Space Invaders dev Tomohiro Nishikado says danmaku games are "dead end" for the genre - thoughts?

[Light1000]

https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025 ... a-dead-end
https://www.timeextension.com/features/ ... -games-fun
“As for more modern danmaku-type games, I don't really like these. However, they are probably an inevitable result of players becoming more skilled with these types of shooting games, and developers are forced to outdo them in some way. This is some kind of never-ending battle."
“Actually, the first prototype of Space Invaders was much easier, as I am not that good at games. However, I let my colleagues test the game, and they all said it was too easy. I was initially worried about making it too hard, but the final version shipped with that difficulty, and everyone seemed to think that was fine. Game balancing is always tricky, but the conflict between gamers and developers forces this kind of evolution. However, I do feel like danmaku is sort of a dead-end functionally."
“This is because it gets to a point where newer players cannot enter, and I think this is why modern shooting games have disappeared, as they got too difficult.
“That said, though I have never played myself, games like Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga, which focus more on technical strategy rather than brute force difficulty, are a better approach. I feel that focusing purely on making a game difficult doesn't help the game bring in a broader audience. Games like Ikaruga are a smarter way to evolve the genre."

[Creamy Goodness]

I feel bad dogging a pioneer, but this sounds like "old man shakes fist at cloud." The concept of the short visceral arcade style gameplay has died in general.

[m.sniffles.esq]

I saw this earlier and... I dunno, he's not wrong...

I mean, there was this theory that the whole reason Ikaruga caught on with the 'norms' was because frat dudes need slickness, lens flare, and bombast in their macho, chest-beating-bragging-right tests of video game prowess. And while that's partially true, it's also because the game is accessible before becoming a macho, chest-beating-bragging-right test of video game prowess. The slickness just made the whole thing more attractive.

[Sengoku Strider]

I saw this earlier and... I dunno, he's not wrong...

I mean, there was this theory that the whole reason Ikaruga caught on with the 'norms' was because frat dudes need slickness, lens flare, and bombast in their macho, chest-beating-bragging-right tests of video game prowess. And while that's partially true, it's also because the game is accessible before becoming a macho, chest-beating-bragging-right test of video game prowess. The slickness just made the whole thing more attractive.

Just need shmups with wolverine health and PvP.

[BulletMagnet]

It almost feels to me like something is lost in translation here, but off the cuff I would posit that he's conflating two different things, namely whether or not a game is prohibitively challenging and whether or not it can be classified as a danmaku. Some of the latter subgenre are quite difficult, sure, but so are a ton of "old-school" shmups, and they've been openly reveling in that fact for a very long time - Toaplan released Tatsujin ("expert") in 1988, and the even more infamously brutal Tatsujin-Ou ("expert king") in 1992. Heck, Namco put out the extra-challenging Super Xevious even earlier, and I'd imagine it has predecessors of its own.

That being said, a related perspective that I might be more inclined to agree with is that danmaku games by their very nature appear more challenging than other shmups, even if they aren't - if someone sees footage of a game with tons of bullets onscreen, especially if they have no idea how small the player hitbox is or what bullet-cancelling mechanics might be present, their first reaction will be "that looks impossible", especially when compared to shooters with lower concentrations of enemy fire. In terms of "surface appeal" to newer players I could see where a viewpoint like Nishikado's might merit consideration, but beyond that point it strikes me as, if nothing else, an over-generalization.

[m.sniffles.esq]

Just need shmups with wolverine health and PvP.

Has there been a shooter with a parry/counter system?

(I feel like there had to be a least one, but I can't think of any off hand)

[BulletMagnet]

Has there been a shooter with a parry/counter system?

Giga Wing was the first thing to come to mind, though I imagine something like this is more what you mean here.

[m.sniffles.esq]

I imagine something like this is more what you mean here.

Yeah, I meant that
(I thought Gigawing was just a straight bullet absorber... Maybe I'm wrong. I've smoked like a field of weed since the last time I played Gigawing)

[SuperDeadite]

Honestly, I think Yuzo Koshiro's idea for Earthian is the right idea. It is going to be easy and accessable for newcomers, but having a proper challenge too for those that want it. People who don't play shooters will buy it just for his name alone, so he wants to make it enjoyable for all.

[sunnshiner]

“That said, though I have never played myself, games like Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga, which focus more on technical strategy rather than brute force difficulty, are a better approach.

Nope and nope again. With a side of nope. I'll have the nope for dessert too please.

[Loom1es]

Just need shmups with wolverine health and PvP.

