19th Annual Top 25 Shmups of All Time - Discussion Thread*

[Nifty]

To expand some more on the earlier discussion, I'd been wondering for some time when the glut of procedurally generated multi-directional shooters in the vein of EtG/Nuclear Throne/etc might start turning up. There's a range of uncertainty to consider; clearly there are some that will fall into the shmup category with no problem, but across the whole genre spectrum it blends very ambiguously into action games where you can shoot things territory. Based on the guidelines, I guess it would it come down to whether they fall more on, say, the Smash TV side of things than the Gauntlet one. Maybe it's something that could be discussed more for next year.

...Speaking of which, I'm still yet to receive any offers of interest regarding handing over the future organisation (and calculation) of the T25. I doubt I'm going to lose interest in the genre any time soon, but I will be sticking to my guns and taking a year off if it remains a solo project.

[BloodHawk]

To expand some more on the earlier discussion, I'd been wondering for some time when the glut of procedurally generated multi-directional shooters in the vein of EtG/Nuclear Throne/etc might start turning up. There's a range of uncertainty to consider; clearly there are some that will fall into the shmup category with no problem, but across the whole genre spectrum it blends very ambiguously into action games where you can shoot things territory. Based on the guidelines, I guess it would it come down to whether they fall more on, say, the Smash TV side of things than the Gauntlet one. Maybe it's something that could be discussed more for next year.

Every year when I reread the rules I always see Smash TV as an example of an eligible field shooter and I am tempted to vote for it and Xeno Crisis, but I always chicken out since no one else mentions field shooters at all. The X360 port of Smash TV is awesome with the twin stick setup, I just wish it was still available and backwards compatible.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

I'll firmly put Smash TV into the "historically significant but greatly outdated" pile along with Total Carnage. Legendary game but we have so much better these days.

Now, Xeno Crisis is wholly deserving of a spot. I regret not putting it anywhere now, actually. Guess it just never came to mind due to its style.

[Eyvah_Ehyeh]

Xeno Crisis for sure feels nicer than Smash TV, even if Smash TV was pretty awesome to play when I was younger. Nex Machina it pretty rad as well - give it a try if you want some Twin Stick action?

[Nifty]

The voting period is now approaching its end, be sure to get any entries or amendments in before the deadline hits

[Sengoku Strider]

[25] [Power Strike]

I respect it.

[dmk1198]

When results come?

Sent from my M2007J20CG using Tapatalk

[LenDar]

"Also tying the scoring system to survival"

This is a really underutilized design choice in shmups, I feel. In my top picks, noiz2sa and parsec47, you're always willing to take more chances in order to score more, because you need those extra lives that come every 500 000 points, since you're gonna be dying often (and also want to score high). It's such a simple concept, and can be explored in many different ways. In cave shmups, even though I love them, I feel it's the opposite - when I take more chances, I just die more often, and don't get as far. Not nearly as satisfying for me, since I make what I feel are "stupid" mistakes all the time, and don't get to feel nearly as good as in parsec47 when I'm dodging super hard patterns all the time, dying often, but also recovering just as often due to another explosive round of taking risks, scoring high, and making a come back.

As a newer shmupper whose limited experience in the past was console shmups, I feel that arcade shmups are tragically hamstrung in many ways for game design thanks to the quarter-munching business model. That's probably why an arcade shmup doesn't want to give you lives for score.

They're made to make you THINK you "got far" so you keep inserting quarters when the difficulty spikes literally ten-fold into stage 2 or 3. Or then the last boss is five times harder than the whole rest of the game put together. Then again, sometimes console shmups spike too, like the mostly-easy Blazing Lazers spikes at the last stage.l

My other complaint is, why don't we have analog arcade sticks ever since the late 90's? I want to go DIRECTLY through the bullet patterns. But we have to learn funky timings with 8-way movement instead while bullets come from absolutely any and all conceivable directions! (There are some precious few that actually do, especially newer ones).

