Newbie looking for a place to start

[Blackbird]

As another newcomer, I'm actually examining the possibility of getting DoDonPachi myself. Which version would you say is the best? Are the Saturn and Playstation versions comparable to the arcade, or should I just MAME it? I would rather have a "real" copy of the game, but I expect getting the actual PCB would be prohibitively expensive.

Which version is the best version?

[Lance Boyle]

As another newcomer, I'm actually examining the possibility of getting DoDonPachi myself. Which version would you say is the best? Are the Saturn and Playstation versions comparable to the arcade, or should I just MAME it? I would rather have a "real" copy of the game, but I expect getting the actual PCB would be prohibitively expensive.

Which version is the best version?

The Saturn port is ugly, and the Playstation port is inaccurate in ways the Saturn port isn't.

From a quick Google, the DDP PCB seems to run over $500 and I hope you have a nice cab / supergun and arcade stick.

MAMEing the game is absolutely the best choice, especially since you're a newbie, and especially if you want to record and upload a replay (or watch PROMETHEUS score 500+ million).

Get a whole bunch of other ROMs while you're at it. Try them out.

[D-3]

I'm another nub in the same position as the OP, I'm pretty much completely ignorant of the genre at the moment. Philosoma was the game that got me interested in the first place, Einhänder was my favorite so far, and Giga Wing was the most fun I had with an arcade shooter. The 194x games and Daioh were great too. The original R-Types and Gradius 4 on PS2 were quality, but not really for me. I guess I'm a casual; I play more for the simple pleasures of blowing things up in a plane rather than getting a competitive score.

So, anyone know more shooters I'd like? If you recommend something that covers the screen in bullets I probably won't get very far, but I never continue and I never give up a good game, so masochistic levels of difficulty are fine. Wouldn't mind picking up a Saturn or DC if there are enough good games that would suit my taste. I'm accustomed to using the d-pad on a controller, but I also have a Hori Fighting Stick 3 if that would work.

[BPzeBanshee]

I'm another nub in the same position as the OP, I'm pretty much completely ignorant of the genre at the moment. Philosoma was the game that got me interested in the first place, Einhänder was my favorite so far, and Giga Wing was the most fun I had with an arcade shooter. The 194x games and Daioh were great too. The original R-Types and Gradius 4 on PS2 were quality, but not really for me. I guess I'm a casual; I play more for the simple pleasures of blowing things up in a plane rather than getting a competitive score.

So, anyone know more shooters I'd like? If you recommend something that covers the screen in bullets I probably won't get very far, but I never continue and I never give up a good game, so masochistic levels of difficulty are fine. Wouldn't mind picking up a Saturn or DC if there are enough good games that would suit my taste. I'm accustomed to using the d-pad on a controller, but I also have a Hori Fighting Stick 3 if that would work.

Blowing stuff up? Try any of the Raiden games, the newer ones have some very satisfying explosions in them (PM me if you need help with picking any of these up).
Or a Thunder Force game, those ones especially involve blowing stuff up.

[Blackbird]

The Saturn port is ugly, and the Playstation port is inaccurate... MAMEing the game is absolutely the best choice.

Ugh, I was hoping not to hear that. My PC is pretty awful... constant crashes make it barely suitable for web browsing, let alone a pleasant gaming experience.

Then again, I've been meaning to replace this computer sooner than later anyway, and DDP is just one more reason to do that. Hmmm.

If it comes to satisfying explosions, I think Darius Gaiden has some of the most satisfying explosions of any shooter I've seen... bosses literally explode in a supernova when you destroy them, it's awesome. Music is cool, too.

[Special World]

I'm another nub in the same position as the OP, I'm pretty much completely ignorant of the genre at the moment. Philosoma was the game that got me interested in the first place, Einhänder was my favorite so far, and Giga Wing was the most fun I had with an arcade shooter. The 194x games and Daioh were great too. The original R-Types and Gradius 4 on PS2 were quality, but not really for me. I guess I'm a casual; I play more for the simple pleasures of blowing things up in a plane rather than getting a competitive score.