Has there been a shooter with a parry/counter system?

(I feel like there had to be a least one, but I can't think of any off hand)

Reflex by Siter Skain has a parry system, works really well. Not many games use it but titles like Gigawing/Mars Matrix have something similar.

[Lemnear]

I think he's partially right, danmaku are the extreme of "some" key features of SHMUPS. There's definitely more room for creativity in the old school. You have more than 2/3 ships, and if you don't have that many ships, you have many different weapons to pick up, or innovative levels with more R-Type-like structures.
As much as I love Danmaku, the basic scheme on which they are built is rather limiting in the end, also it's clear that in one aspect he's right..."This is because it gets to a point where newer players cannot enter, and I think this is why modern shooting games have disappeared, as they got too difficult...."the extra arranges in the M2 Shot Triggers are a clear result of what he says.

The alternative is to do like Treasure and undermine the bases, but purists might not appreciate it.

For example, have there ever been SHMUPS that have more than one type of bomb? Intended as a weapon to pick up, not as a bomb specific to a ship.

[sunnshiner]

For example, have there ever been SHMUPS that have more than one type of bomb? Intended as a weapon to pick up, not as a bomb specific to a ship.

Raiden 2 (or is it DX?) has a couple of different bomb types.

[Steven]

Soukyuugurentai and Slap Fight MD also have two different bomb types, although only one type of pickup counts for both types in both games. I guess Daioujou as well if you count that weird laser bomb.

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

Let's be honest here, if anybody else who wasn't seen as a legend said the things he said we'd be ridiculing him for obviously not knowing what he's talking about. Most danmakus have some sort of scoring system, which is an extremely technical approach to the genre - too much so, in some cases (Espgaluda 2 and Mushihimesama 1 are pretty cryptic IMHO). There's also very approachable bullet hell games; take Mushihimesama Futari or the later Dodonpachi games, all of which have quite different modes and difficulty levels. Also, in some way, bullet hell shooters are rather traditional in that they give you that short brutal rush that arcade games were always supposed to give you. If anything, you could say that bullet hell publishers maybe weren't very good at communicating how approachable (some of) their games are.

[spmbx]

In the end it's just some dude's opinion.
Having said that i find bullethell shmups thoroughly unenjoyable so i pretty much agree with him

[Kino]

Just need shmups with wolverine health and PvP.

Has there been a shooter with a parry/counter system?

As a matter of fact... (kinda surprised B-Mag forgot about this )

[Rastan78]

Yeah I think he's right, but the concept applies pretty much across arcade genres regardless of the danmaku classification. I'd say the era of increasing complexity where the casual audience got lost was the mid to late 90s.

It's not so much about raw difficulty but complexity and the number of systems and mechanics at work. In simple terms do you need a wiki to properly play?

Take a look at the jump from SF2 to SF3. SF2 if you learn to block, throw, jump and do a couple specials per character you can play. By third strike in 1999 you have parries (high/low, air and red), universal overheads, overhead normals, ex moves, multiple super arts, special taunt properties, juggle system, quick rise, target combos, unblockable setups, hit confirms, install supers etc. Most of which could be considered basic beginner skills.

You can chart a similar evolution in shmups during the same time frame between something like Raiden 1 to Raiden Fighters Jet. And Jet isn't even really a danmaku, nor is it harder than Raiden in terms of raw difficulty.

He's not wrong about the game of cat and mouse between arcade players and devs. Devs talked about having location tests, the game gets blown up by pros in one day and they have to go back and increase difficulty. However, I think this predates the danmaku genre. This was surely happening by late 80s or early 90s when we got games like Raiden 2 and Gradius III.

So he's generally not wrong, just using the term danmaku offhandedly to reference modern shmups overall.

Take a look at a dev like Arcsys. They were at the forefront of pushing complexity in arcade gaming. Recently they had to dial it back knowing that they wouldn't survive and reach a global audience if they continued to design for the same 12 guys who played at Mikado every day.

[alamone]

though I have never played myself

Maybe if he actually played them he'd change his mind about RSG and Ikaruga lol

Sometimes I just want to shoot and dodge not worry about esoteric chaining

[BIL]

He's not wrong about the game of cat and mouse between arcade players and devs. Devs talked about having location tests, the game gets blown up by pros in one day and they have to go back and increase difficulty. However, I think this predates the danmaku genre. This was surely happening by late 80s or early 90s when we got games like Raiden 2 and Gradius III.

