Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

[BEAMLORD]

As part of a warts-and-all history of the series, I would accept its inclusion in any future DDP collection. Who knows, maybe M2 could even redeem it totally with an arrange?

[Steven]

I'd actually rather see ShotTriggers Bee Storm than most of the other, safer options like Batrider or CAVE games just because of how weird it would be. I thought about buying a PGM and the cart, but it's a little bit too far out of my price range for non-Toaplan. I was seriously considering buying a Daioujou PCB until that got a ShotTriggers release and the PCB doubled in price, so maybe I'll get lucky again.

[stellar_light]

Man, I was playing Bee Storm the other day for the first time. What the fuck is going on with that game? I understood it's not a canonical DDP game and had no input from Cave, but feels like some kind of cursed basement homebrew. Bullet patterns seem so ill-considered, and it takes an age to kill anything. Gonna have to do some reading up to satisfy my curiosity. I thought it was horrendous, but someone's gotta love it i suppose

The tankiness of the enemies is definitely the worst part, everything has juuuust enough health to grate on you and bosses go on for a crazy amount of time if you aren't playing Energy style. That said, after the horrendous pacing of the early stages I do think some of the later sections can be quite fun to dodge even if they're obviously not designed with the same flow as CAVE's stages, and the bosses occasionally have neat patterns as well. Never bothered with a TLB clear though cuz grinding out all the safespots on Great Value Hibachi is pretty annoying.

[pegboy]

Don't hate on beestorm, it ownz. Also, it is a legit entry in the series. DOJ even has a mid stage cutscene that says doj is donpachi episode iv, which implies that beestorm is episode iii lol. And they even later called the international release of DOJ as DDP III.

I kind of love the it but only as playing energy style.

[bsidwell]

Gekirindan went down surprisingly easily so up next on my revenge tour of easy games i inexplicably failed to beat for years on end: Deathsmiles, a game I have now bought at least three times.

Deathsmiles 1cc get! I might return to it at some point to try the other modes and maybe futilely beat my head against the Gorge but for now I'm moving on. Deathsmiles II didn't really grab me so instead I'll be going for the 1-ALL in Donpachi.

[AGermanArtist]

I paid for the REDREAM upgrade and right now I'm playing Border Down in 4K, and it looks beautiful. I've never really played it much previously (I had a CDI disk years ago and sold it with my DC w/out really playing it) and after getting a few levels deep into it, I think G-Rev's input into Gradius V is understated. It's always credited to Treasure. You can see so much of Border Down's DNA in it.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Oh wow, I knew Gradius V was a Treasure production but I didn't realize they also contracted G-Rev to help on it, really interesting to know!

[the-ERA]

currently bashing my head repeatedly into musihimesama and dodonpachi daifukkatsu though ive yet to do particularly good in either, im pretty much a noob but im in a wierd spot where i cant find anything hard enough that isnt too hard, maybe i just dont know where to look tho

[XoPachi]

I've actually been playing it the past week. It's so incredible just how GOOD this game is when there's a lot that should really be riding against it. There's some pretty bad weapon balancing and the stages are extremely long. But like...damn, I kinda don't care? This game is incredible. I have never gotten sick of this one.

I'm also playing Gradius ReBirth a ton, just hopping back and forth between them. This might be among my favorites. It's insane how much they squeezed into this one. The variants of stage 1, all the bonus stages, unlockable ships, the stage layout changes on higher difficulties, the additional loop variations. There's even a replay function which I don't think Gradius ever had prior to this? They really wanted to make this a legitimate Gradius that played extremely well, looked excellent, sounded great, and lasts a while despite being 5 stages.

[Flashman]

Under Defeat HD on PS5 - kind of casually been going for the 1cc for a number of weeks now, I feel it's one I'll get with time, kind of on the Raiden V difficulty level.

[DarkSlayer]

Under Defeat HD on PS5 - kind of casually been going for the 1cc for a number of weeks now, I feel it's one I'll get with time, kind of on the Raiden V difficulty level.

I was playing this last night, what mode and input method were you using? I’m struggling to decide if I like the 16:9 version with controller or the arcade version with stick more. Awesome game and sound track

[LordHypnos]

Mostly been playing Giga Wing and Tumiki Fighters.

In Giga Wing,I've been enjoying trying to figure out routes to Ruby's stages 2 and 3. In the past I kind of ignored these stages, and thus had a very frustrating time trying to actually get to stage 4. That being said, my consistency is extremely poor still, so a lot of work to do. I also can't figure out how to get 100% break on S2 boss, so I should probably net-deck that.

Tumiki Fighters doesn't give me much to practice it (really just continues that start you at the beginning of the stage where you died, and only like 3 of them), but I think I've still managed to improve and figure out some semblance of routes in a few places. I also haven't managed to beat my old high score, but scoring in this game seems quite swingy, so that's not entirely surprising.