How did the danmaku genre reach such ascendancy?

[Despatche]

Wow. Just when I thought I was playing the game well enough, someone has to seriously one-up me.

[Treasurance]

Raging Decision

Raging Deicide

[Sumez]

Though Cave misspelled "Deicide" as "Decide", which makes room for obvious confusion.

[Despatche]

Yay, word stuff. This is a better topic. I'm going to answer Skyknight though, and say something like "large amounts of bullets began to appeal to people more so, and there haven't been many 'clones' as most developers giving it a shot have tried to make something unique; this makes for a healthy ecosystem now and a great library later, and there are still companies doing this 'old style' but the thing is that it's never so easy to distinguish".

Sumez, I'm not sure what you mean:

"'deicide' is misspelled": the song is "RAGING DEICIDE", so what are you referring to?

"'decide' is misspelled": Though, "deicide" is a word. Consider Gaara's godlike power, and boy does she die.

[Jeneki]

Maybe they are fans of the band.

[nZero]

Yay, word stuff. This is a better topic.

Sumez, I'm not sure what you mean:

"'deicide' is misspelled": the song is "RAGING DEICIDE", so what are you referring to?

"'decide' is misspelled": Though, "deicide" is a word. Consider Gaara's godlike power, and boy does she die.

http://vgmdb.net/db/covers.php?do=view&cover=64069

Finally fixed in the tracklist of the Guwange/ESPRa.De. soundtrack that came out in 2007.

[Despatche]

So it really is meant to be "deicide"... that makes me happy. I don't care if Kusunoki did a half-hearted job, I get the feeling he didn't have much of a choice anyway.

[RNGmaster]

No, it's actually spelled Ronde.

[Wenchang]

Danmaku games have bigger hooks than previous shooting games(mostly because of the appearance of the big mass of bullets) and Cave's games have scoring systems that are complicated enough to appeal to the hardcore players(something a lot of older shooters or say Psikyo games lacked) without being too esoteric, unusual, and difficult to understand(like say Yagawa games).

And I'm going to agree with the idea that most bullet hell style games allow less freedom of movement than manic shooters. Especially to a player who plays for survival but will try to kill all the enemies(as opposed to avoiding a bullet pattern entirely and letting the enemy pass by), games like DoDonpachi Daioujou and Ketsui feel utterly robotic to play when compared to something like Raiden or Dimahoo. People will bring up the secondary mechanics that involve cancelling bullets and the like, but those abilities usually slow your ship down and besides that, they're practically necessary in games like Ketsui where enemies take so many hits to destroy. Takumi games utilized this mechanic much better I think, but I still would not say they allow the same freedon of movement of said examples, especially to new players. I also don't get the idea that playing at the top of the screen and point blanking demonstrates freedom of movement. I think the complete opposite, that's a sign of just how robotic and exacting(in terms of placement) Cave games are(and how simplistic enemy behavior is). You use Miyamoto in Dimahoo and you can zip across the screen and destroy enemies from any number of angles and order you want. You play a lot of manic shooters and the enemies respond more to your actual movements(usually through the simple fact that most of their attacks are literally aimed at you), giving the player more possibilities on how to approach enemies.

As far as success goes though, it's always an oversimplification to look at things merely from a gameplay perspective. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons that have to do with business and technical issues that have made a company like Cave more successful than its predecessors were in the 90s. And then there are factors like Cave's utilization of characters instead of ships(finally culminating in pandering to the loli loving otaku douchebags) that caught on. But anyhow, greater freedom of movement is certainly not the most valued quality among shooter fans in general. Look at the success of R-Type and Gradius.

[ChainsawGuitarSP]

R-Type's restriction of movement is balanced out by it's diverse attack options. And in spite of how cramped it is, the level design still stands out much better than your average shmup.

[shadowbringer]

slower bullets allow bullet patterns made by stage enemies or bosses/midbosses, while still allowing fast bullets to be in the game (or to be mixed with said slower bullets). While having to deal with fast bullets require attention, reflexes and foresight (for your next actions) and in some cases, memorization of important obstacles (and sometimes, how to answer them properly), slower bullets help you exercise foresight better (and at least I enjoy this exercise), as long as you can feel the flow of the important bullets.

(sometimes, in older games with faster bullets, it helps to know when the enemy is about to fire or how long is their delay after firing, or their dead angles, or how close you can stay to them, so you still have time to dodge on reaction)

[Wenchang]

R-Type's restriction of movement is balanced out by it's diverse attack options. And in spite of how cramped it is, the level design still stands out much better than your average shmup.

Of course. I wasn't pointing these out as a criticism of R-Type. I still think the original R-Type is the gold standard for level design in a shooter.

[gs68]

Because danmaku looks pretty. Unfortunately, at the same time, it looks intimidating enough that people will never want to try out a shmup.

[-Bridget-]

Not much good when just watching a bit of the superplay gives the watcher a sense of claustrophobia, even in a no-miss situation (I know some of those gaps, I probably never would have searched them out before I got shot)...Why would anyone WANT to ride on the ragged edge of disaster as a matter of course (granted this applies more to Garegga than anything else...)? I suppose it also has to do with my inability to see how graze mechanics are an attraction. The graze sounds never manage to tell me much beyond "You're too close to the bullets, you fool! GET AWAY FROM THEM!", whether or not I know I'm getting extra points from the accident.

Alot of this also depends on the player, and the level of practice they've had.

I'm impatient and aggressive, and this leads to me always trying to point-blank things..... even in full-on danmaku games.

Futari's God Mode, for example; I will spend basically the ENTIRE first stage (aside from the midboss) in the uppermost part of the screen and I'll point-blank basically everything. Stage 2 as well, I end up doing the point-blank thing alot, and that's DURING the dense crap. It's just a matter of practice and learning to do it, and knowing if I SHOULD be doing it, as far as scoring goes.


And things like that are where I think danmaku type games win out over "traditional". I find that the games are alot less restrictive usually.... actual WALLS will FORCE you into the sections of the screen that the devs want, but danmaku games can only TRY to force you; you can often still squeeze through if you know what you're doing, or direct the pattern to somewhere YOU want it to go and exploit it.

They're also almost always better about SCORING.... and I think that's one of the biggest draws for me. Alot of "traditional" games are.... very non-focused on scoring. You get points for blowing stuff up.... that's it. That's boring, as I see it. Alot of danmaku type games add SO MUCH MORE to the scoring; granted, you occaisionally get a really strict scoring system like DOJ.... cant stand that sorta thing.... but for the most part, alot of these games give you alot of freedom to figure out the best ways to score, and will take real skill in order to actually DO so.

[zaphod]

ESP Garuda

Oh, come on.

'Garuda' is the correct spelling of the mythical Buddhist bird creature that the game got its name from. 'Galuda' is just an engrishy romanization.

Fixed for you.

You arr know how much difficurty they have with getting their Ls and Rs stlaight.

(I exaggerate only slightly here.)