Good news is that modern indie devs don't have to be constrained with this flak. Raging Blasters is a modern masterpiece: fairly consistent difficulty (whether it's easier or harder) for example, or analog shmups like Astebreed and a handful of others that I can think of, but you need the controller (no arcade board that I know of for an analog stick).

[Sengoku Strider]

As a newer shmupper whose limited experience in the past was console shmups, I feel that arcade shmups are tragically hamstrung in many ways for game design thanks to the quarter-munching business model.

You'll find tough arcade shmups are the exact ones serious players revere the most. If you look at the top 25 from last year, you'll see only 3-4 of them aren't arcade games. The good ones are made with care, and while they're tough, they don't cheat you. While I love me a good console cruise 'em up, the thing about this genre is that it's at its best when it's at its most intense. The tough games are demanding, but because of that they force you to learn and improve the most.

My other complaint is, why don't we have analog arcade sticks ever since the late 90's? I want to go DIRECTLY through the bullet patterns. But we have to learn funky timings with 8-way movement instead while bullets come from absolutely any and all conceivable directions! (There are some precious few that actually do, especially newer ones).

You will not find very many players who share this opinion. Even in the past, the only shooters designed around analog movement were games that were meant to mimic flight controls in some fashion like Space Harrier or After Burner.

The thing about digital movement is there's no startup, momentum, or finding yourself vaguely positioned between one of the 8 cardinals; it's on or off, the most precise form of control. With a bit of practice pretty much anyone can reach a point where they can smoothly move 'through' the bullet patterns, as you say.

This is a pretty in depth video that goes over a lot of the fundamental concepts of playing the genre. When things like micrododging & tap dodging start to click for you, it'll make a lot more sense why digital movement is the genre standard:

https://youtu.be/z4AA8GRDalc

[LenDar]

You'll find tough arcade shmups are the exact ones serious players revere the most. If you look at the top 25 from last year, you'll see only 3-4 of them aren't arcade games. The good ones are made with care, and while they're tough, they don't cheat you. While I love me a good console cruise 'em up, the thing about this genre is that it's at its best when it's at its most intense. The tough games are demanding, but because of that they force you to learn and improve the most.

I'm aware of all that. The only thing I disagree with about this is the suggestion that the console shmups are indeed a tier lower in quality.

I LOVE Battle Garegga for example. It's bliss. And I'm really grateful for M2's "Premium Mode." If I'm not making a gross error (and someone can let me know), people who 1CC BG usually strategize around doing things like intentionally dying in certain places to prevent the ranking from going up too high and unmanageable. That's ridiculous. In my mind the ranking system is clearly there to prevent a pro player from monopolizing the arcade machine with too few quarters.

What I heard about the developer of Same! Same! Same! (or maybe it was Sky Shark, I forget), is that he was pressured against his personal desire to make the game harder than he wanted for this very sort of purpose.

All that to say, there's no doubt that there is amazing game design in arcade shmups (or arcade anything). Inconsistent difficulty isn't "unfair" but it's really jarring, and (say) Cave shmups always make me feel like I'm playing two different games: the first part is one that can be overcome with quick thinking and reflexes, while the latter part requires memorization. There is NOTHING wrong with either one, but I'm still getting used to what tends to be considered jarring and a design flaw (i.e. difficulty spikes) in any other discussion of gaming.

I'm not saying that they're "cheating" you though. As experiences at home, theoretically one credit-spamming run shows you pretty much everything and the experience is cards face-up -- NOT "cheating."

If you're well used to it, that's one thing. My perspective is that it takes a LOT of mental hoop-jumping to get used to. I'm not convinced that the designers of shmup, in all their demonstrated game design skill, really would have made their games in such a way apart from the arcade's business model. Modern indie shmups benefit from not being so constrained (PERFECT example of this, again, is Raging Blasters with such extremely consistent difficulty).

You will not find very many players who share this opinion. Even in the past, the only shooters designed around analog movement were games that were meant to mimic flight controls in some fashion like Space Harrier or After Burner.

