Which shmup killed "shmups"

[dpful]

Pardon the ranting, but please chime in on this if you've got something----

I just returned form PAX 10 in Seattle, there were MANY simple and indie-style games, tons of platformers, etc., but no shmups.
There was a game that was pretty shmuppy (alright, it was an arena shmup- there were a few of those there), and when I asked the guy who made it if he would make a proper shmup next, the quote was, "Only if I wanted to end up living on the street penniless". And he said it with conviction.
Now, I know that I'm not the only person who like shmups, and I know that I'm not some kind of crazy person for thinking they are fun, and I know that the bazillion other simple platformers present at the show weren't more enjoyable than any shmups that could have appeared, I mean, plenty of the games were pretty dumb. In conclusion, the "shmup" format is blacklisted.

Then, I remembered the tale of video games, as I understand it, where Atari marketed their machine successfully, and tons of those games were stupid, but ONE game (E.T.), that was also stupid, but that was printed in such a large number that it ruined the reputation of the whole market, and it was just extra copies of THAT game, still sitting on the shelf, that made that KIND of game (Atari cartridges) unappealing.

So, it occurred to me that the same thing must have happened with shmups, too. I could only offer.... just whatever shmups were last mass marketed and didn't make the money back. Ikaruga? Sina Mora? I can only imagine that it'd have to be one everyone knows about, but nobody buys. Just like Atari's E.T. (I don't know if ikaruga or sina mora were successes or bombs, financially). Maybe R-type on the xbox 360? It'd have to be a game that lost money and everyone in the industry knows it.

Anyways, here's the theoretical equation:
1. No one (out of very many developers) at PAX dared to invest the time in a shmup, believing that it would be financial ruin.
2. I don't believe the a poor shmup would compare unfavorably, fun-wise, to any of the other poor games presented there. (and the other end of the spectrum, too-- a good shmup would compete, fun-wise, with anything there). So, they're comparably fun.
3. This black-listing of shmups in the industry DID happen. (there were no shmups at PAX)

So, what's the answer? Was it specific games that did it?

Also, I won't believe that it's just a cultural thing. I know that the average joe would get into dodonpachi quicker, and more deeply than they would with my xbox 360 contra or strider, if they came to my house and played them for the first time. I know no shmup can compete with Dragons Dogma-- it's the black-listing of their competition with every other comparably small and simple kind of game that I'm trying to figure out. Basically, every other indie game, Gameboy game, or other puny game at PAX.

[cicada88]

Kyūkyoku Tiger

[nosorrow]

Project Silpheed?

Admittedly, they were already dead at the time as far as ''mindshares'' are concerned.

[dpful]

Anything more recent? I've been visiting the pax convention for 4 years, and the first couple years, there were a few. Next couple years, none.

[Pretas]

The abysmal 2600 versions of Pac-Man and Asteroids were far more damaging to Atari than E.T. was, and also made up a much larger percentage of the carts that were buried in the desert.

E.T. only gets all the attention because it wasn't an arcade port, had an iconic movie license and was a very strange and unintelligible game.

Ikaruga was a modest success on Gamecube and probably on XBLA. Sine Mora may have been a (undeserved) critical darling, but it was most definitely a commercial flop.

If you want an answer to the question in the thread title, Ikaruga is the strongest contender.

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

I haven't seen shooting games be a widely popular genre outside of Japan and France since oh about Street Fighter 2.

[GrantWindsor]

I think the final big nail in the shmup coffin, at least in the big picture sense, was the transition to 3D gaming in the 90s. The effects of this were far more pronounced in the US, of course, where traditional shmups tended to be viewed as dated. In the past, some have blamed the overload of mediocre shmups in the early 90s for killing the genre in the US, but that was only one of many causes. You could also blame the advent of fighting games as the genre of choice shortly thereafter. As such, there wasn't one game that killed the genre; it was just a matter of changing tastes and technology. Personally, I'd sooner play a POS like Planet Joker on Saturn than touch any FPS, as my tastes run way contrary to US gaming sensibilities. To each his or her own, I guess.

[Kollision]

Definitely Ikaruga

[cools]

Indies in it for the money. Explains the awful games most output, same attitude as the big guys.

[BrianC]

The abysmal 2600 versions of Pac-Man and Asteroids were far more damaging to Atari than E.T. was, and also made up a much larger percentage of the carts that were buried in the desert.

