Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

[Lemnear]

I'm in that "taste consolidation" phase, and there are games I occasionally reopen and throw a coin into; some are recurring, others aren't, and every now and then my tastes change.

For example, I never would have said I'd like Raiden III X MIKADO MANIAX so much (I haven't tried IV yet), and I never would have said I'd downgrade Darius in favor of the Ray'z Trilogy; there's something so satisfying about locking on as many targets as possible and destroying them together. I'm noticing that I don't like the Darius patterns in general; it's beautiful to look at but not as enjoyable to play, with the exception of Darius Gaiden.

The usual ones remain DOJ and Ketsui, obviously (and DDP), Batsugun is losing ground (oddly enough, because that's exactly what I started with), and things like the USAAF Mustang and P47 are rising in my personal list.

Maybe something will change later, but for now I'm basically bouncing between these.

Special mention goes to ESP.Ra.De and Dungun Feveron, though there's something I don't like about the latter and something that makes me want to play it again (maybe it's the third ship, it's unique). I have no complaints about Raizing in general; I simply don't like the hitbox or the small projectiles, and I can only enjoy Battle Bakraid

[Starfighter]

I'm not confident I'll reach my goal mainly because it's a horizontal shmup (I just can't dodge anything in those, every dodge forces me to stop thinking about anything else and just focus on my ship and the two or three bullets near me and I lose all birds eye perspective) but I sure want to really give it my best!

I've now experimented with pilot/gunner combinations and tried to get the hang of the ring/gem system for about five hours (if I'm to trust my game launcher software), but I'm still not even reaching the third score based extend (my last run ended at just over 10 mil). That run ended about ten seconds before the S5 boss went down (meaning if I had just one more bomb I'd already have the 1-ALL) however, and I missed the 1UP at S4 so... I don't really think I need to get good enough to reach the third score based extend to clear the first loop. I just need to get that hidden 1UP at S4 and I'll have this. Well, the last run was filled with "how did I survive that?"-moments so I'm sure I'll have a bunch of sessions ahead of me before I'll get that lucky again.

Edit: The combo/formation I used during my lucky "almost there"-run was Bolt/Rivet with the default formation, I thought the run would end early because I didn't really like it at first.

Update one day later: Ah, now I recognize myself again! Dying of stray bullets as early as stage 2, losing lives to the S2 boss... It's like night and day, I'm doing so much worse it's a bit funny.

Update three days later: I tried my old trick of putting the screen in TATE (rotating the controls accordingly) and play it that way, which helped immensely. The only trouble now is surviving stage 4 and 5, since they're filled with enemies coming from all directions and in those cases playing TATE isn't really helping much. I just need to get better at dodging fire from all sides. I'm now 7,5 hours in and I still have no feeling for where the hitbox is. I've looked it up, but during play I still forget ("it's somewhere behind the wing... where's the wing? *dies*"). Stages 1, 2 and 3 + all the bosses are now manageable, but the stages 4 and 5 themselves are completely destroying me. And it doesn't help that everything seems different everytime I play. Not hugely different, but enough to force me to deal with "slightly different situations" all the time.

Update some days later: Is there some sort of rank to this...? I watched The Hidden Fortress' run and my game is a lot feistier than that. (I've now tried japanese at default difficulty (4) and US on default (4), easy (3) and very easy (2).)

Blablabla: Okay so I recorded today's practice run (I've resorted to practicing only once a day because I don't like the game that much anymore, I'd rather play other stuff - which is pretty alarming since I've only spent 9 hours with the game) and from what I can see I'm not having a one specific thing to improve, I have them all. 1: Dying from stray bullets, 2: letting myself be cornered/bad positioning, 3: failing to dodge some patterns and 4: not scoring well. So I sort of have to do everything better. The run ends not even halfway through S5 - which is fine though, because I get through the last part pretty consistently - it's mainly during the first half that I'm completely lost and where I need to practice.

Video of me sucking the lower backside
(I've decided to go with the gunner thingies behind me, that way the hitbox is sort of in the middle of my formation. Yeah, I still struggle to "feel" where it is.)

Edit 9827: I now tried to play it in Retroarch with lower input latency (well... 2 frames lower from what I've gathered, which isn't much). Don't know if it was placebo, but I started doing good again, I cleared the game with 1 credit and 1 life (meaning I pressed continue and died once, then it was done). As a first try I think I did good and Retroarch is the way I'm going to continue practice.