*Astebreed
*Sterreden
*Jet Lancer
*Oshyaberi!
*Debris Infinity / Geometry Wars
*1976 - Back to midway (this one in particular feels divine as far as I'm concerned)

(I think Gradius V does too but I haven't tried that yet, sadly)

To be clear, far be it from me to deny that 8-way movement is doable, that people have fun doing it, etc. And I'm considering what you're saying, although so far, I still don't know where the harm could be in an arcade stick that has full analog movement if they but existed and games were made for them. In my mind I'm still wanting to fly my ship directly through those openings and feels unnecessarily artificial that I can't do that.

I can understand some value in well-defined inputs as you're saying. Furthermore, using an octagonal gate helps with an arcade stick. Nevertheless, the shortest path is a straight line as they say. When I want to go somewhere, going to it directly should be the most innately intuitive. Maybe there's an argument both ways here, I'm not sure, but am considering it.

Thanks for your thoughts though, and I'll remember this video.

[To Far Away Times]

Garegga is an outlier.

I think every notable shmup ever made is designed to be fair and beaten on one credit.

It's only really the Euroshmups where you run into unfair design flaws, but then again, most of those games aren't notable.

[Sengoku Strider]

I'm aware of all that. The only thing I disagree with about this is the suggestion that the console shmups are indeed a tier lower in quality.

Oh, I'm the last guy around here you'll catch putting down console shooters. I had more than a dozen on my list & honourable mentions. I was speaking about intensity, which you'll find plenty of in stuff like Power Strike/Aleste.

I LOVE Battle Garegga for example. It's bliss. And I'm really grateful for M2's "Premium Mode." If I'm not making a gross error (and someone can let me know), people who 1CC BG usually strategize around doing things like intentionally dying in certain places to prevent the ranking from going up too high and unmanageable. That's ridiculous. In my mind the ranking system is clearly there to prevent a pro player from monopolizing the arcade machine with too few quarters.

Yes, you're right about the rank system. Like Far Away Times said, it's an outlier. The people who are into Garegga play it obsessively precisely because they enjoy the idiosyncratic way that rank manipulation and scoring work together in that game. It wound up being mechanically deep for score chasers.

What I heard about the developer of Same! Same! Same! (or maybe it was Sky Shark, I forget), is that he was pressured against his personal desire to make the game harder than he wanted for this very sort of purpose.

Console devs are no less susceptible to that pressure. Many games back in the 8 & 16-bit eras were made unreasonably hard by managerial fiat, in order to prevent people from renting them & finishing them in a weekend. At the opposite end, in the post-rental era all sorts of games have been designed as frictionless content tourism, to maximize sales through building around the lowest common denominator skill level/patience of players.

*Astebreed
*Sterreden
*Jet Lancer
*Oshyaberi!
*Debris Infinity / Geometry Wars
*1976 - Back to midway (this one in particular feels divine as far as I'm concerned)

You were talking about the 90s & before, so that's what I was responding to. From the PS2/Dreamcast era forward, analog sticks were standard on controllers, so naturally things like Geometry Wars will tend to include support for them. But that's not necessarily the same thing as designing for analog movement, rather than just having the analog stick respond digitally, as any Switch game will do. In that (frequent) case, the analog stick is just acting as a less efficient digital input device.

[jehu]

I'm aware of all that. The only thing I disagree with about this is the suggestion that the console shmups are indeed a tier lower in quality.

I LOVE Battle Garegga for example. It's bliss. And I'm really grateful for M2's "Premium Mode." If I'm not making a gross error (and someone can let me know), people who 1CC BG usually strategize around doing things like intentionally dying in certain places to prevent the ranking from going up too high and unmanageable. That's ridiculous. In my mind the ranking system is clearly there to prevent a pro player from monopolizing the arcade machine with too few quarters.

What I heard about the developer of Same! Same! Same! (or maybe it was Sky Shark, I forget), is that he was pressured against his personal desire to make the game harder than he wanted for this very sort of purpose.

