Why shmups are such a niche genre

[Otai]

In my opinion, I would rather say that the shmup genre shifted from become mainstream to a huge indie/doujin genre. It is hard to find a mainstream title, but vast library of indie/doujin shmups exists and can be find with ease. That's not even counting flash ones. It will continue to exist, just the form changes. But then, from what I see, gamers around my real life avoid shmups because of the "kiddie" mentality around shmups (even Touhou and DoDonPachi, mind you) and viewing me as "regain my childhood innocence" when looking at me playing. I guess they haven't try what does it mean by bullet hell.

In global perspective, a factor that I seen overlooked is the attitude of the shmuppers themselves. Some shmuppers force the "high score, 1cc, no cutscene" mentality onto others. Some people would afraid of this "hostility" and ended up don't play shmups anymore. While this might be done because fear that the shmup genre ended up too casual, but this is a little bit going overboard. People should be allowed to enjoy a game/genre his/her own way.

[BIL]

Nobody minds cutscenes as long as they're skippable.

[AraraSPAMWitch]

Some shmuppers force the "high score, 1cc, no cutscene" mentality onto others. Some people would afraid of this "hostility" and ended up don't play shmups anymore. While this might be done because fear that the shmup genre ended up too casual, but this is a little bit going overboard. People should be allowed to enjoy a game/genre his/her own way.

No one is stopping you from continuing, and of course people are allowed to enjoy things their own way. However, people who credit feed are depriving themselves of the greatest joys of the genre and will more likely than not get quickly bored with the games, as there will be nothing to work towards. This boredom, self-inflicted by the unknowing or lazy gamer, is of course one of the main reasons most people tend to get tired of the games quickly and then decry developers as "backwards," "archaic," yadayadayada

[gs68]

On a side note, I strangely feel horrible whenever a Touhou fan talks about how he can't get past the 2nd or 3rd stage of a Touhou game on Normal difficulty using all 3 continues. As someone who has ALL'd EoSD on Normal and nearly ALL'd PCB on Normal, I feel like a complete monster for indirectly making them feel like shit that I can do what they definitely cannot.

Don't. They like Touhou primarily for the fanart/music and are only making an attempt at justifying their fan status to the people who really play the damn things.

Well, I'm making assumptions. Are these Touhou fans you speak of from /jp/?

No, they're from that wiki. The same wiki that makes one too many references to "hardcore" gamers decrying features that make games easier.

[Domino]

It's a Japan thing.

[Obiwanshinobi]

One way to get the ball rolling is to make a standard Star Wars shmup. Those SW fanatics will buy up anything. Its the Western side of things that are at fault, they don't make good shmups and Japanese ones are seen as too "out there" to be considered.

Which reminds me how freaking sweet Metal Warriors are. Lucas Arts used to rock pretty hard. It's a shame that Assault Suits action games (and Castlevania while we're at it) have still yet to be done properly in 3D. Z.O.E. and PS2 Castlevanias don't deliver in this department. Which was the last thing Konami made for home platforms that really pleased the crowd? Suikoden V?

[EPS21]

I think people are missing the point. Its not if you can get to stage 5 or 6 in Futari, its if the person feels its going to be an enjoyable experience getting as far as they can get.

I wish I was good enough to get to stage 6 in futari

[DJ Incompetent]

I wish I was good enough to get to stage 6 in futari

I got to stage 6 in futari once. Larsa turns into a space shuttle and the game becomes a driving sim minigame where you road trip to the sun to rescue the secret pants.

[gs68]

No, stage 6 is insomnia.ac and if you die to the TLB (Icycalm) you get permabanned from playing Cave shooters.

[lgb]

If this thread ever dies it should be added to the list of topics to avoid.

Not even remotely true, at all. This is the first topic any new member should come to.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

One way to get the ball rolling is to make a standard Star Wars shmup. Those SW fanatics will buy up anything. Its the Western side of things that are at fault, they don't make good shmups and Japanese ones are seen as too "out there" to be considered.

Which reminds me how freaking sweet Metal Warriors are. Lucas Arts used to rock pretty hard. It's a shame that Assault Suits action games (and Castlevania while we're at it) have still yet to be done properly in 3D. Z.O.E. and PS2 Castlevanias don't deliver in this department. Which was the last thing Konami made for home platforms that really pleased the crowd? Suikoden V?

