestate for each stage; I'll probably have a crack and 2 and Generations for funsies in between.

Those big red planes with the unfolding wings keep giving me the giggles; the shaped cloud of medals that spawns if you kill them slow is a bit Wile E Coyote

And jesus Roo, doing the finale with the reflector seems like serious business, let alone without it! That's seriously impressive

[samspot]

Can anyone sell me on Thunder Force 4? My first few attempts it felt like extreme memorization was going to be necessary. But I do want to play some more to see why it’s so frequently recommended.

[XoPachi]

Got a hold of RefRain: Prism Memories. Man...
I needed this. I love this game's presentation. You could only get something like this in that time period. This is great.

[Steven]

I voted for RefRain during the top 25 thing because it deserves it. Naturally, nobody's played it.

[XoPachi]

I voted for RefRain during the top 25 thing because it deserves it. Naturally, nobody's played it.

I've been trying to learn it. Stage 3 is giving me a lot of issues (the cube things are just barely visible and move really fast if you don't kill them). And stage 4 is mindboggling. I haven't even seen stage 5 yet.

[fotozero]

I voted for RefRain during the top 25 thing because it deserves it. Naturally, nobody's played it.

I started playing it a few days ago, it rocks! I'd pay for the music alone tbh. It's oozing with style too. Makes me wonder what other games I'm missing out on, but I have enough on my hands already anyway.
I've also started playing Futari and I'm having a lot of fun with it. I can't 1cc it yet but I'm getting close and I just wanna keep playing it all the time

[Steven]

I am glad that there are actually people that play RefRain, or even know it exists. I have made it to the final boss a few times but never killed it. I almost always get hit during the crazy missile barrage at the start of stage 4 and then usually several times at the final turret wall on that same stage, and then take a few more hits at the miniboss right after the final turret wall. Sometimes I seem to have difficulty seeing stuff in this game, but I still like it.

There is a high score thread for it, but it seems abandoned. I thought about hijacking it, but probably few people would submit any scores for it. I have no idea how to score in the game anyway.

[fotozero]

Why not start it up again? A lot of these games are bound to only have a few players here and there anyway. And yeah that missile barrage pisses me off each time, I have no clue how to avoid getting hit so I just bomb/bullet cancel through it. I'll post a score once I beat it, although it's likely to be pitiful.

[Lethe]

Been revisiting the polygonal PS1 classics since it's been a few years.

R-Type Delta is, as usual, a predominant bore that rests on a couple of murderous gimmicks i.e. meat blimp. It's baffling to me that many seem to consider it the strongest game in the series. There's all these fantastic concepts, then the only interesting thing you get to do with a Force is a 30-second segment involving lice clinging to spinning pipes, and the rest of the game is trying to avoid falling asleep and bumping into something. Stage 3 is especially dire with so much slowdown (and playing without slowdown ruins the music sync). The presentation speaks for itself, of course. Even Final 1's hefty bag of faults would have been forgivable had it recaptured Delta's vibe.

Einhander is, as usual, rad. It's got so many little details that could easily have not existed - like the different ways enemies can die and the physics and aiming subtleties, which are then well-integrated with the enemy placement and boss design. A preeminent "future game", eager to reinterpret and recombine select elements of its predecessors without being slaved to their conventions, pushing simulation in abstracted ways that benefit gameplay instead of compromising it. It's unfortunate that in Future Now, as opposed to Einhander-kinder, the typical STG templates we've actually ended up with are 1. nostalgia throwback, 2. Touhou-style game that doesn't understand the identity of what it came from, and 3. Daifukkatsu-Futari soylent machine product. Not that it matters to me really, there's more than a lifetime of games to play even if I ignore new releases.

[w-ring]

I'm trying to 1cc Zero Wing, arcade version (the easier one, not the checkpoint one)

[BareKnuckleRoo]

And jesus Roo, doing the finale with the reflector seems like serious business, let alone without it! That's seriously impressive

I'm glad you're getting into it! It was my first arcade clear, I always really enjoy revisiting it. It's not a braindead clear by any means, but even without reflecting, there's far harder shmups I'd say (ones with massive hitboxes like Raiden or Viper Phase 1 are far worse).

The TLB's patterns are quite scary, but doable with bombs. Ruby in particular can speedkill the final pattern that gets super dense because he moves to the side so slowly and her shots can concentrate all their damage rather easily. The phase before hand where he moves rapidly around the screen firing blue shots everywhere though? That scares the willies out of me.

