Wow, only just spotted this - quite surprised to see my definitions quoted. Like the conventional term!
Psikyo = manic/conventional.
Ikaruga = danmaku.
G-Darius = conventional.
@TodayIsForgotten - absolutely. Split out the scoring mechanics from the game type.
@DJ Incompetent - difficulty is seperate from game type.
Cody's gone one step further, and I agree this would be the way of sub-categorising everything. It's also quite practical to do. Start by working through categorising everything with the top level, and as you're going along produce lists of specifics (terrain, scrolling type, hitbox, scoring mechanic) for each game. It's too big a task to do in one shot, so be sure to at least get the tag "type" correct even if the tags themselves have odd terms.
Standardizing Difficulty Styles. (Manic, Memorizer, etc.)
Re: Standardizing Difficulty Styles. (Manic, Memorizer, etc.)
Methodical and memorizer are definitely not the same.
For a shmup to be a memorizer, knowledge needs to be more important than reflexes, at least for a large part of the game.
Lets take the classic R-Type. Once you've seen someone else do it, you can pretty much breeze through the first 4 stages with minimal practice, because you know what you are supposed to do. particularly in level 4, most of the challenge of the stage is learning what you should be trying to do, not in actually doing it.
If you know what you have to do and are still haveing a lot of difficulty, then the game you are playing is not a memorizer. In this case, proper execution is the real challenge.
For a shmup to be a memorizer, knowledge needs to be more important than reflexes, at least for a large part of the game.
Lets take the classic R-Type. Once you've seen someone else do it, you can pretty much breeze through the first 4 stages with minimal practice, because you know what you are supposed to do. particularly in level 4, most of the challenge of the stage is learning what you should be trying to do, not in actually doing it.
If you know what you have to do and are still haveing a lot of difficulty, then the game you are playing is not a memorizer. In this case, proper execution is the real challenge.