Which shmup killed "shmups"

[IseeThings]

Fair enough. What is your stance than on the novice modes in Cave games or the relatively easy going normal difficulties in Touhou?

They exist, but one of the interesting mentalities I've seen out there is that a lot of people feel insulted by an 'easy' mode, and so ignore it. Never underestimate the ego of a current gamer, and how bad it is if you damage that when the majority of other games out there are doing everything they can to make the player feel like they're god-like.

There are exceptions of course, some games do have genuine insanely difficult modes offered after beating a game on the normal settings etc. but I think from a psychological point of view that's a bit different from the player having to select an easy mode, an easy mode is what you give your kids to play on.

Keep in mind tho, that current gamers consider the Demons Souls, Dark Souls etc. type games to be extreme hardcore, I've completed those, looped several times, but even then they're more like a bullet hell shooter would be if had checkpoints & infinite continues to beat each section of a level. In the case of those games you only need to get lucky once to pass a boss, and have an infinite number of attempts to retry it, but that's the style of gameplay they encourage, the developers and all the advertising material is basically telling you that 'credit feeding' is good. I don't think even 0.001% of the population would even consider trying to clear them on a single life yet the actual challenge and concentration / reflex levels required are IMHO lower than a lot of shmups where you're looked down on if you can't.

The current mentality for that kind of game is not that skill = reward, it's that time = reward, I think this comes in part from MMORPG style games, where the more time and money somebody invests in the game the better score / level they have, regardless of their actual skill. In the above example, should it be a shmup, people who had spent 5 weeks trying to beat the level 4 boss would want every point they'd collected in the process appearing as part of their score, and expect to be top of the scoreboard due to the time they'd put in even if in the end they only beat the boss by getting lucky. Anybody with the skills to 1CC the game would be somewhere near the bottom. Such things wouldn't appeal to people here (you go apeshit if a game keeps your score on a simple continue) so again, there would be a clash of egos over the high score tables and what counts as the 'best player'.

Touhou I can't comment on, outside of these forums (and the obvious YouTube videos you get associated with any other shmup you search for) I can't say I've ever heard anybody mention it, not even once, so it's definitely not managed to reach out to a lot of people who might enjoy it, or might hate it.

How do you appeal to what a modern gamer who buys the latest mainstream titles wants without the game being an abomination to the people here?

[Stevas]

I don't think it's any one game, it's a combination of a number of factors.

Primarily - with the arrival of 3D - (single player) videogames have become more like interactive movies, with little skill required to get to the end. Shmups themselves haven't really changed much when seen through the eyes of your average wallet (or human, if you prefer): they're still, for the most part, the core "five or six really short levels, with bosses" that can be "done with" in half an hour.

To get the most out of a shmup, you really have to put a lot of work in. And humans have become lazier, more used to having whatever they want, whenever they want (in particular when talking about digital entertainment). They don't want to have to put any work in on their downtime, thanks. Not unless there are some proper rewards at the end.

Which brings me to:

If you get good at a shmup? You get to post a high-score and feel good about yourself. I guess you can throw your weight around in some nerdy forums somewhere (hey there, fellow shmups chatters!) - if you need that sort of validation. Nobody knows your name. Nobody cares, apart from the very small percentage of nerds who are into these games.

You get good at a COD? You get to shoot actual other morons in the face. And tell them things about their mom.
You can even make money off it, if you get VERY good.

Hell, you get good at a one on one fighter and you get actual money and fame for that. While telling those you beat down things about their mom, too.

I myself am into shmups in a huge way. Maybe not to the same level as some of you guys, but from the average gamer - should they ask what games I'm into - I very often get looks like this when I tell them: O_O

And do I know the name of even one record holder? Do I fuck.

But I know names like Justin Wong, Daigo, etc.

Funny, that.

Actually, I changed my mind. It's not any of all that.
I think maybe we all just stopped telling other people what we're doing to their moms at some point.


Edit: Yeah, I guess I am suggesting there's been a cultural shift - which just happens to coincide with a few other things - resulting in (or even being caused by) your average human being less likely to attempt something that is a) difficult, and b) offers no other rewards than simply being able to say "I did that". Humans gonna human.