[Lander]

I've started fitting one-credit attempts into my work breaks, and had a couple of solid ones today - no-deathed up to stage 4 and got on the leaderboard, then later hit stage 5 but with piffly points. Managed to snag the 1UP and trigger some huge fireballs (and equally huge medals!) but the secrets of the mystery ground pattern are still unclear

Surprising how much variance there is; I'm mostly playing for survival with opportunistic item-grabbing, plus a few tricks here and there like pointblanking the train and activating the mirror goldmine.

I find myself enjoying the pacing a lot - having a short stage 4 with a really impressive boss is a nice dip before the grueling bulletwall that follows. And, despite the order changing by character, ended up wondering if the airport hangar section is analogous to Garegga's opening jeep pattern; one of those early-game things with a level of mastery and good payoff. I wouldn't be surprised if every stage had something like that, since each one is revealing more and more neat little facets as I go.

My one gripe is eating a bullet just before the reflector starts up; feels terrible! Though I probably need to sort out my input settings, Retroarch uses a weird modifier for autofire where you have to plink from turbo button -> button you want turbo'd, so switching back and forth is clunky.

The TLB's patterns are quite scary, but doable with bombs. Ruby in particular can speedkill the final pattern that gets super dense because he moves to the side so slowly and her shots can concentrate all their damage rather easily. The phase before hand where he moves rapidly around the screen firing blue shots everywhere though? That scares the willies out of me.

That's a reflief to hear! Ruby's been my go-to; red ship, straight shooter, classic.

It's quite interesting as TLBs go - surprisingly small health bar, versus say CAVE where you get all the insanity with an extra helping of tank, and maybe a reactive shield to really force perfection. Makes it feel like there's a series of tricks to it that go beyond twitch dodging skill, which is very in-spirit with other fairness measures like the generous bullet sealing behavior.

[m.sniffles.esq]

Since it's hot as fuck, I've been hiding in the room with ac. Meaning I've been away from my Switch dock, thus breaking my Radirgy 2 addiction (the game plays very well on the small screen, but due to the large/awkward distance between the right stick and trigger on the joycon, the twin-stick ship is very difficult to play without a real controller)

So I've been playing some 'good for undocked' games. Tempest 4000--and a game a lot of people slept on--Neverawake

The latter is sort of a cross between Deathsmiles (in graphics) and Forgotten Worlds (in gameplay) and plays REALLY well on the Switch's screen. Large characters and bullet patterns, and right-stick auto-fires, leaving just a dash and a special weapon on the triggers

It was easily one of my favorite original shooters of last year, so if you have a Switch and the above description piques your interest at all, you should probably investigate.

[cfx]

.

[BIL]

Samidare is a gem, I should probably let it back into my Top 25. Knife-edge intensity throughout, and while the visuals tend towards shrewdly efficient, good god damn are those boss explosions ultra-violent. Killer OST too; particularly the thumping, darkly shimmering "Halberd" for Anareta. I totally forgot RefRain was by the same people! Now I remember it remixing the st2 BGM.

[Steven]

Got some semi-last minute stuff in the Steam sale, including Cotton Rock 'n' Roll, Bot Vice, Battle Crust, and Xeno Crisis, so I am kind of playing those now.

I must say that while Steam's thing where it recommends games based on what you have played is sometimes a little off, this time it picked some really odd choices, although even this isn't the strangest I've seen:



That lower case n on the end of COTTOn still bothers me. I know it's probably intentional to match the logo, but it sure is weird to see it like that. I also love how they were too lazy to write the whole title next to the buy button so they just put COTTON R, which I find hilarious. Like damn dude even I'm not that lazy!

I am glad that there are actually people that play RefRain, or even know it exists. I have made it to the final boss a few times but never killed it. I almost always get hit during the crazy missile barrage at the start of stage 4 and then usually several times at the final turret wall on that same stage, and then take a few more hits at the miniboss right after the final turret wall. Sometimes I seem to have difficulty seeing stuff in this game, but I still like it.

There is a high score thread for it, but it seems abandoned. I thought about hijacking it, but probably few people would submit any scores for it. I have no idea how to score in the game anyway.

