Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Aww, thanks. ^w^; I'm glad to hear it's been useful.

I was hanging out in a friend's Twitch channel while he was playing it and I was the person who'd played it the most there... kept trying to be informative and answer questions, but it seemed to be one of those games that's hard to get a feel for with just an explanation alone. So I tried whipping up a quick video with text explanations in the hopes that'd work and save me typing out explanations, haha. There's a few people playing who were deaf so a voiced video would've been useless to them, and I generally prefer text for detailed walkthroughs, etc.

The first time I produced it I recorded getting the 1UP and forgot to include it. >w>; Then GunnerSTG, one of the best Progear players I know, let me know bullet sealing is actually a thing and by far the easiest way to crank rank up in S1 for the gem vacuum at the end, so I had to quickly add that and reupload. <w<;

[Ice Beam]

Playing around with arcade challenge mode in Kyukyoku Tiger (M2). The explosions look and sound like the enemy vehicles are made out of sand, which amuses me. I hope to get a 1-all eventually.

[Sam250]

Grinding for the 1CC in Rayforce. The visual design of this game blows my mind. It's one of the best looking shmups I am aware of, yet it predates Donpachi by almost two years. The level design with the two layer weapon system is also excellent.

When I was getting into shmups maybe a decade ago, it seemed like nobody was talking about the Ray games or Darius. Taito underrated?

[ryu]

When I was getting into shmups maybe a decade ago, it seemed like nobody was talking about the Ray games or Darius. Taito underrated?

The Ray series hasn't seen a new game in decades. And comparatively people still talk about Darius a lot, mostly because of Dariusburst and the many ports and expansions it has seen over the years.

[Sam250]

The Ray series is dormant, but so are many of series of the top 25 games from the last poll.

A new game would help though. I'd never seen anybody talking about Cotton (I admit I'd never even heard of it) until they announced Reboot , but now Cotton seems to be really popular.

[Starfighter]

I'm finally playing DOJ, it's really fun! It's every bit as tough as I remember (I played it on PS2 when I got a japanese console in the 00's), I'm not sure I'll get my 1CC in this one but I'm having a blast trying!

[To Far Away Times]

Slowly chipping away at Pocky and Rocky. I can do the first three stages pretty well now.

Stage four is quite tough.

[To Far Away Times]

I finished Rocky & Pocky and it's semi sequel, Rocky & Rocky Reshrined, which were two of the three games on my 2024 shmup goals list. At first I thought I'd take a break from shmups for a bit and tried a bit of Horizon: Zero Dawn. It looks nice but ultimately feels kinda pointless. I needed to play something which had a bit more urgency.

Decided to start up the last game on my goals list, which is Sorcer Striker. I know this one gets real tough at the end starting with the Ninja boss, we'll see what happens. After trying out the characters, I think I will give it a go with Bornnam.

[Gamer707b]

I finished Rocky & Pocky and it's semi sequel, Rocky & Rocky Reshrined, which were two of the three games on my 2024 shmup goals list. At first I thought I'd take a break from shmups for a bit and tried a bit of Horizon: Zero Dawn. It looks nice but ultimately feels kinda pointless. I needed to play something which had a bit more urgency.

Decided to start up the last game on my goals list, which is Sorcer Striker. I know this one gets real tough at the end starting with the Ninja boss, we'll see what happens. After trying out the characters, I think I will give it a go with Bornnam.

Pocky And Rocky Re-Shrined is an amazing game. I can go back to it again and again. I would love to do a no-miss of it, maybe this year. I already unlocked all the characters. Never played the original, but from my understanding, only the first 2 levels were re-made. The rest are completely new.

[To Far Away Times]

Pocky And Rocky Re-Shrined is an amazing game. I can go back to it again and again. I would love to do a no-miss of it, maybe this year. I already unlocked all the characters. Never played the original, but from my understanding, only the first 2 levels were re-made. The rest are completely new.