[Blinge]

I dodged your mum's patterns so hard last night

[Stevas]

Yeah, she told me while she was sucking my-

Wait, that isn't right. Dammit, I've never got the hang of this shit.

[gray117]

Just one guy's flip opinion and your happenstance where you hoped to find something and didn't...

... er also he was showing a game, and you asked if he would instead make a 'proper' game? ... if not actually knocking his current effort then at least dismissing it and asking for something else... and you got a slightly snappy answer (whether or not it's accurate). Perhaps not too surprising?

I think it's pretty short sighted to simply expect it's relatively easy for anyone to knock out any good game - whether you know what you're doing or not. With that in mind it's perhaps not staggering that sometimes there's just a lull in the game releases/announcements for a (niche) genre? There's a fair amount of craft necessary for a staged shmup, it's generally a lot of time/effort, there's probably several games being worked on that just weren't in a position to show at PAX...

No parallel to E.T. ... that was just an out and out bad business deal, they also overpaid of the IP which kind of forced/drove the wild expectation of sales... that and it was not exactly a great game... On top of which, in the wider picture Atari also mismanaged it's hardware cycles, failed to invest and capitalise on their market position, and instead kind of tried to exploit their position. This led to them losing ground technologically and in business terms; forever attempting to play catch up to the secondary players that emerged to dominate the market. Of course that's hindsight, the implied criticism is a bit harsh - they still essentially pioneered popular home console gaming (at least in the US).

Indie's do still get inspiration from larger commercial efforts and vica versa. It's not surprising that they will be ebs and flows on the fashion-ability of a genre in either arena... What's somewhat damaging to the fetishtique value of a shmup is that with few standout larger commercial examples, there's less general excitement/interest in the genre. And no larger company is looking to set out on a project that just makes it's money back - perhaps they'll write off something as growing/development pains - but they'll absolutely looking to make an investment; usually in terms of profit...

Meanwhile, although they are not the ideal for many traditional shmup people, I'd still take encouragement from the exposure garnered from games such as resogun/geometry wars/txk/luftrauser.

[Strikers1945guy]

Touhou did.

This.

[MR_Soren]

No one game killed the genre.

The shift to 3D, consoles surpassing arcade hardware, the death of arcades, a shift away from the arcade mindset (collection/completion has replaced the desire for technical mastery), and the genre's failure to become social enough have killed shmups.

Bullet hell games get worse when you add a second player. The screen is too cluttered, and the all-important scoring mechanics become very difficult to utilize when there is a second player on the screen. This makes it difficult to introduce new players. "Hey, whacha playin? Can I join in?" "No, you'll ruin my combo... You can try it by yourself after I'm done." If that doesn't immediately turn them off, they'll quickly lose interest as soon as you try explaining the scoring mechanics.

Shoot-em-ups mostly failed to introduce story elements that console players have come to expect. "I don't care about points, what's the story?" "Oh, well these dead tweens are having a shared hallucination where some pervert dresses them up in sexy lingerie and gives them magical powers." "Uhh... got anything else?" "Sure, this game is about an aircraft that fights enemies on earth and in space, leading up to a grand finale against a big diamond. Okay... there's really no story worth mentioning, but one of the optional ships is a fairy!"

Arcades are dead. If people want to make shoot-em-ups relevant again, they need to cater to the console audience. Make a fun multiplayer mode, have unlockable crap, skippable story segments, great 3D graphics, lots of things to destroy, a gentler difficulty, fill the screen on an HD television, etc. That's not saying they can't also include an arcade / score attack mode, but they need to market it to the console audience with all that other stuff. Outside of the indie scene, the days of a well-tuned bare-bones score attack vertical are over.

[Bananamatic]

Definitely Touhou.

[Kollision]

Seriously, I agree 100% with what MR_Soren wrote.

[royalfan84]

Mentioning the Raiden Series was spot-on. For instance; I'm still fairly new to the shmup genre as far as "really getting into it". I've only been really into shmups for the last 2 years; and I enjoy nearly all eras and sub-genres in it. I have 4-7 friends over about every month or two to play shmups. These guys range from heavy gamers who don't play shmups to "average" gamers who don't even know what shmups were. I'm slowly getting all of them hooked on the genre however.

