results: Top 25 Shmups of All Time (through 2004)

[Rob]

Just because you like the modern stuff more it doesnt mean it's necisarily better.

I'd prefer to be more roundabout and attack their depth and challenge, which is an easy target. Then it's shallow games vs. complex games.

I've played TF3 to death. It takes less to master than half a stage of GWG. 16-bit games are fun for what they are, but don't work the brain much. Like a not so distant relative of the beat 'em up.

[Rob]

It all boils down to personal tastes.

It does, but a person has to be clueless not to see the genre's critical weaknesses past and present. Past weaknesses are more debilitating as games.

[alpha5099]

Just because you like the modern stuff more it doesnt mean it's necisarily better.

I'd prefer to be more roundabout and attack their depth and challenge, which is an easy target. Then it's shallow games vs. complex games.

I've played TF3 to death. It takes less to master than half a stage of GWG. 16-bit games are fun for what they are, but don't work the brain much. Like a not so distant relative of the beat 'em up.

Oh no, you did not just insult beat 'em ups. That's it. You and I, we're going to have to take it outside.

PS - Forgot to mention: Nice list, Shatterhand.

[Rob]

[
Oh no, you did not just insult beat 'em ups. That's it. You and I, we're going to have to take it outside.

Actually, to be fair, I've always thought of most old school shooters as scrolling versions of:

Enemies randomly appear, BONK! They pose no threat, you just keep hammering them! Not very clever, but people love it.

[captain ahar]

oh ho, rob is the KING of controversy these days. i had a good laugh at the whack-a-thing comparison.

edit: even though i don't necessarily agree.

[alpha5099]

Robert, I will destroy you.

[Accutron]

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

[nullstar]

Please Note: I just realized that there I screwed up the synonyms for Salamander -- so they showed up on the list as two vs. one. I corrected that...which bumped Sally into the HM list. Fixed the various stats -- but combining the games would have resulted in the #13 game, not the #25 game as I originally said.

Hey nullstar, any chances of you showing us the whole list, with the score of all games voted?

I am just curious too see how many points each game got, what position Space Manbow ended up, etc...

Sure -- I'll post it this weekend.

Exactly. Guys, this is democracy. No two people, much less the 55 that voted, will ever agree 100% on the same list. Relax...

I'll also specifically point out the stat that only 26 of the 260+ games receiving a vote -- just shy of 10% -- even got a vote from more than one in four voters! (!!)

It's interesting to see how similar and how different these results are to shmup.com's Hall of Fame.

That site just has people vote on each of the games, I think a lot of those results are just fanboys giving the games they love 10s over and over again. It's odd to see how that list is constantly changing. It used to be DoDonPachi and Radiant Silvergun as the undisputed kings of that list. Sometime last year, Rayforce got some amazing momentum and got to number 1. Now, the ThunderForce series controls the top 3.

Considering how subjective that list is, I actually think I prefer the results of the Hall of Fame to our Top 25. It contains a broader range of shmups from different eras, with far more old games on the list than what we're seeing. If only they wouldn't include rail shooters on the list.

As you say, it is actually surprising how similar the lists are. Rail shooters aside, there isn't a lot in their top 30 that doesn't at least show up in our HM list. I'm also not sure how either system is truly fanboy free, but at least in our case the point component is a zero sum game -- you can throw all your eggs in one basket and still get seriously outvoted; you can probably affect the placement of a game, but it's harder to single-handedly put a game on the list. As you suggest about theirs: it's a voluntary vote that I'm sure has no meaningful way to track the IDs of the random visitors that cast votes for games.

But as I said earlier in the vote discussion thread: I like the fuzzy logic of making this a `top' list vs. `funnest', `essential', `most challenging', `most representative', `best wrought', `favorite', or whatever other thing. Against most of the criteria I just mentioned, for example, I'd rate Radiant Silvergun all over the map -- certainly a 10/10 for craftsmanship and attention do detail...and at best a 2/10 for respresentative...with the others scattered probably evenly in between.) Either way, I'm sure my vote (which reflects a serious affection for the Gradius series and most of Compile's work) is as foreign to the hardcore Treasure and/or Cave supporters as theirs are to me. But I can't hold their tastes against them...even if they are undeniably weird. ;P

(I'm not trying to suggest the way I've done it is the best way. It's clearly not the only one, but I do like it. Plus, it's easily tweakable -- if everyone suddenly starts putting, say, 90% of their voting weight to one or two games, we just reduce how heavily that factors in with the actual number of votes they receive...)

[BulletMagnet]

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

Neither could I.

[Shatterhand]

Yes, Gaiares is also another excellent example. As is Eliminate Down.

I noticed I said Gynoug twice though, hehe

And random shmups are great stuff. I'd rather need skills and reflexes to dodge bullets that I don't know where will came from than memorizing dozens of chains to do.