All that to say, there's no doubt that there is amazing game design in arcade shmups (or arcade anything). Inconsistent difficulty isn't "unfair" but it's really jarring, and (say) Cave shmups always make me feel like I'm playing two different games: the first part is one that can be overcome with quick thinking and reflexes, while the latter part requires memorization. There is NOTHING wrong with either one, but I'm still getting used to what tends to be considered jarring and a design flaw (i.e. difficulty spikes) in any other discussion of gaming.

I'm not saying that they're "cheating" you though. As experiences at home, theoretically one credit-spamming run shows you pretty much everything and the experience is cards face-up -- NOT "cheating."

If you're well used to it, that's one thing. My perspective is that it takes a LOT of mental hoop-jumping to get used to. I'm not convinced that the designers of shmup, in all their demonstrated game design skill, really would have made their games in such a way apart from the arcade's business model. Modern indie shmups benefit from not being so constrained (PERFECT example of this, again, is Raging Blasters with such extremely consistent difficulty).

Your opinion is a pretty standard one for a player who is on the road to developing a better STG-skillset and more nuanced appreciation for this genre's design conventions.

When you say that 'console STGs are not of lower quality than their arcade counterparts,' your concept of quality is defined along a set of parameters that are aligned with your skillset and knowledge base. And that's fine - not meant to be a disparaging comment.

But you'll have noticed that the games that have become the defining pillars of the genre tend to be arcade titles. It's silly to think that this is all 'mental gymnastics' on the part of the most longstanding players around. These games have attained their status in the community because they have a kind of sustainable quality that makes them rewarding for a person to play for months and years at a time. What is this sustainability if not a real, enduring metric of quality? There are, of course, console games that share in this sustainable quality - but I'd even go as far as to argue that this quality, in most cases, emerges from an adherence to arcade-inspired design principles.

Raging Blasters is a fine game, and has the relatively easygoing spirit of a console shmup. But, like many other shmups that share its design language, it will not be able to sustain you for any great length of time.

[To Far Away Times]

I'm a big fan of console shmups, and I really wish I had more in my list. Many of them would probably sit in that 26 - 50 range for me. There are many, many great console shmups. There are even a handful of console versions like SNES Gradius III, Darius II on the Genesis, and Thunder Force III where I think they're a bit better than their arcade versions.

Raging Blasters, a game that I assume most people 1CC on their second or third try, is too easy.

I think there are some console shmups that are too easy to have a lasting impact; but I think the games that take at least 8-10 hours to figure out and clear are challenging enough to be in the conversation. Enough time for a little repetition to set in. Enough time to know the music pretty well. Even if something like Thunderforce III or Axelay is "easy", you won't blind 1CC it, and it takes practice and learning to clear, and clearing it gives a sense of accomplishment. I'm very much a 1CC tourist, and I don't play the mechanically deep games for score, so something like DDP is not going to be a 1,000 hour game for me and my enjoyment from the game is going to be from a survival standpoint only.

The only shmups I've ever really dabbled in for score are Futari, Cotton Rock N Roll, Rezion EX, and Ikaruga since I thought they had really cool scoring systems.

[Rastan78]

If you're well used to it, that's one thing. My perspective is that it takes a LOT of mental hoop-jumping to get used to. I'm not convinced that the designers of shmup, in all their demonstrated game design skill, really would have made their games in such a way apart from the arcade's business model.

You make some good points. That could very well be true in some cases, but you can't forget about the players. Part of the reason designers and arcade ops had to be paranoid about games being too easy was that at the peak time for arcade shmups, game centers in Japan had an extremely skilled player base.

Any game might get cleared in a matter of days, and some would get cleared even at location tests before the game was even out. Since the pro players could potentially spend a lot, you wouldn't want them moving on to other games after 2 days. Then designers had to also think about keeping the first few stages fun for casual players. A difficult balancing act to please everyone for sure.

