shmups available on steam

[Guardians Knight]

Anyone got a good list of shmups that are on steam? annoyingly their search/genre options don't specify traditional shooter, and just lumps everything as 'arcade'. Makes it tough to do a search so i keep accidentally stumbling across 'new' shoot em ups on there all the time.

Thanks guys

[cj iwakura]

Satazius and the Gundemonium games, as well as Jamestown.

[sikraiken]

Yeah, I was going to ask about this a few days ago.

These seem to be shooters, don't know how good they are, some are arena, feel free to say if some aren't:

Astro Tripper
Bullet Candy
Everyday Shooter
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved
GundeadliGne
Gundemonium Recollection
Hitogata Happa
Inside a Star-filled Sky
Ion Assault
Jamestown
Razor2
Really Big Sky
RIP - Trilogy
Satazius
Spacewar
Swarm Arena (eh kind of)
Titan Attacks
Waves
Zeit2

Space Giraffe is similar to Tempest.

[Observer]

I would add Beat Hazard Ultra to the mix. You use your own music to play, it's kind of neat and the Ultra version got rid of the bloody inertia.

Of those listed above, I played Razor2 and that's one to avoid entirely. Broken as hell and just not too enjoyable.

Zeit2 is interesting at first but then it gets a bit boring. It's nice and now that it got rid of TAGES, I can safely say it'll keep ya entertained. It has inertia though and that's a bit complicated to come by at times.

Waves has the same problem with the ball and inertia, it's a fun arena shooter crammed with challenges but maybe not as original as expected.

Jamestown is fantastic. Has some rough edges here and there due to its vertizontal approach but it's pretty damn well done. Great introduction to the genre too!

[Guardians Knight]

thanks guys, annoyingly i just bought razor2 and was about to fire it up, lets hope it isnt as bad as you make out observer.

[Shogun]

Jamestown is great. I play it quite a bit. I'm planning on picking up the Gundemonium Collection during the sale but I'm waiting to see if it pops on the daily deals first. Theres some more titles which should be arriving soon like eXceed and Ether Vapor. I thought they would be out already so I don't know when they are due to release.

[damakable]

Great to hear there's a version of Beat Hazard without inertia, that might convince me to try it again. I have a feeling I'll still find it kind of dull, though. If only Waves would remove the inertia I could see myself getting into it. The inertia's not too terrible but the game itself just does very little to differentiate itself from Geometry Wars and its ilk, so the inertia on top of that has caused me to ignore it.

I have Astro Tripper for the PS3. It also has inertia, and it's doubly weird in that the inertia only applies horizontally, not vertically. Decent fun, somewhat unique, and hard by the end, but also a bit frustrating due to the inertia. It never made me want to dedicate an afternoon to beating my scores, you know?

Swarm Arena really isn't a shmup at all. I couldn't get into it, even as a puzzle / experimental game.

Inside a Star-Filled Sky is also more of an experimental indie thing than a shmup. It's okay for what it is.

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved is just the old standard infinite-survival-mode Geometry Wars. None of the cool different modes available in the various console releases. No online leaderboard either from what I remember. Still, it's pretty classic if you've never played it and enjoy arena shooters.

Finally, I'll join the crowd singing Jamestown's praises. Highly recommended. Out of the games I own on Steam it's the only "real" shmup.

[GenkiPatton]

It's already been suggested twice, but I'll add that SATAZIUS is currently only $2.99 (50% off) at the Steam Summer Sale.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/203990/

Best get it soon, though - time's a runnin' out!

[exquisite_torture]

Astro Tripper is Defender remixed by Pom Pom. I like it.

[Austin]

Razor2 is pretty bad. When I first played it I thought its performance issues were just because of my PC at the time (running a dual-core AMD setup with a four year old video card). When I upgraded, I expected things to be better. Nope! Not at all, it turns out. Poorly optimized garbage is what it is, apparently.

[astrix]

eXceed trilogy, Mutant Storm: Reloaded and Gridrunner Revolution are all pretty fun.

[DJ Incompetent]

Symphony is like Beat Hazard in that you use your own music, but it is a vert.

[MadScientist]

Most of these are now on sale, including;

Gundemonium Collection = $5
eXceed Collection = $5
Satazius = $3
Ether Vapor Remaster = $4
Jamestown = $4
etc...