So, anyone know more shooters I'd like? If you recommend something that covers the screen in bullets I probably won't get very far, but I never continue and I never give up a good game, so masochistic levels of difficulty are fine. Wouldn't mind picking up a Saturn or DC if there are enough good games that would suit my taste. I'm accustomed to using the d-pad on a controller, but I also have a Hori Fighting Stick 3 if that would work.

Buying a DC is a fantastic choice if you're looking for good shooters.

They're very cheap and have a great selection of shooters, including Mars Matrix, one of my absolute favorites. Some games might be hard to find, but you can always burn them if you can't find them in stores.

That being said, MAME should be able to tide over your shooter needs for a long, long time. I recommend Battle Bakraid. It's a very fun game and not terribly hard if you're not playing for score.

[emphatic]

Ketsui just arrived in MAME. It's a blast. You are free to blow shit up and go apeshit about how frickin' cool it is with the rest of us.

[chempop]

The Saturn version of Dodonpachi isn't bad at all. Sure the explosions are a bit rough, but they are still satisfying. The port also has a Saturn mode which allows you to fight the true last boss Hibachi after the first loop which is really nice for people who will never get through the second loop. For $50ish, I'd say it's well worth it.

I think the Saturn is by far the best console for getting into shmups. It has some fairly inexpensive Gems (Soukyugurentai, Layer Section, Strikers 1945 etc), plenty of Horis, cute-em-ups, classics, and high end exclusives like Battle Garegga and Radiant Silvergun. $150-$250 starting investment could provide years of gameplay and there is enough on the console to collect over the course of a lifetime. Another bonus is that if you use a control pad it has the best one, although a good stick is a bit harder to come by hori makes a good 8 button Virtual Stick ($75ish average on eBay) and a decent 3 button "fighting stick" ($40ish?).

If you enjoy more old school games or are on a strict budget then Genesis is my recommendation. Loose carts are easy to come by and there are many quality titles both hori and vert. If you are a collector though you'll need to drop serious coin on some of the more sought after Megadrive imports.

Dreamcast and PS2 also have a bunch of good titles, both worth looking into for sure (but keep in mind that their control pads SUCK for shmups, not an issue if you are going to be getting a stick though).

What's even more important though than deciding on a console is getting a decent TV setup. For vertical oriented games it makes all the difference to Tate your TV, and you'll want to probably stick to something in the 20-30inch range. A good flatscreen CRT shouldn't be too hard to find for dirt cheap or even free (I've picked up two 20inch Sanyo's that are perfect for shmups right off the side of the road this year!). It helps to sit right in front of the screen and have your TV angled a bit to imitate what playing on an arcade cabinet is like. For controllers, we all have our own preferences, but many will say that using a quality arcade stick adds to the experience and often improves your game. I used to use pads mostly and it took a while to adjust to stick, but I'm glad I made the switch because I'm enjoy the games more and actually able to beat some

[Nick420]

Its gotta be DDP or gradius V play em 2 death and if your not a massive shmup fan by then u never will be

[TrevHead (TVR)]

@ Blackbird Since having shmups as a hobby is genrally expensive, especially if you dont have a PC to emulate (although you could run Mame on something like a xbox or DC aswell) You might aswell throw down the money to get yourself a new PC (or a 2nd hand one atleast) also as chempop also states get yourself a 2nd hand CRT while you still can cheaply. Either a 19-21" CRT monitor or a 20-30" TV just make sure you can TATE them. (You probably already know this) The reason why a CRT is good for playing old arcade games is down to LCDs image been blurred if its not displaying at its native resolution (or multiples of it).

Edit This is a pet peeve of mine but if your playing shmups on a widescreen, pls do yourself a favour and make sure its set to the correct aspect ratio and not stretched to fill the entire screen. If your monitor cant be setup correctly it can be done through the your GFX cards control panel of both G-Force and ATI catalyst control centre. Although ATI is buggy, so you will have to drop your monitors resolution down from its native settings to beable to sellect the correct image scaling options, once settup correctly you can change the resolution back to native and itll be set up correctly.

Also its worth investing in a half decent controller, either an arcade stick or a good pad with a good D-pad like those Saturn USB pads off ebay.

