Why shmups are such a niche genre

[Obiwanshinobi]

In japan a lot of people were already shifting to laptops in the late 90s, with crappy intel integrated graphics chips, because it was a big space savior (and you could get one as bonus).

This gotta be the reason why Japanse games for the PC tend to have modest system requirements. Sweet!

[Exarion]

PLAYER 1
READY

For a long time my local arcade had one slot Neo Geo machine with Pulstar in the marquee, even though the machine was actually running Fatal Fury 3. That cab now houses Pulstar. It lives up to its reputation of being more representative of memorizers than R-type. While the genre is getting more exposure, it may only be driving people away, as most people will see Pulstar as a cheap quarter-mucher. That same arcade also looks to be getting better at maintence, which means that people aren't going to be dying because of the machine.

[gs68]

quarter-mu[n]cher

That term makes me facepalm like no tomorrow.

Personally I think fighting games can be just as money-draining as choot-em-ups. Especially considering the fighting game scene.

[doctorx0079]

When I think of a "quarter-muncher" I think of a game like Magic Sword US that basically forces you to die after a certain amount of time no matter what you do. I also think of games that encourage you to credit-feed by not resetting your score, and are thus problematic for competitive play. In Street Fighter 2 the score becomes irrelevant for this reason.

[yudha990]

After reading all 43 pages of this topic, i want to say something in my point of view. Be aware that I'm not that good at all this conventional/bullet hell/whatever other subgenres shumps might have played before.

You see, I pretty much growing up with shumps. When i was 5 year old i got my first console, a slim psone. My first impression on that console is these three games; raystorm, raycrisis, and in the hunt. I love those games, and i love shumps in general. In fact i am still trying to beat the fourth stage of r-type leo in mame using like 10 credits or something while writing this.

In my opinion why this shump genre is being despised is :

1. Lack any real progressive difficulty

Most of these shumps are released for arcade in general, so they will design the game as such that you will just put loads and loads of coins. Let's say we are talking about a person who went to arcade and saw these cave games. Considering not everyone is having xbox 360 he would never know how ruthless the game can be. He put a coin and start playing, only to be killed 2 minutes later. Put another coin to continue, and killed for another 2 minutes. Most people will just go away and never play the game anymore, since credit feeding is not an option (who will buy loads of credit in arcades just to be blown for one game, apart from most hardcore fans?)

I won't say the companies should make their games just flatout casual and fend off the hardcore fans. Let's just make every level is a bit harder, until last level, which is the hardest. These shumps just want people to put as much coins as possible, and do it as many times as possible. While this is nice for a revenue standpoint, this is not nice for most players. This is, in my opinion, is one of the reason why arcades died now. Even 50% of ports to consoles don't even tone the difficulty down, only done so marginally. This, combined with the mindset of people nowadays, in which more content per hour ratio is more important that repeating the same level for days, is contributing for holding shumps back as a more mainstream genre.

2. Lack of creativity nowadays

This might come off as a bit vague, as even most conventional genres played nowadays like fps are very notable for their lack of creativity, the fact that they still sells very well shows our stupidity in gamers nowadays. In order to break this stupidity, a non conventional genre should come and break this todays tradition of half baked games. Shumps is a very good candidate of this, except, even shumps are not really progressing in variety since cave release the series of bullet hell games. More and more people just make more and more bullet hell games. Only some companies will release something a bit different (although it would be either a rehash, like r-type dimensions and gradius rebirth, or indies which failed to make a impact on bigger audiences). It would be better if we can see more variety (My ideas include turn by turn shump. I would say like combination of Godzilla-monster of monsters of nes with gradius;sorry couldn't take a better game than nes godzilla , or might be a combination of deathsmiles left/right shooting system (or side arms, which is the originator of deathsmiles button scheme) with r-type final customization. That will be awesome). This will revitalize the genre and make people turn their heads and interested in these games once again.

3. Lack of worldwide release
Most of shumps nowadays won't even leave Japan. In my country, Indonesia, every arcades will be littered by WMMTs, Initial Ds, those DDR and clones, something even worse like those temple run and fruit ninja arcades, combined with older games like after burner climax, sega race tv, thrill drive 3, and even final lap 3, but none of shooters, not even older and newer ones, nothing. It might be because shumps are not really successful here, and also contributed to the fact that almost all shumps were in jap language, and here most people will play only games in english. English version is important for shumps to attract more audiences.