Asteroids lumped in with Pac-Man and ET? really? It's far from abysmal and was a pretty impressive port for the time it came out. It was also the first 8k bankswitched game on the system. I prefer the arcade, but I still like it quite a bit, especially on the harder difficulty with shields. I'm not sure of the exact reason other games, even more successful ones, were buried, but I'm guessing that that probably had a surplus of those, as well.

[ACSeraph]

Just my thought but my guess is it's because we saw very few of the truly excellent shmups of the 32 bit era released in the west and the genre was effectively forgotten. It was brought back into the forefront slightly when Ikaruga hit GC, but only in a "Look at this crazy shit they play in Japan" kinda way. By not publishing many shmups for an entire generation they let the community die imo, and it just never recovered from that.

[EmperorIng]

Probably when shmups became focused on strictly single-player score-chasing exercises.

Not that scoring systems aren't a novel way of introducing longevity into a game, but this more or less removed the social component of the arcade game, as well the focus on extreme technical/skilled play made it unappealing to everyone else.

Personally, I'd sooner play a POS like Planet Joker on Saturn than touch any FPS, as my tastes run way contrary to US gaming sensibilities. To each his or her own, I guess.

Only if "his own" is reasonable. Halo 2 = x1,000,000 better than Planet Joker.

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

The abysmal 2600 versions of Pac-Man and Asteroids were far more damaging to Atari than E.T. was, and also made up a much larger percentage of the carts that were buried in the desert.

Asteroids? really? It's far from abysmal and was a pretty impressive port for the time it came out. It was also the first 8k bankswitched game on the system. I prefer the arcade, but I still like it quite a bit, especially on the harder difficulty with shields.

Yeah nobody I knew at the time had a problem with Asteroids on the 2600, everyone had it and played it to death.

I don't think any one game killed it. It's just people migrated to other genres. There was a decade or so there where I preferred fighters, but I've never liked FPS. It took Cave to get me back into shooting games, and honestly I don't think anyone I know off the web knows who they are. Actually there was one guy I knew in college who saw me doing mame stuff on my computer and he immediately brought up Cave games and Batrider. One guy.

[Squire Grooktook]

Death of arcades in the west. Fighting games eventually recovered from this due to the advent of online play bringing them back to the masses, but the art of arcade gaming became something of a lost art form for most other genres built around the arcade experienced, format, and mindset.

Probably when shmups became focused on strictly single-player score-chasing exercises.

Not that scoring systems aren't a novel way of introducing longevity into a game, but this more or less removed the social component of the arcade game, as well the focus on extreme technical/skilled play made it unappealing to everyone else.

How on earth do deeper mechanics "remove" the social aspect of the genre? That's up there with saying fighting games would be better if they got rid of combos and footsies and just become simplistic party games.

Shmups gaining a higher skill ceiling may have happened around the same time they started to become more niche, but seeing as how these mechanics are entirely optional and seldom even recognized by those who don't play them, I find it hard to argue that one caused the other.

[EmperorIng]

I think your confusing arcades dying in the west with scoring mechanics becoming a main focus. The two may have happened at the same time, but it's hard to argue either one caused the other, as you seem to be implying here.

I wasn't arguing that. I'm saying the shift alienated a lot of potential players. The skill ceiling became too high for most players to have a passing interest in the genre. You know, a niche genre and all.

Also how on earth do deeper mechanics "remove" the social aspect of the genre?.

Experiment: try explaining ESP Ra.De's scoring system to someone and see how long they care. A lot of these systems are needlessly complex and promote insular play (again, single plays that dominate "gaming" the system). That's the opposite of social, especially in an arcade setting. While there have always been single-player focused shmups, modern shmup design errs too far in designing its game solely around one player, performing the precise motions to get a good score. Anything else makes the game start feeling sloppy.

To contrast with modern examples, Raiden IV sidesteps all of the problems, focuses on core simple mechanics, and thus has a lot of currency among gamers, even those who don't normally play shmups. There needs to be more games like Raiden.

[Squire Grooktook]

Also how on earth do deeper mechanics "remove" the social aspect of the genre?.

Experiment: try explaining ESP Ra.De's scoring system to someone and see how long they care. A lot of these systems are needlessly complex and promote insular play (again, single plays that dominate "gaming" the system). That's the opposite of social, especially in an arcade setting. While there have always been single-player focused shmups, modern shmup design errs too far in designing its game solely around one player, performing the precise motions to get a good score. Anything else makes the game start feeling sloppy.

