good shmups by developers not specialised in them

[Zeether]

Sammy made Change Air Blade too, which is fun with 2 players but if you play single player it's a bit rough.

[cj iwakura]

Alfa System are known mostly for their projects for other publishers, like Phantasy Star Portable and such.

I think the Shikigami series are their only shmups.

Unless you count Elemental Gearbolt; lightgun. (And one of the best lightgun games ever at that)

[BrianC]

Recently, I was baffled by the revelation, that Biohazard Battle seems to have been an arcade game originally. Is that true? I wasn't aware of that. I always though it was a Mega Drive original. In any case, it's quite an awesome shmup not only published, but actually developed by Sega. Another great Sega-developed shmup is Astro Warrior for the Master System, which I also re-played recently.

Looking at these two, it makes me wish that Sega (and Nintendo) had turned to our favourite genre more often, as their results always seemed to be very good. For Sega, there's also Fantasy Zone, for Nintendo I can only think of Solar Striker.

Are there more?

Biohazard Battle's arcade game is just the Genesis game ported to arcade. Sega actually did a few shmups. Aside from those mentioned, they also did Orguss on the SG-1000, Star Jacker, Transbot/Astro Flash, Transformer/Astro Flash (different from the SMS game), Astro Blaster, Borderline, Scramble Spirits, and Tac-Scan (not sure if this counts. Starts out as a shmup then goes pseudo 3d). They also did shmupish games like Zaxxon, Super Zaxxon, Space Fury, Eliminator, Zektor, Star Trek, Ninja Princess/The Ninja, and Rambo/Ashura/Secret Command(o). Both Nintendo and Sega made clones of Taito's Space Invaders, if that counts.

Nintendo's Donkey Kong 3 is a rare shmupish game from Nintendo. It's actually a follow up to their Greenhouse LCD Game & Watch, and has more in common with that than the usual DK game. I found it to be a great deal of fun.

Anyway, relating to the topic... another game that comes to my mind is Subterrania by Zyrinx. Not a typical shmup, but I would still count it to the genre. It´s a good game, the multidirectional exploring and the gravity give it a nice and individual touch.

Subterrania is basically an update of games like Gravitar and Thrust, both worth checking out. Both have impressive versions on the 2600, as well. I don't usually think of Atari (the maker of Gravitar) as a shmups company, but they did make games like Asteroids and Centipede.

[Devil REI]

If you can find Baroque Shooting by Sting anywhere, give it a go - it's quite good.

(Though Sting does seem to love shooters - Knights in the Nightmare uses a LOT of shooter elements and it's totally awesome)

[Enhasa]

I never thought of Donkey Kong 3 as a shmup before, but that is a very good observation.

Like Enhasa said, it's difficult to know where to draw the line. Konami, Taito and Capcom weren't genre specialists like Cave/Raizing/Psikyo et al, but they undeniably had firm standing within the genre throughout the 80s and 90s.

I think I'd exclude them. They are well known for at least some of their shmups (Gradius, Darius, 19xy). Other companies mentioned are most widely known for totally different stuff, though, and that's what I'm aiming at.

Yeah, I guess the thread would have made more sense for me if it was "not known for them" in the title instead of "not specialized." Otherwise I'd say the average Capcom shmup is a lot better than the average Milestone one. Even with this new definition though, just looking at my top 10, I have stuff like Twinkle Star Sprites, Granada, and Psyvariar (nobody except shmuppers thinks of Cotton or Psyvariar when they hear Success).

Ed Oscuro's post is perfect and pretty much what I was getting at. Back before lots of info was readily available in the internet age, people used to pay most attention to who the manufacturer was ("it's a Nintendo game"), then later publisher, now finally beginning to pay attention to developer. Looking down at the team level has always made more sense though. Otherwise you see Viewtiful Joe as a Capcom game and Viewtiful Joe 2 as a Clover game. People have already skipped past team to the individual director level, but for large teams these design superstars don't come up with the level layouts. Even with people swapping around all the time inside bigger companies, looking at teams is still the way to go.

Nier (and probably most of those games) are not made by SquareEnix. Take note of the difference between developer and publisher.

Neither were most of the non RPGs listed in the original post by yyr. Square has always published a lot of others' games, even more so with Enix. My two favorite Square games on the SFC/SNES, Alcahest and Treasure Hunter G, were both developed by others. And that was their most in-house period.

I've never been able to stand all the "good ole days" sentiment about Square on the SNES or PS1 or whenever. People typically blame the merger/buyout as the turning point too. But if you segregate out Enix or Taito or whoever's stuff postmerger as best you can, they're no better or worse now than they ever were (they're actually better now with the additions). It's the fans who have changed. They're jaded and no longer pre-internet teens anymore. Release FF7 for the first time today and they would rightfully mock it. Also, to me at least, Enix has released a much better library of games than Square on every single shared system, and I've never seen anyone long for the good ole days of Enix. Maybe you can find people like that in Japan though, lol.

[BIL]

If you can find Baroque Shooting by Sting anywhere, give it a go - it's quite good.

(Though Sting does seem to love shooters - Knights in the Nightmare uses a LOT of shooter elements and it's totally awesome)

They did Override (PCE) as well, a very nice Compile-esque vert.

[Voxbox]

Oops, first part of my post should've been in another thread

I've never been able to stand all the "good ole days" sentiment about Square on the SNES or PS1 or whenever. People typically blame the merger/buyout as the turning point too. But if you segregate out Enix or Taito or whoever's stuff postmerger as best you can, they're no better or worse now than they ever were (they're actually better now with the additions). It's the fans who have changed. They're jaded and no longer pre-internet teens anymore.

I agree. The fans and the market are the truly important changes.
Us oldschoolers aren't the target group for most of todays games. We got hooked when we were young teens and today there's millions of more new teens to hook. The boom in casual gamers and the high production costs today makes for few games that are as satisfying as the oldies was, back when all games were hardcore, and later when developers could experiment more without the pressure to create a guaranteed hit.

[toaplan_shmupfan]

To me, Taito is almost a specialized shooter developer/publisher, even despite their many puzzle games and platform type games, due to a combination of:

1. Fixed shooters, mostly their Space Invaders series but also games such as Halley's Comet.
2. Shooting elements in their Arkanoid games (Laser capsule in Arkanoid) and maze games (laser powerup in Raimais).
3. Shooting elements in their platform like games (e.g., Pyros shooting multiple weapons, Don Doko Don shooting hammers, Bubble Bobble shooting bubbles).
4. Shooters developed by other companies, such as Toaplan, distributed by Taito alone or in conjuction with another company (Taito/Romstar).