Good sites/links to freeware or indie shmups

Straber · Post by **Straber** » Mon Jul 11, 2005 6:03 pm

Hey guys, been lurkin' around for a few weeks after recently coming back from a long shmup hiatus, mainly due to my DC taking a shit on me. I have few for my PS2 (R-Type Final, Gradius V, the latest DDP, etc), but mainly I'm using emulators for the simple fact I have an X-Arcade stick & I enjoy the controls & haven't yet bought the Ps2 adapter yet. Anyways, I'm completely ignorant of the indie shmup scene, but I hear there's some good freewware/shareware shmups out there. Can any of you point me in the right direction where I can find more info?

Thanks

captain ahar · Post by **captain ahar** » Mon Jul 11, 2005 6:29 pm

shoot the core! will be a good place to start.

also for a more focused collection (read one author) there is ABA games.

and after you've pounded away at those for a bit, there's always the score thread.

kidneythief · Post by **kidneythief** » Mon Jul 11, 2005 7:09 pm

hotu (home of the underdogs) has a lot of them but they aren't explicitly listed, but usually if you look for anime themed action games there are a ton of shooters.

Straber · Post by **Straber** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 6:09 am

thx, shoot the core has tons of infom this will defintely keep me busy a while. thx again

BUHA · Post by **BUHA** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 7:31 am

sorry if this is off topic, but I'd recommend Parsec 47 and Tumiki Fighter from ABA games and Cho Ren Sha 68K from shootthecore. Those are my top picks for freeware games.

OOohh and don't forget Radio Zonde! You can get it on the underdogs or shootthecore. Really hard but definitely a great game (kinda complicated at first).

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 10:48 am

http://www18.big.or.jp/~hikoza/Prod/

the homepage of the author of 'warning forever' how has also done various other shmups which are on the webpage shown above.

dbish · Post by **dbish** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 4:06 am

I think from ABA games also, a game called Rrootage. It's pretty sweet; you can switch modes so it plays like Giga Wing, Ikaruga, Psyver or just "normal."

Andi · Post by **Andi** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 12:57 pm

kidneythief wrote:hotu (home of the underdogs) has a lot of them but they aren't explicitly listed, but usually if you look for anime themed action games there are a ton of shooters.

They actually have a section under Action games from "vertical scrolling shooters" and "horizontally scrolling shooters". This is probably the best freeware and indie games site on the web.

http://www.the-underdogs.org

Leviathean · Post by **Leviathean** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 3:29 am

In Japan, you cannot say "indie shooter" without having to mention the Touhou series, by Team Shanghai Alice. They are simply the most popular and highest selling Japanese indie shooters out there that I know of. The games are very good bullet-hell/danmaku style games, the graphics, music, and gameplay mesh together amazingly well (since the main dev team is essentually one person), and the fan base... well, I'll get to them later.

There are 3 standard games that you can try out right now:
Embodiment of Scarlet Devil - Trial Version
Perfect Cherry Blossom - Trial Version
Imperishable Night - Trial Version

All of the trials contain the first 3 stages, about half of the full game, which is more than enough to see for yourself whether you'll like playing more of it or not.

As for the fans, they are truly in love with this series. I mean, can you name any other indie shooter that has:
A dedicated image board on IIchan?

A 2.5 hour lineup for just the demo of the next Touhou game?

Tons of CD re-arrangements of the music in the Touhou games? Fanzines?

Fan-coordinated conventions and cosplayers?

fpbrush · Post by **fpbrush** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 10:05 pm

Is there any Macintosh love from the doujin shmup scene?

Andi · Post by **Andi** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 10:58 pm

fpbrush wrote:Is there any Macintosh love from the doujin shmup scene?

Not really. ABA Games does Mac ports of some of their games (Parsec47, Noiz2sa, rRootage).

Other than that, nothing comes to mind.

shiftace · Post by **shiftace** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 4:01 am

I think only Noiz2sa and rRootage got Mac ports -- done by fans, at that, IIRC -- because after that Kenta switched from C++ to D, and there are no D compilers for Mac. I wonder if they'll ever make one for OSX.

shiftace · Post by **shiftace** » Sun Jul 17, 2005 4:59 am

Oh, and now that I posted that, I see in the Torus Trooper high score thread BiQ posted this link to OS X binaries for all the ABA stuff since rRootage and some other stuff too.