As for pre bullet hell shmups (aka manics) Mars Matrix is a fav of mine and is imo allot of fun to play for score. Layer Section / Rayforce, Gekrinden, Gunbird 1 & 2, the Raiden games inc the Raiden Fighters series, Gigawing series. Tryout some shmups by Psikyo, Cave, Treasure, Compile, Takumi, Taito, Konami, Capcom, Eighting/Raizing, Toaplan, Irem or even Naxat Soft and Hudson Soft shmups on the PCEngine. Each developer genrally has there own style so its worth checking out one or 2 shmups from each dev.

[NzzpNzzp]

As for pre bullet hell shmups (aka manics) Mars Matrix

I'm pretty certain that any game that regularly has more than 100 bullets on screen at a time is actually a manic one.

[Ed Oscuro]

Edit This is a pet peeve of mine but if your playing shmups on a widescreen, pls do yourself a favour and make sure its set to the correct aspect ratio and not stretched to fill the entire screen. If your monitor cant be setup correctly it can be done through the your GFX cards control panel of both G-Force and ATI catalyst control centre. Although ATI is buggy, so you will have to drop your monitors resolution down from its native settings to beable to sellect the correct image scaling options, once settup correctly you can change the resolution back to native and itll be set up correctly..

MAME has handled varying "internal resolutions" correctly for years now. I remember when all the selectable aspect ratio options came out; I had great fun setting games incorrectly for a few revisions before I wised up. On the newest versions of MAMEUI and related ports in Windows, the only graphics setting I have had to change is disabling bilinear filtering (i.e. blur), which seems completely useless yet has remained selected by default in MAME for years (just like displaying bezels and all that other useless garbage). The option to use the graphics card stretch doesn't blur the image (like in the older days) and is grayed out on the latest version of MAMEUI - not sure what's going on there. In the old days it didn't make much of a difference; the CPU would just scale the image by itself.

I haven't experienced the problems you're describing with ATI (actually AMD) drivers. Since you mention "scaling" I'm sure you're talking about getting the proper 4:3 ratio image in MAME at the monitor's native resolution (assuming an LCD panel for the moment), but I haven't ever had to go through anything like the process you're describing, either for nVidia or AMD/ATI (which I just switched to for my latest graphics card). I wonder if you haven't had an installation problem with your graphics driver.

Basically, these days MAME is pretty much plug 'n' play, or fire and forget.

The only thing a player should be doing is setting their graphics driver and MAME settings with an eye to reducing lag. On a panel you may introduce image tearing but it's not a large price to pay.

[Pulsewidth]

Basically, these days MAME is pretty much plug 'n' play, or fire and forget.

I disagree. MAME defaults to using the CPU as the master timing source, and that makes it impossible to get perfect 1:1 mapping of emulated frames to displayed frames. You'll get annoying glitches in the scrolling. The correct solution is to use the graphics card as the master clock. You need to set your monitor's refresh rate to the same refresh rate as the original system (note that it's not always 60Hz), (or double the original rate if you're using a frame doubling hack), force vsync on, and disable autoframeskip, disable throttle, and disable multithreading. I'm pretty sure that these scrolling glitches are the biggest reason for people complaining about emulators not being as good as the real thing.

I use gtf and xrandr on Linux to set the correct refresh rate, and vsync is forced on by default with my graphics driver. I'm sure there's some way to set custom refresh modes on Windows too. Of course, your monitor needs to support it too, but if it's close to 60Hz it will probably sync properly.

I also believe that compositing window managers (eg. Compiz, Windows Aero, etc). add latency, so I never use them.

[Blackbird]

I don't care for graphical stretching either, I know full well to avoid that =)

I'm actually pretty familiar with a lot of different game companies. I've watched many people play them, but have played few myself because I am not well off. However, I now feel compelled to give it more of a shot after watching people master some of the games I played when I was younger.

Playing shooters need not necessarily be an expensive hobby - it seems to me that most people could get their feet wet with the numerous classic and doujin titles that can be had very cheaply, or even free. I intend on hitting up some local yard sales come summer to see if I can find some R-Type, Raiden, and Gradius carts for a buck apiece. The virtual console also offers an inexpensive way to acquire shooters... if I had a Wii, I'd totally get MUSHA for it.

