PSiKYO Appreciation from a Cave Fan

[captpain]

psikyo games always give you like 7 bombs by the 4th stage so half the time i wind up dying with all of them on me and screaming and pulling my hair out.

[dunpeal2064]

Theres no way I have plasmo reflexes, and I can sight-dodge/bomb my way to level 5 in the psikyo shooters I have played.

But, to each his own. I personally do not really enjoy Mars Matrix much myself. I prefer dodging to reflecting, and the lack of powerups, weapon awesomeness, and character selection lend me to prefer Giga Wang when I want some Takumi action.

For dunpeal2064,

If you get the proper chance to try out the PSX port of Takumi's solid Night Raid, it's a fine danmaku shmup title (considering that they did the port conversion and publishing themselves). The original Taito G-Card version of NR running on the G-Net arcade platform ain't too shabby as well.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

Huh, I never knew that Takumi made something other than their Giga Wang series and Mars Matrix (and Kyukyokyu Tiger 2, I suppose)

I will definitely go check that one out, thanks!

... alrght, looks sweet. It seems to still have that nice big shot that I loved from Giga Wing. Doesn't look to be full of bullet hoarding either. Great suggestion there, PC Engine Fan X!

[Obiwanshinobi]

I knew about Night Raid, but have been avoiding the port, knowing it doesn't work properly on PS2 (more input lag, just like Zanac Neo). Having finally tried it out on ePSXe, I'm surprised it's not talked about more around here. Pretty slick game, and in a good way. Much like Zanac Neo, it's hardly a technical marvel, but the presentation has that "something" to it. One of best soundtracks to be heard in the last decade's shmups too (up there with Under Defeat OST).
Can't say I really knew what I was doing with its system, but it felt good.

[dunpeal2064]

Ah, good to know it runs poorly on a ps2. Luckily, I bout a psx at the flea market after realizing it was a model 1001. Works great for imports too!

[Rob]

psikyo games always give you like 7 bombs by the 4th stage so half the time i wind up dying with all of them on me and screaming and pulling my hair out.

At least they'll give you 1-2 back in addition to the brand new 2 (to never see use).

Night Raid is borderline awful. I only like it because it's made by Takumi. They really needed that Capcom support.

[stryc9]

Just received Gunbird 1&2 for PS2 off the back of all this PSiKYO tomfoolery, this is the third time I've owned it (first on DC then the PAL PS2 version), and all I can say is that this game never gets old, despite me playing it to death for the past decade. I have fond memories of playing this for 8 hours straight after a particularly heavy night on the old >ahem<

The gameplay and level design are so finely tuned, the difficulty curve steep but fair, and the destruction still ever so satisfying - despite being subjected to a wave of excellent shooters in the past few years (mostly CAVE) - this still rocks hard.

Gotta love the boss fights, which are well paced and just the right length.

This is the reason why I play shooting games.

[DMC]

psikyo games always give you like 7 bombs by the 4th stage so half the time i wind up dying with all of them on me and screaming and pulling my hair out.

Yea, I can relate to that!

[Hagane]

I see what you guys mean, but the super-fast shots (bam, you're already dead unless you have Plasmo reflexes) are so off-putting to me that I just rather play something else. Also, charge shots is a very frustrating mechanic in my opionon.

The point is that if you play right, you DON'T need super fast reflexes most of the time because you should kill your enemies before they actually shoot. If they don't get to shoot you don't have to dodge anything. Failing that, tapping, waiting, tapping, etc works for most patterns cause pretty much everything is aimed.

If you center your strategy on waiting for your enemy to shoot and then dodge its patterns then yeah, you WILL get destroyed. And if you dislike charge shots (why?) play Dragon Blaze since you mostly are going to use Dragon Shot anyways and you don't need to charge that.

Not to be a pain in the neck, but doesn't getting right in front of enemies as soon as they appear to kill them fast enough require precise memorization of the stage's layout in and of itself? It strikes me as a similar principle to the scoring system in Raiden III/IV, but not optional.

