What was your first shmup?

[professor ganson]

I played the original Space Invaders within the first year it was released. I probably played it in 1979 when I was 9 or 10 years old. it was mind-blowing-- we'd never seen anything like it before!

[Lord British]

I thought I was the only one that ever heard of Alien Invaders Plus or even the console itself. I've never heard anyone talk about it here. Nice to know someone else mention it. Was the console known in the UK?

My first console! Not sure about its availability in the UK.

[Starfighter]

Does Defender count, by the way? If yes, then that on Atari 400 must've been my first!

[davyK]

Space Invaders in the arcade. Late 70s. I must have been 11 or 12? (Born in '66).

It's between that and Pong as to what my first videogame was. I can't remember what order they were in but I suppose it must have been Pong at home. I remember arcades having mechanical games and then along came Space Invaders.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Does Defender count, by the way? If yes, then that on Atari 400 must've been my first!

I'd say it does. It's just one where you control the scrolling of the playfield yourself, something that didn't end up being quite as popular as autoscrolling shmups. Reminds me I also played an early one that was similar to Defender as a kid called Fort Apocalypse that also had a minimap, but you had to basically fly into an enemy base/cave system and rescue captured soldiers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJFfK54pnOg

[Starfighter]

That looks pretty cool! It feels like I really missed out on a lot of games never having a C64. (Well, I got one as an adult, but just the thing itself, no cables, controllers or games, so I've never even tested if it works.)

[BareKnuckleRoo]

As long as you get some power and TV cables you should be good. Just type out your own games!

A lot of magazines at the time had games available that you played by first typing in the BASIC code, so effectively you copied all the programming code by hand. This site has a few games like this and photos of the books they came from:

https://retrogamestart.com/answers/lear ... ased-games

[Firehawke]

Possibly Galaga but almost certainly Asteroids. Didn't get much into Defender in the arcade, the controls were a little too complicated for someone who needed a chair to see the control panel for Pac-Man. I did get deeply into it on 2600, though, teaming up with my father to roll the scoreboard on both that and Dig Dug (we're talking well over 7 hours without a pause button for either of those.)

[professor ganson]

Space Invaders in the arcade. Late 70s. I must have been 11 or 12? (Born in '66).

It's between that and Pong as to what my first videogame was. I can't remember what order they were in but I suppose it must have been Pong at home. I remember arcades having mechanical games and then along came Space Invaders.

Pong was definitely my first video game (at my cousin's house), and then Space Invaders was my first shmup (at some convenience store). I bet a lot of people in our generation had that same trajectory.

[Creamy Goodness]

1942 and R-Type at my local grocery store back in the late 80's/early 90's.

[pablumatic]

Probably Space Invaders on Atari 2600.

In arcades I believe I first saw and played Galaxian.

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

Dad got an Amstrad CPC in the latter half of the 80s and it had a Space Invader clone. Also, I distinctly remember the arcade at the beach in Italy we went to in the summer holidays having a Galaga cabinet (we had very few arcade cabs in Germany). I didn't play it, though, since my parents gave me one coin for the arcade (and I had to beg forever until they did), the Galaga cab unfortunately took two coins I also had an Atari 2600 and Asteroids for it. Most of this happened when I was still in primary school, but I think the CPC came first.

[AGermanArtist]

Dad got an Amstrad CPC in the latter half of the 80s and it had a Space Invader clone. Also, I distinctly remember the arcade at the beach in Italy we went to in the summer holidays having a Galaga cabinet (we had very few arcade cabs in Germany). I didn't play it, though, since my parents gave me one coin for the arcade (and I had to beg forever until they did), the Galaga cab unfortunately took two coins I also had an Atari 2600 and Asteroids for it. Most of this happened when I was still in primary school, but I think the CPC came first.

I remember jealously eyeing the colour CPC in Boots.

[Jonpachi]

This thread could just as easily be titled, “How old are you?”

I’m 46. First time I remember actively playing and loving a shmup was a cocktail Galaxian at a little burger spot near my house. The first shmup I bought with my own money was Xexyz on the NES.