I own the physical version of RefRain and some of the preview discs. I don't think I ever managed to get all of those but I know I have at least two. I find those sometimes interesting with doujin games to see how they evolve over the developemnt period. In the case of RefRain, the whole menu system kept changing too so the entire presentation of the game evolved.

I've never played it seriously because I still need to get a joystick functioning on PC. Unlike some people I can't play games like this with any level of proficiency on a PC keyboard.

The general period when this was released was such a great time for doujin games. Then something happened and so many groups totally disappeared or are still around but don't do much anymore. I know of a few that just burned out as they posted about at the time.

I'm sure you know already but the website is https://www.rebrank.org/

Samidare is pretty cool too.

The keyboard controls for lots of doujin STGs suck and cannot be rebound. This game is sadly no exception. Yes, you can use keyboard mapping software, but that shouldn't be required because all games on every system should always inherently allow full remapping for every compatible controller without having to resort to external things. Super Metroid got this, and almost everything else, softlocks aside, right in 1994, and it was probably unheard of for a console game at the time, and yet we have regressed in features since then, not gotten better.

Anyway, yeah, I have been looking for Samidare since before I got RefRain. I have been unsuccessful. It's probably a very difficult game to find now and they seem to have no interest in making more copies of it for some reason. I haven't been to Comiket for over a decade (mostly because it's hot as fuck in the summer, but there really isn't much of a reason for me to go anyway, even during winter), but it looks like they still go. I am tempted to go ask them why the hell they haven't made more copies of it or at least put it on GOG.

That does make me wonder if I have been missing cool doujin games at Comiket. I probably have. Oh well. It almost motivates me enough to want to go to check out what is available, but going to that event is such a pain...

[Daytime Waitress]

I must say that while Steam's thing where it recommends games based on what you have played is sometimes a little off, this time it picked some really odd choices, although even this isn't the strangest I've seen:

Garbage in, garbage out - Gabesoft is perpetually drunk on a heady blend of publisher apathy and consumer fuckwittery.
It still lists the Castlevania collection genres as "racing" and "sports" five years after release FFS.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

The keyboard controls for lots of doujin STGs suck and cannot be rebound.

I never really was able to fully enjoy Touhou until I got AutoHotKey and was able to map to ZXC. I didn't like shift as a slow button. It's frustrating but remapping is still very hit or miss with respect to availability. Another thing that frustrates me is an inability to adjust deadzone % on consoles with analog sticks. It's not uncommon for older controllers to drift a bit, something that's easily rectified with a 10% deadzone or something and won't impact playability.

[XoPachi]

I guess it's because of the Steam port but, RefRain worked with my controllers out of the gate. Come to think of it, so did Imperishable Night when I grabbed that recently (not off Steam though, if it's up there). Even Bike Banditz just worked with my controllers. I don't really remember the last few I tried that didn't have some controller support. But I also don't really know of too many. I love the styles of this era so I want to change that.

Touhou is weird with sticks though. I didn't find anything comfortable until I tried my 8BitDo M30 and then it played like a dream.

[Lander]

That lower case n on the end of COTTOn still bothers me. I know it's probably intentional to match the logo, but it sure is weird to see it like that. I also love how they were too lazy to write the whole title next to the buy button so they just put COTTON R, which I find hilarious. Like damn dude even I'm not that lazy!

This happens so often on Steam, particularly with japanese publishers like Capcom. I think they did a renaming pass for the Resi games at some point to improve it, but there was a point where the text styling for each entry was a WILD MISH MASH of Inconsistency ™ ® ©

Imagine how much OCD that could all be avoided if the platform let us rename stuff without engaging in Add Non-Steam Game hackery

[Steven]

I checked out Battle Crust, which I recently got. It's... like Image Fight but boring? Am I missing something here? It's got a few charge shots to choose from, which is a good start, but there is so little going on in the first few stages that they feel barren and unfinished. Is Picorinne Soft the inverse of Toaplan, where they can do good horizontals but can't seem to figure out verticals?

I must say that while Steam's thing where it recommends games based on what you have played is sometimes a little off, this time it picked some really odd choices, although even this isn't the strangest I've seen:

Garbage in, garbage out - Gabesoft is perpetually drunk on a heady blend of publisher apathy and consumer fuckwittery.
It still lists the Castlevania collection genres as "racing" and "sports" five years after release FFS.

lol

My Steam is in Japanese and the tags are okay there. I have seen some weird Steam tags over on the English side, though. Most of my entertainment from Steam weirdness these days comes from the sometimes very odd recommendations on the store pages.