Edit: Two runs that ended on the last boss again. I'm so tired of this game! Not a fan at all of "bullets from every direction and it can come from an enemy who entered the screen two frames ago" paired with the RNG bosses. It's like every new run, a new way to get caught off guard. And my inability to dodge in horis... I think I'm going to give this one up. DOJ was an incredibly hard 1CC for me, but for some reason it felt more predictable than this - and that was what kept me going. When I hear Progear is considered a pretty easy clear it really confirms for me that "easy" is subjective.

Got the 1CC. ^^

[Jack Emerson]

Just picked up Truxton 2 on steam sale. I am digging this game. Difficulty seems high, but easier than Truxton 1, at least the fist levels. Maybe I just like the weapons more, but I am horror truxton 1.

[aak]

Currently still trying to 1cc Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius ~forever with me~ with checkpoints on. It doesn't seem like it'd be so hard considering you get unlimited score extends but the rank is really tough, especially with a character like Sue who powers up faster, I noticed it getting insane even in Stage 1. I could probably clear it with checkpoints off but now I'm stubborn, I feel like I can do it with them on if I don't die on the TwinBee stage midboss and lose like 6 lives on the checkpoint like I do every time. I've been playing around with every character and I'll probably end up beating it with either Dracula-kun or Kid Dracula, they have by far the best defenses.

After that, either DoDonPachi or Crimzon Clover. I just bought the latter in the Steam sale and it seems awesome. I also got DDP DFK and the Black Label Arrange (Ketsuipachi) mode is really fun so I might play that, though I imagine the clear would be a lot harder.

Edit: Finally cleared Oshaberi!! But with Ran not either of the Draculas.

[XoPachi]

Got Ginga Force for the first time. I hate this game. Definitely my least favorite STG purchase in a long time. I'm actually surprised and kind of sad because I like Qute a LOT.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

The music's really good in it though, so that's something. There's a lot of content in it so it can be overwhelming at first, don't write it off too quickly. If the more RPG-ish mode where you have a lot of parts to customize with is too overwhelming, there's another mode where you have 3 or so more powered up presets to choose from and play with one of those?

[Steven]

Ginga Force has amazing music and some of the best stage design in the entire genre. It's worth playing just for those. Hard difficulty seems kind of extremely poorly balanced, though, even with lots of upgrades. The homing shot or whatever from one of those training mode things is one of the best weapons in the game and possibly the best one, so get that and watch as it crushes easy and normal difficulties for you. And yes, start on easy, not normal. Normal is basically loop 2 and they really should have probably labelled them as normal, hard, and very hard instead.

[EmperorIng]

>Ganja Farts
>Normal is loop 2
>Start with Easy



Agreed though that Hard mode felt a little bit sloppy and I kind of preferred the score attack mode with preset ships but you can only play one stage at a time. The game is actually a euroshmup where you are expected to grind stages for better weapons/health so you just have to embrace that if you want to see the ending.

The sequel Natsuki Chronicles has apparently a traditional arcade mode on top of the euro-esque story mode so that might be worth considering as well. I still need to get around to playing it.

===

I am juggling too many games right now. Still intermittently cracking away at Sonic Wings 2 (hoping to 2all before the end of the year), while also putting time into Triggerheart Exelica (excellent game, playing the Enhanced port on Steam), Psyvariar 2 (the "sequel" announcement inspired me to start playing this again), and some occasional bouts of Giga Wing 2.

Too many games, not enough time! Not counting some neat-looking indie games around the bend, like that new Bird Cage demo.

[MovingTarget]

Like I mentioned in the intro thread, I've come back after a long long break and have decided to make a determined effort to git gud(or less bad).
I have chosen Strikers 1945 2 to really focus on, and 1ccing the easier modes(on steam) first, and finally hoping to end up with a 1-all. Then we'll see from there.
I have a lot of hours to put in to improve my basic skill level, I seem to make a lot of stupid mistakes, and with time the stage memorisation will hopefully kick in.

Theres a lot of shmups on the sale on steam atm so have had a quick dabble with batsugun, blue revolver, dragon blaze, and jamestown which I will return to in the future after I'm done with strikers. Having said that Dodonpachi is always calling...