1. They all dig Raiden Fighters and Ikaruga.
2. They all dig the older gen shmups like Gunhed, Lords of Thunder, MUSHA, Life Force, even SkyShark. We spent over 4 hours just playing Skyshark one night; I did not expect that.
3. They all like the Gradius games; again surprising to me based on how difficult they are...they mostly prefer Gradius III and IV over V....again surprising to me based on how unforgiving III is and how much it kicks you in the balls....but they love it.
4. They like the 1940 series but especially Strikers 1945II. Good taste. They also like 19XX a lot.
5. They tolerate Radiant Silvergun and it's slowly growing on some of them; but they don't prefer it. They really like Battle Garegga and it's often requested even though they cuss the bullets.
6. They love the visuals and bosses on Sine Mora but it's too hard for them and has almost no replayability once they've seen the game's entirety.
7. They don't like any of the Cave games at all; except Deathsmiles a little. I really thought they'd did AK at least; but nope. One of the guys does kinda like Guwange; but mostly because of the cat-spider boss.
8. They really love playing Raiden Fighters, Ikaruga, the Strikers and 1940's games, and space shooters in general. Except DoDonPachii
9. They don't like R-Type that much; too slow and difficult they say.

I'd say number's 6 and 7 are the most telling of why shmups are not doing so well overall...Cave lacks mass appeal and no one has figured out how to make a good all-around and accessible shmup in quite some time.

[Doctor Butler]

Forgive me this brevity, but:
As consoles gave way to more plot driven games, a difficulty barrier stopping average joe from progressing ceased to be lucrative at all. The need was to develop games that people would want to come back to, or play sequels of. "Game" was a bad word for a while, there are stories of people holding up their creation and saying "It's not a game, it's an interactive experience!"

Also Ikaruga did not kill the genre, goddamnit

Thank you. The problem for shmups (and games in general, in fact) starts with the original PlayStation; the popularity of PS1 brought in a huge influx of new players, many of whom only saw games as throw-away distraction, instead of a passionate hobby. These people dominated the market-share, and developers began to cater to them, making games more shallow, easy, and narrative-heavy. Granted, narrative-movie bullshit existed in games for far longer, on PC, but that was largely a small niche-market, that had little to no impact on the arcade industry.

Consoles had an impact on arcades, at least in the US, and we now have an entire generation of people who claim they love videogames, and yet have never been to an arcade in their life. They demand more cutscenes, less gameplay, and no interaction with other players.

Btw, I'm not an old-man complaining about 'kids these days'; I'm 24, and when I went to Community College, I heard some nerdy guys say some mind-numblingly stupid shit about "realism" and "graphics" and how games are art, so they should be single-player Sega CD movies, since that's the only way they can truly "evolve" This girl I know only plays RPG's because that's what REAL gaming is. Not being a game at all, apparently.

And this is what the general gaming audience is now. People who hate videogames.

[Squire Grooktook]

I'd say number's 6 and 7 are the most telling of why shmups are not doing so well overall...Cave lacks mass appeal and no one has figured out how to make a good all-around and accessible shmup in quite some time.

Ironically though my experience is quite different. Most of my non shmup friends think bullet hell is the only part of the genre that looks remotely interesting and might be worth playing.

"Shmups are boring and always kind of sucked. They improved a little when they added more bullets though"

[Blackbird]

We've had this conversation a few times before on shmups forum. I don't think it was any one game that was the proverbial "last straw" but rather a combination of factors.

- Decline of shmup popularity in arcades because 2D fighters replaced it as the most popular genre.
- Overabundance of "Raiden clones" in the 90's
- Obsession with 3D being the "new thing" in the 32bit era meant that there were very few good 2D games localized to consoles in the West. All genres got slammed by this, but shmups were hit especially hard.
- Genre stigma of shmups either having stale/same-y mechanics between titles or being graphically obsoleted by First Person Shooters.
- Strong critical emphasis on innovative features/mechanics rather than perfection of a form.
- Shift of gaming preferences from challenging single player arcade experiences to comparatively relaxed multiplayer social experiences.
- Poor game design. Many shmups make it very easy to play them in a manner unintended by the developer. "I credit fed this game and beat it three times in an hour!"