[Jeneki]

Razor2 is pretty bad. When I first played it I thought its performance issues were just because of my PC at the time (running a dual-core AMD setup with a four year old video card). When I upgraded, I expected things to be better. Nope! Not at all, it turns out. Poorly optimized garbage is what it is, apparently.

My favorite part is how if you insert a 360 controller, it sometimes gets stuck into thinking you're pushing a direction. Even if you unplug the controller and restart, it remembers that stuck position and the game is unplayable. Was brought up in the steam forums years ago (along with other issues) but the game was never patched.

[monoRAIL]

Sine Mora's on Steam also. $10

[gs68]

I very much recommend Satazius, it's a brilliant throwback to 90's horis.

Not sure if I can recommend Ether Vapor Remaster what with the performance problems on my end, even at fullscreen 640x480 with all graphics settings cranked as low as possible.

[BPzeBanshee]

Sine Mora's on Steam also. $10

I tried the Steam demo today. Didn't even run fullspeed on my 2.8Ghz Dual Core. Not as performance-friendly as some here seem to think, and it fixed none of the issues of the original demo.

I did try Ether Vapor Remaster on the same machine and it ran better. Probably a better buy, performance AND gameplay-wise.

[ciox]

Not sure if I can recommend Ether Vapor Remaster what with the performance problems on my end, even at fullscreen 640x480 with all graphics settings cranked as low as possible.

Must be some compatibility issue, I can run that game on a pretty mediocre 2007-era machine.

[Captain]

Astro Tripper is Defender remixed by Pom Pom. I like it.

I think it's Space Tripper.

[Jeneki]

Bullet Candy

It's worth noting that if someone's interested in this one, there's a newer "Perfect" version on Charlie's Games website that improves a bunch of things, most notably the end-game patterns.

Scoregasm is also on Steam now, which is sort of like a spiritual successor.

[gs68]

Not sure if I can recommend Ether Vapor Remaster what with the performance problems on my end, even at fullscreen 640x480 with all graphics settings cranked as low as possible.

Must be some compatibility issue, I can run that game on a pretty mediocre 2007-era machine.

Possibly, but nothing that I know helps. As I stated in the game's Steam forum:

This game on my laptop suffers from terrible framerate and speed drops, and even worse, the music skips, usually at the beginning of the stage. Tinkering with graphical settings (even 640x480 full screen, no antialias, no blur, and minimum effects) does nothing to alleviate the problem.

And what's more, in windowed mode, if I switch focus to another window, then switch back, the game suffers from occasonal split-second blackouts.

And yes, this is with anything that eats up a lot of CPU or memory (i.e. everything by Mozilla, Skype) closed.

I'm running a Lenovo Y560p laptop with a Core i7 processor, 6 GB of RAM, Windows 7 x64, and a Radeon 6570M graphics card. Maybe one of these elements is contributing to my problems.

[Xonatron]

Here you go: http://store.steampowered.com/tag/en/Shoot%20'Em%20Up

You can sort by new release (default), best selling, etc. And can narrow by related tags such as "Twin Stick Shooter", "Side Scroller", etc.

[PinkSweets]

I can't believe nobody mentioned Ikaruga or Crimzon Clover.

[MathU]

Avoid Ikaruga and Crimzon Clover's Steam release as they are crippled with DRM.

[PinkSweets]

Avoid Ikaruga and Crimzon Clover's Steam release as they are crippled with DRM.

I've played both of these titles and love them but I don't own the Steam versions.

Can you go into detail with what's wrong with these releases?

[MathU]

They cannot be run without Steam running in the background. A GOG release of Crimzon Clover has supposedly been in the works for a while but there seems to be no word on if they'll end up removing the DRM on the Steam version when that finally happens.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

Crimzon Clover's Steam release is the arcade version, so unless you've played it in a Japanese arcade, you would not have played that version if you don't own the Steam one. Worth checking out if you liked the Doujin.

[drunkninja24]

They cannot be run without Steam running in the background. A GOG release of Crimzon Clover has supposedly been in the works for a while but there seems to be no word on if they'll end up removing the DRM on the Steam version when that finally happens.

So basically, if you actually have Steam, go nuts

[Lord Satori]

...why was this thread bumped again?

[vector7]

Avoid Ikaruga and Crimzon Clover's Steam release as they are crippled with DRM.

I didn't read the forum for too long but i seen a lot of your posts ranting about drm in steam games. I get it you don't like it but most games on steam have that drm. So instead of telling to avoid cc and ikaruga you could just write the games without drm, there are not that many of them.