Favourite bomb?

[Deadliar]

Timekiller thread, but in good spirits. May also lead to nice discussion.

What's your favorite bomb or similar limited clearing, reflecting or otherwise ass-saving special attack?

This doesn't apply to how cool the bomb looks, it is purely from a mechanical viewpoint. (After all, Truxton would just win instantly if it was the former)

I'm gonna say right now that ESP Ra. De. is my favorite. You can use it for score, you can use it for damage, and you can use it to get out of a mess. It is a great all-purpose ability and I respect that, especially for its time. I also like how using it for more damage costs more, thus penalizing cheesy players.

Banned: Autobombs. Unless they do more than give you a free save or fuck up your score, that is.

[d0s]

the thing in radirgy and karous for the same reasons you listed for the esprade bomb. it's an integral and required part of scoring in those games

[BIL]

ZOMG AULD THREAD

Just saving someone a few minutes :^)

Bio Metal's GAM (edit not GAMP lmao!), a shield for smashing skulls. It'll save your ass by tearing theirs, rim from rim. Don't hide behind your shield, you pussy! Be like CAPN AMERICA and chuck it at the schweinhunds who are shooting at you! Decapitation + sweet frisbee return catch, that's more like it. MEANWHILE, the meter's balance of smashing power to punishing endurance is bang-on and means you need to wield it as much like a jugular-slashing blade as a face-caving sledge.

Conversely I know you said no looks, but for sheer, indiscriminate, table-flipping Here's my BOMBA, cunts! Take it! FUCK! carnage I swear by Under Defeat's airstrike. Whatever scoring opportunities are on the board when it hits, it'll probably fuck them up. Everything you coulda taken down manfully for X2 BONEASS dies in an inescapable wall of flame. Just like granddad used to do BITD! You're very small from way out here / The last thing you will feel is fear! Add the instant invincibility AND THEN add the aesthetic bombast and it's a microcosm of the guilty pleasure, wake up screaming drenched in sweat survivor's guilt BOMBA.

WORST BOMB: anything ineffectual. The heart and soul of BOMBA is Momentous Occasion or its related phenomenon, Face-Shredding Overkill. It's gotta bring significant changes in the lives of all involved! Damp squib? GET THAT SHIT OUTTA MY FACE. I can't recall anything off the top of my head right now, but I know there's been some over the years that've made me yell "DON'T WASTE MY MOTHERFUCKIN TIME" at the tv screen! For now let's just say certain early Psikyo charge shots really get my goat. Timewasters.

[BurlyHeart]

Love the bomb effects in Under Defeat.

[Squire Grooktook]

eXceed 2nd Vampire Rex = My favorite mechanically. Using risky point blanking / bullet absorbtion strategies to recharge it early (and even chain it) is immensely satisfying and cool.
Mars Matrix = I know you're not supposed to use it, normally, but finishing off bosses with a fully charged black hole feels brutal
Recca - Of course. Sword and Shield paladin shmup.
Garegga/Batrider - Lots of great stuff on almost every character, with diverse handling and scoring purposes.
Refrain - The combo bombs are immensely cool and being able to freeze / stunlock bosses and turn their patterns against them feels great

Purely Aesthetic:

Gun Frontier = So hot it distorts time/space
Gigawing - Love the switch to a furious elemental background admist over the top pyrotechnics (see also: Dodonpachi).
Darius Gaiden = Black Hole Bombs are rad, 'nough said.

[Herr Schatten]

Another vote for the 'bomb' in Radirgy. It being an integral part of the gameplay makes using it skillfully a very satisfying experience. I guess Raizing masterplayers will feel much the same way about the bombs in Garegga, Batrider, and Bakraid. Possibly Ibara and Pink Sweets, too.

Best looking bomb by far is clearly the one in Tatsujin-Oh, though.

[Shepardus]

I think Fairy Wars deserves a mention here. No, I'm not talking about the main freeze mechanic, though that's also cool and is a big reason why the bombs work as well as they do in the game; I just assume that doesn't qualify for this thread since it's not really "limited" except for a short cooldown. I'm talking about the Perfect Freeze, which on the surface behaves like a typical Touhou bomb (become invincible for a few seconds, eliminate enemy bullets, and do some damage) but ties into scoring and is balanced in such a way that it's much more than just that. At the end of the Perfect Freeze duration, all bullets on the screen are frozen, including fireballs which your normal freezes can't freeze. This allows you to get big freezes that you otherwise couldn't get, and thus more points since the entire scoring system revolves around freezing bullets. Unlike most Touhou games, you're actually encouraged to use your bombs since there's no real penalty for using a bomb (you do lose the spell card bonus but a good freeze heavily outweighs that cost), and if you're using your regular freeze a lot (which you should be, it's critical to both survival and scoring) you'll regenerate bombs fairly quickly but you can only stock up to 3. Dying also gives you a small amount of bomb stock (1/4 of a bomb if I remember correctly), unlike most Touhou games where it simply resets the stock, so there's an almost Yagawa-esque balance where normal freezes build lives and bombs, and bombs can be used for score, and lives can be sacrificed to give more bombs (there is a remaining life bonus at the end but if you play well you can reach the maximum even with a few deaths). Resources in the game feel a lot more "fluid" than in other Touhou games that have largely fixed resources. If I could stand all the RNG in the scoring and were any good at the game, I would probably play it a lot more - it's a great game.

