Recommendations

[Gyom]

Hi, this is my first time posting on the forum. I’m looking for a “shmup” to play with my girlfriend, and I’d love some recommendations. The console doesn’t matter! It has to be multiplayer, vertical, full-screen, not extremely difficult, and have good visibility (bullets shouldn’t be hard to see, and the background shouldn’t be too cluttered or distracting). I’m looking forward to your suggestions—thanks in advance!

[Steven]

Out Zone

[AGermanArtist]

Under Defeat (twin stick New Order mode)
Gigawing on Capcom Arcade Stadium
M2 Shot Triggers - Ketsui/Mahou Daisakusen/Dangun Feveron/Esp.Ra.De.Psi

[DMC]

Maybe Twinkle star sprites, Rival Megagun, or Darius Burst AC (although hori, it seems good for coop)?

[Light1000]

Hi, this is my first time posting on the forum. I’m looking for a “shmup” to play with my girlfriend, and I’d love some recommendations. The console doesn’t matter! It has to be multiplayer, vertical, full-screen, not extremely difficult, and have good visibility (bullets shouldn’t be hard to see, and the background shouldn’t be too cluttered or distracting). I’m looking forward to your suggestions—thanks in advance!

-multiplayer
-vertical
-full screen
Only game I think satisfies these requirements + being easy would be Jamestown. That game is built around multiplayer first and foremost iirc

[BareKnuckleRoo]

The other thing you want in a multiplayer game is no shifting of the screen side-to-side when players move left and right. This is very visually disorienting and is why a lot of CAVE shmups tend not to work in multiplayer.

Lots of games available that fit what you're looking for though:

Giga Wing: The first and second games are exceptional for multiplayer and are designed explicitly around with, with unique storylines for each character combination and a good ending for 1CCing with both players. The third game is very fun too but has left/right screen shifting and thus doesn't work well in multiplayer.

Vasara 1 & 2: Mechanically similar to Giga Wing in that you use a special attack that focuses on deflecting bullets. Neat aesthetic, too.

Omega Fighter: For an early arcade shmup it's extremely modern and innovative in its scoring system and powerups. Might be the earliest example of an Espgaluda-style time slowdown ability, works very well for cooperative play

Mahou Daisakusen / Sorcer Striker: Early Raizing game with no left/right screen scrolling. It's not a bullet hell game and visuals are fun. Tough to clear, though!

Most Psikyo games including Gunbird 1 & 2, Strikers, etc: They're tough games but otherwise fit with what you're after and generally don't have left/right screen shifting.

Score Rush Extended: Breaks the multiplayer rule of no left/right screen shifting as players move, but the scrolling is quite slow so it's still fun and playable despite that. The dev also made some other indie Xbox 360 4 player games like Decimation X3, a modernized take on Space Invaders that's extremely fun, but likely hard to actually get a hold of and play nowadays.

Is there a reason you're disregarding horizontal shmups entirely? There's a lot of really good ones that work well for cooperative play. I'm ignoring the "full-screen" request because I don't know what you mean, and at any rate lots of vertical shmups were meant to be played on rotated CRT monitors and would fill the entire screen, but still look good when played on a large TV with bordered sides.

Only game I think satisfies these requirements + being easy would be Jamestown. That game is built around multiplayer first and foremost iirc

Except for the fact that it breaks one very important rule: the screen shifts left and right when players move, making it visually very disorienting. It's actually rather bad for multiplayer when you realize how difficult this makes keeping an eye on your dodges is, and most games with it except for one I'd say are not suitable for multiplayer. If Jamestown ditched this, it would have been way better for multiplayer, but as it is I don't like it much, because the screen shifting feels very aggressive for the tight dodges you have to make. It's also not terribly good in single player as the shot types feel a bit sparse and wimpy, a deliberate move for the sake of its multiplayer.

Score Rush Extended is the only multiplayer game that does this I give a pass to, mostly because its scrolling speed is far slower, and it's possible to stay at one edge of the screen during bosses to keep it largely pinned in place.

[Steven]

The other thing you want in a multiplayer game is no shifting of the screen side-to-side when players move left and right. This is very visually disorienting and is why a lot of CAVE shmups tend not to work in multiplayer.

This is extremely important, and a big part of why I recommended Out Zone. Panning cameras are mostly fine for single player, but in multiplayer they make the gameplay completely miserable.

[LordHypnos]

Most Psikyo games including Gunbird 1 & 2, Strikers, etc: They're tough games but otherwise fit with what you're after and generally don't have left/right screen shifting.

I would just add to this that Psikyo lower difficulty modes could be something to consider. I remember enjoying Gunbird 2's "child" difficulty when I was very new to shmups. Some of their games (Including Gunbird 2) have 2-player cut-scenes in between stages as well, which could be appealing (or not). I think the Giga Wings also had these.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Speaking of Out Zone, Fix Eight I think also fits the bill, right?