ST Dragon · Post by **ST Dragon** » Sun Jul 17, 2005 2:44 pm

Straber wrote:Hey guys, been lurkin' around for a few weeks after recently coming back from a long shmup hiatus, mainly due to my DC taking a shit on me. I have few for my PS2 (R-Type Final, Gradius V, the latest DDP, etc), but mainly I'm using emulators for the simple fact I have an X-Arcade stick & I enjoy the controls & haven't yet bought the Ps2 adapter yet. Anyways, I'm completely ignorant of the indie shmup scene, but I hear there's some good freewware/shareware shmups out there. Can any of you point me in the right direction where I can find more info?

Thanks

3D Realms was kind enough to release a freeware version of the 1996 horizontal PC shooter "Star Gunner"

You can get it here:
http://www.3drealms.com/stargunner/index.html

To tell you the truth I never knew of the existance of this shmup, but judging by the pics, it looks ok. (it reminds me of Disposable Hero on the AMIGA)
The graphics aren't as good as Fourth Generation though...

Does this work in WinXP by the way?

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Sun Jul 17, 2005 3:26 pm

btw this was covered before but NO... you will need dosbox to run it!

ST Dragon · Post by **ST Dragon** » Sun Jul 17, 2005 4:11 pm

I'll try it tomorow then...

In the readme.txt, it has some interesting info about the graphics. They were infact made on the AMIGA using Deluxe Paint.
Now It makes sense why it looked like an AMIGA game.

The game itself was written in C++, but with heavy usage of assembly for the video and sound routines. It was one of only a few games that could run at 60 frames per second on the current "486" hardware of the day. Most of the art was developed on the Amiga using Deluxe Paint. In fact, the game was originally supposed to be an Amiga game with a PC version supposed to follow, but the PC version soon overtook and led development, and sadly the Amiga version was eventually dropped.

We hope you enjoy Stargunner, and appreciate the attempt to faithfully bring to life on the PC a style of game seen most commonly on the Commodore 64 and Commodore Amiga throughout the 80's; the good old days.

David Pevreal
Project Leader - Stargunner

Straber · Post by **Straber** » Sun Jul 17, 2005 6:07 pm

Whew! with the help of Google (translating the japanese site, Vector), & the links provided here, I have found a ton of indie shmups. The highlights so far:

The Shanghai Alice series...good lord, these are made by one dude?

Parsec 47...great vector graphics & very quick control

Storm Calibur series...great old skool look & feel.

CyBreaker...ditto

Every Extend...great new concept

I've got about 20+ more to try out, thanks for the help guys.

[/code]

ST Dragon · Post by **ST Dragon** » Sun Jul 17, 2005 7:18 pm

Don't forget to try:
"Kamui" By Siterkain, for the PC.

Thats one kick-ass vertical shmup that you don't want to miss out!
Basically Its a RayForce Clone, that borrows elements from many other shmups, but plays & looks better that RayForce...

Also use the latest patch from the siterkain home site, to update the midi soundtrack into cool high quality ogg tracks.

And... "Reflex" with the unstopable force field. (also by Siterkain)

Have Fun.

Straber · Post by **Straber** » Sun Jul 17, 2005 11:55 pm

I enjoyed the trial of Kamui, but as w/ most of these, I have no idea how I'd actually be able to purchase the full version

so I've been sticky mainly to full version games for my d/l's.

One thing I do like about the doujin games is the wide variety of shmups available. If I want a newer, manic shmup in the same vein as the DDP or the Shiki series, I can find find it. However, I can also find shmups in the same style as those I grew up with (Turbograx, Genesis & late 80's early 90's arcade shmups). Add-in cool stuff from ABA Games & Omega (Every Extend & Sea Urchin ゃ - Proxi ま are both very, very good) and there's enough to keep any shmup fan happy for some time.

Thanks again for the heads up guys, Nice to know the genre is not as dead as the mainstream media would have you believe.

Straber · Post by **Straber** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 3:14 am

came across this site with a few freebies I haven't seen on most others...careful, Google's translation makes "All your base belong to us" look eloquent

http://216.239.37.104/translate_c?hl=en ... D%26sa%3DG

ST Dragon · Post by **ST Dragon** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 2:24 pm

Die Slave:

http://freegame.on.arena.ne.jp/rank/game/dieslave.html

Is the best Freeware Shooter form this list:
http://freegame.on.arena.ne.jp/rank/game_shooting.html

It beats a lot of commercial Shooters in the graphics & gameplay department. The best Animated Mecha I've seen in a shmup, even compared to PS-2 games!

The music is in mp3 format so you can easily arrange the soundtrack & change it to your prefered tastes.
I'm playing it with the RayStorm Arranged tracks, Thunder Force V Boss Music & Mega Man X4 level sellection track.

Perfect compilation.

shmups.system11.org

Good sites/links to freeware or indie shmups

Good sites/links to freeware or indie shmups

Re: Good sites/links to freeware or indie shmups