Not really. You see a big enemy, you blast it. You don't need to kill everything fast, you have to prioritize the bigger (more resilient, more dangerous) enemies, and then deal with the rest (which usually aren't as dangerous and shoot slower, easier patterns). If you are close you have enough time to do that on reaction. This is especially easy with characters with fast charge shots (Aine in Sengoku Blade) or anyone in Dragon Blaze (characters with faster Dragon Shot recovery are better of course).

As a general (pretty intuitive and straightforward IMO) rule, prioritize bigger enemies, then medium ones, then the small fry.

There isn't any more memorization in Psikyo games than in any shooter by Cave or Raizing. In fact, I'd say that any game with a chain based scoring system (Pachis, Ketsui) are much more memorization heavy than Psikyo games. Not like that's a bad thing, but people exaggerate memorization in Psikyo shooters a lot.

I think most people get this impression after playing Strikers 1945 II, which plays closer to Raiden than to a Psikyo shooter. Play Dragon Blaze, Sengoku Blade, Strikers 1945 or even Gunbird 2 the way I told you and you'll find they are much easier that way.

[NTSC-J]

I'm as big a Psikyo fan as any, but I will concede that they're very memorization required, even for shooters. But I like that.

The loops are a lot of fun because of their difficulty and planning that's required to survive for even a few seconds. Once you do have a plan, it feels great being able to tap-tap-tap your way through even the burliest patterns. Getting through Gunbird 2's 2-6 boss' second form without having to use a bomb in a real run for the first time was really satisfying. I also like how the second rounds are several times harder than the first. Once you get used to their blistering speed, no-missing the first loop becomes second-nature.

[dunpeal2064]

I have to agree with Hagane, I find little to no memorization required when playing Psikyo. I really don't get why people think they need to memorize patterns in their games, as they are sight-dodgable (at least on the first loop)

I dunno, I just don't get it. People always drop the "memo heavy" on psikyo, but I can't think of a single spot in a Psikyo game where death was unavoidable, even having never played that particular part before.

Ketsui's Stage 2 boss requires more memo than anything I've played in a first loop Psikyo, and even that is fairly sight-dodgable.

[Ganelon]

Was it common knowledge that Gunbird 2 Remix for the PSP has been canned? That's pretty unfortunate.

[man9child]

Psikyo shooters were my gateway. They were the only shmups I would find in the wild in arcades. I think I may have decided I really like shooters through Strikers 1945 Plus, on a freaking MVS cab.

My problem with Psikyo is that I feel as if there's an invisible wall I can never get passed somewhere around stage 6. Because there's no intricate scoring system, I'm not learning much on the early stages when I replay them, and I always end up dying in relatively the same spots in the later stages because I have a hard time with the quick bullets.

One thing I absolutely love about Psikyo shooters is the pacing. They don't mess about. Screen, screen, screen, boss. Done. And I actually like the randomized early stages.

I love Strikers 1 and 2, I really like Gunbird, but my fave Psikyo game is Cannon Spike. So what if it has lifebars?

[Obiwanshinobi]

Three pages+ of nothing about Space Bomber?

[dunpeal2064]

I had never heard of space bomber, thats two games I've discovered thanks to this thread.

Picked up Gunbird 2 and Cannon Spike off ebay, looking forward to trying those out

[BPzeBanshee]

Three pages+ of nothing about Space Bomber?

I failed hard there Master Obi-Wan. Space Bomber undoubtedly wins over the rest just for the lulz.

Actually I'm not kidding either, the dialog stuff really is quite the laugh. I think it's kind of meant to even take the piss out of Bill Clinton or at least one of the US presidents.

[Rob]

Three pages+ of nothing about Space Bomber?

It is what it is. Really cool that they made a single screen shooter and additional proof that they didn't just make the "same thing" over and over again, but hideous and has a lame scoring system.

