Going down through the clouds

[Shatterhand]

Does anyone remember VERTICAL shmups with levels where you are going *down* through clouds... like you are in a descending into the atmosphere or something like that, even though the gameplay, obviously, remains vertical with a top-down view?

I can remember the start of level 3 of Rayforce which is.. kinda like that .... but I am pretty sure I've seen this in more games, but I can't seem to remember right now.

If anyone can remember more games doing that... thank you.

[BIL]

Do yoko-oriented verticals count? Soukyuugurentai's third stage / Descent Into The Sea Of Clouds is a huge, iconic favourite. Starts in the stratosphere, ends skimming the treetops.

Much briefer, more of an interlude, but I'll also mention Kamui, whose stage 1 boss approach was almost certainly influenced by the same; a quick dive from upper orbit, with interceptors bursting up through the clouds. Game's heavily inspired by both Souky and Rayforce, unsurprisingly. Stage 3-1, while it's set in a canyon, is also notable for combining nonstop action with an absolutely rocketing sense of diving speed.

Finally, it's an outlier on a few counts, but Metal Hawk lets you ascend and descend through cloud cover as you please. Generally speaking, if you're up in the clouds, you won't be able to hit vital ground targets. OTOH, they won't be able to hit you either, and a breather can be nice. So it's something of an aesthetic constant, balancing evasion against the ticking clock.

I wish we had YT embeds. :3

[Bassa-Bassa]

Earth Joker.

I vaguely remember Sky Alert trying to do it as well, though it was not immediately evident. I may be wrong, though, it's a game too easy to forget.

[guigui]

Not through clouds, but Ikaruga's diving in the machine at the beginning of stage 2 looks epic enough to quote ?

[Shatterhand]

Do yoko-oriented verticals count? Soukyuugurentai's third stage / Descent Into The Sea Of Clouds is a huge, iconic favourite. Starts in the stratosphere, ends skimming the treetops.

Much briefer, more of an interlude, but I'll also mention Kamui, whose stage 1 boss approach was almost certainly influenced by the same; a quick dive from upper orbit, with interceptors bursting up through the clouds. Game's heavily inspired by both Souky and Rayforce, unsurprisingly. Stage 3-1, while it's set in a canyon, is also notable for combining nonstop action with an absolutely rocketing sense of diving speed.

Finally, it's an outlier on a few counts, but Metal Hawk lets you ascend and descend through cloud cover as you please. Generally speaking, if you're up in the clouds, you won't be able to hit vital ground targets. OTOH, they won't be able to hit you either, and a breather can be nice. So it's something of an aesthetic constant, balancing evasion against the ticking clock.

I wish we had YT embeds. :3

All those examples were great and exactly what I was looking for, thank you

Not through clouds, but Ikaruga's diving in the machine at the beginning of stage 2 looks epic enough to quote ?

It does look awesome, but the point of view is from behind while you go through the gates. I wanted something where the point of view stays from the top.

I just wanted to show a friend how *it is logic* in a shmup that you may descent through clouds while staying perpendicular to them.

[Restart_Point]

Namco's NebulasRay (which generally has a similar aesthetic to RayForce) and Taito's "Tokio" aka Scramble Formation come to mind (although this is an old arcade with no fancy scaling etc). There must be quite a few others im sure, I always dig it too. Some outliers are RSG intro (zooming downwards), and Typhoon aka A-Jax (Konami 1987) which has an entire stage like this, which plays a little like Pilotwings.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

This exact thing is stage 4 of Crimzon Clover's gimmick, with your ship going up and down through various cloud layers at certain points of the stage for cinematic reasons: https://youtu.be/x2FRVkYykgo?t=874

Solid State Survivor also has a couple of spots like this including a boss fight while descending a vertical shaft and a Ketsui-esque stage 5 descent to the final boss: https://youtu.be/PI-pPo2dNWA?t=1212

It's not unusual to imagine futuristic craft are capable of hovering or more directly controlling up/down thrust similar to a Harrier jet, let alone flying up or down through cloud layers by simply inclining at a slight angle.

