How long have you been playing shmups?

[rolins]

Since 1988 when I first played Gradius on the nes.

[GateofThunderforceIII]

At first I thought shooters were useless and games like Shadow Dancer, Revenge of Shinobi and Golden Axe were the shitz.

Then during May of 1991, my family drove from Seattle to San Diego to attend my brother's Navy boot camp graduation. My mom went to a swap meet and ended up blindly buying me Wings of Wor because the guy said it was the newest game they had. He was probably trying to rip off my dumb ignorant mom who knew nothing of videogames. Heh. Little did everyone know (including me), that it was the start of an instant addiction. Wings was like nothing I've ever seen or played before!

I looked forward to and bought Gaiares and Thunderforce III a few months later. At first I was only into horizontals, but now I prefer verticals. Thanks mom!! That's why Wings (or more appropriately, Gynoug) will always hold a special place in my heart. Though for the record I suck at shooters compared to the 1CC gods here...

[kccttzj]

I had a shooter that came with my PC that I played all the time, but my significant other (who worked at a game store at the time) is the one that really got me into them about 2 1/2 years ago. I was up at their work hanging out and I went through their GBA games to play one. I picked Gradius Galaxies not knowing what it was. I was told that it's a hard game and they weren't sure if I would like it, but I tried it out anyway. I ended up playing it for the next 7(?) hours while I was waiting for closing time. I'm not even exaggerating. It's funny because I did think it was really hard, and now I can't believe that I had such a hard time with it, but I ended up with the addiction.

[IlMrm]

First shmup played - Dragon Spirit, 1988, in Hong Kong.

First NES game was Sky Shark arond 1989 or so.

Didn't start playing the modern shmups until around 2002.

[Neon]

First ones played were probably scummy turbografx stuff or gradius 3 on SNES.

One that really got me into the genre was Donpachi

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

1988 - Blackpool. Salamander.

[xghostsniperx]

Wow, I think I'm the newest in this topic.

About two years ago, my "gaming drought" occurred (wow, I'm already categorizing my life. How pathetic). I played Final Fantasy X and I was floored. I thought RPGs were really my thing. I started buying them left and right, paying upwards of $60-100 for some such as Shin Megami Tensei:Nocturne and Suikoden II. Then when I actually started playing the games rather than researching them, I saw how ridiculous my backlog of games was. I had at least over 1000+ hours of gameplay. I then found out I wasn't as into RPGs as I thought I was.

Discouraged, I actually thought I had more fun collecting video games than actually playing them. I started selling off some of my cheaper RPGs. With all this extra money, I ended up buying Ikaruga for no reason at all besides it was worth money. I decided just to pop it in just to see what it was like, and I absolutely loved the game. After I 1 CCed Ikaruga, I was desperate for more. I picked up Castle Shikigami 2 (1 CCed) and Gradius V (haven't even beat with three credits) and loved both. Since then I've decided, however, that besides Gradius, I pretty much hate Horizontal shooters.

Anyways, now I have a small but good collection of shooters for DC, Saturn, PS2, and GC. I'm planning on 1 CCing every one of them. Shmups are really a great style of gameplay though; they're so pick-up-and-play. Nice for being in college when you have 15-30 minutes to kill.

[Belmont]

growing up i always played shmups in the arcades whenever i could mostly raiden and twin cobra. In highschool it was all about castlevania. But it wasnt untill i moved away for college that i really got into them. I think it was probubly the release of gradius 5 that really got me into the genra....even though i had shmups in my collection before that. After i found this forum i promptly bought a sega saturn with dodonpachi and then spend the next 6 months hitting up every game store within a 30 mile radius of west covina. Its a hard thing to ask eb/game stop employees if they have any arcade shooters, they mostly just point at halo or halflife 2. After i found mame and more importantly ebay i found a much esier way to get more shooters.

[Bishamon]

It must be close to 30 years now, but I wouldn't say they have always been my primary gaming focus.

[Arvandor]

I started with playing Zaxxon, Ledgendary Wings, Captain Skyhawk, Gunsmoke, 1942, Isolated Warrior, and a few others, but only very VERY sporadically. Actually, that's wrong. I played them a great deal until the 16-bit era. Didn't ever have any shmups on my SNES/Genesis, and my mom never really liked me dumping too much money at the arcades, so I didn't play a lot of shooters in the 16-bit era, and even less in the 32/64 bit era when my NES became an even more occasional thing, and usually got hooked up for Snake Rattle 'N' Roll and Mario 3, not Cpt Skyhawk or Isolated Warrior.

Shmups didn't really become a thing for me with until the GC release of Ikaruga (first shooter I've owned since my NES days), followed by Gradius 5 on the PS2. I didn't fall totally in love with the genre until I started buying games for my Dreamcast about 2 years ago, and Saturn shortly after.

So, I was playing and enjoying shooters about 20 years ago, but I played very VERY little of them for about a decade or so. So let's see, about 6 years of my childhood plus the recent 3.5 years (counting from the release of Ikaruga), means I've been playing shooters for 9.5 years or so. Dang, you'd think I'd be better at them o_O

[FatCobra]

Shmups have always held my interest ever since I saw Raiden II in arcades way back in the early 90s.

[louisg]

I started playing them in the mid-80s if the scoot n shoots count.. I still sort of suck at them.