[aak]

I've settled on two games to try to clear next: Ketsui Deathtiny on my PS4 and DoDonPachi Daifukkatsu on my PC
Probably gonna try to clear Deathtiny mode first (I got to Doom on first try so I know it's pretty easy, I'm sure the focus is more on scoring) then grind Arcade mode, I know it's gonna take 10s of hours, severe difficulty bump from what I've been playing, but Ketsui is cool as fuck
DFK I'm gonna do 1.5 first. As far as I know, this should definitely be easier than Ketsui.
One of these is probably gonna be my first CAVE 1cc (unless I get lucky on a random DDP run, I haven't been grinding that game but I have been playing from time to time and I feel like it could be doable if I can save up bombs and lives until stage 5)

Edit: Yeah I think DFK will be a lot easier than Ketsui. Already only takes me 4 credits to beat like 2 or 3 runs in. Ketsui takes... a lot more. I think the patterns in DFK might be harder but there's also a lot of crutches like the autobomb and bullet-cancelling hypers. Bullet-cancelling hypers feel really cool though. Most of my hits taken were on the laser wheels in stage 5.

Edit 2: I wish Super Easy on Deathtiny was a little harder. Novice on DFK is also extremely easy but it at least feels like they kept the patterns more or less intact. Super Easy doesn't really feel like you learn anything.

Edit 3: Honestly I switch around games too much to predict what will be the next 1cc. I think I'll still get Daifukkatsu pretty soon since it's honestly not that difficult. Ketsui will most likely take months, but I'll keep playing since that game's awesome. I'll probably get DDP before that. Also I've been trying Batrider's Normal course and I got to stage 5 after not that much practice so that might be an easier one.

Edit 4: Okay well instead of all that I 1cc'd Premium mode on Battle Garegga PS4

[Faith]

Tried to play Platypus Reclayed... did not go well ._."...

So, usually, I try not to have bias towards "euro"shmups because there are some good ones like Tyrian & StarGunner.

But Platypus suffers from some major design problems, biggest of which, for me:

1. Too many enemies appear from behind (all the time) with zero warning (so many cheap death).

2. Visibility problem with background & foreground enemies blending together means 99% of death from crashing into enemy/building.

3. To counter #1, you could say, just stay in middle of screen. But many times not possible because enemies from front come fast with erratic movement, and shot is weak.

4. Even though you have power-up to counter #3, they only last 20 sec per drop, and are lost if you take any hit.

5. Making #4 even worse, e.g. for bosses they will drop 2-3 power-up to stack for long fight... but take one death and you lose it and fight becomes drag.

6. Solution you may say is "just don't die" then... but this game throws a lot of cheap deaths at you... so not always possible to avoid.

7. This game seems mostly to avoid enemy crashing into you or pushing you into buildings (bullets are sparse and visible), which is not fun with all of the above problems.

Such a pity!! Because the art, the clay... really is my thing... and can see the dev really has a lot of passion for the art style.

...so because of all this crap...

I finally decided to play Muchi Muchi Pork!! And this game is just... crazy super good. In my opinion one of Cave's best STG.

I can say with 100% confidence... Muchi has the best boss fights of any STG I have played. They are just so super fun, great music & love the comics before the boss fights.

I think I will take this game seriously and play for score, because bosses are fun to milk, and overall, scoring system is fun.

This seems to be the game to finally pull me away from Crimzon Clover @_@"...

But yes, having a great time with Muchi Muchi Pork. Many laughs, great moments, Stage 4 is crazy but fun to route, so on!~

[Sweatlord_STG]

Fired up the Salamander Collection for the PSP and realized Gradius 2 (MSX) is included. Got my ass handed to myself. Not in the mood for STGs at the moment.

[MovingTarget]

I swapped from strikers 1945 2 to 1, which I class as similar enough not to break my promise of commitment

Its also really hard, some of the later boss patterns are so fast I just can't compute what even I should do lol

[Sweatlord_STG]

I swapped from strikers 1945 2 to 1, which I class as similar enough not to break my promise of commitment

Its also really hard, some of the later boss patterns are so fast I just can't compute what even I should do lol

Just remember the first loop of their (Psikyo) games is always pretty short, hopefully that can keep you motivated. I always tell me myself "how hard can it be to survive for 15-20min? Let's do this!"