This is my opinion. Feel free to add and refuse what i said. I just want to say all about this, and this is my reason why i make an account here in the first place.

[davyK]

The rise of the mainstream gamer has caused lots of genres to become niche. This phenomenon occurred around the time of the original Playstation. Up until then you had to use your imagination when game playing.

When hardware became capable of creating 3D environments to simulate reality, mainstream gamers bought into gaming in droves. Not having to use your imagination is in many ways equated with being more grown up - so for many it made gaming less child-like in its presentation and thus more acceptable to the "mature" gamer. Mainstream gamers are quite happy with just more of the same, hence the endless procession of entries in large franchises like Call of Duty, GTA, Streetfighter and FIFA (which is big here in Europe). These games are technically very well crafted and meet the wants of their target audience which is now very large and it means risk averse publishers will by and large only support what they know will be a success, or at least will more likely than not be a success. Sadly this pushes other genres out that are reduced to limited runs because of lack of financial backing and the smaller target audience.

Most games outside those genres would be considered niche. There are exceptions such as Nintendo's output which does seem to remain popular while outwardly appearing child-like (though anyone who has played a Nintendo title know that their appearance belies the subtle sophistication that quite often lies beneath). However Nintendo operate in a different market - one would argue one all of their own. Their take on mainstream genres such as Smash Bros and Splatoon are extremely interesting and make genres based around violence appear to be more wholesome while being genuinely interesting to play. I'd love to see what Nintendo would do with the modern STG genre by the way. Lets face it - the STG is a violent genre even if that violence is very abstract.

Many modern genres are transient in nature. You play them through once and experience a narrative and the mainstream gamer enjoys that but then moves on. The high street retailers are all about the latest game or what's coming out next. You play it and move on. Any genre that doesn't match that paradigm tends to get left out. Of course multi-player FPS games and one-on-one fighting games kick that trend. Fighting games in particular have a long life span due to their depth. FPS games tend to have a long life but only until players are kicked off by the publishers to move them onto the next version. There is no doubting the fun that a multi-player FPS gives - and its all wrapped up and presented extremely well - so it's easy to see why they are popular. It is such a shame that these games soak up so much design & development talent leaving less for other genres though.

In their way, FPS and fighting games players are every bit as "hardcore" as STG players. They are fortunate to be in gaming's limelight, but saying that STGs are too hard or to "hardcore" to be popular for me isn't a reason.

STGs are the original and oldest genre there is. Maybe that is the reason, but I don't buy that. The FPS is really a progression of the STG - it's just it has gone off and developed its own set of rules and conventions and has benefitted more from tech advances than most other genres. STGs have more or less been served by technology for a long time and they don't need better tech - indeed tech limitations have become part and parcel of the genre and made them more enjoyable. Slowdown incorporated into levels make for extremely rewarding segments of gameplay that would otherwise not be humanly possible.

A lot of STGs problems are I think based in how they are perceived. They are entirely different types of game and the heritage is still locked into arcade game sensibilities which many mainstream gamers today never experienced. I'm not going to do into the features of STGs which make them different - we all know those. Perhaps the way forward is to create STGs that can be played in a way that is compatible with todays tastes? A large campaign mode would satisfy the mainstream gamer while score attack modes set over a smaller set of levels adjusted for that style of play would keep the dedicated happy too.

Sturmwind, in its Euroshmuppy way - I think showed one way of perhaps looking at making STGs more mainstream. It has a campaign mode set over a relatively large number of levels. They have new sights and sounds and set pieces - fodder for the mainstream. When I played this game it brought back feelings I had back in the 80s when I played videogames - a strong urge to see what the next level looked like. For all the brilliance of games like DDP and Futari they don't make me feel that way.

In Sturmwind's campaign mode you can save and continue as many times as you like and the score is irrelevant.

There is also an arcade mode with a single credit run through a subset of the levels.