[glide]

Xenon 2: Megablast, PC version in 1991 or 92. The good old days when games were on diskettes. I was 6-7 at the time.

[Starfighter]

This thread could just as easily be titled, “How old are you?”

It says "I thought this might be a fun conversation for the forum members to reminisce about their earliest shmup memories" in the opening post so I doubt "how old are you" would truly go in the intended direction.

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

Dad got an Amstrad CPC in the latter half of the 80s and it had a Space Invader clone. Also, I distinctly remember the arcade at the beach in Italy we went to in the summer holidays having a Galaga cabinet (we had very few arcade cabs in Germany). I didn't play it, though, since my parents gave me one coin for the arcade (and I had to beg forever until they did), the Galaga cab unfortunately took two coins I also had an Atari 2600 and Asteroids for it. Most of this happened when I was still in primary school, but I think the CPC came first.

I remember jealously eyeing the colour CPC in Boots.

Dad got a b/w monitor. It was like 30 years later that I learned that the CPC could display colour!

[StrzxgvNuvWvfld]

I'm not entirely sure, but I remember as a young child playing some of those post-Space Invaders shoot 'em ups that early 80s arcades were full of.

It isn't exactly a shmup as we'd describe it today, but the earliest shooting game I played that I can definitely identify was the Atari Star Wars arcade.

The first scrolling shoot'em up arcade game I played was Salamander, though I'd probably played some other shmups on the C64 and Spectrum by that point (incidentally, whilst I've been able to 1CC Salamander for some time, I 1CC'd it on actual arcade hardware for the time just a few weeks ago!)

[To Far Away Times]

Solar Striker on the GameBoy.

[pegboy]

Parsec on the TI-99 was the first shmup my family had, but I don't remember playing it (too young). The game that truly got me into the genre and made me a life long fan was Life Force on NES. Also had MagMAx on NES but I'm not sure which one was purchased first but those were the 2 main shmups I played when I was very young. Still have all 3 games all these years later.

[mirkvid]

Probably a Space Invaders clone on the C64 or River Raid 2600. Does Snoopy And The Red Baron count?

I really got into the genre with Life Force NES though.

[SavagePencil]

Does Snoopy And The Red Baron count?

Heck yeah it does! I played the hell out of that.

[utsunderthesky]

Pretty sure it was The Guardian Legend on NES. If that counts. Otherwise maybe Super Rtype.

[theclaw]

Uh good question. I believe I played Tyrian, and I've mentioned being fond of Starfox 64. Might've tried the either the C64 or NES ports of Life Force at some point...

[D!!]

Xenon 2 Megablast on DOS. Played it at my father's work. 99% of time I was a "gunner" mashing space key while he used arrow keys for movement. Game is absolute shit as I can tell now with all of my genre's experience but back then when I was a kid I was blown away by its graphics and titular music theme.

[kayakoyaka]

UN Squadron. I'm real comfortable rn only having PS5 to play shmups, but I've kept my copy of my first shmup because I'm convinced we're never getting a release of that game

[pablumatic]

UN Squadron. I'm real comfortable rn only having PS5 to play shmups, but I've kept my copy of my first shmup because I'm convinced we're never getting a release of that game

Probably not, but I like to think Hamster will license it like they did with SDF Macross II and Mazinger Z one day.

I wonder if they could get away with just releasing U.N. Squadron and pretending its not a rebranded Area 88...

[CIT]

Life Force Salamander and Tiger Heli on NES. Don't remember which one I played first.

I think I played Commando on C64 even before that, but that's not really a shmup I guess.

[kayakoyaka]

Probably not, but I like to think Hamster will license it like they did with SDF Macross II and Mazinger Z one day.

I was floored when they included The Punisher in MvC Collection, so I guess never say never...

[eksratu]

It was either Star Soldier on my uncle's old Famicom or an arcade cabinet of Raiden II/DX. Both were well past their time in the spotlight by the time I got around to them in the early 2000s.