[MovingTarget]

Also get caught by surprise by random bullets in the stages quite often. The plan for now is to get more consistent in the stages, then load it up on MAME to save state practice the bosses.

[Jack Emerson]

also got DDP DFK and the Black Label Arrange (Ketsuipachi) mode is really fun so I might play that, though I imagine the clear would be a lot harder.

DFK Black arrange is a great game, and taking most of my time right now. Currently stuck on those rotating lasers on stage 5, which seem much tighter than the normal black label. Lots of fun!!

[aak]

Now fully entranced by Battle Garegga on the M2 port. Might still try to get some other easier clears on the side but for the time-being I think this is gonna be the game I play the most. Something clicked. I can already get to Stage 5 on one credit.

Also I wish there was an additional patch on top of Zakk's patch to add the pink flashing bullets. That + runahead with RetroArch would pretty much make it the same level of QoL as Rev.2016 and I could have more fun playing it on my PC. Yeah I know it's not very "legit" but I don't care I've never patched a MAME rom but I'm guessing a simple graphics replacement can't be too hard so I might do it myself if it is that simple (the "flashing" effect might not be possible since the bullet sprites aren't animated)

[LordHypnos]

I picked up a few games on Steam during the most recent sale: V . V (aka Grindstormer, but I'm mostly playing the V . V version so far), Out Zone, and the Cotton Reboot + Cotton Rock 'n Roll bundle.

V . V has been a really fun one to revisit, though it's quite hard, but it's got very interesting bullet/enemy/stage design, and it keeps the gradius-style power-up system from getting too frustrating, although I will say that the power difference between the different power levels seems to be a lot larger than it looks. I am not exactly the best versed in Toaplan games, but I do think this is probably my favorite. Good graphics and music as well.

The Cotton games felt really fast at first. In the case of the Sharp X68000 version, I'm guessing this is because it actually is running fast, as I believe most X68000 games run at like 55Hz or something like that. I was able to check the game speed in the Cotton Reboot Arrange mode, and it looks fine, and that mode really feels fine. I think I've just played too many handheld shmups recently, which are often slowed down to compensate for the tiny screen (at least the Konami ones are). I was unable to figure out what speed Rock 'n Roll is running at, so I guess I'll have to compare to a video or something at some point.

Anyway, these games are pretty fun. I've probably enjoyed the Reboot Arrange the most, though the second stage boss keeps getting me with the swords (this boss is also super annoying in the NGPC version for somewhat different reasons). I ended up picking Luffee in Rock 'n Roll due to seemingly having the simplest mechanics. Haven't yet figured out how her bomb is limited, which probably means I should be using it more. Rock 'n Roll clearly has a complex scoring system that I haven't yet fully figured out, and I can't say for sure whether I like it yet for that reason. I do think the visual affects are a bit over-the-top for my tastes in these (excepting the X68000 version, of course).

The game that I've actually spent the most time on recently though is Parodius Da! on the Game Boy (emulated on an Anbernic device), and that is because I've been away from home, so I haven't been able to play on my desktop PC (I was actually playing a ton of Giga Wing before that). Have definitely made some progress on this. I believe I made it to stage 7 at the furthest. Interestingly, I think stage 3 might be the one that gets me the most. It's kind of deceptively difficult with all the tight spaces, tons of bullets, and wall protrusions. The tongue-guys on stage 5 are also a real problem spot (well, mostly the second one). There are also a pretty large number of spots that are difficult to recover from, though others aren't so bad. Haven't played stage 7 much yet, so I'm not sure where the sticking points are in that one. Based on the menu, it looks like 8 might be the final stage, so I still have a decent way to go on this.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I'm currently struggling against Guwange. I've made it to the final boss a few times, but limping my way there. Apparently if you spawn the full health item in the last stage (which I still can't do reliably) you can just let it sit onscreen and then suicide once or twice, then grab it. Very silly strats, and I still am struggling to wrap my head around the aiming, being unable to move up or down in with Shikigami out, the s5 boss's first form, and so on.

Visually it's a cool game, and I'm nostalgic about it as it's one of my earliest CAVE games I got to play, but man I'm really questioning if I actually like it or if it's any good. It feels really messy, mechanically.