Yeah, and those first two levels are only remade in the loosest sense. They use the same type of tile sets and music, and evoke some of the same ideas, but the actual design is different. Even the things that are more directly copied over all contain some sort of surprise. Reshrined’s stage 7 level is also a remake of the SNES’ stage 6 (Black Mantle was the final boss of the SNES game) but it has the same kind of idea to evoke the feeling of the original while being a completely different layout.

It’s a really cool (and high effort) way to do a “remake.”

[XoPachi]

I'm playing Raiden 4 and this is very nostalgic for me. I'm playing the (delisted) Steam port but I've had this on 360 since 2008. I still remember when I went to GameStop and grabbed this. The clerk was trying to warn me that it wasn't an Ace Combat style flying game. But I always wanted to play a proper Raiden title ever since I played Raiden X on school computers in 2005 so I knew what I was buying. I've never and will never clear this but it's so much fun and has remained my favorite of the classic series. They really nailed this one.

This game is HARD.

EDIT: I'm still at this and I think I could actually do a single loop, original arcade mode clear. I've been really enjoying the Mk1's Proton Laser. It reminds me of a stricter version of DoDonPachi's Biaxe which has always been a favorite as well. Directional influenced firing is so cool in STG's and this might be my new favorite.

[To Far Away Times]

Wow, my early impressions on Graze Counter are pretty great. Presentation wise this game nails everything.

I think I actually played the demo of this for a few minutes many years ago and wasn't too impressed back then. I don't what I was thinking, this game seems incredible now.

[XoPachi]

Decided to try Raiden 5 again after about 10 hours of 4 recently. I remember when videos of this released and I was skeptical. Then I got it and hated it immediately. I'm giving it more of a fair shake now and yeah, this game kinda blows.
It's not 100% terrible like I remember it being, but what good it's got is completely overshadowed by all the missteps. First off all, I. CAN'T. SEE.

I've had issues seeing in the very rare STG, but this has got to be the absolute worst about it. There is so much working against the playability of this game through visuals. The bloom is just simply over the top. Everything just has this horribly blown out radiance to it. Your fire, the medals, enemy bullets, the massively oversaturated backgrounds some of which have more hues than a makeup aisle. So much gets lost in the backgrounds especially since everything is smaller than it was in previous games, and some scenes zoom things out even further for ~cinematic~ effect. Or the scrolling is entirely too fast over a ton of bright colors. It's a relief when you get to that crystal mine area because there's some actual contrast and the game slows the fuck down.

-Music sucks.
-Audio balancing is ass so even if the music wasn't generic anime space opera shit, you can't even hear it unless you drop the sfx to the point you then can't hear those.
-The cinematic nature of the game is garbage.
-There's so few settings to adjust even for when this game came out and I'm playing the DX version.
-That one chick in glasses with the mom hips is not in my room right now.
-On top of the bad visibility during the action, the HUD is blasting me with busy visuals and I can't shut that shit off.

It's a shame because when I can focus and not give myself a headache, the game is decently fun. It's not like at it's core it plays *bad*. It's satisfying blowing stuff up. The new weapons are all a lot of fun and it seems like the scoring can be really cool when the scene transitions aren't screwing the pacing/deleting loose medals. I've always like the quick kill system. MICLUS! It doesn't quite feel like a Raiden game, but it plays like a quality title when the gunk takes a break. People dunk on 3 and I never understood why. I'll go back to that over 5 honestly.

[ryu]

People dunk on 3 and I never understood why.

Isn't 3 regarded as one of the better mainline Raidens? Don't think I've ever cone across a negative critic of it.

I took some time to dig into M2's Aleste Collection today.

Aleste
Did the devil make this? I'm surprised people actually beat this. The erratic and seemingly random patterns are infuriating.
I wonder if this is the first STG where you power up by collecting many smaller oder larger valued power ups. I've seen that system in a bunch of popular shmups and didn't realize it had this much of a history to it.