So yes, arcade ops might have put pressure on devs to increase difficulty, but in some ways that might have been good for the genre (at least within its original context of Japanese game centers) bc arcade ops were directly in touch with the skill level of current players and how quickly they could clear games or get high scores and move on.

people who 1CC BG usually strategize around doing things like intentionally dying in certain places to prevent the ranking from going up too high and unmanageable. That's ridiculous. In my mind the ranking system is clearly there to prevent a pro player from monopolizing the arcade machine with too few quarters.

I agree 100% that was the original intention behind the rank system, at least on a very basic level. If I had to speculate, I think they knew pros would optimize strategies that involved suiciding, especially since its a way to pick up more bombs, which can lead to higher scores.

Personally, the way I approach games is to try to play in the best way allowed by the game without focusing on the designers true intention (which is speculative and unknowable in most cases anyway). I tend to prefer games that have a complicated enough system that players will continue to find new strategies long after release, even finding stuff that developers never would have foreseen. Some would call this "emergent" gameplay.
Often a game like this will have some level of jank, idiosyncratic design decsions, or imperfection in balance.

Maybe this is bc I'm predominantly a fighting game player, so I tend to think of games as competition between other players. FG players often stretch game systems far past the intentions of the original design with unblockable setups, kara cancels and so on. Often the game is more interesting for having these things. Some even complain that in today's world of infinite balance patches, games are less janky and more balanced, but also have less room for player innovation and expression than old school arcade titles.

Then again a lot of players tend to think of shmups not as a competiton between players (as in scoring competition), but as a bout between the player and the designer's original vision. Which is of course a completely valid way to play. No one is saying you have to look beneath the game code and play in a perfectly optimized way if that's not what's fun for you.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

Having to suicide to reasonably clear a game is BS, and having to suicide to get optimal scores is not as bad but still terrible.

Now let's be real for a moment. No one likes Garegga because of that mechanic. it's the rank management behind it along with many great designs of the core game. Imagine if, for example, the game ranked you down for going pacifist for a while instead of suiciding. Pros would find the optimal moment to take a break from shooting to manage their rank. This is exactly what high tier Garegga plays look like. Only you're eating a bullet.

In other words, the execution is outdated - no modern game should enforce player death. But the core idea is great - managing rank like a resource using careful play.

[Sengoku Strider]

I'm a big fan of console shmups, and I really wish I had more in my list. Many of them would probably sit in that 26 - 50 range for me. There are many, many great console shmups. There are even a handful of console versions like SNES Gradius III, Darius II on the Genesis, and Thunder Force III where I think they're a bit better than their arcade versions.

That's pretty much the case with me. A number of those console-first titles got bumped down to my honourable mentions. But many of the arcade titles I listed are based on my experience with console ports which are appreciably different, like Tatsujin, Ordyne & Same!³. And SNES Gradius III specifically made my list. Went the other way with Thunder Force III though. AC all day, it just feels wrong with out the extra sound channels.

Maybe this is bc I'm predominantly a fighting game player, so I tend to think of games as competition between other players. FG players often stretch game systems far past the intentions of the original design with unblockable setups, kara cancels and so on. Often the game is more interesting for having these things. Some even complain that in today's world of infinite balance patches, games are less janky and more balanced, but also have less room for player innovation and expression than old school arcade titles.

Then again a lot of players tend to think of shmups not as a competiton between players (as in scoring competition), but as a bout between the player and the designer's original vision. Which is of course a completely valid way to play. No one is saying you have to look beneath the game code and play in a perfectly optimized way if that's not what's fun for you.

I came out of fighting games as well, because I found shmups to be the only single player genre out there consistently giving the same kind of rush that live competition fighters did. Except having my face stomped in by Gunbird 2 feels much less personal than getting washed online at Street Fighter.

[LenDar]

But you'll have noticed that the games that have become the defining pillars of the genre tend to be arcade titles. It's silly to think that this is all 'mental gymnastics' on the part of the most longstanding players around. These games have attained their status in the community because they have a kind of sustainable quality that makes them rewarding for a person to play for months and years at a time. What is this sustainability if not a real, enduring metric of quality? There are, of course, console games that share in this sustainable quality - but I'd even go as far as to argue that this quality, in most cases, emerges from an adherence to arcade-inspired design principles.