Yeah, definitely. Tokuro Fujiwara talked about running Makaimura (1985) loke tests, noting safespots players found, then coding them out.

[hamfighterx]

Maybe if he actually played them he'd change his mind about RSG and Ikaruga lol

Sometimes I just want to shoot and dodge not worry about esoteric chaining

This, x1000. RSG and Ikaruga are so fussy. They have an appealing LOOK for more casual players, but IMO far less forgiving that your average danmaku.

I think M2 has it more correct - in past interviews they also noted the accessibility barrier, but their solution is to do smartly designed "Very Easy" modes to get people in, or have options like disabling rank difficulty increase. TBH, even as a longtime genre fan I jump in and play a lot on those kinds of casual modes these days. For one thing I'm not getting any younger, but I also have a tendency to want to play EVERYTHING and that leads to a lack of patience to practice one specific game long enough to really master it. So I love being able to get some practice in on a real credit on easy mode, then if I'm getting into a game or it's one that I've really played a lot (DOJ, for instance) I'll start playing more normal mode.

And we were absolutely seeing the birth of this kind of trend in the arcades, with stuff like Cave offering Original/Maniac/Ultra modes for Mushihimesama, or the selectable difficulty levels for each stage in Deathsmiles. Auto-bomb mechanics, especially if it's an optional setting, is another great set of "training wheels" to make getting into a bullet hell game less intimidating and give people less to focus on.

I think something like DDP Daifukkatsu with its auto-bombs is actually a LOT more forgiving for people to learn than some of the brutally punishing old school games. Your memorizers like an R-Type, the Gradius school of "lose your power ups and you're screwed" and the extreme challenge of building back up from checkpoints, some of the vicious rank mechanics of games like Same!Same!Same!/Fire Shark.

[Bassa-Bassa]

So the question is - do these easy modes such as M2's really serve to "get people in"? As in, do people try them and when they're done, do they really try the normal game or just leave it at that?

Because if it's the latter -and that's what I'd believe, given that "the people" naturally want to see new set pieces with their progress, not the same ones over and over-, it doesn't seem like they haven't really got into the actual game or something made with arcade sensibilities, does it?

[Light1000]

I cataloged a couple of the sales numbers for non-danmaku games which got American releases: (all from vgchartz, some missing Japanese data for some reason)
Raiden IV - 120k copies (100k of that are US sales)
Raiden Fighters Aces - 90k copies (only 60k in America)
Raiden V - 30k copies
Gradius 3+4 - 80k copies (40k in the US, 30k in Europe)
Gradius 5 - 90k copies (50k in US, 40k in Europe)
R-Type Final - 190k copies (90k in US)
PS Vita Release of Darius Burst - 40k sales (Japan only)

Danmaku games largely didn't get released in America at all, but for the few that did:
Akai Katana - 60k copies (40k in US)
Castle of Shikigami III - 40k copies (only US sales listed)

and the sales of each version of Ikaruga:
American Gamecube release - 70k copies
Steam Port - 128k copies
Xbox Live Arcade port - 137k copies (https://web.archive.org/web/20120124020 ... review.php)

now compare that to Sine Mora:
PC release - 137k copies
PS4 EX release - 60k copies (30k US)
Xbox 1 EX release - 30k copies (all American)

and finally, lets look at Deathsmiles: (360)
150k US sales
50k Japan sales
60k European sales

So... I'm not really seeing a huge correlation between danmaku and less successful games.
The sales for the throwback games like Raiden and Gradius are really interesting for being as low as they are - these games have INSANE name recognition, especially back in the mid 2000s when the average player would probably have had memories of playing them in arcades, so the fact that even those can't break 200k copies but Deathsmiles can is really strange. In any case, they didn't sell enough to continue being made.
I don't think difficulty has anything to do with it as much as marketing does. The average person, as far I can see, literally just knows nothing about shmups or just remembers being told by some millennial / gen x youtuber that they're all brutal unfair quarter munchers or something. They just don't care at all.
Ikaruga and Sine Mora got endlessly praised by journalists and that only led to a (relatively) paltry 200k sales for each of them.
The closest thing to real marketing that any shmup has received recently is dunkey's star of providence video and thanks to that, it has 2,678 reviews on steam at the moment, which is ~600 more than the Ikaruga steam port, which is really fascinating. I can assume it has ~150k sales at the least. Getting a big name to promote your game does way more than actually changing the content of it, it looks like.