Now set aside the mechanics of this particular game which has its critics but that basic model - a large campaign mode supported by an arcade mode that drops the levels with the set pieces and has deeper scoring and more intricate attack patterns, and you have a game that has a chance of being mainstream while keeping the fanbase happy. It might even grow the fanbase.

[moozooh]

In my opinion why this shump genre is being despised is

It's not being despised. It's being neglected—because its core gameplay sensibilities are, by this time, archaic and only suited for the comparatively small part of gaming audience looking for particular types of challenge in their games. It's just what happens to some genres; to list some others: turn-based strategies, roguelikes, point-and-click adventures... I believe even 1-on-1 fighting games are on their way out as well because of their high particular skill floor (even if you are good at any other fighting game you will be absolutely crushed by an experienced player until you've both learned the difference between characters, a couple dozen strikes/combos, and actually executing said strikes/combos in this particular game).

It happens because gameplay sensibilities of the majority of gaming audience reflect the overall sensibilities of their generations. Shmups were all the rage during the time when gaming was more of a get-together event where people would go to an arcade to pass time, cheer each other on, and sometimes play in co-op. Most of this transitioned well to offline-era home consoles as gamers were still mainly used to single-player or same-screen co-op experience, with high difficulty level typical of arcade games. Internet in general and permanently online gaming platforms in particular have changed this forever, and the generation of gamers mainly active in the last 12-15 years (i.e. today's teenagers) have been thoroughly conditioned by the new order of things in gaming. This new order basically divides games into three large mainstream categories:

1) games you can play socially with/against other people: ARPGs/MMOs, FPSes, MOBAs, RTSes, etc.;
2) games you can play casually on a mobile device—most of these are various kinds of puzzles (from Angry Birds to 2048);
3) games you can play once for the story/aesthetics/achievements and discard shortly afterwards: most platformers, action/adventure games (including interactive movies) and the like.

Genres that don't quite fit into these three categories are destined for the sidelines of gaming industry. If we take shmups as an example, they have very little social element aside from a small community of fans coming to a forum and having conversations about all sorts of things that's basically not playing shmups; they are not a casual genre at all as they demand precise controls and constant concentration; they are one of the worst genres possible in terms of playing for story or the like—can't do much with a full-game playthrough of about 30–60 minutes and a few nonsensical cutscenes before certain boss fights. That's a triple miss, so there you go.

1. Lack any real progressive difficulty

This is actually incredibly misguided. Shmups have historically pioneered certain self-balancing difficulty mechanics (i.e. "rank"), and pretty much all the shmups released in the last 15 years or so have super easy first stages, or even whole super easy modes (Mushihimesama and recent DoDonPachi games, most PC doujins, etc.). For instance, the first couple stages of Mushihimesama Futari Black Label Original mode can be completed without ever moving vertically even by an amateur, and it's widely considered one of the easiest games for survival. Same mode, when played aggressively for score, features some of the hardest routes in any shmup ever, requiring inhuman amounts of skill and precision to successfully execute. Note that the concept of "easy to survive, hard to score" has actually been prevalent in shmups since about early 2000s, especially those pertaining to bullet hell subgenre.

2. Lack of creativity nowadays

Are you sure you aren't confusing this with the overall lack of high-budget production? There has been a grand total of two dozen original (non-remix, non-port, non-addon) arcade titles over the past ten years. A whopping productivity of ~2.5 new games per year, about 1/3 of them by the same developer. But even among those, we have both classic and modern mechanics, all sorts of themes (fantasy, historic military, sci-fi; Western, Japanese, culture-agnostic; mature/serious-toned and cute/otaku-pandering), all sorts of scoring systems. That's not even counting all the PC doujins and console-exclusive releases that have come out during this time that sported all sorts of innovative and experimental gameplay mechanics/elements. There have even been crossbreeds of shmups with adventure games, platformers, even MMOs I believe. If all you've had exposure to is what's currently in MAME and on X360, you're probably not seeing the bigger picture.

3. Lack of worldwide release

The main reason for that is that not many people care outside of Japan. Even in terms of worldwide releases, Japan accounted for more than half the sales volume most of the time (actually I'm not even sure if there have ever been any outliers... Ikaruga, maybe). Believe it or not, a lot of popular shmups were released worldwide; you can check by looking at the amount of "World", "US", "Europe" ROMs in MAME as well as US/EU/region-free items on console port listings.