[Hagane]

What's wrong with Space Bomber's scoring system? Hidden bonuses?

[Obiwanshinobi]

Space Bomber certainly doesn't look any worse than Strikers 1945 II. It's also one of the last coin-op shmups sporting the eye-catching factor, akin to that of Sengoku Ace (stuff on this side of Ikaruga generally lacks it).

[Rob]

Oh, it definitely does look (much) worse. There is nothing appealing about the way it looks, while Strikers II at least has some cool looking bosses (that are not trashcans and pigs over animated gif-quality backgrounds).

The scoring system is just boring. When other Psikyo games do scoring bonuses, there is a lot of risk in going for them. With Space Bomber it's just about waiting until things line up before shooting one at the moving pins. The enemy grabbing arm is a cool thing, but that's not a good use for it.

The boss fights are reliable Psikyo. The downtime for worthless scoring bonuses kills it.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Backgrounds in Space Bomber are ace (with nearest neighbour upscaling and scanlines anyway). My favourite CG backgrounds in a shmup, matched only by the city beneath clouds in Dragon Blaze. By the way, *.gif is not a quality standard. Gifs can be as good looking as any digital video out there.

[Psikyo_Ball]

In Psikyo games you need use a "agressive strategy" for do score. You must kill the enemy before it kill you. Psikyo have great graphics and , in my opinion, have nice scoring sistem because you know "where you get your score".
In cave games you must know "i must shoot here to dont cut the chain" but you never know how many score you get there. Only aprox. The bullets are slow and the hitbox are "liar", You can cross with luck troughout a wall of pink bullets and dont died. Try it on dragon blaze and try the same on mushimesama and tell me what happen
For me psikyo are better than cave. But cave have funnyes games like ibara or dangun feveron. And piskyo have badies games (1945 series and sengoku ace are a little worst in my opinion).

[Rob]

The bullets are slow and the hitbox are "liar",

Couldn't have put it better. Hating on the Strikers is an offense, though.

[Psikyo_Ball]

Strikers havent high offense ships like katana on sengoku blade. It is the cause it dont like too much strikers series. But i think strikers are better than DOJ or espgaluda.

[Twiddle]

i like how psikyo games play but everything that's not strikers 2/dragon blaze is painful to look at

[dunpeal2064]

i like how psikyo games play but everything that's not strikers 2/dragon blaze is painful to look at

I think Zero Gunner 2 and Gunbird 2 look great. Both have superior graphics to strikers imo, although I still enjoy Strikers 2's gritty look.

Cannon Spike is a bit funky-looking though

[Hagane]

Rob: Oh, I thought you meant there was something broken about it. I like the system mysef, it kinda feels like proto-Dragon Blaze in a way since in DB sometimes you have to wait for your enemies to line up so you can take all of them out with a single dragon attack.

As for graphics, I don't see how games like Gunbird, Sengoku Blade, Dragon Blaze, Strikers, etc look boring, to me they are superbly rendered and full of personality.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Although I haven't tried out its co-op yet, Space Bomber seems to be largely about 2 player. Should make for a superb "competitive co-op" experience.

[Drum]

i like how psikyo games play but everything that's not strikers 2/dragon blaze is painful to look at

Sengoku Blade is one of the best-looking shooters.

[dunpeal2064]

Random thing I just noticed:

Sonic Wings Special has a helicopter character, and the heli is the Hokum, which later appears in Zero Gunner 2. Whats even cooler, you can turn the heli ~45 degrees in either direction when not shooting, and shoot to hold that position.

Definitely a glimps of things to come.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Yep, when the staff left Video System Co. Ltd. to form Psikyo, all their work paid off in spades with their later Psikyo PCB offerings.

Interesting that Aero Fighters/Sonic Wings PCB and the final Aero Fighters/Sonic Wing Special PCB are the only two to get a proper seperate PCB release (considering that Aero Fighters/Sonic Wings 2 & 3 were released as MVS game carts only).

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~