If you have a question, please send me a private message or ask it in the discussion thread. Thanks!
NEW! Feel free to provide commentary on your vote or to discuss the votes of others in the comments thread.
Polls close May 14 at 23:59 GMT!
What's New?
1942: Joint Strike [thread]
Astro Tripper [thread]
AtomHex [thread]
Bangai-O Spirits [thread]
Blast Works [thread]
Cloudphobia (download version) [thread]
Dodonpachi Dai-Fukkatsu (original and 1.5) [thread]
Droid Assault [thread]
Fantasy Zone II: the Tears of Opa-Opa (System-16C version) [thread]
Galaga Legions [thread]
Geometry Wars - Retro Evolved 2 [thread]
Gradius Rebirth (WiiWare) [thread]
Gyrostarr [thread]
Illvelo [thread]
Ketsui Death Label (Nintendo DS) [thread]
Mamoru-kun ha norowareteshimatta! [thread]
Omega Five (XBLA) [thread]
Powerup Forever (PS3/X360) [thread]
Protöthea [thread]
RefleX [thread]
Shred Nebula [thread]
Söldner-X: Himmelsstürmer (PS3 release) [thread] [PS3 version thread]
Space Invaders Extreme [thread]
Space Invaders Get Even [thread]
Star Soldier R [thread]
Subterranean Animism (Touhou 11) [thread]
Super Stardust Portable (Sony PSP) [thread]
Thunder Force VI [thread]
T.W.T.P.B. [thread]
Underwater Attack (DS release of Ocean Commander) [thread]
RULES:
00. If you haven't participated before, read the Background section (below) before proceeding any further.
01. Vote for the 25 shmups you feel are the "top" of all time. (What constitutes top is up to you: best, favorite, most influential, most significant, mix-and-match, et cetera.)
02. For each shmup, allocate an integer number of points in the range from 1 to 25. The points you assign will help compensate for, say, games that fewer people vote for but feel much more strongly about than others they vote for.
03. You must vote for exactly 25 games, no more, no less. If you can't come up with 25 games, chances are you're not experienced enough (see Background, below) to vote anyway. If you can't limit yourself to 25 games, consider viewing the agonizing experience of cutting down your list to 25 as a lesson in self-discipline.
04. Shmups released in calendar year 2009 are not eligible for consideration.
05. Don't vote for games you haven't played! Hopefully that was self-evident...
06. Distinguish between games on compilations! (e.g. Zanac X Zanac is not something you can vote for -- it's the name of the compilation, not a game. Raiden Project is another example.)
07. Specify when different games share the same title. (We're not talking about ports here -- stuff like U.N. Squadron: the SNES game and arcade game are so different we consider them separately; Gradius III SNES and arcade is another good example.) If you intend to vote for a game titled Salamander or Life Force, please be as specific as possible as to which format and region you're voting for.
08. No off-limits games! Please consult the chart below to see if your game is eligible for consideration. If you have questions about a specific game or about any of the categories, please contact incognoscente.
No voting for:
- First-person perspective shooters (Doom, Solvalou)
- including Lightgun Shooters (House of the Dead, Rail Chase)
Rail Shooters (Rez, Space Harrier)
Gallery/Carnival Shooters (NAM-1975, Cabal)
Action-adventure games (Alien Breed, Gauntlet, Legend of Zelda)
You may vote for games in any of the following categories:
- Non-scrolling playfield
- Fixed Shooters (Space Invaders, Galaga)
Maze Shooters (Berserk, Tank Batalion)
Field Shooters (Robotron, Smash TV, Geometry Wars)- Field Shooters set on a cylinder or torus (Asteroids, Star Castle)
- Automatically scrolling shooters
- Vertically scrolling shooters (Xevious, Cybattler)
- including those set on a cylinder (Scion)
- including those set on a cylinder (Fantasy Zone*)
- Manually advancing horizontally scrolling shooters (In the Hunt, Mr. Heli no Daibouken)
- including those set on a cylinder (Defender)
Manually advancing multi-directional shooters (Granada, Kiki Kaikai, Bangai-O)- including those set on a torus or infinite plane (Sinistar)
- Vertically scrolling shooters (Xevious, Cybattler)
- Every Extend series
Gyruss and clones
Tempest, clones, and sequels
Zaxxon
- Fixed Shooters (Space Invaders, Galaga)
10. Use the proper vote format. We're trying to automate data entry, so please provide only one game per line, in the following format:
- [integer score 1 to 25] [game title]
- [25] [Deep Blue]
[25] [Planet Joker]
[25] [Scramble Egg]
- [1] [Deep Blue]
[1] [Planet Joker]
[1] [Scramble Egg]
- [25] [Deep Blue]
[3] [Planet Joker]
[1] [Scramble Egg]
Can I just give a simple ranked list of 25 games instead?
