14th Annual Top 25 Shmups of All Time - Results

[Squire Grooktook]

I like both Xyga and Chum. I think you guys had more of a misunderstanding that escalated more than anything. Neither original posts were that unreasonable but then it just kinda turned sour.

[gimebe]

The list seems reasonably diverse to me considering it was compiled by popular vote. Heck, I think that the minimum ballot size being 15 or 25 games already forces voters to diversify their selection a fair bit.

That's the thing with popular voting, it tends to inherently favor popularity. It'd be a lot more shocking. horrifying and indicative of foul play if obscure games showed up near the top.

[qmish]

Idea:

Have a vote where you can choose no more than 3 games from each developer

p.s.
most interesting games always get least votes...

p.s.s.
You know what's shocking?
When you realize you wasted voting for some games in top-25 because nearly no one voted for them there,
and you should have mentioned them in Honourable Mentions instead, where people actually were voting for them.

[Cee]

(kid got issues), yeah...

Said the grown adult with the anime child avatar.

People who know my avatar will certainly appreciate the irony
and you fail twice since the one wit an anime child avatar is Chum

Want to make a thread called the "we hate Xyga club" ? that'd be useful to me, like a big trash can
but maybe you enjoy stalkingme, whatever

What an utterly strange and preposterous post, a blancmange of victim syndrome, passive defensive reverse psychology furnished with non sequitur and assumption. If one regards the meeting of fellows within the tight corridors of this Internet house as "stalking" then there really isn't much anyone can do to challenge the perception aside from extending courtesy, so with that in mind would you care to see my cock?

[Xyga]

What an utterly strange and preposterous post, a blancmange of victim syndrome, passive defensive reverse psychology furnished with non sequitur and assumption. If one regards the meeting of fellows within the tight corridors of this Internet house as "stalking" then there really isn't much anyone can do to challenge the perception aside from extending courtesy, so with that in mind would you care to see my cock?

Yes Mr. Pompous Douche, I'd like to see it.
Also how would you like to suck my balls ?

[MarioNintendo]

This is my favorite list since I joined this forum.
edit: xyga, why not use PMs instead of polluting this fine thread?

[bikingjahuty]

My thoughts on the results:

It brings me joy to see Radiant Silvergun rise in the rankings as it should, AND beat out Ikaruga (love Ikaruga too btw)

As someone else posted, it pains me to see Raiden Fighters Jet get all the glory, when I feel like both the first and second Raiden Fighters games are superior.

As much as I love Garegga it is somewhat satisfying to see it get dethroned.

Going along with what others are at each other's throats right now for, Cave is a bit over represented, but most of the titles that made the 25 deserve to be there imo

WTF are Gunbird 2 or Strikers 1945 II doing on this list at all?

Happy to see Mars Matrix getting the love it deserves.

[Some-Mist]

Something I find interesting is that this year Mushihimesama and Mushihimesama Futari are the only two CV1K games in the top 25. I'm also pleasantly surprised by the rise of Progear and Dangun Feveron, they usually have no trouble reaching the honorable mentions but I didn't expect to see them in the top 25.

it makes me very happy. after spending a very extended amount of time playing, I've been wanting progear to make the list for at least the last few years. dangun feveron (for a cave shmup) has been somewhat underappreciated in the past too.

the only other CAVE game I would have loved to see in the list is Muchi Muchi Pork, but I'm more than content.

and maybe I should have done a top 25 so I could have maybe represented mecha ritz and battle traverse..

edit: missed that thunder dragon 2 actually made the HM list :O

[EmperorIng]

edit: missed that thunder dragon 2 actually made the HM list :O

Solid gains for over a decade in the rankings; soon people will realize what they're missing (ie frustrating rank shenanigans and funny catch-phrases).

WTF are Gunbird 2 or Strikers 1945 II doing on this list at all?

A bit lonely without Dragon Blaze, but there's only so much room for the best! Gunbird 2 is endlessly replayable, if only to keep on trying to get past that 1-4/1-5 wall of pain.

[Xyga]

@MarioNintendo: tell that to these two idiots idgaf now.