To contrast with modern examples, Raiden IV sidesteps all of the problems, focuses on core simple mechanics, and thus has a lot of currency among gamers, even those who don't normally play shmups. There needs to be more games like Raiden.

The problem with this argument is that ESP Ra.De in no way forces its scoring mechanics upon the player. At most you might be rewarded in using them with extends, but other than that you do not need to know about or care how it's score works to enjoy the dodging and shooting. Ironically Esp Ra.De was the first bullet hell game I ever played, and I spent quite a lot of time enjoying it without knowing one thing about it's scoring system. And I still don't.

And that's even a more extreme example of a very finicky scoring system built precisely around its mechanic. The scoring mechanics in say, Mushihimesama-Futari Original Mode or even Dodonpachi are fairly intuitive and easy to understand even if they aren't necessarily easy to master (especially in the latter, ugh).

I'm not saying that more simplistic scoring systems are a bad thing, but to say that simply having the option to play a game at a deeper level somehow invalidates playing it at a more basic level is not correct. It's like those guys who argue fighting games are "too hardcore" because you can't play them at a casual level. You can play them at a casual level and have fun, just don't expect to get accolades for it when people watch

Now, if you were to argue that the culture that grew up in the niche aimed at zealous pursuit of high score is a bad thing, you may have a valid argument. But to blame the games themselves is not something I can agree with.

[ciox]

 
 
That indie penniless guy is way exaggerating, here's a shmup that is indie and very basic and has gotten a good reception/awards/comments both before and on its recent steam release http://store.steampowered.com/app/31264 ... 7_237__103
Making decent scrolling shmups is just hard if you don't already know what you're doing, the Hangeki dev for instance said on STG Weekly that making a scrolling shooter rather than an arena one would have been a real pain, so when considering making a scrolling shmup as an indie dev it's just not worth it when you know you can make money out of Twine games.

Only responding to your main question here about no scrolling shmups from indies, the ohter stuff is weird since I really don't see how games from 2001 and later could have "killed shmups" when these games were already in dire straits for almost a decade.

[BobbyNewmarkiii]

Space Invaders

[Squire Grooktook]

 
 
That indie penniless guy is way exaggerating, here's a shmup that is indie and very basic and has gotten a good reception/awards/comments both before and on its recent steam release http://store.steampowered.com/app/31264 ... 7_237__103
Making decent scrolling shmups is just hard if you don't already know what you're doing, the Hangeki dev for instance said on STG Weekly that making a scrolling shooter rather than an arena one would have been a real pain, so when considering making a scrolling shmup as an indie dev it's just not worth it when you know you can make money out of Twine games.

Only responding to your main question here about no scrolling shmups from indies, the ohter stuff is weird since I really don't see how games from 2001 and later could have "killed shmups" when these games were already in dire straits for almost a decade.

This goes into another comment I was about to make on this thread:

How costly are shmups even? Especially compared to all these other indie platformers that are supposedly making enough money to pay the bills, at least.

I mean think about it, most shmups don't have half the animation as your average platformer. Even the player character only really needs one animation of turning to the side, which can than be mirrored for the other. Unless you're going for some super ambitious character shmup, but those are rare as heck.

[Blinge]

Now, if you were to argue that the culture that grew up in the niche aimed at zealous pursuit of high score is a bad thing, you may have a valid argument. But to blame the games themselves is not something I can agree with.

This. OP is frankly ridiculous.

Forgive me this brevity, but:
As consoles gave way to more plot driven games, a difficulty barrier stopping average joe from progressing ceased to be lucrative at all. The need was to develop games that people would want to come back to, or play sequels of. "Game" was a bad word for a while, there are stories of people holding up their creation and saying "It's not a game, it's an interactive experience!"

Also Ikaruga did not kill the genre, goddamnit

[Xyga]

Touhou did.

[IseeThings]

For the mainstream audience? probably the ones you love most.

When the bullet hell type games first started getting added to MAME I remember a lot of people bracketing them with the Mahjong games, as pointless pieces of software, completely impossible to survive, designed for no purpose than suck up coin after coin as quickly as possible. They seem to be loved a bit more than they were at the time, but back then people were slamming the team for wasting money on securing the boards!

That's also a viewpoint I'd heard in public years before.

For previous generations of games you average (read, not very good) player had a decent enough chance of surviving a game on the highest difficulty without feeling the only way was a 'credit feed / continue' method. Once the games got more difficult it split the audience in two, the hardcore players loved them, and, in all honesty the games were a work of art, but the mainstream audience saw them as nothing but cheap. The new games equired skills far beyond what they had, they were never going to be able to compete for score, or play a game requiring the smallest of movements, 100% concentration all the time, relying on what seemed to be for the most part pure luck with no sense of improvement.