GG Aleste
Pretty good for an early handheld shmup. Just seems somewhat unbalanced. It's way too easy on normal and special mode appears to be the almost exact opposite.

GG Aleste II
This one is my favorite on the collection so far. Fun patterns to dodge with little downtime unlike its predecessor. The shield gimmick makes the huge hit box relative to the screen size tolerable.
Now, did this one invent bullet cancelling bombs? I wouldn't be surprised if the mechanic originated here because the awkward delay is suspicious. Feels like the prototype of cave bombs.
A great little game but the backgrounds are a tad too pronounced so it's easy to just not notice enemies sometimes.

GG Aleste 3
Why not III?

I got the collection because I like it when games get developed for old hardware. Feels like a mix of classic console and arcade shmup. It's good but would be more fun if it wasn't so easy to miss power ups. The graphics are impressive considering it's a legitimate Game Gear game.

Power Strike II
Apparently this one was a big deal because it hadn't seen any official releases outside only a couple of regions. Seems to be a strong upgrade to the original Aleste, but has a bit of a slow pace. I'll have to try it on the harder difficulties.

[XoPachi]

Holy shit, Raiden 1 and 2 are so much fun. These might be my favorite games in this classic style from this time period. They're really good. @-@
And these PS1 ports are really fantastic! Raiden 1 is more forgiving than I expected. Had a weird moment in stage 1 that sapped both of my lives. I was pleasantly surprised to see there's extends in this game so I got them back. Lost at stage 6 though.

One thing I noticed is that there's a lot more lateral panning of the stages than in 3 and 4. Not to say it's gone in the later entries but it feels split in them between very strict scrolling sections and then the more "open" areas. But even in those areas it seems like a little less space. Granted there's also other new scrolling tricks at play being in 3D. It gives both eras of the series their own distinctive feel. I think 4 may still be my favorite but all of the first 4 games really are just great video games.

[To Far Away Times]

The little details in Raiden still impress to this day.

[Steven]

Raiden has poorly documented dumb shit like how starting rank depends on the timing of when you put your money in the machine, which according to the devs was done in order to make the player feel like they're getting better even though they are not. The game is already hard enough as it is, but having a variable starting difficulty that the player can't select or is at best most likely impossible to get 100% precisely every time, depending on how it actually works (never seen the timings for when to put your coin in, so I don't know), and probably isn't even aware of is just ridiculous. You can fix the starting rank if you play on ACA, at least.

[To Far Away Times]

Wow, I didn’t know that, that sounds awful.

In a true Yagawa moment, Armed Police Batrider has a starting rank penalty for booting the machine up. Once you start playing, rank from previous runs will partially carry over. Rank will decease when the attract screen loops, but I think it takes like 30 loops to clear it all. Pre-credit rank shinanigans can be mitigated by starting from the Test Menu.

[XoPachi]

The little details in Raiden still impress to this day.

I was raving about this with Raiden 2 in my server. I was kind of blown away by the explosion effects. The main explosions themselves are already extremely smooth and detailed. You see the pressure waves of the initial blast to the very realistic dissipation of smoke after a flash and really well made cloud of fire. But then the random shrapnel that explodes in all directions of a ton of shapes and sizes. Beyond that, they visibly shrink to simulate falling to the ground where they kick up appropriate sized dust or water on landing. Enemies in the sky that crash into trees will ignite them. Ground enemies leave smoldering craters and blow parts of close foliage away. The double walkers leave foot prints and kick up water on each step. When they step on a building, rather than the building blowing up entirely like most games, they just take out the chunk they stepped on.

There's a ton going visually in this game. It's seriously impressive. And I didn't really grow up with the first two games. The only "Raiden" I played until Raiden 4 was Raiden X.

Also this series has a lot of cows!

[To Far Away Times]

Yeah! All these visual elements and their reactivity to the area around them make it seem like a living world as opposed to sprites scrolling along a play field. It’s really well done.

[Him]

Yeah! All these visual elements and their reactivity to the area around them make it seem like a living world as opposed to sprites scrolling along a play field. It’s really well done.