In short, shmups are just out of fashion. The mainstream views them as graphically dated, boring, antisocial, and either too difficult or too easy depending on whether credit feeding is enabled or not. It's just been a slow, gradual decline over a period of decades.

I think there is a lot of evidence of the above points when we consider the shmups that -have- garnered critical success in recent years. Jamestown, Sine Mora, Astebreed, all of them have made concessions to modernize their image in some way. They all include at least an attempt at narrative. Sine Mora and Astebreed use 3D graphics and are visually appealing. Jamestown has an excellent co-op play mode (the best feature of the game, imo). As much as I love my hardcore bullet hell shooters, I think future shmups are going to need to find new ways to engage with the modern gaming audience.

[iconoclast]

As a few other people have said, I think the rise of console/PC gaming has done more to kill arcade games than anything else. Most people just don't want to play games that demand effort, they'd rather get immersed in an adventure or enjoy the latest cinematic experience. I'm not even trying to look down on those games - I play them, too - but there's no denying that they're easy and shallow by comparison. That's why they're so successful.

Arcade-style games have it especially rough nowadays because of platforms like XBLA/PSN/Steam and mobile phones, which have conditioned people into believing that they shouldn't cost more than $10 or so. And of course there isn't enough interest in the genre to support such a low price point, so when Grev tried to test the waters with Strania, they wound up losing money. The only solution is to keep making games for the 10,000-30,000 people who are still willing to buy them for $70 at retail.

It doesn't help that most STG developers seemingly gave no fucks about casual consumers, as they kept making games more difficult with more complex systems to satisfy their hardcore fans. Cave tried their best to appeal to as many people as possible by using cute girl characters, making games with difficulty selection, and by making some games easy to clear if you just want to play for survival, but evidently that couldn't keep them alive forever.

[nosorrow]

I play modern Cave games like everyone else, but I'd prefer if there were more emphasis put on survival skills rather than in understanding some scoring mechanic. My wish is that Compile-like outfits would still be releasing games on modern hardware.

That being said, I'll take Cave before any developer that tries to incorporate cinematic flair/story into shooters. Please leave that crap to games for people who are into The Last of Us or Heavy Rain. And if shmups die, so be it! There are so many good shmups available (dating back to the late 80s!)... Any normal being would never have the time necessary to play seriously most of them.

[Squire Grooktook]

Shooting game never die

[Sakurei]

Definitely Ketsui.

It's fucking gay. Fujoshi fanservice is probably the most disgusting kind of thing someone could do. And they just went and did it.

[KAI]

Definitely 2hu.

It's fucking pedo. Lolicon fanservice is probably the most disgusting kind of thing someone could do. And they just went and did it.

[eatdogs]

I think shmups went to crap when the developers started having a bunch of dumb fan service. Even if the games are ok, they become worthless to me and that's a shame. I really wanted to check out Caladrius blaze and a few others, but eh... I'll throw in touhou as well.

[Xyga]

How old is Shizuru again ?

[KAI]

I play it for the mechas.

[yorgje]

To rebutt all of the fanservice people here: I think that fanservice is a symptom, not a cause of the decline of shmups. The way I look at it is like so: of all the game genres out there, a shmup is probably the easiest type of game to program, but one of the hardest to do well. Part of the reason it is hard to do well is because of the first point: you have to be fucking EXCEPTIONAL to stick out from the masses of shmups that are all shoddy clones of each other. And, moreover, it's not enough to just have a novel scoring mechanic or something, because since these games are so easy to write, almost anything you can think of has been done before. There's really just no low-hanging fruit in the genre from a developers perspective. Moreover, the audience for shmups, in addition to being small and thus non-lucrative, is also mostly comprised of hardcore gamers who really emphasize personal improvement to the max. Thus, in order to write a game that these types of people will laud, you have to understand the genre to great depth, you have to have played several types of shmups at a very high level and understand how every little detail of any scoring mechanic you come up with will be used and abused in high level play, and stuff like that. It's clear how fanservice can be used to help your yet-another-traditional-shmup stand out from the crowd: post images of a generic cute anime girl on the internet, have weeaboos fall in love with her, and they'll play your game. I really don't think that the existence of fanservicy art actually actively keeps people away from shmups in a statistically significant way.