The keyboard controls for lots of doujin STGs suck and cannot be rebound.

I never really was able to fully enjoy Touhou until I got AutoHotKey and was able to map to ZXC. I didn't like shift as a slow button. It's frustrating but remapping is still very hit or miss with respect to availability. Another thing that frustrates me is an inability to adjust deadzone % on consoles with analog sticks. It's not uncommon for older controllers to drift a bit, something that's easily rectified with a 10% deadzone or something and won't impact playability.

Yeah, then you get to the Switch and it's even worse. I bought the Flip Grip, but I can't use it without buying new Joy-cons because mine are so bad that I can't even navigate the system menu because the drift is that bad. I have been thinking of ripping out the analog stick assemblies in their entirety and covering the hole with tape. That will fix it! Won't fix the lack of a good d-pad, but it's infinitely better than their current state. Don't have the proper screwdriver to open them and I don't care enough to walk to the hardware store to see if they have it, especially because they probably don't.

That lower case n on the end of COTTOn still bothers me. I know it's probably intentional to match the logo, but it sure is weird to see it like that. I also love how they were too lazy to write the whole title next to the buy button so they just put COTTON R, which I find hilarious. Like damn dude even I'm not that lazy!

This happens so often on Steam, particularly with japanese publishers like Capcom. I think they did a renaming pass for the Resi games at some point to improve it, but there was a point where the text styling for each entry was a WILD MISH MASH of Inconsistency ™ ® ©

Imagine how much OCD that could all be avoided if the platform let us rename stuff without engaging in Add Non-Steam Game hackery

While I have only played maybe 3 to 5 Capcom games in my life, I hope I will never forget this



This series is one of the many Capcom games I have never played, so I don't know anything about it other than this, but this alone makes me happy every time I see it. See also Nartuo on 3DS, although that was the fault of Bandai (Scamco? Same company either way, but it says Bandai on it, so...).

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Yeah, then you get to the Switch and it's even worse. I bought the Flip Grip, but I can't use it without buying new Joy-cons because mine are so bad that I can't even navigate the system menu because the drift is that bad. I have been thinking of ripping out the analog stick assemblies in their entirety and covering the hole with tape. That will fix it! Won't fix the lack of a good d-pad, but it's infinitely better than their current state.

LOL I did that with an old XB360 hori pad that was ghosting, was at my wits' end. Pleasantly surprised it worked, I used it for the D-Pad exclusively anyways.

Joy-Cons suck. There's far better third party controllers out there, which is rather unfortunate. I use this one, it's quite nice, D-Pad isn't perfect but it's superior to the Xbox360 one and the stick is vastly better than the stock Joy Cons: https://www.amazon.ca/Nintendo-Wireless ... 08RJBJ3SG/

[Andrey Aritonov]

V-V
I didn't know something

[XoPachi]

I'm playing Akai Katana's Steam port which I guess got spruced up. I had heard this was a terrible port but frankly, I see no reason to go back to my 360 version having bought this now. This plays extremely well. I forgot how much fun and how gorgeous this game was.

The original version is boring as Hell though. No wonder they push Shin as the default game despite technically being an arrange. The original is surprisingly bland with incredibly flat music.

[Lethe]

Rare sighting of the "Elite Number", now highly endangered in the wild. (Could also make a respectable secret project code and/or band name)

[BIL]

Happy news! Meanwhile I demoed some STGs for curious colleagues and now I'm fired. 3;



I thought Under Defeat was the heli STG to avoid showing people

[samspot]

Nintendo will repair joycons for free no questions asked. I just got two back yesterday. One of them was completely replaced.

[DMC]

Happy news! Meanwhile I demoed some STGs for curious colleagues and now I'm fired. 3;

How did that happen?

You weren't sourcing the dick stock thread, were you?

[Morsalty]

Ketsui save state practice, refreshing on the Omote loop before I start doing attempts again. Took too long of a break off.

[BIL]

Happy news! Meanwhile I demoed some STGs for curious colleagues and now I'm fired. 3;

How did that happen?

You weren't sourcing the dick stock thread, were you?

No that one got me a medical school scholarship actually! (I gave it to our heroic young agent Goompaolo, who pretended to betray us in order to infiltrate the enemy! he will return with critical intel on the strange phenomenon! )