Absolutely. I haven't played Raiden in over 15 years but this I distinctly remember as a kid.

[ryu]

I've collected so many shmups over the years, and with all the one's having been rereleased on current gen consoles, I don't even know where to start anymore.

So I've put down a list of all the shmups I own or always planned to get, ordered them by their japanese release date and decided to tackle them in that order. Which means it'll take forever until I get to play DOJ and Ketsui because I got like years of '80s and '90s shmups in front of me lol
So I think I'll be throwing in M2's arrange modes for more recent games every now and then.

Tangentially the Salamander Deluxe Pack I bought and sold for about 30 bucks way back is now sold for up to 140€... it's insane. Good thing we got Hamster's Arcade Archives these days.

That said... looks like I'm starting with Gradius. At least Hishouzame is not too far off, with only Salamander coming in between.

[ryu]

So about Gradius...

It's going how you'd expect.

Silly how smooth that looks on video. Making that checkpoint recovery had me completely lose my spaghetti. I didn't think it was possible to get through that section after a respawn.

[Steven]

Yep, that's how Gradius goes. I am not sure if checkpoints and speed powerups putting you in checkpoint hell is better or worse than that of instant respawns and speed powerups causing you to chain death, but in this case the game has the former. I guess I just don't like speed powerups.

[ryu]

Nah, I was actually at the speed level I usually use and am comfortable with. Just couldn't focus because recovering and surviving the pre-boss section was unbelievable to me.

Unfortunately I hit a checkpoint in stage 7 that was really unrecoverable I believe. Went in there with like 6 to 7 lives and couldn't make it through. Wish I had made a save state to practice that stage in case I screwed up (which I did)... all those lives made me too confident I'd make it I guess.

[m.sniffles.esq]

I mentioned this in the other thread, but due to me playing through Yakuza on the Xbox, and having it's creator on my mind, I been playing a lot of Space Giraffe lately.
Back in the 360 days, I found myself thinking it was interesting for what it was trying to do, but not entirely successful in doing it. So I find myself being more than a little surprised that I now think it's really, really good.

Like, really good

I think approach was a big part of my initial issues. In that, I was constantly trying to build multiplier, and playing in such a manner can be a (very) frustrating experience. I've since learned to be a little more relaxed, and will certainly take opportunities as they present themselves, but not make it the sole focus.

With that said, the game is still far from perfect. It's a little too fond of purposefully obscuring sections of the play-field forcing one to 'use the force', some enemies look a little too similar to power-ups, and -- as in the case of most of Minter's games -- it doesn't so much as have a difficultly ramp, but more a series of leaps.

Buuuuut, even when the game occasionally frustrates you, the 'one more try' factor is very strong. I absolutely love the mechanic of making a level's start bonus whatever your high score was (instead of an arbitrary set number), and therein lies the impetus to go back and try to build multiplier. And I kind of love how it sort of expands the principals of Tempest, and sort of boils them down to essentials simultaneously. Tempest isn't really a 'shooter' because you're CONSTANTLY shooting. and you can't miss. Essentially, it's more of a 'steerer', so Space Giraffe makes that the focus. And in a genre so obsessed with piling stuff on. trying to make you forget you're playing Galaga again, I find it really refreshing to see a game actually take something away.

[ryu]

I mentioned this in the other thread, but due to me playing through Yakuza on the Xbox, and having it's creator on my mind, I been playing a lot of Space Giraffe lately.

How do you go from Toshihiro Nagoshi to Jeff Minter?

[m.sniffles.esq]

How do you go from Toshihiro Nagoshi to Jeff Minter?

Generally, the home screen

(sorry, you kind of set yourself up for that one)

[ryu]

Sorry, I just misunderstood you. Reading the other thread cleared things up for me.

[m.sniffles.esq]

I see, that's my fault. My opening sentence is terrible.
The Xbox is the common denominator, not Toshihiro Nagoshi