Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

[Jonst]

Haha! By just dodging?... Maybe I should've picked a harder game!

[Mortificator]

Ran through Musha Aleste and Dennin Aleste again. The former's a little better than I remembered; the latter, a little worse.

Hilarious story, though. You spend the game fighting Nobunaga's enemies, then in the ending, the final boss tells you he's the devil and you immediately go burn his house down.

[Mero]

Playing one of my favourite games, Exed Exes. Hopefully I can beat my old score. This is the first STG that I've played in the calendar year 2015.

[pokemon123]

DOJ, I like the game for survival but can't stand it's scoring system. It's the first shmup i've tried to play for score and ehh it's to strict for me and having to memorize every little thing is not my cup of tea. Pretty much applies to every patchi I've played though. Thinking i'd enjoy SDOJ scoring more since it is lenient.

I like playing this on mame more compared to ios because i suck at even novice because my fingers are to big and the screens to small.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Batsugun Special. Had a potential all clear of the game suddenly go poof when, at the start of stage 12 with 3 extra lives stocked, I got asked by my significant other if I wanted to snuggle.

Snuggling won. next time I'll go full shmup I swear

[Jonst]

Not really committed to anything particular at the moment but I did spend a little while with Ibara arrange tonight. I even made it to the stage 5 boss, I'm not sure if this was progress or fluke at this point. I'd love to get into it but i'm rubbish at rank control and scoring even in this easier version...

[Squire Grooktook]

Snuggling won. next time I'll go full shmup I swear

Shoulda just paused lol.

Stuff I'm messing with lately:

-Mahou Daisakusen
-Dimahoo
-Yakouga 4
-V-Five
-Mecha Ritz

[Stevens]

Haha! By just dodging?... Maybe I should've picked a harder game!

Aww hell no!

[ACSeraph]

Scored a copy of Gunbird for Saturn over the weekend. I've been taking a bit of a break from shmups and arcade games in general lately to relax with more casual modern stuff, but this one has brought back the itch. I never see what kills me in it though...

I've had this on PS1 for ages via the "Mobile Light Force" Western release but never liked it much. Playing on Saturn with proper tate settings changes everything though.

But speaking of MLF, does anyone know the story of how that even came to be. I'd love to read why they did the horrible things to those games that they did, what their logic was behind it and why they chose those games to localize at all when they clearly had no respect for them. I imagine it would be like reading a serial killer's autobiography about his crimes.

[Stevens]

AK zetsu, stage 6 again. Score is up to 152 million.

[Obscura]

But speaking of MLF, does anyone know the story of how that even came to be. I'd love to read why they did the horrible things to those games that they did, what their logic was behind it and why they chose those games to localize at all when they clearly had no respect for them. I imagine it would be like reading a serial killer's autobiography about his crimes.

Say what you will about those... "localizations", for lack of a better word... but playing MLF 2 on a friend's PS2 back in college was the reason I got into shmups.

[Jonst]

AK zetsu, stage 6 again. Score is up to 152 million.

Good progress! In the meantime I'm still not really playing anything. Had a couple plays of Ibara and the arrange mode, just feels like one step forward and two back.

[Shepardus]

Been playing a bunch of Dodonpachi II: Bee Storm thanks to Death Roulette. The pacing's not as tight as Cave's Dodonpachi games and a lot of enemies are way too tanky for my liking, but despite that it's more fun than I expected, especially the Energy mode since you can actually use offensive bombs instead of just saving them for defensive purposes. It seems easier than Cave's games but I still suck at it. At least I'm having more success with it than the other games I got for Death Roulette...

Maybe I'll stream a bit of it tomorrow if anybody's interested.

[To Far Away Times]

I started playing the original Raiden Fighters. Pretty cool little game.

[Gamer707b]

Im back at Galactic Attack on Saturn. Im at beginning of stage 7. One more level to go to finish this thing. Not even trying to do a 1cc. More like a 4cc.

[LordHypnos]

Been playing Omega Fighter a lot on account of Death Roulette. It's actually pretty fun, but I'm finding it incredibly difficult, especially starting in the 3rd stage. It's growing on me more and more though. Otherwise, the only game I drew that I've actually enjoyed is Hacha Mecha Fighter. It's actually really awesome, but some research suggests that I'm unlikely to make it past stage 3 (which I've already gotten to) in two weeks. I'll probably give it a few more shots, though. I don't think I can bring myself to actually play P47: The Freedom Fighter, Grid Seeker, or Twinbee enough to get past stage 2 or so (actually I think I made stage 3 already in Twinbee, but the feeling stands). Maybe Grid Seeker, that one at least has some pretty nice music.