[MovingTarget]

I'm currently struggling against Guwange. I've made it to the final boss a few times, but limping my way there. Apparently if you spawn the full health item in the last stage (which I still can't do reliably) you can just let it sit onscreen and then suicide once or twice, then grab it. Very silly strats, and I still am struggling to wrap my head around the aiming, being unable to move up or down in with Shikigami out, the s5 boss's first form, and so on.

Visually it's a cool game, and I'm nostalgic about it as it's one of my earliest CAVE games I got to play, but man I'm really questioning if I actually like it or if it's any good. It feels really messy, mechanically.

I love Guwange, the visuals, audio, and shooting mechanic. At the same time I never felt very comfortable with the shooting mechanic which is why I suppose I gave up with it.

[Gamer707b]

After not touching Esprade for over a year, I've been nibling at it a bit lately. Love the game and the PS4 port.

[repoman]

Currently playing the very grindy Sky Force Anniversary (Switch version but emulated on a Retroid Pocket 5). It's a lot of fun.

Tried to play Platypus Reclayed... did not go well ._."...

Yeah I'm not enjoying it at all. The visual style is great, I'll give it that, but 25 stages is too many and there isn't much variation in there.

The gameplay isn't great. Oddly it's getting decent reviews but for me it feels almost random. There's no feeling that the levels have been designed. More that the enemies are just being thrown at you. And for all the weapons in there, you feel pretty weak throughout.

For a game with such a unique look it's got no character.

[1000Eyes]

Weirdly enjoying Image Fight. I respect but don't really love R-type, which I thought looked extremely cool and had many imaginative setpieces, but was kinda too methodical and glacial for my taste given that im a CAVE and Raizing philistine . So in comes Image Fight with the same philosophy, the infamous Irem memo formula, but the way the game handles it now makes me "get it"? More interesting enemy and bullet designs - i really love the blue horizontal lasers and purple rings in stage 1 - and the pod gimmick is really cool on stage 2 and it has a nice spin on the usual battleship raid levels. It just feels like a denser, faster game for some reason, despite retaining many of the ideas from R-type. Helps that I'm head over heels for the aesthetic: R-type's heaving bio-metal replaced with glassy chrome, where you can feel the contrails. I first saw it in its semi-successor War of Aero and I loved it then, but I find that Image Fight's stages are better designed.

Glad to have tried this from checking Itagaki's favorite games list. Rest in peace.

[Sweatlord_STG]

Tried to play Platypus Reclayed... did not go well ._."...

So, usually, I try not to have bias towards "euro"shmups because there are some good ones like Tyrian & StarGunner.

But Platypus suffers from some major design problems, biggest of which, for me:

1. Too many enemies appear from behind (all the time) with zero warning (so many cheap death).

2. Visibility problem with background & foreground enemies blending together means 99% of death from crashing into enemy/building.

3. To counter #1, you could say, just stay in middle of screen. But many times not possible because enemies from front come fast with erratic movement, and shot is weak.

4. Even though you have power-up to counter #3, they only last 20 sec per drop, and are lost if you take any hit.

5. Making #4 even worse, e.g. for bosses they will drop 2-3 power-up to stack for long fight... but take one death and you lose it and fight becomes drag.

6. Solution you may say is "just don't die" then... but this game throws a lot of cheap deaths at you... so not always possible to avoid.

7. This game seems mostly to avoid enemy crashing into you or pushing you into buildings (bullets are sparse and visible), which is not fun with all of the above problems.

Such a pity!! Because the art, the clay... really is my thing... and can see the dev really has a lot of passion for the art style.

...so because of all this crap...

I finally decided to play Muchi Muchi Pork!! And this game is just... crazy super good. In my opinion one of Cave's best STG.

I can say with 100% confidence... Muchi has the best boss fights of any STG I have played. They are just so super fun, great music & love the comics before the boss fights.

I think I will take this game seriously and play for score, because bosses are fun to milk, and overall, scoring system is fun.

This seems to be the game to finally pull me away from Crimzon Clover @_@"...

But yes, having a great time with Muchi Muchi Pork. Many laughs, great moments, Stage 4 is crazy but fun to route, so on!~

Currently playing the very grindy Sky Force Anniversary (Switch version but emulated on a Retroid Pocket 5). It's a lot of fun.