Raging Blasters is a fine game, and has the relatively easygoing spirit of a console shmup. But, like many other shmups that share its design language, it will not be able to sustain you for any great length of time.

I'd like to respectfully suggest re-reading exactly where the "mental gymnastics" are in my post.

It's not that the game is hard. I LOVE Ketsui even as it's utterly destroying me the overwhelming majority of the time. Its design is brilliant and I constantly admire the care that is clearly put into every moment of it.

My comment is about the difficulty incline. There's a huge difference. And I'll give another example of a shmup I really like: Esp. Ra. De. That game is mostly pretty easy compared to Ketsui BUT it depends on which part of it! The final boss of Esp Ra. De. is WAY harder than the first stage of Ketsui, for example, many times over. I remember thinking, "gah I need to put on my Ketsui hat for this." It's bizarre and is normally considered a design flaw called "difficulty spikes." And I see that it must be rooted in a scheme to munch people's quarters: "I got REALLY far and don't want to lose my progress so I want to keep putting in quarters!"

Did I say they aren't superbly designed games nonetheless? No.
Did I say they're unfair? No.
Did I say I hate them for being hard? No.

It's the crazy difficulty incline that's a tough pill to swallow. Crimzon Clover is said to have a great novice mode but I can't stand it as the first stage is way too boring, as it wasn't very hard to do it no-death in arcade in the first place.

My praise for Raging Blasters is, this might be the best example of a shmup with consistent difficulty that I've ever seen. The WHOLE game is very clearly designed on its normal setting to be beaten on reflexes without a need for memorization.

I have similar praise for Contra 3, where there's simply no way it can be beaten on hard on a first try on a blind run. But it has terrific scaling difficulty to train a player for its dance routine to work you up to hard.

I hope that doesn't sound argumentative, but just showing the point with my impressions so far and being clear that I'm really enjoying getting into the genre for its benefits including the arcade classics. It looks like the modern indie scene has some really great advantages in that they don't need to be constrained by the arcade business model -- yes, console shmups are kind of like that too, I think partly because of game rentals (I heard this was true about "The Lion King"). It's all legit stuff though, and thank God for M2 and the things they've done with their ports with BG's premium mode or arcade training which has made worlds of difference for my enjoyment of some of these games -- getting the great stuff out of them.

[LenDar]

Having to suicide to reasonably clear a game is BS, and having to suicide to get optimal scores is not as bad but still terrible.

Now let's be real for a moment. No one likes Garegga because of that mechanic. it's the rank management behind it along with many great designs of the core game. Imagine if, for example, the game ranked you down for going pacifist for a while instead of suiciding. Pros would find the optimal moment to take a break from shooting to manage their rank. This is exactly what high tier Garegga plays look like. Only you're eating a bullet.


In other words, the execution is outdated - no modern game should enforce player death. But the core idea is great - managing rank like a resource using careful play.

Yeah the core idea is great. I'm not familiar on all of BG's intricacies, but like you said, with some tweaking the core idea is very good. I imagine that success at the higher rank rewards with better score.

Again, I'm soooo happy for M2's premium mode, and I'm nuts in love with Battle Garegga in any case anyway. It's almost impossible to play that game and not have fun.

[LenDar]

I'm a big fan of console shmups, and I really wish I had more in my list. Many of them would probably sit in that 26 - 50 range for me. There are many, many great console shmups.
Raging Blasters, a game that I assume most people 1CC on their second or third try, is too easy.

I did a 1CC on normal on my first try, actually. Some of that I attribute to the way the game gives warnings for incoming threats so as to prevent a trial-and-error gameplay experience (that's especially great for an easier setting) as otherwise you'd get killed by things you couldn't have known about.

But it has two settings higher than its normal difficulty though. Is it still too easy on its highest one?

