Which top down shmups have your favorite scenery?

[Squire Grooktook]

I was thinking, and it occurred to me that a lot of my favorite environmental art/scenery in 2d games comes almost exclusively from side scrollers. I guess the perspective is just better suited to showing off amazing vistas and whatnot.

That being said there are definitely some great top down environmental art and scenery out there. I'm curious what some peoples favorite might be?

Personally I really like the huge machine world of Radiant Silvergun. I'm also a big fan of Esp Galuda II's combination of quaint towns and magical steampunk castles. Rayforce has some great space vistas, though some of the down to earth sequences are a bit drab in comparison, though I really like the underground city in stage 5.

[LordHypnos]

Sturmwind has very nice backgrounds with tons and tons of detail. Especially good considering that it's all prerendered w/ a few polygons here and there, wheras I generally prefer pixel art.
Another DC indie game with nice background art is Neo XYX
Haven't played it at all, but what I've seen of R-Type is really cool.
Border Down and Under Defeat have nice backgrounds, even if they're a bit low on color.
I know there are plenty more, but those were the first that came to mind

[Mortificator]

ESPrade's near-future metropolis.
Raiden DX's pastoral scenes.
RayForce's machine planet.

[xfullmetal17]

Always liked the Touhou series' scenery, and how in some cases it tries to sync with the music.
Apart from that not entirely sure, haven't played enough shmups (shame on me) to judge.

[BIL]

Soukyugurentai's cloud dive (stage 3) never gets old. The scenery itself is the typical clouds and earth you'd find in a dozen other shooters, but the application of scaling to create a sense of descent, from thousands of feet above the earth until you're skimming the treetops, is amazing.

Under Defeat's war-torn third and fifth stages are big favourites of mine, both for the respectively earthy and urban devastation, and also the constant reminders of the battle raging around you, some directly impacting the action (a doomed allied pilot crashing his burning plane into some enemy tanks, the last boss announcing his presence by annihilating both his and your allies with a mortar strike).

The Raiden Fighters games have my favourite earthen/gunmetal "army shooter" aesthetic. I could look at those games all day. Those monster tank treads left in the mud by the boss of RFJ's jungle stage, each one the width of a normal tank - squee!

Elemental Master has some really strong locations, and they tend to be well-employed too (volcanoes raining fire, gales buffeting you about, a river crossing fraught with hostile seafood).

[ACSeraph]

Always liked the Touhou series' scenery, and how in some cases it tries to sync with the music.
Apart from that not entirely sure, haven't played enough shmups (shame on me) to judge.

Personally I found 2hu to be among the weakest as far as stage and enemy visuals go. The bullet patterns are beautiful though.

For me I really like the opening skystage of XII Stag, the reflecting water in Delta Zeal stage 2, Basically everything about Mushi 1 (Nausica!!!), and the future city at the start of Bullet Soul (but that one's 3D). Too bad everything else about BS is bs though.

[chum]

These 3 Raizing games are absolutely marvelous: Mahou Daisakusen, Battle Garegga, Armed Police Batrider

RayForce is another big one

[Squire Grooktook]

Always liked the Touhou series' scenery, and how in some cases it tries to sync with the music.
Apart from that not entirely sure, haven't played enough shmups (shame on me) to judge.

Personally I found 2hu to be among the weakest as far as stage and enemy visuals go.

I generally agree, though there are a few exceptions.

Stage 3 of Mountain of Faith is awesome.

[chempop]

Dodonpachi - To me the backgrounds in DDP are by far the best in the series, the giant crashed SDF-1 looking thing at the end of stage 1 is brilliant.

Dogyuun - some amazing detail going on, from the mech in the beginning of stage 2 bursting out to that amazing abyss-like city. Just an incredibly well illustrated game.

Varth - For it's age, it is amazing how detailed some of the background are. With the sheer number of stages it is impressive that it manages to stay fresh throughout.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Akuu Gallet has some pretty snazzy background artwork, I think.

[LordHypnos]

Some other I thought of:
Xevious - has some really pretty landscapes for how simple they are (hardware restrictions and all).
Gunbird 2 - Not sure if this is one that most people would think of, but it's got some nice, colorful, detailed pixel art. I'm thinking of that autumn stage, and the one with the pretty buildings, but they are all pretty nice, IIRC.

Also - just realized this thread was top-down only. Ignore where I mentioned Sturmwind, R-Type and Border Down, then Well, Sturmwind has some technically top-down stages, which is odd for a Hori, but they look nice too.

[Squire Grooktook]

Dodonpachi - To me the backgrounds in DDP are by far the best in the series, the giant crashed SDF-1 looking thing at the end of stage 1 is brilliant.

Yeah, the details, color, and setpieces are really amazing.

