seeing shmups around your area

[mehguy]

I walk in this bowling alley and HOLY SHIT BISCUITS, theyz gotz teh raidenz 2 arcade cabinet. It was a Frankenstein of a cabinet, it had a strikers 1945 2 marquee and had a konami controller board. Even the pricing was good too, it aint 1 dollar for 1 credit, but 25 cents for one. The only problem is that the second player stick was busted. Anyways, still a cool find, ill upload a video later. what shmups have u found in your area.

[pokemon123]

nothing , all the people who live in my area are inactive so I have no idea where to look anyway.

I once saw this raiden fighters 2 cabinet when we went to a persons birthday party for laser tag (in a totally different area though)

didn't have my own money on me and wasn't going to ask their parents for money so I could just stare at it.

[Jeneki]

Hmm, I'm seeing a trend with Raiden-series cabs in this topic.

There's a local place with Raiden Fighters 1, but the joysticks are rotated about 45 degrees. So you have to sort of stand sideways for the controls to make any sense.

On the bright side, this place also has Dragon Breed in great condition.

[To Far Away Times]

At my college they had a Strikers cabinet (meh) and a Mushihimesama cabinet.

[BPzeBanshee]

EDIT 15/4: Raiden II was at the cinema here but has since disappeared, seems to go on rotation around a few places every so many months. That's it for northern Australia except for the odd 50-games-in-1 crap. I'm hopeful for the new bowling alley center that's being made near the airport but not holding my breath of seeing anything there.

There used to be Raiden Fighters and Metal Slug cabinets around the place but I stopped seeing them a few years ago. The entire RF trilogy was present in some form: RF1 on a cabinet or two (may have been the same cabinet with a replaced screen, looked very similar), a RF2 I haven't seen in over a decade and JET at a sports club that disappeared after their last big renovation.

[Stevens]

There is a Daioh cab at Barcade on 23rd st. That is about it though.

[Neo Bliss]

I walk in this bowling alley and HOLY SHIT BISCUITS, theyz gotz teh raidenz 2 arcade cabinet. It was a Frankenstein of a cabinet, it had a strikers 1945 2 marquee and had a konami controller board. Even the pricing was good too, it aint 1 dollar for 1 credit, but 25 cents for one. The only problem is that the second player stick was busted. Anyways, still a cool find, ill upload a video later. what shmups have u found in your area.

I see you're in Canada. Out of curiosity was it Bowl 300 in Markham. They had a cabinet with raiden playing with the volume cranked. It was awesome. Played a few credits.

[JBC]

No arcades in my area anymore, much less shmups. We do have a bowling alley & park lodge with a few typical machines (Cruis'n, MvsC) & some busted pins (Addam's Family, Jurassic Park) but it's a sad state of affairs compared to growing up in the 80's & 90's.

At different points we had full on businesses & store lobbies that contained many great shmups. Off the top of my head I can remember -

Sky Adventure
Ghost Pilots
Viper: Phase 1
Storm Blade
Raiden Fighters
Prehistoric Isle 2
Pulstar
Blazing Star
Strikers 1945 II
1944: The Loop Master
Life Force
R-Type II

These days? Nothing... just empty spaces where my childhood used to be. Most of the locations have even been remodeled into other businesses or bulldozed. Cue sax.

[jcfoster]

We have an arcade here (Greensboro, NC) that runs 2-3 shmups at a time and rotates them out every month or so. The last time I was there, they had Gradius 3, Deathsmiles, and (I think) Batsugun running, but the owners have a few in their collection -- here are some of the others I've seen come through there:

Dodonpachi
Mars Matrix
Omega Fighter
Ibara (don't remember if it was BL or not)
Armed Police Batrider
Terra Diver
Fire Shark
ESPGaluda
ESP Ra. De.
Progear
All the Mahou Daisakusen games

[Furry Fox Jet Pilot]