[LenDar]

If you're well used to it, that's one thing. My perspective is that it takes a LOT of mental hoop-jumping to get used to. I'm not convinced that the designers of shmup, in all their demonstrated game design skill, really would have made their games in such a way apart from the arcade's business model.

You make some good points. That could very well be true in some cases, but you can't forget about the players. Part of the reason designers and arcade ops had to be paranoid about games being too easy was that at the peak time for arcade shmups, game centers in Japan had an extremely skilled player base.

I can imagine that. And arcade shmups start off really doable and give me that false sense of security "I can get this on reflexes!" Not by stage 3!!!! (or thereabouts) And don't get me wrong, like with Ketsui, I very much enjoy learning what's coming and thinking of strategies for what's coming after learning, challenging both for strategy and execution.

The Ghouls 'n Ghosts series, IIRC does really spike in difficulty quite the same way as it's kind of continuously tough. But maybe others get a different impression.

[jehu]

I see your point, LenDar. I have to be more careful about not making it sound like I'm dumping on console STGs. If I had contributed a top 25, you can bet a handful of them would be there. But they wouldn't be at the tippy-top where I'd enshrine all the games I find renewing, the ones as sacred as bundles of code and pixels get.

The difficulty curves are features, not bugs - I argue. Speaking generally, of course - there are outliers, which I'm sure we'd agree ramp up clumsily, inorganically. But the cream of the crop - the 'forever games' - on-ramp you with manageable first levels, and give you something truly worthy of your time and sustained effort by the end. The genre thrives on its brevity, and you don't want a game that begins to pose a challenge to the experienced only in the last 8 minutes on the last stage. And if they are 'forever-and-ever' games, they'll have a mechanism - tied to scoring, most likely - that'll give veterans something compelling to do in tandem with 'survival' on repeat plays. A lot of the discussion around arcade-oriented design is so focused on 'difficulty = profit' that it loses sight of the fact that excessive difficulty is really not a way to make a game profitable. Machines will earn a lot more money if they feel 'fair,' give the player a sense that it's their skill (not the 'unfair' difficulty) that is gating progress, and make repetition as rewarding as possible. Console STGs do not have the same economic incentive to promote long-term rewarding repetition in the same way, though plenty manage to be replayable. But again, the economic incentive structure behind the design isn't the same, and console shmups, thankfully, borrow a lot of their design language from the arcade.

Also, when a player is just sampling an unfamiliar game, it's difficult to judge whether a perceived difficulty spike is really uneven. The true difficulty of these games only reveals itself when you have a handle on the game's mechanics, the enemy layouts, the way it expects you to expend your resources etc. etc. The games are balanced by developers who have a particular playstyle that they're designed around, and - if the game isn't a simple move-and-shoot - it's up to the player to figure out how to actually play before difficulty can be properly assessed.

Anyway LenDar, this is meant to be more of a comment in defense of the arcade design language and not so much an argument directed against you or your specific arguments. It seems I framed my last comment with a bit of excess combativeness - no hard feelings, wasn't meant to be so prickly.

[Lethe]

My comment is about the difficulty incline. There's a huge difference. And I'll give another example of a shmup I really like: Esp. Ra. De. That game is mostly pretty easy compared to Ketsui BUT it depends on which part of it! The final boss of Esp Ra. De. is WAY harder than the first stage of Ketsui, for example, many times over. I remember thinking, "gah I need to put on my Ketsui hat for this." It's bizarre and is normally considered a design flaw called "difficulty spikes." And I see that it must be rooted in a scheme to munch people's quarters: "I got REALLY far and don't want to lose my progress so I want to keep putting in quarters!"