Also, because KAI is an idiot:

Definitely 2hu.

It's fucking pedo. Lolicon fanservice is probably the most disgusting kind of thing someone could do. And they just went and did it.

If you've ever actually played a fucking touhou game, you would know that the girls present in the series are one of frankly very few examples of females in games that aren't sexualized at all. Many artists choose to make fan-depictions of touhou characters as young-ish, because ZUN doesn't know how to draw boobs and thus in all of the official art the girls are flat, but none of the imagery or dialogue in-game ever appeals to childish-moe, and most of the characters with canon ages are really quite old. But the age issue is kind of besides the point. You don't play touhou games because your favorite loli waifu has such beautiful eyes, or you like looking at yuyuko's boobs, or because aya's belly skin is so perfectly erotic, becaues none of that stuff is in the games. Like, right now, go find some official art of reimu and compare it to any of the generic moe anime girls from, i dunno, sai dai ojou or something, and my point will be made strikingly clear. Personally, the reason I find that (at least the early) touhou games are so popular is because it has the feeling of a passion project: it's made by a shmups fan with a creative imagination who really took the time to flesh out his world just the way he wanted it to be, without being particularly concerned with the size of his audience or pushing a political agenda or appealing to some trendy cultural perception of artsiness. Whether you're just going for a first 1cc, a difficult survival goal, or delving deep into the scoring system of a game, it always feels solid and engaging because ZUN gave a lot of shits about how the player experience should feel at many levels of play. I've spent a liittle bit of time thinking about score system design myself since I've been recently working on writing my own shmup, and the more I look at the systems present in the various Touhou games, the more I am amazed at how almost every detail is very elegantly solving a particular design problem.

I know the op of this thread said he didn't want to accept an answer that claims it's just cultural, but I think that the cultural aspect is inevitably a huge part of the decline of popularity of shmup development. I've talked to a couple of indie game devs whose opinions on shmups were basically "the programming is easy, you just have to spend a lot of time or money getting good graphics," which is very antithetical to the way most indie game dev shops are run (see all those half-assed pixel art or online-flash-game-style cartoony things; not to say those styles can't be done well, but oftentimes they're just used as a cop out to save time on graphics). With that kind of reputation, you'll never see a deep shmup like touhou or any other shmup that you may personally love coming out of an indie shop, because the things you love about the genre just aren't seen by most indie developers. The other thing is, there's definitely this pretention in the indie game dev community about being artsy, which for many devs means nothing more than "pushing the boundaries of what can be considered a game", whereas the shmups community has almost the opposite pretention of their games really being about nothing but the gameplay and personal improvement. These shouldn't be mutually exclusive, but in practice many people think of them as being so, because "being about nothing but the gameplay" means writing a game that's primarily about dodging bullets with a non-intrusive scoring system thrown on top for the advanced players, which leads to very traditional sort of games. I personally believe that there are lots of emergent properties of the shmup genre that can and should be exploited in artsy-type concept games or whatever, even basic things like the number of times you have to play a pattern to learn it, the way you develop a sort of tunnel-vision when assaulted by a dense bullet pattern, whatever, but it takes a lot more finesse to shoehorn some broader thesis into these kinds of phenomena.

[mastermx]

Whilst sine mora may have bad gameplay. The devs sure knew how to cater to the mainstream audience.

It's exactly as MR_Soren said

[Lord Satori]

This thread is a ridiculous troll magnet.

[Lilium]

My shmups are still alive. Dunno about yours.

[Furry Fox Jet Pilot]

My shmups are still alive. Dunno about yours.

Raiden is the only big name shmup series that's still alive, if you want to know why, look at my post on the previous page. But seriously, ask yourselves what other shmups have survived as long as Raiden, long enough to see a 25th anniversary?