[Shepardus]

Allow me to remind anyone reading this thread that there are two concepts whose "revival" are being discussed here. The first is the STG as a vague genre where you fly a spaceship, dragon, shrine maiden, etc. and shoot things, and the second is the almost as vague "arcade-like" nature of many STGs, with their series of increasingly difficult stages and scoring systems and credit-based sessions and whatnot. Be careful not to conflate the two. One may be able to re-popularize STGs by ditching their arcade-like format, but that makes no sense if that format is what you sought to preserve. For example, Enter the Gungeon may be seen as some as a breakaway hit spreading the love of shoot 'em ups by fusing its values with other genres in the way roguelikes surged in popularity and gave birth to "roguelites" thanks to games like Spelunky and The Binding of Isaac, while to others it simply misses the point.

Personally I think the genre (for both definitions as described above) isn't as popular as it was at its peak mostly due to the growth in the gaming audience and the variety they have to choose from. Many people play games now who didn't back when STGs were popular, and that's because there are games that appeal to their interests in ways previous games didn't. As these games grew in popularity, even some people who already played STGs moved on from them because there were now games that better served their interests. The net result is an increase in the overall gaming population and the STG audience dwindling in comparison. I do think there is untapped potential for the genre to grow in popularity (I think this forum often underestimates the already-existing audience too), but its heyday is in the past. I say let's not concern ourselves with making drastic changes to our values to attract audiences that aren't going to be interested anyway, but rather figure out how to reach those who already have the right mindset or elements of it.

While this is nice for a revenue standpoint, this is not nice for most players. This is, in my opinion, is one of the reason why arcades died now.

I find this contradictory - if it's driving the death of arcades and arcade STGs, then it's certainly not nice for revenue. The difficulty in arcade games, or really any game, is always a balancing act between making it too hard, which drives players away, and making it too easy, which runs the risk of making it too boring and also too quick to play through once and never play again.

3. Lack of worldwide release

I think this a "chicken and egg" problem - games don't get worldwide releases because there isn't enough interest to justify the cost, which further contributes to the decline in interest. In recent years it's gotten easier to do worldwide releases through digital platforms such as Steam, though, and we're starting to see the effects of that with both doujin and commercial developers choosing to do worldwide releases through digital distribution sites.

2. Lack of creativity nowadays

I think this is also a sort of chicken and egg problem - bullet hells attract people who like bullet hell, and said people want more bullet hell so that's what they get. But it's hard to say whether that cut out the audience who preferred more "classic"-style shooters, or if that audience was already gone to greener pastures and the drive towards bullet hell was simply to cling on to what was left.

[davyK]

STG reviews don't help the case. Ignorant reviewers making ludicrous statements as the impossibility of a game can only put off anyone who might be interested.

STG screenshots can be imtimidating but they can be interesting too - a well crafted review incorporating a brief modern shmup primer taking about tiny collision boxes, bullet cancels and deliberate slowdown - all features that make these mad looking challenges possible - would help.

[Squire Grooktook]

I think shmups are by nature niche and always in danger of falling into a dreaded territory I call "super niche".

Shmups are inherently niche because:

-Lack of "true" content
That is, even though they have replay value, they are technically "short" in terms of the sheer amount of places to go and things to see.

-"Gauntlet" based nature is inherently more intimidating
1cc's might not be the hardest feat out there, but having to a noticeably lengthy journey on death (essentially, they have "perma death", in roguelike terms) keeps it intimidating and nervewracking. Enthusiasts of the genre find this to be their greatest appeal, living on excitement and thrill. Others find it anxiety inducing

Other, less universal reasons:

-Challenging
Many games can be popular off of challenging gameplay, but it'll never be for everyone. Dark Souls is popular, but it's not COD or GTA popular. By making a game require skill and/or dedication for basic enjoyment, you will always be limiting your market a bit.