WTF are Gunbird 2 or Strikers 1945 II doing on this list at all?

I was more surprised to see both pass DB honestly.

[Bananamatic]

Gunbird 2 is endlessly replayable

which game isn't endlessly replayable
except for russian roulette I guess

[EmperorIng]

Gunbird 2 is endlessly replayable

which game isn't endlessly replayable
except for russian roulette I guess

I should have said "far more endlessly replayable than other games"

them rando stages keep things fresh

You play some games like Zing Zing Zip or Revenge Joe's Brother once and you never want to play them again, or kill yourself; the choice is yours

[Some-Mist]

As much as I love Garegga it is somewhat satisfying to see it get dethroned.

your point still stands, but it also got dethroned by futari either last year or in the 2014 vote (iirc)

and yes, it's nice seeing those small changes even though I'm not the biggest DOJ fan

[Shepardus]

p.s.s.
You know what's shocking?
When you realize you wasted voting for some games in top-25 because nearly no one voted for them there,
and you should have mentioned them in Honourable Mentions instead, where people actually were voting for them.

The honorable mentions isn't a separate poll from the top 25, they're simply results #26-60 in alphabetical order.

[Bananamatic]

Zing Zing Zip

[TransatlanticFoe]

Idea:

Have a vote where you can choose no more than 3 games from each developer

p.s.
most interesting games always get least votes...

p.s.s.
You know what's shocking?
When you realize you wasted voting for some games in top-25 because nearly no one voted for them there,
and you should have mentioned them in Honourable Mentions instead, where people actually were voting for them.

It's not about trying to bump up certain titles if you think they have a chance of placing highly and no-one likes your favourite games anyway.

Your favourites are your favourites. It distorts the picture if you falsely represent something because you think it stands more chance of "winning" than those you truly care about.

[qmish]

Your answer should be forwarded to my earlier replies instead, nope? Where i mentioned that people can love all those niche games but that doesnt prevent them from voting for DDP or Garegga or whatever.

As for what i said about Honourable Mentions subvote, i just noted that many games from my top25 never made it to overall 25 yet i can notice them in HM results...


...whatever

[DJ Incompetent]

Thanks a lot for your ceaseless enthusiasm and work, Nifty!

I must say that this is a surprisingly well-rounded list, probably one of the best we ever had when it comes to representing different facets of the genre.

Almost one third of the games are from Cave, modern games are disproportionally represented considering their quantity, some prestigious developers such as Capcom or Namco are not even close to having a single game in either the top 25 or the HM, several platforms are completely out of the picture... You might like the results as they are, but stating that the list is well-rounded - in a "statistical" manner, as it were - is just wrong. It's extremely lopsided and everyone knows it.

I will say that I'm glad for the increase in Touhou games: I don't know anything about them but it always struck me as weird that they, too, were almost not present at all. That is indeed one step in the right direction.

maybe because they're disproportionally less garbage

...accept that people love their cave/raizing/whatever is popular/.. games

I believe there's a bit of a misunderstanding here: I'm not arguing whether or not there should be that many Cave games or what have you on the list. My reply was geared towards Herr Schatten's statement that the list is "well-rounded" and represents "different facets of the genre" which is objectively questionable. You can say that the list contains those games that are important for the genre, or those games that are best-suited for the list, or flat-out the best games. But considering the imbalanced tendency, you cannot really say this list is a good representation of the entire genre. That would be like creating a canon of literature where 90% of the books on it are from the 20th century and onwards.

You have to put in numerical perspective, however.

How many Cave games are there in total? 25 or so? 18 of those made it either into the top 25 or the HM. That's significantly more than half of the output of this one developer.

Compare that to a few other examples:

- There are well above 100 games pre-1984. You know, those fixed verticals and embryonic games. 0 of those are on either list.

- There are well above 100 games on 8-bit consoles. 0 of those are on either list.

- Between the PCE, MD and SFC (with all the add-ons), there are some 200 games. 1 of those made it on the HM.

- I don't even know how many classic games there are for all sorts of computers. If you add all of them together you'd certainly end up with a few hundred I'd imagine. 1 of those made it on the HM.