Yea Lucas Arts originally made some sweet games, shame they flopped and LA made point 'n clicks after. Anyone played Night Shift? one of my fav 8/16bit computer games http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO16thk3vOk

[Mortificator]

Which reminds me how freaking sweet Metal Warriors are.

Man, I would kill for a 3D Metal Warriors.

[lgb]

Z.O.E. doesn't deliver in this department

Actually, Kojima has said that he would like to do a new Z.O.E., multiple times. Not really seeing how this doesn't deliver...

[ShmupSamurai]

I don't mind cutscenes and HP bars as long the cutscenes are a)decent and or b)skippable and the hp bars aren't overtly long.

Kamui and Ether Vapor are examples of shmups getting HP bars done right.

Just like how I don't mind shmups being a niche genre.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Aren't you guys missing something? Or someone? Come to think of it, Espgaluda II on the iPhone can give more boost to the shmupness in west than DeathSmiles on the US 360. If it really is that good (haven't played either).

Z.O.E. doesn't deliver in this department

Actually, Kojima has said that he would like to do a new Z.O.E., multiple times. Not really seeing how this doesn't deliver...

Z.O.E. is decent enough series, but Metal Warriors makes you dream about something... greater. So do Assault Suits Valken and Front Mission: Gun Hazard, to an extent.
For my money Z.O.E.2's graphics (in high resolution this time) would be enough even these days. Coupled with funky, non-linear level design, mecha-jacking, available tactics varying from tank assault to stealth/cloaking/speed etc. (not quite unlike Deus Ex), the environment destructible pretty much to the fucking ground, new Metal Warriors could rock the house.
Unfortunately, if you are Konami, you're more likely to come up with:
- 30 fps at the best
- fancy lighting, shading, environmental mapping, tremendous cut-scenes
- corridor-arena-corridor-arena-corridor-arena style cinematic linear action adventure.
Didn't Castlevania on the last gen home platforms end up as just another TPP slasher?

[Taylor]

The Last Starfighter reference? Next time a shooter/shmup/manic/maniac/bullet hell/curtain fire/STG discussion kicks off: Death Blossom.

[Observer]

(Often with this type of game, your first attempt – when you just shoot stuff and try to stay alive – will garner a lot more points than subsequent ones when you've learned what you're "supposed" to be doing, and as a result get yourself killed going for fancy multiplier bonuses and the like. This is so counter-rewarding that it can quickly leave anyone but a socially-dysfunctional shmup obsessive frustrated and bored.)

This one left me a bit confused. Or sad. I don't know...

[Taylor]

I just linked it from Obiwanshinobi’s post. And yeah, I didn't get that sentence at first either: "This is so counter-rewarding that anyone but a socially-dysfunctional shmup obsessive will be frustrated and bored." That's pretty nice coming from Stuart Campbell.

[EPS21]

I was just thinking, a lot of people complain shmups are too short because you can credit feed through them and "beat" it in less than an hour, but as we all know with some of our favorites we've played them to death and keep coming back for more, easily logging 50, 75, or 100+ hours into them. I wonder if its too late in this day and age to get this fact of true replayability into anyones heads these days unless some achievement has explicitly told them so...

But these games, if played properly, can easily compare to the time one puts into a typical RPG or other game.

[lmagus]

To be honest, I've put more hours into Touhou than any Final Fantasy (maybe except Tactics) I've played in my whole life.

[t0yrobo]

It'd be nice if people could be convinced of that. But it seems like nearly all games are being based on a system on constant reward (mmorpgs, achievements etc.) People get freaked out when then need to work for reward, not just get it by accident or from time spent.

[gs68]

And then some people rage because a game has an achievement that's exceptionally hard to get (think RFA's 100,000,000 achievement). If you were to take that out, said people would not be freaking out at all.

This is why achievements for all skill levels doesn't work.

[spl]

Anything that is not mainstream = niche.

It's fact of life.. don't try to find more reasons.