The audience that rejected them at that point was far bigger than the audience that embraced them, and to this day it's very difficult to create a game that appeals to both without it being slammed into the ground by the other, so you're almost guaranteed average to poor ratings when you collect up all the reviews.

I don't think it was one shmup, it was a process, combine it with a decline in the mass appeal of 'arcade-style' games / ports too (and I'd say that was a bigger reason the Dreamcast died than anything else) and I think you have your answer and why most view a shmup as commercial suicide these days. Ultimately all the major (hardcore) shmup developers have either folded, or sold out, so perhaps people are right?

[Stilghar]

Pardon the ranting, but please chime in on this if you've got something----

I just returned form PAX 10 in Seattle, there were MANY simple and indie-style games, tons of platformers, etc., but no shmups.

Futurlab's Velocity 2X is all over the news now, you telling me nothing on that one was at PAX in the Sony area?

It's even been called best sci-fi game of the year http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/2/6097159/velocity-2x

[Squire Grooktook]

For previous generations of games you average (read, not very good) player had a decent enough chance of surviving a game on the highest difficulty without feeling the only way was a 'credit feed / continue' method.

Honestly shmups haven't gotten that much more difficult. Most Cave games are not terribly harder to 1-all than many of the standout games of the "classic" style. I got a bomb spam 1-all of both Dodonpachi and DOJ with only a few days of practice on both, yet Rayforce and Gradius IV continue to kick my ass every time I try to spend some time with them.

[Furry Fox Jet Pilot]

To contrast with modern examples, Raiden IV sidesteps all of the problems, focuses on core simple mechanics, and thus has a lot of currency among gamers, even those who don't normally play shmups. There needs to be more games like Raiden.

I agree with you here completely. Why do you think the original Raiden was so successful back in the early 90s? Its SIMPLICITY. Sure it wasn't flashy and over the top with ridiculous convoluted scoring systems and mind warping bullet patterns *cough cough* I'm looking at you CAVE and Touhou that would instantly drive away the casual player, but Raiden was polished, it was well done, and it got straight to the point: shoot, dodge, collect, and earn simple end of level bonuses. Raiden II and DX followed the success of the original, with DX being the perfect golden example of how a scoring system can be deep and rewarding enough to keep practicing for score, yet it wasn't confusing to casual players. I'm sure this is also the reason Raiden is one of the few shmup series that is still alive to this day. With a 25th anniversary project coming next year, I'm sure it'll be around for quite a bit longer. Not much can be said about other shmups though, I can't think of any others that have survived to see a 25th anniversary. The facts don't lie, The reason that Raiden has lasted this long is due to it's straightforward mechanics.

[Cagar]

Touhou.

[IseeThings]

For previous generations of games you average (read, not very good) player had a decent enough chance of surviving a game on the highest difficulty without feeling the only way was a 'credit feed / continue' method.

Honestly shmups haven't gotten that much more difficult. Most Cave games are not terribly harder to 1-all than many of the standout games of the "classic" style. I got a bomb spam 1-all of both Dodonpachi and DOJ with only a few days of practice on both, yet Rayforce and Gradius IV continue to kick my ass every time I try to spend some time with them.

Some of the classic arcades are really difficult yes, but for older console era games people grew up with the difficulty of the shmups was comparable to everything else on the platforms. Since then we've seen the general difficulty trend go down (games become more and more forgiving) while the shmup difficulty (or at least perception of it with the millions of bullets) has increased as hardware specs allowed things to become crazier than ever.

In that sense shmups didn't kill shmups, everything else did because it makes the gap seem so much wider.

However if you can bomb-spam 1-all DDP or DOJ then it's kinda what I'm talking about, the audience was split, you can do that, I'd say you're in the 2% of the population that can actually do that, you don't notice how much more difficult they are than your average 16-bit shooter, the people buying Mars Matrix for the Dreamcast after previously playing Genesis and Snes shooters did and quickly decided that genre was no longer for them.

The generation currently buying games (and the previous generation) really grew up without arcades (they were for the most part gone, at least in the UK) so the leap isn't from classic arcade titles, it's from the much softer toned down ports of them straight to 100% arcade perfect insanity.