Around 9 years ago there was a Raiden DX cab in a local family fun center where I live. I would literally spend all my tokens on it and rarely even touch other games. There was also another Raiden DX cab with no auto fire in an indoor swap meet here in my city, which I played more recently, now it's gone like the first one I mentioned. There was also an original Raiden cab in a movie theater that used to be inside my local shopping mall, but the theater was removed and so were the games. Also, at the Santa Monica Pier arcade, they have a Raiden II (one of the odd, easier variants I believe), but the monitor desperately needs to be degaussed. There is also a Sonic Wings/Aero Fighters in a Raiden Fighters cab at the same location. Raging Waters water park in San Dimas, CA also has Raiden Fighters 2, but it's been so long that it's probably gone by now. I've also been to a nickel arcade in West Covina that has since closed, and they had Raiden, Raiden DX, Strikers 1945, and Flying Shark.

[Captain]

There was a Sunset Riders and Metal slug cabinet, along with some weird games in a bar. A few years ago they got rid of them all.

That is pretty much the only cabs I ever saw in my life.

[NTSC-J]

All of them.

[Skykid]

DOJ WL
Battle Garegga
Battle Bakraid
Strikers III
Shikigami no Shiro III
Raiden IV
Dodonpachi Daiffukatsu
Varth
Dariusburst AC
Aero Fighters 2
Raiden Fighters 2

And maybe a couple others I've forgotten about.

Quality of setups varies greatly.

[arcadehero]

I'll take this as an opportunity for shameless plug time

In my arcade in West Valley UT I've currently got:

Dariusburst Another Chronicle
Macross Plus
Blazing Star
Assault
RoadBlasters (this counts, right?)
Centipede/Millipede/Missile Command
Asteroids Deluxe
Phoenix
Zaxxon
1945 Strikers II (monitor crapped out at the moment)

I have ESP Rade, Armed Police Batriders, Last Resort, Aero Fighters 3, Guwange (damaged board), and 1942 (damaged board and cab) which I occasionally swap out with other games. I would like to build a cabinet to house 4 shmups in one (monitor and controls on each side) to offer more. I also almost grabbed a Raiden IV earlier this year but I don't have a JVS cab so that would have just sat and collected dust. One day I really want to have Raiden 1-4 and RFJ lined up in a row; same thing with the Darius games but that will be a tough thing to pull off (and require a new, bigger location).

Other than that, I don't come across shmups too often in my area. Atomic Arcade in South SLC has nothing but classics so he has a few: 1943, Assault, Vanguard, Star Wars, Star Trek, STUN Runner, Centipede, Defender, Galaga, Gyruss, Raiden Fighters Jet and a couple of others that I can't recall. Nickelcade and Nickelmania probably have a couple but I haven't visited either of those places in ages. None of the movie theater arcades or bowling alleys will have something like a shmup though. Not new or high earning enough.

[pokemon123]

why can't I live where you guys live

[limpan]

All of them.

Haha!

In Stockholm we pretty much don't have any regular arcades machines left. Driving cabinets and pinball are pretty easy to come by. A few years back, we had a place called Super Motaro, they owned a few PCB:s themselves, but mostly they had sven666's PCB:s in their cabinets, and also a few from Eaglets collection.

Here's a list of shmups I remember that I played there:

Espagaluda 2
Mushihimesama Futari Black Label
Deathsmiles Mega Black Label
Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu Black Label
Dodonpachi Dai Ou Jou
Ketsui
Raiden Fighters 2
Battle Garegga

[ACSeraph]

All of them.

The joys of Tokyo

People might be surprised to know though, that up here in Japan's great white north shmups are quite rare. Compared to the West we have a lot of arcades, but for Japan there aren't many and almost none of them have dedicated shmups cabs. Nesica and All.Net are common though, so I can play whatever is on them and that is actually a pretty solid collection of stuff. For dedicated cabs there are only 2 arcades in the prefecture that have any, within walking distance of one another and unfortunately a two hour drive from where I live. Both switch out machines regularly, most recently Sega World had Guwange and Progear, and Namco had Sexy Parodius (with no autofire >_>), Gradius 3 (blegh), and Darius Burst ACEX (Fuck yeah!). I love ACEX so much that I actually make the drive about once a month to play for an afternoon.

