Good Hishouzame/Raiden style games?

[M.Knight]

Flame Zapper Kotsujin (PC-98) is my go-to recommendation for this style of game, and I see it hasn't been mentionned yet. It's got lots of weapon archetypes from these older shooters (wide spread, forward laser, the missile types, etc.) but the pacing feels a lot more exciting than what it's inspired by. Right off the bat, Kotsujin feels lively and fun, and every stage has some cool setpieces than don't detract from the rush of enemies but enhance it. Set in space (which means no boring Vietnam war desert/jungle backgrounds recycled forever), it still manages to have a neat variety of locales and backgrounds instead of just an endless black screen with tiny white dots that MAME can't replicate or something.

Also lots of little tweaks to remove the potentially annoying parts of Raiden-style shmups. Ship speed is good, weapon powerups will flash before changing colors, bomb iframes are instant, weapon powerups can move low but can also be avoided if you so desire by staying at the very bottom, you even have a Batsugun Special-style refreshable one-hit shield.

The soundtrack is fantastic with many cheerful and exciting tunes. E.N.K.A., the final stage track music, is such an incredible accompaniment to the climax of the game.

If you like older vertical shmups you ought to play this. Runs are also ~20 minutes long with 5 stages and no loops so a lot better than some of the drawn out, 8+ stages long games padded with infinite looping on top of that.

[Marc]

Twin Tiger Shark was neat. Must dig out the 360 and give it another whirl.

[Lethe]

Kotsujin is a cool game and all, but it's even further down the proto-bullet hell line than Batsugun Special. Beyond having a fan vulcan weapon it has nothing in common with the thread subject.

[BIL]

oh i just founđ out on Youtube today, the game is Trigon, a Hishouzame style gameplay with Contra/Gradius graphics, why won't you try

Cool game! Seemed quite tough from my time with the first loop. ala Hacha Mecha Fighter, it's one of those STGs whose fast bullets, moderate ship speed, and big hitbox demand proactive evasion, versus enemies at even half-screen proximity. Easy to dodge a bullet from standstill, only to get your wing fatally nicked.

I've seen JP players knock the hitbox and collision over the years, which makes me wonder if the ACA's optional hitbox reduce might be more a fix, than an outright Easy Arrange tweak. From what I've read, I could imagine it merely trims the hitbox back to the sprite's borders. Visions of Detana Twinbee's bad arm hitbox, haha. I never tried it though, and the game seemed fine to me overall. Just a tough Hishou-like.

Will revisit at some point, it's on my bucket list. Gritty tension backed up by that killer xenometallic Contra look, and a singularly galvanic OST. (same team as FC Crisis Force, feat Michiru Yamane; noted favourite of Hitoshi Sakimoto)

It's also notable for its set 2ALL, instead of infinite loops. Something late 80s/early 90s Konami PCBs seemed to gravitate to. (XEXEX, Detana Twinbee, plus a whole raft of action games like Super Contra and Crime Fighters... and I guess there's A-JAX, straight 1ALL). I used to associate 2ALLs with IREM, but offhand, perhaps Konami have as many?

[Nguyen VinhLOC]

oh i just founđ out on Youtube today, the game is Trigon, a Hishouzame style gameplay with Contra/Gradius graphics, why won't you try

Cool game! Seemed quite tough from my time with the first loop. ala Hacha Mecha Fighter, it's one of those STGs whose fast bullets, moderate ship speed, and big hitbox demand proactive evasion, versus enemies at even half-screen proximity. Easy to dodge a bullet from standstill, only to get your wing fatally nicked.

I've seen JP players knock the hitbox and collision over the years, which makes me wonder if the ACA's optional hitbox reduce might be more a fix, than an outright Easy Arrange tweak. From what I've read, I could imagine it merely trims the hitbox back to the sprite's borders. Visions of Detana Twinbee's bad arm hitbox, haha. I never tried it though, and the game seemed fine to me overall. Just a tough Hishou-like.