There's other niche games too besides shmups.. how about 2D fighters?? Time attack racing games?? Hell, even adventure games are niche now. The only thing that is NOT niche are FPS/RTS/RPG games.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

fighters (excluding SF) are niche, but im not sure about racers and adventure games. Although i cant think any other genres except beat em ups that are as niche as shmups as everyone can buy atleast a handfull of games in their chosen genre. Shmups on the other hand are so niche that very few developers are making AAA grade commercial shooters nowadays. And those that are made are unavilable to most ppl in world unless they import.

I think that most ppl posting in this thread would love to see shmups more popular so that they are more quality shooters been made that everyone can get hold of as cheaply and easily as other genres. But by all means not too popular so that developers gimp the games to be more casual friendly.

[Obiwanshinobi]

He did it again.

[Kiken]

Fact checking FTW!

Having spent the last three days hooked on the incredible Espgaluda 2 http://wosblog.podgamer.com/2010/04/12/ ... of-the-arg... , I've been looking into what other shmups we might be able to hope to see on the iPod in the near future, and it dawned on me that this vibrant genre has had almost no coverage of any kind on EG. There have been loads of fairly high-profile shooters released in recent years, yet not a sniff of a mention of any of them, far less anything so heady as a review.

Espgaluda 2 (iPod) - nothing
Espgaluda 2 Black Label (360) - nothing
Ketsui Death Label (DS) - nothing
Ketsui Extra (360) - nothing
Raiden IV (360) - one tiny news mention a year and a half ago
Raiden Fighters Aces (360) - a single video trailer
Dodonpachi DOJ Black Label Extra (360) - nothing
Mushihimesama Futari (360) - nothing
Death Smiles (360) - nothing

Now, few of these have had official European releases, but EG has reviewed plenty of games on import, and several of them (Espgaluda, Ketsui, Mushihimesama) are region-free and will run on PAL systems anyway.

And even when shooters DO get PAL releases they still don't get covered. Throughout the previous generations PAL-released shooters were ignored too, with the sole exception of Raiden 3. All these UK-released PS2 shooters, most of them excellent and released at mid-price, got zero coverage, not even tiny news paragraphs:

XII Stag
Psyvariar Complete
Castle Shikigami 2
Gigawing Generations
Homura
Ibara
Steel Dragon EX
Gunbird Special Edition
Mobile Light Force 2
Samurai Aces
Dragon Blaze
Strikers 1945 1+2

And it's not like there's nobody who can cover them - Simon Parkin's Raiden 3 review shows a perfectly good knowledge of the rest of the genre, and he still writes for EG.

Are there really fewer people interested in shooters than Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure or Panzer General: Allied Assault? Is it really too much to hope for the occasional break from hundreds of pages of God Of Gears Of Modern Warshock and tedious frame-rate comparisons between identical PS3 and 360 versions of the same game, and have maybe just one shmup review every few months?

So by several he means 2...? Not to mention that it needs to be clarified with ESP2 BL since only the regular edition is region free.

Hey Euros, how's that PAL PS2 release of Ibara?

[Obiwanshinobi]

Hey Euros, how's that PAL PS2 release of Ibara?

Yeah, I'd like to know too.

[Taylor]

It's nice to see him fighting the good fight. But what will happen if they do get reviews? "Too hard, too short, no replay value, and what's this 'score' you speak of?"

I'd rather someone start by writing an article that dispels all the common myths. You could probably get half of them from that thread. Get Stu' on that.

[EPS21]

(Espgaluda, Ketsui, Mushihimesama) are region-free and will run on PAL systems anyway.

wat

[Udderdude]

He did it again.

http://wosblog.podgamer.com/2010/04/12/ ... -argument/

Hello, readers of shmups.com! I hope all your mothers die in the same chemical fire, and also horribly and traumatically claw each other's eyes out while trying in vain to escape.

So the next time anyone tells you the iPod is only good for shallow minigames, show them yours with Espgaluda 2 running, and then SMASH THEM IN THE FACE REPEATEDLY WITH IT UNTIL THEY'RE JUST A BLEEDING, WHIMPERING MUSH THAT NOBODY WILL EVER WANT TO LOOK AT AGAIN FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES. (Then help yourself to their wallet, because you're probably going to need a new iPod.)

What a nice guy. Also lol@iPhone suddenly becoming TEH HARDCORE when it has one cave shmup on it.