EDIT:

Some further notes on stage 3 of omega fighter: it kind of reminds me a bit of stage 3 of mars matrix in the sense that there is a mess of overlapping patterns coming from a handful of different enemies, meaning that in order to stay safe you need to kill enemies, which means you need to watch the enemies , but if you don't also keep an eye on the bullets and the area around your ship you're also fucked. Additionally, OF seems to have local rank in some degree. Also it forces you to move all over the screen like in MM. My solution in Mars Matrix was to memorize enemy placements and ultimately come up with a route, but the stage in OF is much longer, and I think there's more enemies to memorize. Additionally, you also have to dodge powerups and enemy collisiondeathboxes. In fact, I'd say pretty much every good run I've had was ended with me accidentally getting the powerup for W-shot, or getting a few too many powerups for I-shot. In some places it's easier to recover from than in others.

[ACSeraph]

Playing a bit of Genshi-tou 1930's. This game... seems impossible. I'm pretty sure this is the hardest shmup I've ever played. This is one of the only shmups I've ever played where I literally don't believe I could ever beat it no matter how much practice I put in. Really unfortunate too, as I absolutely love the graphics and concept. Has anyone around these parts actually 1cc-ed this?

[Stevens]

delete

[Stevens]

Seraph - I didn't know that was Prehistoric Isle. I searched it and went to images.

Kollision has cleared it.

http://www.kollision.biz/games/psp/snkA ... In1930.jpg

[Kollision]

oh yes I did clear PH.
and on the PSP without autofire, no less!

indeed it's a very hard one
but once you start coming out of the 2nd boss fight with an intact pod things start getting a little better

once you get the pod don't use those darius-like bombs, they're useless
only vertical or upper diagonals are actually good for something
I think there's a 1CC run somewhere on YT, it might be useful to watch it

[ACSeraph]

Much respect.

How long did it take you to learn the clear, do you remember?

[Kollision]

no I don't exactly
but probably two/three weeks of sparse plays with MAME practice included

but for a man who has made Caladrius his bitch PH shouldn't be so demanding

[Stevens]

Ak zetsu. Haven't played much at all this week (been tired too) but no missed everything up till the stage 4 boss and got to the stage 6 boss. Scored a hair under 200 million.

[Jonst]

Good work Stevens! Not long now I reckon... Good to see score improving too!

[Lobinden]

I've been playing a lot of ALLTYNEX Second and Raiden IV lately. The latter of which is relentlessly kicking my butt.

[LordHypnos]

Well, I've made it up to mission 5 in Omega Fighter now. I think 3 might be the hardest stage up until mission 6 (though it might have been 7 I'm thinking of). Stages 7 and 8 are definitely pretty effin' hard though. Also looks like they might have the first cool boss battles in the game. If I can just get through 4 more stages (and execute 1-4 well), I'll have the 1-ALL (for 5 bonus points!!)

Also, somehow I'm starting to enjoy dodging the power ups IDK what's wrong with me. Still not enjoying the enemy collisions though, 'specially considering that the scoring is based on point blanking, and I do sort of want extends, though chain deaths are fairly common if there isn't an ion shot powerup nearby when you die, because wide shot is basically useless after stage 1. Also, I think the slowdown items might be triggered by score in some way. On the plus side, unlike the special version (based on a few credits, earlier in the week) the normal version of Omega Fighter gives you a pretty generous shot hitbox, so you can kill enemies that hit you on most of your side, so long as you are firing.

Wish me luck with the final week!

[Obscura]

Finally peeked into stage 6 of Raiden III a couple times.

I have got to get stage 5 more under control... I can no-miss my way to that level, and then die three times. The combination of those very random jars, in a place where you're basically forced to pop them, right before a spot where being at full power is at a large premium, is proving to be very nasty.

[Kiken]

So I D/Led Gaia Seed off PSN and gave it a try. SCCed on my first play through even with the horrid input lag. Yeah... that game certainly is... a thing. I love how the designers just didn't give a shit about how the backgrounds fit into the environments.

[Bonus!]

I've been sinking some time into Kokuga. That game seems to get a bad rap here on the forum, but it's pretty solid. It's slow and deliberate, and very methodological. When I first played it I found it quite lacking, but when I picked it up again earlier this week, I was able to appreciate it a lot more. There is a lot of content in this game, too: 13 stages to chose your path from, three destinations (different final boss; game ends once you've beaten one of those), and a literally endless number of possible paths to chose. Realistically, though, you'll limit yourself to a sequence of two or three regular stages followed by a boss stage, since the stages can be on the lengthy side. The difficulty is not too bad either. It's no pushover, but I don't quite agree with the reviewers who called it "punishing".

[pokemon123]

DOJ, although this is probably just the frustration talking i used to like this game until I started to play for score (at least in the first loop , yeah i'll admit i've used cheats to get to the second loop a few times just to see how hard it is because I know i'll not be able to reach the second loop in a long time)

To me it's just way to strict and no fun at all.

If it had the more lenient chaining in the first loop straight away rather than the second loop it would be far more fun.