The worst cost comes from tracking down import titles and rare games (most of Cave's library, stuff like an original MUSHA cartridge and Radiant Silvergun). These include some great titles, but I can work up to them after I've gotten the hang of the basics =P.

[Aguilar]

The Saturn version of Dodonpachi isn't bad at all. Sure the explosions are a bit rough, but they are still satisfying. The port also has a Saturn mode which allows you to fight the true last boss Hibachi after the first loop which is really nice for people who will never get through the second loop. For $50ish, I'd say it's well worth it.

I think the Saturn is by far the best console for getting into shmups.

Glad someone agrees with me. xD

[TrevHead (TVR)]

@ Blackbird True shmupping doesnt have to be expensive, but it will be if you dont have a decent PC which to emulate the games for free, forcing you to have to resort importing or ebay if you want to do more then whats on XBLA or VC.

@ Ed Oscuro Yea I am talking about making sure games are displayed as 4:3 when using a widescreen in fullscreen mode (aka fixed aspect ratio). While Mame is quite easy to play in the correct aspect mode many other games arnt. So you need to set it up either in the monitor's settings or the graphics card driver options. ATI (remember theres more then 1 catalystic control centre) has a bug http://www.overclock.net/ati/824466-doe ... ratio.html.

Once its set up properlly though all your games should display in fullscreen 4:3 as they should, although I had to alter my settings in Mame as when i played mars matrix that displayed in 4:3 before, now was squashed horizontally like a 3:3 display

@ NzzpNzzp Im quite sure a manic shmups is a shmup that is like Raiden Fighters or Rayforce in that its a sub genre that was popular in the early 1990s and share simalarities with danmaku / bullet hell but without the large number of bullets or bullet maze patterns. For example while the number of bullets is quite high Mars Matrix is still a manic (Bullet magnets shmup glossary is great as allways)

[D-3]

Thanks for the advice. I had no idea about the master clock settings, should be simple enough to set up. I already have a 22" CRT, a stick, MAME, PS2 and a Genesis, so it'll probably be a while before I actually buy another console. If I do get a Saturn, does it need to be Japanese to play the good stuff?

Seems like actually finding the good titles is going to be the hardest part by far.

[toaplan_shmupfan]

I don't see how practicing more memorisation focused games such as Gradius and R-Type will help you to learn 'the art of dodging' any better than DoDonPachi.

Larger size hitbox in most cases. That means less depending on passing a bullet pattern through the invulnerable parts of the plane/ship/character with a smaller hitbox and more depending 1) on finding the safe window within the pattern or else, 2) getting away from the pattern as it being fired.

The hitbox not covering the entire sprite also isn't just limited to newer/danmaku shmups. A few examples that can be found in earlier games include Gaplus (only the center of the ship is the hitbox and the side wings allow enemies to pass through), Raiden Trad Sega Genesis (bullets can pass through the wingtips just to the left/right of the white engines), even Sky Shark allows the bullet to pass through the very outside part of the upper wing as long as it doesn't hit the lower wing, and at least in Twin Cobra Sega Genesis bullets can pass through the helicopter tail. Still, some of the newest of these games are using extra small pixel hitboxes that tend to encourage more bullet grazing than actual dodging even when compared to a classic hitbox that isn't the entire sprite.

[crackfox]

Thanks for the advice. I had no idea about the master clock settings, should be simple enough to set up. I already have a 22" CRT, a stick, MAME, PS2 and a Genesis, so it'll probably be a while before I actually buy another console. If I do get a Saturn, does it need to be Japanese to play the good stuff?

Seems like actually finding the good titles is going to be the hardest part by far.

I use on action replay cart with my pal saturn which allows all the japanese goodies to be played!!!!
These are only about 10-15 GBP on ebay....

[NzzpNzzp]

For example while the number of bullets is quite high Mars Matrix is still a manic (Bullet magnets shmup glossary is great as allways)

Oh right, I misunderstood you and thought you were saying it wasn't manic. How silly of me.
Not sure I agree with your definition of manic though but whatever that doesn't matter.