Tried to play Platypus Reclayed... did not go well ._."...

Yeah I'm not enjoying it at all. The visual style is great, I'll give it that, but 25 stages is too many and there isn't much variation in there.

The gameplay isn't great. Oddly it's getting decent reviews but for me it feels almost random. There's no feeling that the levels have been designed. More that the enemies are just being thrown at you. And for all the weapons in there, you feel pretty weak throughout.

For a game with such a unique look it's got no character.

thats a shame. i will still play the game just to see the graphics but i already had a feeling it wont be good. funnily despite the almost non existing bad reviews on steam, as u already pointed out.

the devs say they take criticism very seriously and already did implement some changes from the very few reviews that were not good, so if any of you want to give them the whole list of whats wrong with their game they might still turn it into something great lol

Edit: i just played it. i cant play the game srsly and for long right now for some reason, i just wanted to see it quickly, and im not gonna lie - although i dont like the graphics 100% in all regards and how the idea was executed, just seeing the mere attempt is still amazing and just so fresh and unusual.

look at this clay explosion!!!



btw if ur on pc u can play the game with mouse, which is also funny

[AGermanArtist]

Weirdly enjoying Image Fight. I respect but don't really love R-type, which I thought looked extremely cool and had many imaginative setpieces, but was kinda too methodical and glacial for my taste given that im a CAVE and Raizing philistine . So in comes Image Fight with the same philosophy, the infamous Irem memo formula, but the way the game handles it now makes me "get it"? More interesting enemy and bullet designs - i really love the blue horizontal lasers and purple rings in stage 1 - and the pod gimmick is really cool on stage 2 and it has a nice spin on the usual battleship raid levels. It just feels like a denser, faster game for some reason, despite retaining many of the ideas from R-type. Helps that I'm head over heels for the aesthetic: R-type's heaving bio-metal replaced with glassy chrome, where you can feel the contrails. I first saw it in its semi-successor War of Aero and I loved it then, but I find that Image Fight's stages are better designed.

Glad to have tried this from checking Itagaki's favorite games list. Rest in peace.

Image Fight's a great game.

[Sweatlord_STG]

Weirdly enjoying Image Fight. I respect but don't really love R-type, which I thought looked extremely cool and had many imaginative setpieces, but was kinda too methodical and glacial for my taste given that im a CAVE and Raizing philistine . So in comes Image Fight with the same philosophy, the infamous Irem memo formula, but the way the game handles it now makes me "get it"? More interesting enemy and bullet designs - i really love the blue horizontal lasers and purple rings in stage 1 - and the pod gimmick is really cool on stage 2 and it has a nice spin on the usual battleship raid levels. It just feels like a denser, faster game for some reason, despite retaining many of the ideas from R-type. Helps that I'm head over heels for the aesthetic: R-type's heaving bio-metal replaced with glassy chrome, where you can feel the contrails. I first saw it in its semi-successor War of Aero and I loved it then, but I find that Image Fight's stages are better designed.

Glad to have tried this from checking Itagaki's favorite games list. Rest in peace.

Image Fight's a great game.

yes, even the pce version is fun

[Sengoku Strider]

Weirdly enjoying Image Fight. I respect but don't really love R-type, which I thought looked extremely cool and had many imaginative setpieces, but was kinda too methodical and glacial for my taste given that im a CAVE and Raizing philistine . So in comes Image Fight with the same philosophy, the infamous Irem memo formula, but the way the game handles it now makes me "get it"? More interesting enemy and bullet designs - i really love the blue horizontal lasers and purple rings in stage 1 - and the pod gimmick is really cool on stage 2 and it has a nice spin on the usual battleship raid levels. It just feels like a denser, faster game for some reason, despite retaining many of the ideas from R-type. Helps that I'm head over heels for the aesthetic: R-type's heaving bio-metal replaced with glassy chrome, where you can feel the contrails. I first saw it in its semi-successor War of Aero and I loved it then, but I find that Image Fight's stages are better designed.

Glad to have tried this from checking Itagaki's favorite games list. Rest in peace.

