Eurogamer article: All about China/Shanghai's STG scene

[Skykid]

Article just up:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015- ... -heartbeat

Took forever to be published (thanks E3!) but got there in the end. Hope it's of interest to you fellow shmuppers.

[Icarus]

Oh, nice! Been looking forward to this.

[Skykid]

Hope there's some insight in there for you! Just keep in mind EG readership is not so knowledgeable about shmups in general, so I always have to try to keep the layman in mind.

So when namedropping R-Type and Space Invaders it's just to paint a quick picture for people.

[Strikers1945guy]

Thanks for the interesting read skykid. Double playing espgaluda II would have been something to see for sure.

[RHE]

Cool. Great to see schanghai has a big arcade scene.

[MintyTheCat]

Thank you for the article, Skykid.

I hope that the arcade does not close. they have many decent PCBs too.
I agree entirely: there is something completely different when playing in an arcade.
I was playing some Shmups with some mates in Berlin yesterday and showed them RECCA for the first time - they were blown away In the absence of an arcade the best we can do is a Shmupmeet.

I have no idea that Shmuppers attempted double-play - that is insane

Cheers,

Minty.

[cave hermit]

Fantastic writing Skykid.

Kind of sad to hear that the arcade doesn't really have a way to sustain itself for the future though

[emphatic]

Very nice, but shouldn't acronyms be spelled out like this:

CAVE

[system11]

You mention shmups.org in there but that's a holding domain.

[STG]

That was a fascinating read Skykid, hope that arcade finds a way to survive and/or those players figure something out to keep their community going, as it sounds like they have a great scene!

And damn, double-playing Galuda 2? Man... Any chance of a vid?

[Brainpalace]

Although our skill levels are worlds apart, I'm pleasantly surprised to find our tastes are about even. When I ask him what he considers the best and worst the STG genre has to offer, he instantly throws up DoDonpachi DaiOuJou.

"For me it's the best of all. Because its bullets have an organic nature, and the pressure of the second loop [which restarts the game at a much higher difficulty level and strips you of all your lives] is incredible. I think it's the most perfectly constructed STG ever made. It took me four years of playing on weekends to get the 2 loop clear, but I'm still trying to improve my score. My next goal is 1.8 billion."

And the worst?

"Definitely Ikaruga," he replies.

Made me chuckle.

Fantastic article.

[Skykid]

You mention shmups.org in there but that's a holding domain.

Lol, my bad. And after all these years too. I'll get that corrected now.

That was a fascinating read Skykid, hope that arcade finds a way to survive and/or those players figure something out to keep their community going, as it sounds like they have a great scene!

And damn, double-playing Galuda 2? Man... Any chance of a vid?

You know I may just have some. I needed to be careful and not use too much memory on video, but I definitely have some of various play, just not entire runs unfortunately.



Thank you for all the nice feedback chaps. In the end it cost me far more than I earned to write this article, but I did it for the love of it.

Glad you enjoyed.

Edit:

@emph!

Technically yes, CAVE is indeed all caps. I considered this of course, but in the end used my powers to bastardise the company name for the sake of not causing eye-strain in the prose. I know it's cheeky, but journalistic privilege reigned here - all caps CAVE is just too cutting on sentence flow.

That said if it was an article where Cave games/co. was the focus, I'd probably do the honorable thing and commit it to caps hell.

[MrSalamander]

Fantasic writting.
X91 translated your article into Chinese overnight in order to read smoothly for Chinese gameplayer.
I think it's a wonderful experience and looking forward to see you at the next reunion.

[chum]

Nicely done, a very enjoyable read.

[Skykid]

Fantasic writting.
X91 translated your article into Chinese overnight in order to read smoothly for Chinese gameplayer.
I think it's a wonderful experience and looking forward to see you at the next reunion.

Translated it overnight? Wow, amazing work Chris - didn't you sleep last night? I was out like a light after we spoke.

You guys let me know when the next one is happening. Would love to visit to Lie Huo again, funds permitting. But if WY doesn't promise me a DOJ 2-ALL I'm not coming. I want a world record broken!

"Definitely Ikaruga," he replies.

Made me chuckle.

Lol, yeah, me too. But all these comments and I can't believe no-one has yet picked up on my cheesiest/most pun-riffic contribution to date:

Treasure's avant-garde polarity switching game was once a darling of the mainstream press, but among STG circles its virtues have never been so black and white.

[monouchi]

Great read Skykid, thanks for sharing. <3

[Stompp]

Great write-up, Tom! I wish I had the chance to travel more and experience all this IRL, but text and pics are good too

[copy-paster]

Very nice article, I enjoyed it
Surprised to see that Ikaruga was the worst games in there.

[ciox]

Yeah, that's funny that they contrast DOJ and Ikaruga so much on a quality metric, since DOJ references it quite a bit. It's safe to say the developers don't see it that way, it reminds me of people setting R-Type and Darius against each other, when you had massive references to R-Type in Darius II and later like Alloy Lantern, a bit contradictory to say the least if you have faith in devs' tastes.
Well enough about that, it was a really good read, hopefully the chinese players that are thinking about playing live at Stunfest can make it and show off those skills.

[STG]

You know I may just have some. I needed to be careful and not use too much memory on video, but I definitely have some of various play, just not entire runs unfortunately.

Very cool. Even some short runs would be fantastic to see!

[Skykid]

Yeah, that's funny that they contrast DOJ and Ikaruga so much on a quality metric, since DOJ references it quite a bit. It's safe to say the developers don't see it that way

I think they did with those two, I seem to remember IKD saying that Ikaruga was his inspiration for DOJ, or at least 'the one to beat' or something.

That was only one person's opinion regarding best and worst. I don't know how the others feel about weakest STG. But I do know vanilla DOJ was by far the highest regarded if we're talking votes.

[system11]

Do they have any weird Chinese hack/bootleg games over there?

[Skykid]

Do they have any weird Chinese hack/bootleg games over there?

Near me, yeah - that pretty cool Garegga hack.

In Lie Huo no.

[ciox]

Yeah, that's funny that they contrast DOJ and Ikaruga so much on a quality metric, since DOJ references it quite a bit. It's safe to say the developers don't see it that way

I think they did with those two, I seem to remember IKD saying that Ikaruga was his inspiration for DOJ, or at least 'the one to beat' or something.

Yeah I definitely remember that, there was some serious anxiety over Naomi hardware being just plain stronger than PGM and so on, though the point is this was about more than just fighting to be top dog or Ikeda wouldn't have snuck references to Ikaruga in DOJ, that takes some actual attachment and that's why I said the devs wouldn't compare their games that way.

I always wanted to take a look at that Garegga hack, it's dumped but I could get never get it to run.

[broken harbour]

That was a fun read, thanks Skykid.

[Skykid]

That was a fun read, thanks Skykid.

My pleasure! Thanks to you for reading.

[_rm_]

Just awesome reading.

The dual play "thing" is new to me, totally blew my mind

[DoomsDave]

Loved the original thread and I enjoyed reading this even more. Thanks for taking the time and effort to write it. It's getting posted all over the place so it's cool to see it get exposure.

[Oniros]

That was an awesome article! I would love to see these guys at Stunfest next year. If visas and flight tickets are overly expensive, we could start a Patreon campaign or something?

[Some-Mist]

fantastic article. I saw this posted today and thought it was a crazy coincidence that you were talking about playing with these exact players months ago. didn't even realize until now that you were the writer!

I love WC's ikaruga bashing and now I really want to try out tank force.