[m.sniffles.esq]

The closest thing to real marketing that any shmup has received recently is dunkey's star of providence video and thanks to that, it has 2,678 reviews on steam at the moment

I think that probably has more to do with the Animal Well distributor (which if you didn't notice, seems to spend A LOT on marketing) getting behind it more than an individual video

(also worth noting, most casuals don't know the difference between a developer and a distributor, so as far as they're concerned "the Animal Well people made it")

[BulletMagnet]

As a matter of fact... (kinda surprised B-Mag forgot about this )

I must concede I wouldn't have thought of that as a parry/counter, but my evergreen Cotton bias forces me to give the game full credit for it and thus full shame to myself.

[hamfighterx]

So the question is - do these easy modes such as M2's really serve to "get people in"? As in, do people try them and when they're done, do they really try the normal game or just leave it at that?

I mean... I do? I'm not some newcomer to the genre who is being drawn in to play Dangun Feveron solely due to the availablity of a "Super Easy" mode, but I do appreciate that there's an easier remixed mode as I get the hang of a game. I don't think that's enough to convince someone with only a passing familiarity with the genre to be like "rad, now I'll check out Mahou Daisakusen", but I could certainly see a more casual player - say, someone who picks up the new Gradius compilation because of the name recognition of something they played back in the day - having a similar appreciation.

For me personally, I play too many different games to give most of them sufficient time to really go for 1CC mastery, so the easy modes let me get more accustomed to the game and its levels in a way that I find fun. It gets me into the game, and more often than not I do end up moving onto the arcade mode and other arranges. The ShotTriggers games are probably the best example of this - the presentation and all of those options, not the least of which are the difficulty/accessibility ones, make me actually WANT to learn the game and I always end up spending more time on those releases in the full modes.

Hell, even though I was already enough into STGs to have casually played 8/16-bit and 80s arcade stuff, then going a little deeper in the 90s and importing stuff like Saturn games, I feel like my appreciation of the genre went to another level during Cave's PS2/360 heyday in large part because of the accessibility features like Deathsmiles having a really smart difficulty level system, Mushi's mode select, stuff like the 360 Daioujou port having no enemy bullet or invincible modes to help with learning the levels and bee locations, etc. Really good tools for improving your skills and confidence, that don't require consulting a separate guide/video/etc.

At the very least, it's a more compelling selling point to me than saying "we need less bullets on screen, and more Ikaruga-like puzzle gimmicks"

[hamfighterx]

P.S. sometimes I just wanna kick back with a shooter after a smoke or an edible kicks in (very often, that ends up being PS4 Dangun Feveron with the music cranked up!). I don't want a tough and precise challenge at that point, I'm not going for a 1CC or a WR or even a personal record. I just want something fun to kick back with as a nice treat for the senses. Super Easy mode = A+ for that situation!

I'm sure not playing Raiden and getting sniped to death. Bring on the danmaku and let the waves of colorful bullets wash over me!

[Ms. Tea]

The closest thing to real marketing that any shmup has received recently is dunkey's star of providence video and thanks to that, it has 2,678 reviews on steam at the moment

I think that probably has more to do with the Animal Well distributor (which if you didn't notice, seems to spend A LOT on marketing) getting behind it more than an individual video

(also worth noting, most casuals don't know the difference between a developer and a distributor, so as far as they're concerned "the Animal Well people made it")

Bigmode is dunkey - that's the publisher he owns.

[stellar_light]

So the question is - do these easy modes such as M2's really serve to "get people in"? As in, do people try them and when they're done, do they really try the normal game or just leave it at that?

Because if it's the latter -and that's what I'd believe, given that "the people" naturally want to see new set pieces with their progress, not the same ones over and over-, it doesn't seem like they haven't really got into the actual game or something made with arcade sensibilities, does it?

I doubt that newcomers who play Espgaluda 2's easy mode are going to jump straight to gunning for the regular mode 1cc but at worst I'd say it can still be successful for encouraging some of those players to seek out other shmups which also contain that kind of easy mode. It's part of the struggle of trying to recommend these games to others where it's difficult to pick a random game that looks interesting and expect to clear if it's out of your current skill threshold, but at least these easier difficulty options can help players figure out what kinds of design they're interested in a little bit better while jumping around from game to game; I haven't tried many shmup easy modes myself (aside from Crimzon Clover's Novice mode which was my my first major experience with the genre, I thought that mode was fairly effective for conveying the basic appeal to me at the time) but I'm under the assumption that they don't massively vary in difficulty to the same extent that many other bullet hells do on their default settings.

[1KMS]

Difficulty selection is the best solution, but some designers act like that's a dilemma for some reason.