It's not weird at all to enjoy it, Image Fight is your favourite dev's favourite shmup. I see IF referenced in 90s Japanese developer interviews a lot. It takes the Gradius option formula, which equates to screen-filling spread fire, and turns it on its head by making it more about accuracy and target shooting. In short, in an era where shmup devs were following the Gradius & R-Type formulas by stacking powerups on powerups and the genre was shifting toward dodging/staying powered up over the traditional shooting aspect, Image Fight turned the needle back the other way.

I realized it's become one of my favourites by proxy, too. I never really got into IF, but I love the mechanic in so many games that borrowed it. Gley Lancer, Musha, Pulstar and the Dino ships in Blazing Star, Rolling Gunner, they're all really enjoyable.

One more that I've been playing lately, and I might owe kind of an apology to, is Last Resort. I thought it was just a poorly balanced second rate R-Type clone that packed the best of its production into the first 45 seconds. It's only been recently that I fully understood it's actually combining R-Type with Image Fight's reverse-aim mechanics, while also iterating on them by letting you fire the force pod in any direction. Once I got a handle on the weird interface (warning, the ACA version only lets you assign fire to one button, so don't use rapid fire or you can't use the force pod, why didn't SNK use the pod button for charge?) I started to realize a lot of the seemingly unfair or overwhelming situations it puts you in are actually fairly elegant tests of multidirectional shooting and pod control. I haven't beaten stage 3 yet so I don't know if it's a great game, but it's definitely something that intermediate or better players looking for an interesting shooter with more mechanical spice will find a lot to enjoy in.

[M.Knight]

Rock 'n Roll clearly has a complex scoring system that I haven't yet fully figured out

It seems kinda complex but at its core, it's all about using the special attacks and bombs to keep generating bells, and collecting them for points. If you play Luffee, "all" you have to do is using the charged laser to cancel bullets and kill enemies for bells. Bombs are gained by collecting purple crystals from midbosses or dying (you don't lose any bomb on death because this is a good game ), so it can be beneficial to lose lives here and there if you know there will be a big section with tons of scorebombs.

There's multiple bell types and a multiplier but in essence, it just means you have to keep collecting bells to not let the multiplier fall as lower multiplier thresholds are what generates the bronze or silver bells instead of the gold ones.

[Lethe]

thats a shame. i will still play the game just to see the graphics but i already had a feeling it wont be good. funnily despite the almost non existing bad reviews on steam, as u already pointed out.

the devs say they take criticism very seriously and already did implement some changes from the very few reviews that were not good, so if any of you want to give them the whole list of whats wrong with their game they might still turn it into something great lol

The big problem is really fundamental though. The game has about 5 different enemy styles, 5 different environments, and it's something like 2 hours long. You could compress it by 80% and not miss out on anything.
There are a couple of moments where the more interesting enemies overlap with each other and it gets engaging, but those probably make up 5 minutes in total.
It's classic Eurodev syndrome, they had no conception of how to crystallize the project around their best core ideas.

[LordHypnos]

Rock 'n Roll clearly has a complex scoring system that I haven't yet fully figured out

It seems kinda complex but at its core, it's all about using the special attacks and bombs to keep generating bells, and collecting them for points. If you play Luffee, "all" you have to do is using the charged laser to cancel bullets and kill enemies for bells. Bombs are gained by collecting purple crystals from midbosses or dying (you don't lose any bomb on death because this is a good game ), so it can be beneficial to lose lives here and there if you know there will be a big section with tons of scorebombs.

There's multiple bell types and a multiplier but in essence, it just means you have to keep collecting bells to not let the multiplier fall as lower multiplier thresholds are what generates the bronze or silver bells instead of the gold ones.

Okay, that sounds interesting. Might be a tough question to answer, and maybe I should just look up some high scoring gameplay footage, but in practice is this more weighted towards always charging or only charging when there's a good opening or something like that?

you don't lose any bomb on death because this is a good game

Having recently been playing a lot of Giga Wing, which is incredibly stingy with lives and bombs, I have to agree with this take, lol! To be fair, it has an extremely powerful recharging shield, and is a great game is most other ways, of course, but still.

In Cotton NGPC (and probably also the original), this is also the case, though the "bombs" here have way more affinity with charge shots, but they're more bomb-like in Cotton Reboot. It also only powers you down slightly when you die, which is really nice compared to a lot of games of that era. Not that it doesn't have its annoying stuff (Mostly screen crunch related in the case of that handheld port).