I think I hate games where I have to chain enemy kills.

[Neon]

Compile's games are about as challenging as the average ship select screen in a modern shooter.

Amen, brother. I'm still trying to find what's fun about playing Blazing lazers and MUSHA.

The problem with many older shooters is that they lack depth...that's why Dragon Blaze is so ridiculously better than Gunbird, for example. Gunbird doesn't even have the 'coin shine' of the strikers games...you just pick em up (talking about the first game only here).

It's also why DDP's better than Batsugun. Batsugun you might as well just glue down the fire button...DDP you have to use the laser, standard shot in order to keep the chain going, then there's all the hidden bee's too. That way when you can easily clear the first loop, there's still something for you to try to perfect in the first stage.

I think I hate games where I have to chain enemy kills.

Please elaborate...how does an optional scoring mechanic detract from the game overall?

[Rob]

Bulletmagnet: AWESOME

I think I hate games where I have to chain enemy kills.

So does everyone except Ikaruga fans!

[Ganelon]

Please elaborate...how does an optional scoring mechanic detract from the game overall?

Well, for one, it'll actually take extraneous time and effort to get a great score when otherwise you could just be killing stuff, which would be the goal to survival. Basically, scoring is directly connected to survival when all you have to do is shoot enemies.

Not everybody wants depth, ya know...that's why we're playing shooters and not flight sims.

[alpha5099]

[It's also why DDP's better than Batsugun

LIES!

You want to talk depth, and you compare DDP and Batsugun?! Where's the depth to DDP? Ooo, you push the button, it's a laser. How cute. What else is there? Maximum bonus? Bees?

Batsugun has a fucking two-tiered power-up system. And there is a difference between holding and tapping. For the best example, just play as Iceman, the Pachis stole his firing style. You can also see it in Beltiana, there are more pulses in her laser when you tap than when you hold the button. There are the hidden pigs, the loops, all the secret bonuses. It's replay value up the fucking wazoo.

---

And I wouldn't be quite so pissed off about the Whack-A-Mole thing if the kid didn't look a little bit like me before I lost some weight back in middle school.

[raiden]

How many people who voted actually played FOR MORE THAN FIVE minutes (That's one reason why emulation sucks) most of the titles I've mentioned above?

somehow this reminds me of people defending RPGs with "ok, the first 15 hours suck, but after that the game really takes off". If the first 5 minutes of a game don´t convince people to keep playing for longer, that´s the game´s fault at least partly.
And like people who prefer modern shmups in general won´t spend much time with oldschool games, people who prefer oldschool shmups in general play modern games only casually. Be it Irem, Konami, Compile, Psikyo, Raizing, Treasure or Cave - there´s always people who prefer a company over every other one, and there´s also people who don´t like a company´s products at all.

Concering the debate between Rob and alpha5099: it´s funny, 10 years ago this discussion worked quite differently: the oldschool people claimed memorization games to be "more intelligent", while newschool advocates wanted more random elements for more action.

(I'm not trying to suggest the way I've done it is the best way. It's clearly not the only one, but I do like it. Plus, it's easily tweakable -- if everyone suddenly starts putting, say, 90% of their voting weight to one or two games, we just reduce how heavily that factors in with the actual number of votes they receive...)

I´m not entirely convinced this works in the way it´s supposed to. Anyone can come up with 25 titles most of which they barely played, and we had votes of 24 games receiving 1 point and one game receiving a hundred or more... While some people modestly followed your advice and only voted for a reduced number of games, other people actively tried to influence results without reflecting their honest opinion on all of the games they voted for.

Maybe it would be better without points... seems like some people will always want to manipulate results, even though that doesn´t make any sense.

[Rob]

Concering the debate between Rob and alpha5099: it´s funny, 10 years ago this discussion worked quite differently: the oldschool people claimed memorization games to be "more intelligent", while newschool advocates wanted more random elements for more action.

I don't mean random so much as thoughtless and unchallenging. I don't think structure takes away from action and it adds much more potential for strategy/problem solving, which I also like.

[alpha5099]

other people actively tried to influence results without reflecting their honest opinion on all of the games they voted for.

That is a serious issue. Do you vote as if you and you alone were the results, or do you vote to change the outcome to better suit your tastes? It's a hard decision to make, made more difficult by the fact that most people will be voting the latter way.

Perhaps secret ballots could alleviate the problem. People will see that Shmup A has gotten a lot of votes, far more than Shmup B, which they prefer. And so they will give Shmup B an inordinately high weighting. If everything was secret, it would eliminate some of the cause of this weighting problem. Not all of it, obviously, people will still have some idea of what's getting voted for.