-Aesthetic reasons
It's hard to purvey character through gameplay in a shmup. Action games like Platinum titles thrive off of excellent animation and style, whereas shmups it's usually just a space ship moving around and shooting things with 2 frames of animation to spare. It's possible to make more stylish player characters (see: Cybattler) but even character shmups generally tend to skimp on the aesthetic factor for some reason.

-Mostly single player
A social element is a BIG deal to a lot of people and can help to hook them into things that they'd otherwise have no interest in ever. Shmups have co-op, which is nice, but almost none of them have online play worth a damn, which limits them severely.

Now, shmups may become SUPER niche, due to the following:

-Lack of innovation
When everything is essentially a danmaku score chase with nothing differentiating each games besides remixed level/pattern design and a slightly different way of chaining, many people will think they've seen it all after playing one Touhou or Cave game. Maintaining genre diversity is something developers should always have in the back of their minds, imo.

-Aesthetic failings
Too many lolis. Hell they'd be fine if they were just sufficiently badass looking lolis but come on

-Difficulty of acquisition
Have fun importing from play asia or amazon/ebay for 80 dollars. If you're not already hardcore into the genre, importing or trading over forums is pretty intimidating. I guess there's used games but eh I always had a hard time finding them, so I doubt a newcomer or anyone with a "casual" interest would have a better time.


I feel like most of the above super niche reasons have been growing a lot fainter lately.

[Vludi]

It's not just STG, it's arcade gaming itself that is pretty niche now because the concept behind it is totally different to modern gaming. The only genre that still is kinda popular is fighting games and maybe rhythm? i guess it's because in those genre you directly compete with others, which people find more appealing than single-player or co-op arcade games.

[copy-paster]

I don't want write a longpost here becaue my thoughts is already mentioned by you guys. It's challenging, un-mainstream, and have it's own "philosophy".

In my country, Indonesia, every arcades will be littered by WMMTs, Initial Ds, those DDR and clones, something even worse like those temple run and fruit ninja arcades, combined with older games like after burner climax, sega race tv, thrill drive 3, and even final lap 3, but none of shooters, not even older and newer ones, nothing.

That's very true.

I once seeing a Strikers 1945 and other shooters (I forgot the name) cabinet in one of local mall.

[Shepardus]

I agree with most of what Squire brought up, and have a few things to add:

-Lack of "true" content
That is, even though they have replay value, they are technically "short" in terms of the sheer amount of places to go and things to see.

This is a pretty big thing that puts many people off from buying shmups even if they would play them (I for one wonder how many people actually buy Touhou games). Though I'm sure many here would say they prefer half an hour or an hour of really really good gameplay over ten or twenty hours of merely decent gameplay, the same isn't true for everybody; sometimes people, myself included, just want something "good enough" to pass the time, and any quality past that is a nice bonus. Besides, whenever you buy a game with the hope of finding really good gameplay there's always the risk of it disappointing; with a longer, more content-laden game, you can be assured of something, which is that whatever you get, you're getting a lot of it. Also it's far easier to advertise and sell something based on the amount of content rather than its quality, since people have differing tastes but numbers like "1500 levels" are pretty objective.

-"Gauntlet" based nature is inherently more intimidating
1cc's might not be the hardest feat out there, but having to a noticeably lengthy journey on death (essentially, they have "perma death", in roguelike terms) keeps it intimidating and nervewracking. Enthusiasts of the genre find this to be their greatest appeal, living on excitement and thrill. Others find it anxiety inducing

Indeed, I've heard the "gauntlet" style of gameplay even decried as bad design, by people who insist that if you got past a challenge once you should never have to play it again. That's the ethos that drives Super Meat Boy, and people liked it for its quick restarts that never set you back more than a few seconds to a minute at the upper end.

-Challenging
Many games can be popular off of challenging gameplay, but it'll never be for everyone. Dark Souls is popular, but it's not COD or GTA popular. By making a game require skill and/or dedication for basic enjoyment, you will always be limiting your market a bit.

I think shmups could do a lot better job communicating that they're not just sadistic "hard for the sake of being hard" joke games for masochists or Asians only. Many people seem to be unaware of lower difficulty settings or just dismiss them as not the "true" way of playing the game, which hurts the genre's chances because even their attempts at accessibility are ignored. To me "the way" of playing shmups is more about the learning and improvement process, than it is about any single achievement or superplay, but I don't see that sentiment echoed much.