[ARF]

Shmups are too much memo for this generation of gamers, people love surprises! I'd like to imagine that the next 2hu phantasmagoria, if released online with good multiplayer, could revive shmups!

[Lilium]

Well if you're talking about Dead as in no new games being made then I don't think one could possibly find a single shmup that did that. More like a lack of a large enough consumer base. Thats not the fault of a game but changing times and people wanting different things from their games.

Shooting Game Never Die. Not for as long as there's anyone willing to play them. I don't need new games to play, I have a ton of games I haven't even 2-alled and I have yet to get a decent score in something. Therefore shmups will only be dead to those who only creditfeeds their stuff and runs out of games.

You could say that getting something fresh is nice but I doubt anyone will think that SDOJ is better than DOJBL or that Double Dealing Character is better than Perfect Cherry Blossom. So really... what good is new stuff if its just gonna be inferior to the old anyways :3

[Squire Grooktook]

WARNING, WARNING
A HUGE WALL OF TEXT IS APPROACHING FAST


Reading this thread, I'm hearing a lot of people talk about how they can't get friends into the genre, or have a hard time getting friends into bullet hell in particular. Based on what they're saying though, I get the distinct feeling that they are advertising to the wrong fanbases. Don't cast your pearls before your college room mate who only plays "INSERT AAA GAME EVERYONE HATES HERE". Cast them before the people who already have an appreciation for "hardcore" gaming and have bought many of these so called indie games that are doing better than shmups.

Like, almost everyone I know on the internet has a respect for shmups even if they aren't shmup fans or players. I know a lot of hardcore fighting game players, jrpg enthusiasts, rts fans, and other "hardcore" genres which are only played or played "correctly" by a niche. Almost all of these people bought Cimzon Clover on Steam, as well as several other similar titles like Jamestown, Gundemonium, Ikaruga, etc. And even though they have no intention to 1cc Clover on arcade, they none the less like the game and have at least put several hours into it.

There are lots of niche genres out there that don't appeal to the stereotypical AAA Call of Dooty bro gamer, but none the less at least make enough money that they justify their development. There is no reason all these short niche indie titles that have to be played with similar motivations and self imposed challenges in order to last more than a few hours can do decent but shmups can't. Sure, rogue likes, platformers, puzzle games, etc. all have a few advantages over shmups in terms of mass appeal. But shmups also have advantages. Roguelikes might have randomization going for them, but shmups have flash and style that they don't.

I think shmup fans, and shmups themselves need to advertise themselves to "hardcore" players from similar genres, as well as make it easier for these players to purchase them without being full on 1cc or score addicts. A lot of these guys are already big fans of games that are similar or perhaps borderline examples of shmups. I don't know a single hardcore player who doesn't like either Contra or Metal Slug. Shmups can easily channel the same appeal as those games.

The problem is that shmups have for a long time been too damn hard to acquire for anyone who's not a "serious" fan of them. Up until very recently, you couldn't be a "casual" fan of the genre even if you understood it or enjoyed attempting small challenges once in a while. You have to be willing to buy a 360 (which a lot of people who already own PS3's might not want to do, even more so if it's a Japanese 360 which they might not know how to get any use out of beyond the games they plan on buying), import (which is scary and weird if you've never done it before), have to deal with incredibly heavy prices of 70-80 dollars which are not justified if you only plan on putting several hours into the game and maybe picking it up for fun every now and than, and also you have to deal with other things you might be uncomfortable with like lolicon art or insane amounts of anime.

If you aren't up to any of the above, until very recently, you simply could not be a fan of the genre. There were simply too few shmups available on english ps2/ps3, and services like Steam did not yet have shmups like Gundemonium/Exceed/Crimzon Clover/etc. localized and available to purchase. Sure you could pirate doujin titles to play them casually and 90% of the gamers I know have played Touhou at one point thanks to this, hardcore or not. But that sure doesn't help the genre become more profitable.

Say what you want about Shovel Knight and Super Meat Boy having "greater concessions to the mainstream" but even if you're as casual as they come and don't plan on playing them more than once through, that's still a helluva lot more appetizing considering their price tag than an 80 dollar import on a system you might not own or like. This is IMO why shmups have become more niche than other short single player genres like roguelikes or platformers or puzzle games.