(And when I'm really desperate I can head down to Tokyo for a true arcade marathon.)

[Necronopticous]

At my college they had a Strikers cabinet (meh) and a Mushihimesama cabinet.

Huh. Did you go to Cal Poly Pomona?

[Bananamatic]

haven't seen a shmup cab in my whole life

there's an arcade about 400 km away from me but it's retro as fuck and the only shmups there are r-type, raiden II and salamander 2 (and apparently not even on defaults)
can't be arsed to go all the way there

[PAPER/ARTILLERY]

My local put one of those 300-in-1 cabs in recently. It's not great and the sticks suck but it's nice to play a credit of Progear while I'm having a pint. To my knowledge the next nearest cabs with shmups in are in London.

[bikingjahuty]

We have a lot of Barcades near where I live, but almost none of them have any shooters. In fact, the only place that does is a local AMF Bowling Ally that has a Sonic Wings cab. I nearly started squealing when I first found it.

[Pixel_Outlaw]

A looooong time ago when I was a small boy there was a 3 Wonders in a local Taco Treat they also had Raiden (II?) in there at one point.

[wayultratech]

They have an original Raiden Fighters cab at Gameworks Seattle (I know I know it's corporate bullshite) also in West Seattle there's a great bar with a few MAME cabinets, bar's called Vidiot. Man, playing 19XX The War Against Destiny with a tall frosty beer sure hits the spot. I wish I knew where a complete Raiden Fighters III and RF Jet was in the Northwest....

[wayultratech]

Blazing Star in a Neo Geo 4 cab in Lynnwood WA

[NeoStrayCat]

I'm not sure if its still there, but only in my area, a local pizza place has/had Twin Eagle II, did try it out once or twice. Elsewhere a little further, near the uptown theaters, there's a multicade (mame-arcade, lol.) And it just has some of the usual titles I assume.

Apart from that, there's barely any arcades around here in my area, lol. (Some have closed shop like Nickel!Nickel and Arcade Infinity, while others like Round 1 are bringing in business.)

[LordHypnos]

I recently came across a 1000 in 1 or something like that arcade machine at a bar near me that has Juno First. That was pretty fun. Actually, it kind of brought me back into shmups which I had mostly fallen out of playing for a few months. This was just a few months ago. Juno First is surprisingly fun.

[NTSC-J]

They have an original Raiden Fighters cab at Gameworks Seattle (I know I know it's corporate bullshite)

I worked there about ten years ago, I'm amazed they still have it.

There's a bar/arcade in the Ballard/Fremont area that has a few Japanese cabs with shmups. The last time I went was about four years ago so it's probably a landfill now, but worth checking out.

[d0s]

There is a terrible arcade in Miami that has Raiden IV and Triggerheart Excelica (it replaced mushi futari, wtf) in candy cabs, but they put these ridiculous tennis ball sized bubbletops on the sticks which are also completely blown out and they're too cheap to put in $20 LS-32s or something. This area used to be pretty decent for STG years ago but now it's a wasteland

[rjosal]

They have an original Raiden Fighters cab at Gameworks Seattle (I know I know it's corporate bullshite)

I worked there about ten years ago, I'm amazed they still have it.

There's a bar/arcade in the Ballard/Fremont area that has a few Japanese cabs with shmups. The last time I went was about four years ago so it's probably a landfill now, but worth checking out.

You must be talking about Full Tilt. It's also been awhile since I've been there, but I expect there's probably at least 1 dedicated shmup cab left. I think they were/are kevinddr's cabs. I didn't know you guys were seattle area, you maybe should join the northwest shmup FB group, although it's been dead lately. I tried having a shmupmeet awhile ago and nobody could come!

[pieslice]

There is a good arcade in Helsinki, albeit it's in industrial building and relatively hard to find. There are lots of fighting games but also 4 or 5 shmups that rotate regularly. Dariusburst cab is a fixture and Ketsui seems to be so popular it has been there a long time. I would love to get to play a toaplan classic in arcade form some day.