[Squire Grooktook]

For previous generations of games you average (read, not very good) player had a decent enough chance of surviving a game on the highest difficulty without feeling the only way was a 'credit feed / continue' method.

Honestly shmups haven't gotten that much more difficult. Most Cave games are not terribly harder to 1-all than many of the standout games of the "classic" style. I got a bomb spam 1-all of both Dodonpachi and DOJ with only a few days of practice on both, yet Rayforce and Gradius IV continue to kick my ass every time I try to spend some time with them.

Some of the classic arcades are really difficult yes, but for older console era games people grew up with the difficulty of the shmups was comparable to everything else on the platforms. Since then we've seen the general difficulty trend go down (games become more and more forgiving) while the shmup difficulty (or at least perception of it with the millions of bullets) has increased as hardware specs allowed things to become crazier than ever.

In that sense shmups didn't kill shmups, everything else did because it makes the gap seem so much wider.

However if you can bomb-spam 1-all DDP or DOJ then it's kinda what I'm talking about, the audience was split, you can do that, I'd say you're in the 2% of the population that can actually do that, you don't notice how much more difficult they are than your average 16-bit shooter, the people buying Mars Matrix for the Dreamcast after previously playing Genesis and Snes shooters did and quickly decided that genre was no longer for them.

The generation currently buying games (and the previous generation) really grew up without arcades (they were for the most part gone, at least in the UK) so the leap isn't from classic arcade titles, it's from the much softer toned down ports of them straight to 100% arcade perfect insanity.

Fair enough. What is your stance than on the novice modes in Cave games or the relatively easy going normal difficulties in Touhou?

[Despatche]

Then, I remembered the tale of video games, as I understand it, where Atari marketed their machine successfully, and tons of those games were stupid, but ONE game (E.T.), that was also stupid, but that was printed in such a large number that it ruined the reputation of the whole market, and it was just extra copies of THAT game, still sitting on the shelf, that made that KIND of game (Atari cartridges) unappealing.

e.t. and pac-man by themselves were huge successes (especially pac-man) marred only by the incredibly high stock. this would have been completely irrelevant were it not for atari having been retarded in general and making a lot of poor decisions; these two games became symbols of it all because people are stupid and want to summarize everything even when they can't.

also, pac-man is a terrible terrible port, while e.t. is a decent and innovative game on the same level of raiders of the lost ark (which is always treated as a classic). if raiders had gotten that article back in the mid-'90s, we'd be hating raiders instead and noone would even know of e.t.'s stock problem.

E.T. only gets all the attention because it wasn't an arcade port, had an iconic movie license and was a very strange and unintelligible game.

it was "strange and unintelligible" because it actually asked you to read the damn manual for a change; the entirety of the '90s e.t. "revival" hinges on the failure to grasp this point. manuals had always been printed with the assumption that a good consumer would read them at least once, even in the '90s. no, games should not be made to be so "intuitive" that you never have to think about what you're doing, because that severely limits what a game can do.

i've never seen asteroids brought up alongside e.t. and pac-man. brianc has probably explained why; i've personally never played it.

Probably when shmups became focused on strictly single-player score-chasing exercises.

Not that scoring systems aren't a novel way of introducing longevity into a game, but this more or less removed the social component of the arcade game, as well the focus on extreme technical/skilled play made it unappealing to everyone else.

shmups had always been about single-player score chasing exercises... all arcade games were and older ones still are associated with this. the thing is that this is the entire social component and had always been treated as such.

the litany of terrible console shmups diluted the genre and concept at best. they are a sign of laziness, not of catering. many of them are not good games in any sense of the term and are very much equivalent to the modern-day "this game has great graphics but...".

it's this kind of thinking that's killed the arcades and arcade-like play in general. technical play was never so hated; technical play is never so hated for older arcade games and pinball. the only things you can blame are the rise of credit feeding and the rise of lazy console games. this is why iseethings's scenario is even valid.

the problem with the whole "skill ceiling got too high" argument is that people stopped playing these games well before donpachi hit the field (donpachi is when it can be considered to have started), never mind that donpachi and friends are pretty much japan-only. esp ra.de. is totally useless except as reinforcement of something that it has nothing to do with.

also, touhou has been far more welcoming than anything else. the easy modes are there to trick the player into thinking they can beat the so-called unbeatable, and it's been working. that there's generally a good game in there too is, sadly, a mere plus.

i repeat: continues and poor game design are what kills gaming. i may as well call it "consumerism".

[Lord Satori]

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