[dunpeal2064]

I started by buying Castle Shikigami 2 to fluff another buy. Got me into bullet hell games withought totally destroying me, and its dirt cheap.

However, look up Mushi Futari. If it looks like way too much, then save off buying it for a bit. I thnk the game is brilliant though, and I am guessing it won't be $35 for long!

[moozooh]

I think Futari Platinum Edition is worth every cent it costs. It has 9 (15 with the DLC) play modes ranging from piss easy to near-impossible, brilliant presentation, responsive controls and lots of people to compete with and come for the advice.

Oh, and it's region-free. If you have an x360 and like shmups, there is no excuse not getting it.

[Special World]

Futari is indeed a masterful shooter, and a great pick for somebody starting out. Very probably my favorite game of all time, and that'd be edging out such classics as Chrono Trigger and Super Mario Kart that I've been playing all my life. 1.5 was so good I could barely even believe it, and Black Label fixed every single small problem I had with it and fixed a number that I didn't even know were there. For example, when I played 1.5 I thought Maniac's chaining was a fine, puzzley sort of thing, but after playing BL I am never going back.

Futari just EXCELS. Even if you disregard the fantastic scoring systems, it blows everything else out of the water for sheer fun, satisfaction, and beauty.

[Ed Oscuro]

@ Ed Oscuro Yea I am talking about making sure games are displayed as 4:3 when using a widescreen in fullscreen mode (aka fixed aspect ratio). While Mame is quite easy to play in the correct aspect mode many other games arnt. So you need to set it up either in the monitor's settings or the graphics card driver options. ATI (remember theres more then 1 catalystic control centre) has a bug http://www.overclock.net/ati/824466-doe ... ratio.html.

Once its set up properlly though all your games should display in fullscreen 4:3 as they should, although I had to alter my settings in Mame as when i played mars matrix that displayed in 4:3 before, now was squashed horizontally like a 3:3 display

Well, if it's other games we're talking about, I think we'll let the guy discover those issues on their own without being confusing. The bottom line is that MAME supports multiple resolutions just fine.

And from what I can tell, CRTs, being only VGA, won't go through this hassle after all (assuming you can even find a non-4:3 CRT monitor). For Catalyst Control Center, apparently these options aren't available if you're using VGA instead of DVI (or perhaps DisplayPort).

BACK ON TOPIC:

I would look at free options first - i.e. emulation - to get an idea what I liked first, then I'd think about wasting money on XBLAH or compilation discs or PCBs or whatever.

[dunpeal2064]

I think Futari Platinum Edition is worth every cent it costs. It has 9 (15 with the DLC) play modes ranging from piss easy to near-impossible, brilliant presentation, responsive controls and lots of people to compete with and come for the advice.

Oh, and it's region-free. If you have an x360 and like shmups, there is no excuse not getting it.

How do you go about getting the DLC in another region?

[moozooh]

Set up a Japanese account; last I checked those weren't tied to region.

[Special World]

I think Futari Platinum Edition is worth every cent it costs. It has 9 (15 with the DLC) play modes ranging from piss easy to near-impossible, brilliant presentation, responsive controls and lots of people to compete with and come for the advice.

Oh, and it's region-free. If you have an x360 and like shmups, there is no excuse not getting it.

How do you go about getting the DLC in another region?

If you're referring specifically to Futari, you don't need a Japanese account to download Black Label.

You might have to do a little searching, but it's there. I believe it's called "Black Lavel."

[dunpeal2064]

I think Futari Platinum Edition is worth every cent it costs. It has 9 (15 with the DLC) play modes ranging from piss easy to near-impossible, brilliant presentation, responsive controls and lots of people to compete with and come for the advice.

Oh, and it's region-free. If you have an x360 and like shmups, there is no excuse not getting it.

How do you go about getting the DLC in another region?

If you're referring specifically to Futari, you don't need a Japanese account to download Black Label.

You might have to do a little searching, but it's there. I believe it's called "Black Lavel."

Oh awesome. Futari is the only import I have at the moment so that will work perfectly =) thanks!