List of Organic/Creature Shmups?

[Squire Grooktook]

Every R-Type is cerebral and tactical. Final probably requires less tactical thinking if anything due to the slower pace, greater emphasis on "memorize or die" sections (1 and 2 at least have lots places where you have to think on the fly), and overall emptier level design.

[Guardic]

Final has the most replay value for any shmup I've ever played. I've put about 60 hours into it and still haven't unlocked all the ships. Plus all the ships play completely different, have different stages and even bosses. I wish more shmups had unlocks like Final.

Well, Chronicle Saviours is basically that, but with a lot of missions with different combinations of stages instead of a lot of ships with different combinations of weapons. I can see you preferring ships over same-y levels, but still, that's the closest thing I've seen.
You see, not many shmups have a lot of content. And for good reasons: many prefer a small yet tight package. Anyway, I'm not even sure if there are other ones besides these two. Deathsmiles Smartphone Mode, maybe? Didn't play it.

Darius games have a good amount of replay value due to the many different stages to chose from when playing through. Also, I completely agree with your signature. I play for my own entertainment and couldn't care less about 1cc any shmup or score. Athough, I have quite a few from just enjoying them and playing them over the years. It's mostly been R-Type games, Gradius and few others like Axelay and Bio-Hazard Battle.

[MR_Soren]

Nobody mentioned Phelios yet.

You are a pegasus rider, and you fight various monsters from greek mythology. Arcade and Genesis/Megadrive.


As far as the continue thing, Cave's games are like that because they are straight arcade ports and the arcade games work that way. You can keep dumping in quarters and eventually see the end. Of course without the cost to continue, there is no consequence for credit-feeding through a game until you realize that you've ruined the experience for yourself. Exercise will power, go for a 1CC.

However, not everybody has the desire to do that. I think Cave should adopt Treasure's policy of slowly unlocking continues as you play more. Some of their later smartphone games do that, but it was too late for their 360 ports by then.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Good luck credit-feeding through all of Gradius I-IV (arcade), then.
Were Cave ports on PSX and Saturn entirely credit-feedable the way their PS2 ports are (unlimited continues from the word go)?