I've seen people enjoy shmups such as Crimzon Clover or Astebreed even without much skill or dedication, thanks in large part to their audiovisual feedback, so I don't think shmups inherently require skill/dedication for basic enjoyment. There's a certain immediacy to shooting and dodging that shouldn't be discredited. They do require skill/dedication to get the most out of them, though, and that does limit the audience. However, not everybody who plays a game needs to get the most out of it, so care should be taken to appeal to players who don't want to spend time truly mastering the game or just aren't sure yet. Not all the enjoyment should be locked away behind hours of practice.
(It kind of reminds me of this recent Extra Credits video though I'm too tired to rewatch it and figure out exactly what I'm thinking of, so I'll just link it and hope someone else finds value in it.)

-Aesthetic reasons
It's hard to purvey character through gameplay in a shmup. Action games like Platinum titles thrive off of excellent animation and style, whereas shmups it's usually just a space ship moving around and shooting things with 2 frames of animation to spare.

I agree, and I think this is part of the reason why Touhou is as popular as it is - though it's hard to convey character through the means most other games do so, like movement animations, Touhou manages to do so with what it's got, namely the bullet patterns and music, and it pays off.

-Mostly single player
A social element is a BIG deal to a lot of people and can help to hook them into things that they'd otherwise have no interest in ever. Shmups have co-op, which is nice, but almost none of them have online play worth a damn, which limits them severely.

Yup, there are plenty of games that people take to a very "hardcore" level and spend a lot of time learning and mastering, and these games can be very complex and fraught with a steep, even downright hostile, learning curve. Some of these games are even the most popular in the world nowadays. But every one I can think of is PvP in nature. People value that direct competition, especially if it's team-based so they can party with their friends, but that's something that shmups struggle with.

[Satan]

People are faggots and hippies.

[MintyTheCat]

We are increasingly living in an age where "no one is ever wrong". What I like about Shmups is that they don't need to 'make you right' and allow you to survive when you are wrong. They are short, sharp, pure and are very much flow activities whereby the player simply engages in the game and focuses on what they are doing. Lapses in concentration, feelings of grandeur or other such non sense guarantee an early death.

All the while I find myself constantly working out strategies and review why I failed at a certain point in a Shmup, take on board the ideas then implement them next time.
I find Shmups to be very close to martial arts too in that sense but akin to playing a musical instrument at times too as both rely on experience and learned responses.

The masochistic ego in me is drawn to that in Shmups, but I'm a nut job either way

[pegboy]

Because the entire video industry has been taken over by people who suck at real video games and would rather play through horrible interactive movies instead. We live in the "everyone gets a trophy" world full of entitled little brats that would get their feelings hurt once they realize they suck, so we can't be having that.

[Stevens]

Because the entire video industry has been taken over by people who suck at real video games and would rather play through horrible interactive movies instead. We live in the "everyone gets a trophy" world full of entitled little brats that would get their feelings hurt once they realize they suck, so we can't be having that.

Hahaha. Best post of the thread so far:D

[MintyTheCat]

We live in the "everyone gets a trophy" world full of entitled little brats that would get their feelings hurt once they realize they suck, so we can't be having that.

Yes, akin to a corollary of my impressions and bang on the money We do indeed live in nutty times.

[Shepardus]

I think that's rather unfair to the amount of effort people put into mastering games like Dota, LoL, CS:GO, etc., regardless of how good/bad you think those games are, as well as more niche genres such as fighting games that are nevertheless doing better than shmups, and even challenging single-player games like From Software's output and Super Meat Boy, though they're not as difficult as the more difficult shmups. It's shortsighted to look at the most casual players, many of whom probably didn't even play games when shmups were at their peak, and take that as representative of the entire market.