Yes, though the weight of each part of your vote will be calculated as normal. Follow the format above and be sure to give your top pick 25 points, like so:
- [25] [Favorite]
[24] [Second Favorite]
... etc ...
[2] [24th Favorite]
[1] [25th Favorite]
BACKGROUND:
Historically, informal "top 10" shmup lists showed up on the forum with a frequency only eclipsed by the age-old questions of "Thunderforce V: PSX or Saturn?!" and "which Dreamcast shmups to buy?!" But a lot of people felt 10 was just too short a list to even begin to list the best of the best shmups... so the annual top 25 got started seven years ago. It helps reduce the frequency of informal polls; it gives people a bit more choice in what to include on their list; and most importantly: it helps provides everyone an annual snapshot of what the forum's widely and deeply experienced players collectively felt was "basic background" for any serious (or aspiring) shmupper. (By the way: it's still OK to run informal top 10s.)
So what constitutes "widely and deeply experienced"? That's impossible to truly quantify, but as a general guideline: voters should be familiar with 50% or more of the games on previous years' Top 25 lists and Honorable Mention lists combined. As of the results of 2008's Top 25 poll, 43 unique titles have been listed in the Top 25 over 6 years of polls. In the same time frame, 39 additional unique games have been listed as Honorable Mention titles. Voters should be familiar with 41 ( ~= 50%) or more of the titles from the combined lists. For your convenience, both lists of titles are provided in the discussion thread.
And what constitutes "familiar?" Basically, having played it enough to understand the gameplay mechanisms that make it unique, fun, historically important, and/or any number of other things you might take as helping define "top."
So this is just for the old and decrepit? The intent is not to make voting for a top 25 some elitist function; at the same time, the value of such a list is diminished as those lacking adequate experience participate in the voting process. Scoring mechanisms are in place to try to counteract this somewhat, but this is by no means a perfect system. Meeting the guidelines listed here will go a long way to helping ensure that the results of such votes can be trusted, and that those new to the genre and/or voting process have concrete goals that will go a long way to producing better participation and more accurate results in future years. (Even in the past couple years a number of forum members have used the results of the Top 25 poll to guide where they spend time and money as they become more familiar with the genre.)
Is this perfect? By no means -- but it's a bit of fun, helps spark some discussion, and helps provide some direction of the genres core experiences.
*Fantasy Zone: Many consider this a push-scroll game, but the game automatically scrolls in the absence of player input. The ability to accelerate the scrolling (as seen again in Shippu Mahou Daisakusen) is not the same as a game which will not scroll without input. The game becomes a manually advancing game only when the player rests the Opa-Opa on the ground. Most score-attacking players will only elect to do this during stage 4.
Several passages of this post borrow heavily from the text of earlier polls. Many thanks to nullstar, Zach Keene, and Herr Schatten for their unintentional contributions.
Changes:
2009-04-14 at ~ 3:40 PM GMT -- added Carnival Shooters to the off-limits list. Thanks, Ed Oscuro, for the name.
2009-04-14 at ~ 4:20 PM GMT -- fixed Granada example of "manually advancing multi-directional games" (was written as Granada X).
2009-04-15 at ~ 2:30 AM GMT -- Enhasa has further suggested the name "Gallery Shooter" as the more common name for the category "Carnival Shooter." As this name conflicts with the one previously chosen to represent Space Invaders; Space Invaders and Galaga are now listed as "Fixed Shooters" for the purposes of this rules post.
2009-04-17 at ~ 4:05 PM GMT --
- Corrected "Manually advancing multi-directional games" to "Manually advancing multi-directional shooters."
Corrected "Multi-directional auto-scrolling games set on a torus" to "Multi-directional auto-scrolling shooters set on a torus."
Rule #9 added; the previous rule #9 is now rule #10.
Voter eligibility requirements were reduced to encourage votes from niche specialists.
Action-adventure games were added to the list of games ineligible for votes.
2009-05-05 at ~ 2:55 PM GMT -- clarified poll ending time and edited thread title to reflect time remaining. Unless stated otherwise, all updates from now until thread closure will be to edit the thread title.