- There are innumerable phalanges of arcade shmups from '84 to, say, '94 or '95. A handful of those made it on the top 25 and the HM.

- Several developers with a respectable quantity of games are not represented anywhere.


To reiterate my point from the last post: I'm not saying there's any necessity to include each and all of these items or even one of them. I personally don't care about ancient single-screen shooters, Amiga shmups or developers such as Dooyong, either. And I also have no problem accepting that most people here deem Cave's efforts to be particularly worthwhile games that deserve high rankings on the list. However, I find it odd to postulate that there's an inherent balance to that list when several hundreds of games have not a single ambassador or one at the absolute best while the vast majority of Cave titles is somewhere to be found. Seems like a curious definition of "well-rounded". It's simply a fact that particular types of games are overrepresented while others are underrepresented. Whether or not that's a good thing is a completely different question altogether.

It is a well rounded list because overall quality is being considered.
We could have equal outrage that thousands of indie and doujin games from '00 to today are being ignored. But if a reason for ignoring them quickly comes to mind, apply it to the 100s of games you bulletpointed above.

It's cool you can find charm in the vast library of old stuff. But I'm not sure you recognize charm comes from enjoying one or two traits of forgotten games. Namco's Galaga has one neat gimmick in an otherwise very lacking game. Capcom's Eco Fighters has great art, but has little worth doing after playing once or even watching a longplay. Capcom and Namco have successful STGs, but they are not prestigious STG developers. You need to assess games in their whole packages; other qualities you have to consider such as: pattern design, tight control, balanced hitbox, enemy placement, interesting stage backgrounds, game-feel, single enemy phases, catchy themes, target variety, boss memorability, artistic design, bullet art, rallyable characters, scoring systems, restart syndrome, noteworthy artistic landmarks, powerup structure, depth of tools, difficulty balancing, cutting the fat, the feeling of always having something to do amidst replaying something you have seen before. Most games in the entire library of STGs feel more like proto-shmups than finalized works. I could eliminate most of the overall industry library from top 25 consideration by observing a player ship's large hitbox, forcing slow stage designs to minutes of largely bland and pedestrian strings of simple, direct enemy attacks.

Finding the good in so many things does not mean the STGs consistently voted do not have better overall mechanics, art, and sound packages.
So few players on the form vote because I believe this to be more carefully considered than you predict.

------

Thank you Nifty for hardest work.

[qmish]

But if a reason for ignoring them quickly comes to mind,

Which reason? That people still like arcade classics more, even a little bit?

Aero Fighters II is nice example of "simple, but done well". It's just that right.

[Shepardus]

Once again, Perikles never said that the top 25 should be anything different from what it is or that disproportionately representing certain devs over others is a good thing or a bad thing, just that the list isn't representative of all shmups. The list isn't even necessarily supposed to be representative, nor is a representative list a better list - if you want that (at least for arcade titles) there's this list, which is representative by virtue of including everything.

I'm curious what propelled DOJ so much higher than Ketsui this year, when in past years Ketsui has either outperformed DOJ or been very close behind. Personally I like everything aspect about Ketsui more than DOJ except for the Ura loop condition and the suicide bullets in the loop, so I'm interested in hearing other's thoughts. The two games are closely related, being from the same developer and time period, which makes such a comparison more apt than most.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Your answer should be forwarded to my earlier replies instead, nope? Where i mentioned that people can love all those niche games but that doesnt prevent them from voting for DDP or Garegga or whatever.

As for what i said about Honourable Mentions subvote, i just noted that many games from my top25 never made it to overall 25 yet i can notice them in HM results...


...whatever

I was going for the honourable mentions bit, it's just a pain in the arse to make edits on a shitty old smartphone.

Well you used bold formatting and the term wasted, which is a bit dramatic for "noting"... it came across as disappointed you didn't boost some of your favourite popular titles and leave the obscure/unloved ones as honourable mentions. Which I think is a bullshit thing to do, or want to do. Especially if it were to happen at the expense of DeltaZeal.

[Squire Grooktook]

My mind is starting to snap.

Once again, Perikles never said that the top 25 should be anything different from what it is

People really can't read, can they? He's not saying there's anything wrong with the list being majority cave. He's saying it's not "well-rounded" because of it.