[PowerofElsydeon]

Here my reasons why shooters have fallen into underapretiation

1)Gaming has changed a lot so did the young generation and their phylosofy
25 years ago Arcades were the real deal I feel really depressed that I have to go to Retrogaming bar or something to catch the the real arcade spirit And how could this happen? Everyone just truned their back on "real" gaming even tough it s impossible to deny how amazing shooters are who knows maybe they lack curiosity or courage to survive one minute with Raiden or something

2)The Developers have also changed
Anyone Remembers Konami known for Gradius Castlevania Twinbee Contra or Turtles?
Forget it they make mobile phone crap and soccer shit just because it gets em more profit

What the hell happened to Irem Psikyo Tecnosoft and Compile?
I know they re no longer active but...their franchises deserve to live on
Probably whoever owns those legal rigth just prefers to ignore em

3)How about making these games acecible on disc on stores with a reasonable price without resorting to importing crap from Japan or getting super cheap on digital stores
I guess Darius Burst Another Cronicle opted for the 50 dollars just to impose respect and dignity
Why dont other Shump developers do this?I doubt they lack profit

4)Why dont you guys recomend something like Thunder Force III or Gunhed to newbies?
If I never played a shooter in my life and gave Radiant Silvergun or R Type a try I would traumatized because it s impossible to even survive 5 minutes without some degree of experience
Yet there are so many Kids who never played a shooter in their and get straigth ahead to Radiant Silvergun only to get destroyed

Also whats the big deal with Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga?
Look at this shit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhrxb3_U910
This Noob doesn t even apreciate shooters yet he has the nerve to give a very positive review with Radiant Silvergun
What freackin sense does that make?
Giving a very positive review to something that you cant even play?
Maybe he just heard that Rsg is cult classic so he just played along with the majority of treasure obcessed peverts and praised it as well
But thats stupid when you praise something you cant even play!

5)Even tough Darius Burst Another Cronicle and Raiden V turned out cool (that s your opinion I didn t even get to try this new generation consoles and Im afraid to promote overatedness like last paragraph)
Many Modern players are encouraged to get Retro because we all know what the Saturn and the Turbo are made off
That s not a bad thing but that attitude will not popularise shooters it will instead encourage everyone to go back to the past and increase the Retrogaming Spectrum and kind of increasing this niche

But that s not the way to go if you want a brigther future
I mean you must give support to reliable companies and Indie developers in order for them not to lose faith in the future and get to profit
Otherwise (getting 100% retro)would destroy whatever s left of shooter developers
So have faith guys

6)Have you ever considered making videos like these https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVRjxUII1HY
If only I had the expensive recording tools and a lot of free time

7)Whenever Hardcore Shumps see the light of day they do very little in order to comfort the kids
Is it so degradating to include a noob freindly mode?
How about tring to impress those kids with Grafx and fucked up beyond belief like humor like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLxn54HylLg
or maybe some western appeal like replacing Pink Sweets with Adults only Content (Sorry Cave fans but there s no problem with dark humor)

Dont you agree with everything I just posted guys

[doom_]

@PowerofElsydeon: regarding 4) - what would you suggest to newbies?

[PowerofElsydeon]

My friend im not very familiar with modern consoles or pc's
Neither with the bullet hell subgenre
But if you can acess old consoles(even if it means emulation)
Id recomend you

Thunder Force III
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wrdqiIK7dc

Gunhed or Super Aleste
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8Q-fMJ ... SxmxfZtWZw


Solar Stiker(It s very simple nature should be a perfect learning tool and it s a respecable game on his own rigth)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JldrOz1SDi4

[Squire Grooktook]

I recommend Cho Ren Sha 68k.

It gives you a lot of lives and bombs and the patterns are flashy and fun without being too brutal.

It's also the best action game ever made. Or well, tied with Rayforce

[Vludi]

Batsugun special 1-all is pretty generous

[copy-paster]

suggest to newbies?

Ikaruga.

[doom_]

I didn't want to hijack the thread with my question!

thanks for your suggestions guys.

[Captain]

To newbies?

From arcade titles, some rarely mentioned games I'd suggest are Last Resort, Sky adventure, and I'm thinking Zero Wing?

From "meta" games, Donpachi comes to mind.

[Kollision]

A good vert for newbies imo is Rapid Hero.
Gekirindan is good too.

[Cagar]

-

[Kollision]

^ this makes me inside

of course everybody is able to 1CC Ikaruga or Raiden V in 5 hours
shmups are shit