That's why Crimzon Clover, and all the other shmups on steam are such a HUGE FUCKING STEP FORWARD. You can finally buy good games for cheap without importing! And it's working! All my fighting game fans and rts fans and platformer fans and rpg fans have bought these games! They never have or would have before.

This is what shmups have to focus on, the hardcore gamers with only a casual interest in the genre. They don't have to start 1cc'ing every game, they don't have to start playing for score. All that needs be is that they get a few hours of casual fun out of the genre, which is more than enough to justify a 10 dollar or more price tag and is what many of these other niche indie titles offer. Shmups are always going to be niche. But they can at least be as niche as other niche genres. Not super niche.

There are other things shmups can do to make them more appealing to hardcore gamers as well. They could find clever ways to telegraph the 1cc objective without making it no fun to play without it in mind. They could do something like Treasure's Alien Soldier and give you 3 continues and force you to restart a stage when you run out, and also demand you 1cc in order to see cut scenes. Throw in a 1cc only tlb and make some Batrider-ish secret areas and bosses, and you have a game that could subtely encourage players to 1cc as they work through a 3cc. They could also incorporate story and personality into the art and gameplay in subtle ways.

Also SHMUPS NEED ONLINE CO-OP. I cannot emphasize this enough. I was simply blown away by how easy it was to get people talking about 1 credit victories, scoring, strategy, etc. in Metal Slug 3 just by playing it with them. It succeeds in adding a social aspect (something that shmups are always claimed to lack), replayability, and a "party game" factor. Shmups have never really been about co-op, but that's all the more reason there's so much room for innovation. I know a person who actively dislikes the shmup genre, but even he admitted that Jamestowns co-op was incredibly fun for him and that it's a game he deeply respects unlike the rest of the genre. There is so much that could be done for co op in terms of design. You could create seperate arrange modes just for co op with levels, patterns, mechanics, and scoring systems built with two players in mind. It's a well of untapped fun and greater genre appeal.

There are just so many little things Shmups could go the extra mile with for appealing to hardcore players in other genres while still being arcade games. I could go on for another two pages, but:

TL:DR shmups need to appeal to other hardcore action gamers and niche genre players. They don't need to "convert" them to hardcore genre enthusiasts and have them all be chasing 1cc's and high scores all day, they just need to get to the point where people can get a good 3 or 4 hours of semi casual fun out of a game they spent 10 bucks on, which is exactly what they get out of all these indie platformers and action games, and what they are starting to get with games like Crimzon Clover. Shmups need to appeal to these players with reasonable price tags, localizations, digital distribution, online co op, and other concessions that do not effect the arcade structure of the game.

Shmups are too much memo for this generation of gamers, people love surprises! I'd like to imagine that the next 2hu phantasmagoria, if released online with good multiplayer, could revive shmups!

They aren't any more memo than Bayonetta or Dark Souls. All you really have to do is include some random variables on bullet patterns or boss patterns (like Batrider or Touhou) and you have enough surprises to last till judgement day.

You could say that getting something fresh is nice but I doubt anyone will think that SDOJ is better than DOJBL or that Double Dealing Character is better than Perfect Cherry Blossom. So really... what good is new stuff if its just gonna be inferior to the old anyways :3

There's still a lot of room for variety and innovation in the genre though. Games like Kaikan, Ginga Force, Hellsinker, Akashicverse, and Astebreed show that you can still make a game that feels and plays completely different from the standard issue danmaku games saturating the genre while still being fundamentally close to them (well maybe not so much for Astebreed but still).

Whilst sine mora may have bad gameplay. The devs sure knew how to cater to the mainstream audience.

No they didn't. It was a flop, and there are more negative reviews on its steam store page than any other shmup available there. Not only that, but every one of my casual non shmup fans who played it said it felt "weird" and "not fun" and that they "thought Crimzon Clover was a lot more fun".

[chempop]

^ Did not read.

Probably Battle Garegga, I can’t even see the bullets. WTF killed me?
Bullshit game.