The bomb/Hadou gun duality from Ibara is also very cool, not only because it's immensely satisfying to use (BOMBA!) but because the Hadou gun is very versatile, providing both offensive and defensive capabilities for both survival and score play, and giving options on how to time and position it, such as using it as a wall and luring enemies into it, or targeting specific parts of bosses.

Not sure if Crimzon Clover's break mode counts, the game has an actual "bomb" but break mode is the same mechanic, just when you have a full break meter as opposed to only a partial break meter for the regular bomb. Break mode's really rewarding and obviously ties into scoring, I don't have much to say about it other than that everything about it works well. As for the actual "bomb," the way the necessary break meter threshold increases as you use it in World Ignition is an interesting way to give you several pretty-much guaranteed bombs per life without making it too spammable, in a game that doesn't actually have a bomb stock the way most shmups deal with that problem.

Battle Bakraid's an interesting one - the bomb itself isn't anything special (and it's the same across every ship, though for the "B" types it lasts slightly longer), but the way the scoring system forces you to use bombs and suicides to chain creates a neat rhythm that doesn't really exist in other shmups, even ones with chaining. It's funny how that game can be so demanding even though you can be invincible like half the time and actively trying to die during the other half.

The bell powers in Parodius are interesting in that there's more skill in obtaining them than in actually using them. Most of the bell powers provide some sort of invincibility/bullet cancelling, and, in the case of the blue bell (the actual screen-clearing bomb) and the red bell, can be stocked up for later use, but having to obtain them through bell juggling, and having them share the same button as missiles except in Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius, makes them feel different from the typical bomb that you horde until you need. You can use them as a "get out of jail free card," but obtaining them for such a use is a conscious decision that requires control over your fire and a bit of planning, making it all the more rewarding when you pull it off, especially when you just barely cycled to the right bell in time and used it to get out of a hairy situation. In Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius there's several occasions where bombing with a blue bell grants score bonuses too.

[ProcoTaito]

For me, it's most definitely the black hole bomb from Darius Gaiden! Looks awesome, super effective for popcorn enemies and does a decent amount of damage on bosses as well.

You definitely don't wanna mess with a Silverhawk. Especially when it's armed with those!

[PooshhMao]

The black hole bomb most certainly deserves a notable mention. It certainly helps making the Gaiden iteration of the Silver Hawk one of the best ships in Chronicle Saviours.

So many bomb attacks to rant about, but ultimately I can't help but go for a DoDonPachi one.
They're both useful as an instant bullet cancel and something to considerably reduce the time you spend fighting a boss with.

[OmegaFlareX]

Tatsujin Ou
Gigawing
19XX
'Pachi games type A
Raiden II both types
Darius Gaiden
Sonic Wings 2 Mao Mao (actually a lot of that game's characters had cool bombs)

[Square_Air]

Gun Frontier will always take the cake for me. It's just so satisfying to warp the screen from the sheer magnitude of the blast.
I've always been really partial to any sort of massive missile barrage along the lines of Flying Baron's bomb.
The ESP series bomb gets a mention for its sheer versatility.

I think Fairy Wars deserves a mention here.

Perfect freeze being able to deal with those pesky fireballs is such a neat mechanical addition. The way it factors into scoring feels very Yagawa-esque.

[BrianC]

Zero Wing EU MD deserves honorable mention for having "Set up us the bomb" in the intro, even though the actual game doesn't have a bomb.

As far actual bombs, I like Daisenpuu's suicide bombers quite a bit. Using a bomb summons a whole fleet of planes that can be launched into a bomb attack when pressing bomb again.

[Deadliar]

Zero Wing EU MD deserves honorable mention for having "Set up us the bomb" in the intro, even though the actual game doesn't have a bomb.

Did they actually remove the bomb pickup for EU? What the hell...

[BrianC]

Zero Wing EU MD deserves honorable mention for having "Set up us the bomb" in the intro, even though the actual game doesn't have a bomb.

Did they actually remove the bomb pickup for EU? What the hell...

No. I was mistaken. I wasn't aware of a bomb in any version of the game.

edit: It looks like something you pick with the tractor beam, not a traditional bomb. I was thinking traditional bomb.

[xxx1993]

The Black Hole from Darius Gaiden for me. Feel like going “HOLY SHIIIIT!!!” whenever the bomb gets used. It’s probably the only bomb attack in the Darius series as a whole. How about the bomb attacks in Giga Wing 2? I especially love Kart's "SPAAAAARK BOMBEEEEEEEER!!!!" Castle of Shikigami III has a few good ones also. Such as Reika Kirishima's "Time Stop".