[qmish]

I was going for the honourable mentions bit, it's just a pain in the arse to make edits on a shitty old smartphone.

Well you used bold formatting and the term wasted, which is a bit dramatic for "noting"... it came across as disappointed you didn't boost some of your favourite popular titles and leave the obscure/unloved ones as honourable mentions. Which I think is a bullshit thing to do, or want to do. Especially if it were to happen at the expense of DeltaZeal.

I was not saying that, I didn't even have HM sublist; I said an opposite - that enough titles from my top25 never appear in results' top25 , while people tend to mention them in honorable mentions list instead;

Now we can speculate if I wrote them in HM like everyone it would boost their HM position, opening top25th space for something other

And all of that was pointed at discussion of "only cave only raizing only treasure" posts; I wanted to say that many great titles are doomed to never make it to top, being only in HM or smth, especially indie/doujin etc.

[Plasmo]

I'm just extremely happy to see Radiant Silvergun top that overrated thing called Ikaruga.

fite me irl m8

Seconded. If I ever meet this guy in person, fists will fill up the twilight alleys. IN REAL LIFE.

After what has happened on page 2, can we please actually kill each other at least from page 5 onwards? It's top 25 time after all. No joking around you pussies. It's that time of the year again.

[Shepardus]

[Now we can speculate if I wrote them in HM like everyone it would boost their HM position, opening top25th space for something other

I'm not sure I understand you correctly or if you're misunderstanding how the voting works. There's no separate "HM position" and "top25th space" - putting something in your top 25 list doesn't mean you're not voting for it to be in the honorable mentions. If you had put your top picks in your honorable mentions instead of the top 25, their overall result would have been lower, not higher.

Note that the honorable mentions section of the results has existed long before the honorable mentions option of the voting.

[Iori Branford]

It seems the old salt about "balance" or whatever stemmed from different ideas of what T25 is.

I (like most folks I think) never saw this as anything more than a popular vote. It just asks for our most known and loved games to date and we get exactly that.

If we were going for "the objectively best evarrr" or "all that you need to play", it'd be a much more formal affair with the vote restricted to a panel of experts such as longtime players, successful developers, and others with vast shmup knowledge and experience.

[qmish]

There's no separate "HM position" and "top25th space" - putting something in your top 25 list doesn't mean you're not voting for it to be in the honorable mentions.

Then why in this vote you had to make 2 lists, one is top 25 list with weighting to each position, and additional top10 HM without weighting? By logic such structure should mean that results are also separate for what people voted for in their 25s, and what they do for HMs. But you say that HM are just lower places from 25s votes; that must mean that HM 10s were not counted at all? Please explain, i lost any sense.

/edit
If "hm results" are just 26-50 place from overall top, then "hm lists" from vote have no purpose; i thought that "hm results" should be based on what people mentioned in hm, but not "just advancing top 25 to top 50".

//edit
Unless you mean that HM lists were decided as bottom pit that starts where all games from 25s lists end... Which makes even less sense, as by that logic they will never make it to both top25 result and "hm result aka 26-50", because they will stay on their 300-400-whatever place out of 500 etc.

///edit
Or, perhaps, i'm an idiot while Nifty etc. are just scoring maniacs torturing us with tricky system Still, after re-reading formula of scoring for votes, i dont take my words back Because naming lower places as HM is just... pretty degrading. HMs are HMs for a reason, and not just a name for "didnt make it to top, let's extend it".

[Strikers1945guy]

Damn... Ibara drooped from the top 25... Dimahoo couldn't even hold its honorable mention spot...

As big of a Yagawa fan as I am I'm pleased to see DOJ take 1st place, game deserves it.

[chum]

After what has happened on page 2, can we please actually kill each other at least from page 5 onwards?

I see what this is about, you just wanna reduce the fucking rank don't you

[chum]

It seems the old salt about "balance" or whatever stemmed from different ideas of what T25 is.

I (like most folks I think) never saw this as anything more than a popular vote.

lol no, of course it's a fucking popular vote wtf? who would ever think otherwise?