I also like Doj for the opposite reason. The world there has a kind of desolate, melancholy beauty to it. Aesthetically it kind of has the same kind of feel as Dark Souls to me personally.

[Pretas]

Raiden DX has some of the most detailed hand-drawn environments of any vertical STG, particularly due to how interactive they are. Enemy planes that crash to the ground will leave impact craters. Buildings that they hit will be destroyed, trees and grass catch fire, water landings leave large splashes. If a craft simply blows up in mid-air, the debris will still fall to earth.

[LordHypnos]

Twinkle Star Sprites has some really pretty backgrounds, if you can get past how saccharine everything is, anyway.

[Krooze L-Roy]

I like it when a game has a smooth and logical progression of environments. Galactic Attack is probably the most obvious one, but it's one of the things I like about Gemini Wing. You start in a canyon with a river below, which leads to a waterfall, at the top of which is a lake, then mountains and forest, and eventually a mountain peak, which you enter for the underground level. Then, death, cause I suck.

[KAI]

The akihabara stage from Karous and the Rose Garden base from Ibara, details everywhere.

[chum]

I like it when a game has a smooth and logical progression of environments. Galactic Attack is probably the most obvious one, but it's one of the things I like about Gemini Wing. You start in a canyon with a river below, which leads to a waterfall, at the top of which is a lake, then mountains and forest, and eventually a mountain peak, which you enter for the underground level. Then, death, cause I suck.

Gemini Wing is a very beautiful game, I'm glad to see it mentioned.

[casualcoder]

Guwange has some of the most diverse and beautiful a pixel art of any game I've seen. Next on my list would probably be Espgaluda 2.

[Ed Oscuro]

Ninja Emaki (although it's mostly a Commando-like)
Gun Frontier
Tatsujin Ou
OutZone
Twin Cobra
Rayforce

...in addition to excellent titles already mentioned.

Actually, 19XX and Twin Cobra II have some nice art in them as well.

Edit: D'oh, totally forgot Cave presentations. DDP wowed me when I first saw it.

[Despatche]

ddp's completely handdrawn attention to detail and related games (dp, batsugun, grind stormer, tatsujinou, etc)

we need more ddps

i don't like rayforce because it spams scaling too hard. scaling is always ugly.

"commando-likes" are shmups. it's 2014. can we please stop with the "borderliner" crap already? the only real borderliners are platformers like contra and mega man and crap

[mice]

Gun.Smoke
Switch the G and B cables with each other and you get cyan colored water. Droool...

[LordHypnos]

Yeah, definately need to echo the late toaplan / early cave stuff, it's SO detailed. very pretty.

[Xyga]

My favourite is stage 3 from the original Mushihime Sama.
The big-ass fortress insect is just marvelous.

[neorocker]

Gonna have to say later Toaplan stuff as well. Great colors and an awesome amount of dimension to everything.

i don't like rayforce because it spams scaling too hard. scaling is always ugly.

I'm a sucker for scaling and I love games that use scaling and rotation in abundance. It's always such a fun spectacle for me.

[emphatic]

Ketsui.

[chempop]

Ketsui.

Really? I always thought of most of it as brown dirt and some army bunkers, then there is that very red water stage. Nothing ever stood out as memorable, I'll have to give it another go, as it's been years.

Gonna have to say later Toaplan stuff as well. Great colors and an awesome amount of dimension to everything.

Indeed!

My favourite is stage 3 from the original Mushihime Sama.
The big-ass fortress insect is just marvelous.

Agreed, stage 3 from both Mushi and Futari are my favorites from the series.

[emphatic]

Ketsui.

Really? I always thought of most of it as brown dirt and some army bunkers, then there is that very red water stage. Nothing ever stood out as memorable, I'll have to give it another go, as it's been years.

Watch a video, you'll never notice all the cool stuff while dodging.

[Squire Grooktook]

Ketsui is pretty good. I like the suburban aesthetic. I especially like stage 1 with all the buildings transforming into secret military bases and gun turrets and shit.

[BIL]

My absolute favourite detail of Ketsui is the little chain-link fence at EVAC Industry's perimeter that you fly over at the end of stage 4's titanic cliff ascent. Be like "AWW YEEE WE BUSTIN' IN NAO"

[Captain]

There are too many awesome ones to list.

But the best?

Rayforce and Einhander.

Einhander is not a Top Down but I assume the OP just means no euroshmups, so anyway.

Rayforce was so ahead of its time in scenery, it is glorious, try to notice everything by using invincibility or something, so much effort was put into the environment.

Einhander doesn't go into too much detail, and certainly doesn't have top tier graphics, but the way you get immersed in it is amazing and incredibly well done. Turning a mediocre plot and setting into a movie-like experience.


EDIT: Outzone also delivers...but it's not scenery as much as the diversity and design of the enemies themselves.