[alpha5099]

This whole debate really just boils down to why we play games. I play them for escapism. I am bombarded with intellectual drudgery day in, day out. And to escape, to unwind, I like some good old fashioned mindless fun. I like to pick the fat guy and go beat up the crackheads and pimps who kidnapped the Mayor's daughter. I like to sit in my deathship and blasting away at anything that moves. I'm playing to give the intellectual areas of my brain some time off. When I do want intellectual stimulation from a game, I'll play a puzzle game or an RPG. But my shmups are mindless fun, and anything that tampers with it, adding asinine rank systems and counter-intuitive gimmicks (I mean, fuck, reflecting bullets?!), it's highly unlikely I will like it.

Obviously, Rob has a different agenda. He wants to get his mental stimulation from his video games. So he gravitates towards a different style, a different era of gaming. They both have their merits. For people like me, Rob's shmups are too complicated and have lost the important focus on blowing shit up real good. For Rob and his ilk, my games were important stepping stones that led to the development of the true pinnacles of the genre. We'll just have to have to learn to live together in the same world.

*Odd Couple Theme*

[Rob]

Reflecting bullets is the best thing that ever happened to shooting games and I'm waiting for Giga Wing to spawn its own subgenre.

[ST Dragon]

I'm not satisfied that a game with a level as awful as Cerberus gets the number 6 spot.

A game with no memorable stage like DoDonPachi shouldn't be so hi either.
Or Ikaruga which is more like a Puzzle Shooter...
Or the never ending Boss fights of Radiant Silvergun. It fealt more like a Vs Duel than a Shmup.

[Nemo]

...And people shouldn't have opinions.
And everyone should like the same games or they r dum.
And all your base belong to Cave. BOM-BER!

[Bydobasher]

Some random thoughts:

1. The list is dominated by vertical scrollers -- 17 of them, just like last year. The remaining 8 games are all horizontal scrollers, whereas last year, Salamander, Axelay, and Zero Gunner 2 all made the list.

2. I count 14 shmups from the era 1995-1999; this exceeds last year's count by two. There are 6 shmups from 2000-2004 (Ikaruga, GV, MM, SnS2, DDPDoJ, ESPGaluda), and only 4 shmups from 1990-1994 (TF3, RayForce, Batsugun, RaidenDX). R-Type is the sole representative of the pre-1990 era.

3. Battle Garegga, Axelay, and M.U.S.H.A. were all in the top 10 last year -- and Guwange was in the 14th spot -- so it's surprising to me that all four of them failed to make the top 25 this year.

4. I thought maybe this was the year that we would have a different game in the top spot, but DDP is #1 for the third straight year. Its appeal is both wide and enduring.

5. On a personal note: as the average copyright date of the top 25 moves inexorably forward, I am most gratified to see that the (in my opinion) incomparable genius of R-Type continues to be recognized.

An interesting list, as always. Thanks very much to nullstar and Zhon for compiling the results, as well as to everyone who took the time to vote.

[gingerj]

Reflecting bullets is the best thing that ever happened to shooting games and I'm waiting for Giga Wing to spawn its own subgenre.

Amen to that!
Although bullet scraping is a bit more enjoyable. Psyvariar 2 brought a whole new way to play shooters for me, instead of killing the enemy jack their bullets... It's a weird thinking process....But I love it.

[Super Laydock]

Some random thoughts:

1. The list is dominated by vertical scrollers -- 17 of them, just like last year. The remaining 8 games are all horizontal scrollers, whereas last year, Salamander, Axelay, and Zero Gunner 2 all made the list.

Salamander is scrolling vertically as well as horizantally! Now what was the appropriate term again?

(Bulletmagnet come to the rescue here please...?)

[Ganelon]

Err, all 3 of those games are hybrid scrolling (which might be an appropriate term for Zero Gunner 2, though not the exact encyclopedic term for Salamander and Axelay).

[BulletMagnet]

Salamander is scrolling vertically as well as horizantally! Now what was the appropriate term again?

(Bulletmagnet come to the rescue here please...?)

The term listed in the glossary (which I'll hafta update once finals are over) is "Alternate View," though I'm not sure how "correct" it is.

Some clarification on "hybrid scrolling" might be interesting, I don't think I have that one up there yet.

[Bydobasher]

Hmm, I wasn't very clear in expressing myself.

This year there are 17 verts and 8 horzies. Last year, there were also 17 verts, but there were only 5 horzies, along with Salamander, Axelay, and ZG2, which as you guys pointed out, are hybrid/multidirectional scrollers. That's why I singled them out.

[Neon]

I like the anonymous idea...next year we could just PM our choices, though the mod would need an expanded inbox

[BulletMagnet]

There's always good ol' email.

[alpha5099]

I like the anonymous idea...next year we could just PM our choices, though the mod would need an expanded inbox

If we do do anonymous voting, the full list of everything that got votes, either alphabetically or by rank, would have to be released. It just has to.