Will revisit at some point, it's on my bucket list. Gritty tension backed up by that killer xenometallic Contra look, and a singularly galvanic OST. (same team as FC Crisis Force, feat Michiru Yamane; noted favourite of Hitoshi Sakimoto)

It's also notable for its set 2ALL, instead of infinite loops. Something late 80s/early 90s Konami PCBs seemed to gravitate to. (XEXEX, Detana Twinbee, plus a whole raft of action games like Super Contra and Crime Fighters... and I guess there's A-JAX, straight 1ALL). I used to associate 2ALLs with IREM, but offhand, perhaps Konami have as many?

There are also Irem's Fire Barrel, or Taito Grid Seeker too. But i'd feel like the later having a bomb system similar to V-V and their gameplay is like Fighter and Attacker

[copy-paster]

I would count NebulasRay as Namco's answer of Raiden, but instead you can speedup your ship. Weapon selection is your typical wide and narrow shot type but the former is better for all situations, special weapons are unfortunately time-based through countdown but with the right timing and right weapons you could kill the zakos faster or melt bosses in no time, same goes for main weapons too they'll powerdown after a certain amount of use (like Video System shmups but it's more generous in NR) and you need to grab the powerups everytime it drops.

I like it though. It's really fun to sweep zakos left and right with the right speedup and wide shot but be careful they can snipe you offscreen just like Raiden, and the unusual BG scrolling adds the character of the game. I can't believe the hardware NR used is literally for 2D-designed games (Point Blank shares same hardware and it got some nice 2D spritework) and the prerendered stuff looks clean and animates really smooth, quite impressive for an early 1994 release.

Enemy and bosses' attack patterns kept dead simple like a real dadshmup (no sealing, zakos can pointblank you, bullet speed is comparable to Psikyo/Raiden loops in some cases), and this game might gonna make you having nightmares over a spread shot attack.

It's sad to see the game didn't get much coverage and it's only mentioned as a faux sponsor banner in Ridge Racer games (atleast Namco still hasn't forget it), also the game released like a month after RayForce and players prefer the latter, although both games have "Ray" in the title and similar style like seamless stage transitions and battleship/center core raid theme. Sure RayForce is more jawdropping graphic-wise and engaging gameplay, but for RF devs they said NR is much better looking game and they felt jealous and complete loss over it.

[MintyTheCat]

I've always been impressed by the production of raiden 1 and 2, it did look like it was a premium production back then and still holds up to my eye today.

Music is decent too.

I actually bought shienryu some time around 2000 on the Saturn. I haven't played it on the PS2 or any other port, but I highly recommend it for those who enjoyed the original raiden games.

[dark]

Demonstar. A remake of which is on steam. In the 90s the dev was playing Raiden 2 and Viper at the local arcade for inspiration and then coming home to work on Demonstar, kind of an interesting unexpected thing for a Western dev. He got a lot of things right in that game and imo avoided the trappings of Euro shmups that many western devs in the 90s fell into.

[ACSeraph]

NebulasRay

Hmm, as it turns out I've actually been playing NebulousRay a bit recently myself. I agree with you, it definitely deserves more attention than it gets.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned Taito's Hishouzame clone Fighting Hawk yet. It's no masterpiece, but I still find myself self going back to it pretty often.

[Sumez]

This guy is definitely not a bot

[Nguyen VinhLOC]

Dezaemon Plus, a sequel to Daioh (i heard that, but it yet to be confirmed)
Gameplay here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JISsFKjb_JU

[glide]

Viper Phase 1. Basically Raiden in space. Green weapon FTW!

[Nguyen VinhLOC]

Wing Force https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yZIjvZ39n8&t=349s

[Nguyen VinhLOC]

Gekirindan is inspired by Truxton, Fire Shark and Twin Cobra.

Geki also inspired by Dogyuun as well, most of enemy in the last stage is from Dogyuun

[Nguyen VinhLOC]

Gulf War II, Blue Hawk (they're all clone of their inferior Toaplans)

[Nguyen VinhLOC]

Stahlfeder, Sengeki striker,... In which the latter being more bullet to dodge

[Nguyen VinhLOC]

NebulasRay

Hmm, as it turns out I've actually been playing NebulousRay a bit recently myself. I agree with you, it definitely deserves more attention than it gets.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned Taito's Hishouzame clone Fighting Hawk yet. It's no masterpiece, but I still find myself self going back to it pretty often.

Also, the latest entrant in the Star Force series, Final Star Force is reminiscent of Raiden a lot in terms of gameplay