Turning the difficulty down in Gunbird is a good point, I'm not sure how easy it is to do in the arcade version but for the recent console ports it's definitely a good way to make the game more accessible.

[LordHypnos]

Turning the difficulty down in Gunbird is a good point, I'm not sure how easy it is to do in the arcade version but for the recent console ports it's definitely a good way to make the game more accessible.

Not sure how helpful this is, but I checked the City Connection version of Dragon Blaze (Steam), and it has the full gamut of difficulty settings including not only "child" but also "monkey," lol. Dragon Blaze is definitely a fun game!

A brief examination of the dipswitch options in MAME suggests that original Gunbird (world version) has only three difficulties, and I'm not sure how good the easy difficulty is, as not all games have much thought put into their difficulty settings. Perhaps I'll test it when I get a chance.

My experience was with the Dreamcast port of Gunbird 2, but that's probably not the most practical choice for a variety of reasons.

[Jonpachi]

HOT TAKE ALERT

*ahem*

Cygni: All Guns Blazing
- It's pretty, with lots of whizz-bang VFX to wow the casuals
- It's an unbalanced mess, so it's nobody's fault when they die (blame the game, not yourself)
- It uses a more traditional control scheme, so you can Spray and Pray the Bad Away

[Gyom]

Wow so many good suggestions! Thanks to all of you, I’ll check those out

[Sumez]

The other thing you want in a multiplayer game is no shifting of the screen side-to-side when players move left and right. This is very visually disorienting and is why a lot of CAVE shmups tend not to work in multiplayer.

Honestly there's a lot of reasons why most shooters don't work in multiplayer. They tend to have a really high focus on positioning in relation to herding aimed bullets and creating openings for you to make use of.
Having two potential targets for every enemy to aim at is going to mess up most conventional shoot'em up strategies.
You definitely want a game *designed around multiplayer*, and Jamestown is honestly probably not a bad suggestion.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

The Dreamcast port of Gigawing 2 supports up to four players max for some crazy verizontal scrolling stg action indeed.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[beer gas canister]

Not truly a shmup in the strict sense, more of an arena shooter like Smash TV (hey play Smash TV!!!!), but try Xeno Crisis

[Lemnear]

in my girlpower group the games that they liked the most among those that I proposed were:

Dragon Blaze
Gundbird 2
Twinkle Star Sprites

but also Steam Heart's and Deathsmiles 1+2 (also Gleylancer but it doesn't have coop).

[BulletMagnet]

If memory serves one of the Twinbee games (the SNES one, maybe?) has a "couple mode" or some such thing, which is basically simultaneous 2P but the enemies focus more on the 1P character, so a more skilled player can be player 1 while a newbie will have an easier time as player 2. A bit of a shame it's the only game I've heard of which does that.

[Firehawke]

It's not vertical in the truest sense (screen is horizontal, gameplay switches between horizontal and vertical), but I'd nominate Life Force on NES/Salamander on Famicom as being a great entry-level shmup. Stage 3 might be the biggest headache, but learning the pattern to the prominences makes that less of a problem.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

The PC Engine based Arcade CD-Rom2 stg of "Ginga Fukei Densetsu Sapphire" has a cool two-player co-op deal going on but at the expense of sharing all the credits for both players (up to 9 credits maximum) if you do decide to continue on. You'd also need two PCE gaming pads + a PCE multi-tap add-on & you're all set. Unfortunately, both high scores & high score initials are lost upon the PCE console being powered down for the night (as GFDS doesn't save scores with the internal "Back Up RAM" functionality whatsoever). With GFDS's overall 4:3 aspect ratio presentation with it's "verizontal" approach, it's quite impressive in that it does take advantage of the 16 megabits of on-board added RAM if played on an old-school PCE Duo/Duo-R/Duo-RX console with either a PCE Arcade Card Duo or Arcade Card Pro upgrade setup.

An Analogue Duo + a Krikzz manufactured Turbo Everdrive Pro flash cart will be the ticket to playing the PCE ACD of GFDS properly on a HDTV setup (or get ahold of a Konami manufactured mini PCE console, mini Core Grafx console or mini TurboGrafx-16 console and play it as intended). The positive merits of playing on a Mini PCE/CG/TG-16 console setup is, all of GFDS's high scores & high score initials will be saved for posterity via "save state slots" which is better than nothing (can't do that with real PCE gaming hardware though).

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[m.sniffles.esq]

Only game I think satisfies these requirements + being easy would be Jamestown. That game is built around multiplayer first and foremost iirc

See Also: Twinbee/Detana TwinBee/Bells & Whistles

Edit: Ack! Already mentioned. Anyway, I obviously second the recommendation