If the rest of the game is easy then why don't you have the resources to bomb spam Garra to death? Should only take 3 lives. This kind of thing is typically how Cave games are balanced, and it's an approach that works: get more consistent at the easier parts so you can skip the hard parts. Thank god it isn't Garegga. (Which is, as I'll always say, a massively overstated problem, and if you know how to get to stage 5 without completely fucking the rank up then you won't need to think about rank control for the part of the game that's actually tricky to survive)

I'm going to echo Rastan's sentiment about emergent play for a slightly different reason. Challenge is something that can be overcome; boredom isn't. I'm going to judge games on how well their mechanics can engage me, not on how quickly I can make progress. If I like a game enough to die to the final boss I'm probably going to play it again anyway - so I might as well get the most out of it, take my time, sort out the routes, try to score a little and such. And if the game's at all well-designed then that better understanding of its attitude will carry over to my play later on. The game doesn't necessarily have to directly reward me for that to be the case.

Also yeah, it's a good point that difficulty is absurdly fetishized in this sphere when it's really the least interesting element. Unfortunately a lot of very easy games aren't interesting mechanically either!

[Rastan78]

In other words, the execution is outdated - no modern game should enforce player death. But the core idea is great - managing rank like a resource using careful play.

Bakraid used suiciding as a game mechanic to great effect. You have to suicide much more than in Garegga to score as you need to be constantly stalling the chain timer and replenishing bomb stock with well timed suicides and in turn picking up extends constantly. Also the game is fun to play for survival while ignoring that mechanic and scoring completely.

For a developer, I think it would be a mistake to rule out unique ideas like this automatically.

As a player if you want to avoid games where suciding plays some role in totally optimized scoring play, either to control rank, checkpoint milk, or replenish bombs etc., you'll be ruling out dozens of games including some of the best in the genre from R-Type to Raiden Fighters 2.

And then if you want to rule out games with malleable rank systems under the surface that can be influenced by players actions like not picking up max power ups etc. you'll be throwing out even more games.

[Lethe]

Having to suicide to reasonably clear a game is BS

I just tried a credit of Garegga for pure survival; no suiciding at all, avoiding all medals and powering up gradually. Didn't clear but that was only because I threw my spaghetti out the window and died 7 times on the final bosses (plus I got shit Glow Squid RNG). 2 deaths before stage 7, both easily avoided mistakes and nothing to do with the patterns being challenging. Rank at the end was higher than normal, but not insurmountable, and before that it wasn't functionally different to "normal" gameplay. Even stage 6 is easy given you're justified in bombing all the hangar doors. I'm not an amazing player and especially not at this game, so if I can do this in one attempt...

Spoiler

[copy-paster]

I just did rank control only for first 4 stages, the goal is to enter stage 5 with low rank possible and blast through everything.

[To Far Away Times]

Wait you can just not power up in Garegga and that rank doesn't go batshit? The suicide/scoring dance isn't mandatory?

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

As a player if you want to avoid games where suciding plays some role in totally optimized scoring play, either to control rank, checkpoint milk, or replenish bombs etc., you'll be ruling out dozens of games including some of the best in the genre from R-Type to Raiden Fighters 2.

And then if you want to rule out games with malleable rank systems under the surface that can be influenced by players actions like not picking up max power ups etc. you'll be throwing out even more games.

I don't have anything against this since I understand why it was done. I'm just saying that no modern game should use these, because they're crude and player-unfriendly. There's nicer and more creative ways to manipulate rank.

[Lethe]

Wait you can just not power up in Garegga and that rank doesn't go batshit? The suicide/scoring dance isn't mandatory?

It's obviously harder than dying a couple of times before you stock too many lives and stop losing rank from mistakes. Playing in the style CPS mentioned gets you 30-40% rank at the end, compared to the ~60% I got. But yeah, completely possible.

When it comes to less "reasonable" standards of play, Miyamoto WR holder sddkaede has a no miss no bomb (rank is still way lower than my attempt above ), a no options run and a run where he plays with only 10hz auto and still gets a G score. Some food for thought on what's really necessary in this game.

[m.sniffles.esq]

Even in the past, the only shooters designed around analog movement were games that were meant to mimic flight controls in some fashion like Space Harrier or After Burner.

Well, there's Centipede, which I feel is made by the trackball control. The ports that don't support it aren't nearly as enjoyable.