Trizeal has a neat downward shaft section where you actually have to dodge large girders to avoid hitting them as you descend: https://youtu.be/PO9wu8ApMbI?t=1032

[cfx]

There's no clouds, but you descend and then ascend in stage one of Phelios.

[BIL]

and Taito's "Tokio" aka Scramble Formation come to mind (although this is an old arcade with no fancy scaling etc).

Always thought that was classy, how they simulated transitions between low- and high-altitude stages via those cloudbank interludes (where you're typically rushing to take down a massive boss before timeout; great sleight-of-hand). Souky does something similar, even with its immensely beefier hardware, giving you a glimpse of the canyon and its ant-tiny convoy mid-descent, before the clouds return. Craftsmanship never goes out of style!

You can tell Tokio's devs put a ton of TLC into the cityscape BGs. I just wish it didn't have those awkward strobing bullets, something its clear successor Master of Weapon inherited... Happily, MoW's ACA release lets you disable the buggers! Much comfier. That too has some striking high/low vistas; you go from dogfighting mutant horrors miles above the city in st1, to skimming over st2's freeway in hot pursuit of godawful skittering crab-tanks. Despite the lack of scaling, there's this great continuity, a place gone mad both high and low.

This exact thing is stage 4 of Crimzon Clover's gimmick, with your ship going up and down through various cloud layers at certain points of the stage for cinematic reasons: https://youtu.be/x2FRVkYykgo?t=874

Totally forgot this one! It's one of my favourite portrayals of the classic High-Performance Jetfighter aesthetic (quoth Vic Viper's Yu-Gi-Oh card). There's this awesome sense of sheer climbing force, as the scrolling accelerates and your ship powers into the upper atmosphere, before diving back into the classic Garegga lightning corridor and the cityscape below. The soaring BGM is bullseye-perfect, too. Makes me think of an adrenalized STG take on Panzer Dragoon's classic "Flight." Again, using the cloudbank BG layers to cycle through backdrops is a really efficient way of conveying massive vertical scale.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Found another doujin game that does a neat perspective trick similar to Crimzon Clover, might predate it: https://youtu.be/MPZJ4JeS14s?t=162

[m.sniffles.esq]

Karous does this, but it's a stage by stage progression, rather than the descent being a part of a single stage

[Lord British]

Sounds to me like this is the first stage of Typhoon (and/or the second stage of Ajax). If it's been a long time, in your memory it would be both a vert shmup and a sorta Afterburner shmup.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KsRqmYmYsA

[MJR]

Typhoon has the best "descending" through the clouds sequence, the most memorable through the clouds is the vertical shooter section in Thunder Blade at area 3. That massive jet hiding in the cloud with that perspective scrolling is still one of the unmatched moments in vertical shmups presentation.

[jehu]

how could you all be forgetting about fighting hawk oh my gosh darn diddly goodness those clouds sticking to the ship like cotton candy

[Warp_Rattler]

Not through clouds, but Ikaruga's diving in the machine at the beginning of stage 2 looks epic enough to quote ?

My first thought was the dive through the clouds in the middle of Stage 1, in that transition from the Sword of whatever launch thingie to the part where you're flying over the trees.

And this may not be quite as dramatic, but the progression through at least the first three stages (3A-3C) of Radiant Silvergun are a sort of very gradual descent through cloud layers. It may continue past that point, but this is what I remembered off the top of my head.

[MintyTheCat]

soukyugurentai has at least one "going down into the clouds" stage.

[-Fish-]

Ganablade

https://youtu.be/W-qdc_99fZE?si=SsVuEf2KDLT8kNOy&t=985

[Lander]

Area 3 of Zanac Neo is modeled around the idea, though it's a tad slow-paced next to some of the radical DIVE DIVE DIVE examples that have been mentioned.

The descent to the final boss is a lot more exciting, and a nifty escalation in presentation, but doesn't have any clouds.

Love Ikaruga's rendition of it; machine pornography almost on the level of R-Type III's reactor zoom