what was the golden era of shmupping?

professor ganson · Post by **professor ganson** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 5:35 pm

I've been wondering what people think about this for a while now, and Thunder Force's thread has reminded me that I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

I guess a problem with this question is how to interpret the phrase "golden era." Interpret the question as you like.

Ganelon · Post by **Ganelon** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 5:48 pm

I feel that the "golden era" (which I define to be the height of the shooter genre's slice of the videogame pie) started with Gradius and the huge onrush of arcade shooters around 1985 and ended with SFII's debut and ascension of fighters around 1991.

DC906270 · Post by **DC906270** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 5:50 pm

erm, about now? shmups are far better nowadays than they used to be

captain ahar · Post by **captain ahar** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 5:51 pm

i'd mostly agree with ganelon, but i'd extend the period further into the 16bit era. maybe 1993 - 1994.

Plasmo · Post by **Plasmo** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 5:53 pm

1997 - 1999 The great complexity era

it290 · Post by **it290** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 5:54 pm

Well if you're talking about market share, I'd say the early 80's were the Golden Age, with games like Defender, Galaga, Time Pilot, etc., raking in mad bucks. But for quality, I'd agree with DC906270's assessment - we are getting tons of great games right now with very interesting gameplay.

jp · Post by jp » Mon Mar 06, 2006 7:09 pm

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 7:19 pm

My belief has always been that the further along in time we get, the better the scene gets simply because there's more games to choose from every year, even if that number appears to be dwindling (I can't say). Unless we all die in a nuclear exchange with Iran, things can only get better.

Yes, I know that's not taking into account the size of the fanbase, decaying of old boards, etc. Honestly, though, that's all pretty peripheral - as long as some number of people stay in the hobby, we'll never be alone.

Okay, for the production of shooters? Late 80s, 90s up to the middle or so. Can't say I'm the greatest fan of bullet spam, though weaving my way through a shot pattern is a great feeling.

The Coop · Post by **The Coop** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 7:41 pm

I'd have to say the "Golden Era" came about from the mid 80's to the mid 90's. Many classic shumps were released in that period, and though some continue to trickle out today, they're not hitting with the frequency and repeated quality level that they once did. By this I mean that during the period I mentioned, shmups came out very regularly, and many times those shmups ranged from "quality stuff" to "instant classic". It's true that we're still getting a slow influx of great shmups, but the scene isn't as populated as it once was.

Between the arcades, 16-bit, and 32-bit areas, shmups had a really prosperous period during this time. Before and after it, not so much.

zinger · Post by **zinger** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 7:59 pm

I'd like a good definition of "golden era". My favourite period would be somewhere between Rayforce and Blazing Star anyways.

J-Manic · Post by **J-Manic** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 9:17 pm

1997-now, at least for me it is. Alot of great shmups came out in 1997 that helped trigger the start of the shmup craze, not the craze itself. We've seen nothing but impressive shmups since then. Manic shmups were becoming more popular at the same time too. And this forum here is proof that the genre still has a huge following to this day.

sven666 · Post by **sven666** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 9:25 pm

90s - still going strong...

shmups is the only genre that genuinley exites me pretty much everytime i hear there is a new game in the makings.

Rob · Post by **Rob** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 9:41 pm

Shooters R.I.P. 86-01

DC906270 · Post by **DC906270** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 9:45 pm

Shooters R.I.P. 86-01

eh why what happened in 2001?

Rob · Post by **Rob** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 9:59 pm

Simply a matter of opinion, but I don't think 2+ great shooters have been released in a single year since 01. I also think no original ideas in the arcade/home market have appeared since (can't speak for PC).

professor ganson · Post by **professor ganson** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 11:09 pm

Dragon Blaze, Giga Wing 2, and Mars Matrix-- they were all around 2001, weren't they? (I'll have to check that.) I guess I would say that was the last great spurt, at least up to this point.

My favorite era was easily the 32-bit, PS1/Saturn era-- for so many reasons that I don't have time to list them.

Sly Cherry Chunks · Post by **Sly Cherry Chunks** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 12:24 am

1985 - 89 with summer 1989 being a particularly awesome time for me and shmups.

The Coop · Post by **The Coop** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 1:18 am

zinger wrote:I'd like a good definition of "golden era". My favourite period would be somewhere between Rayforce and Blazing Star anyways.

I think a Golden Era comes about when the subject is going strong, widely available, and being created by multiple companies with regularity. That's why I figure the end of the Golden Era came about in the mid 90's (96', 97'), as the scene really started declining after that in my view. Good shmups were still coming out, but their numbers really started dropping off.

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 1:45 am

I'm doing a research paper on Videogame Arcades...so I'll let you guys know how that turns out.

extrarice · Post by **extrarice** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 3:52 am

The golden era, in my mind, died when arcades were overrun with the beat-em-up du Jour. There was just something about being in a claustorophobic room with low lighting, bleeps and bloops, loud explosions, with the smell of pizza wafting in from the ovens...

Then the explosions and OMGLASERSPEWPEWPEW were overrun with "FINISH HIM", "FATALITY", grunts, meat slammers, and "HADOUKEN".

Shmups were represented only by a single vertical shooter, delegated to the corner, to get covered with dust until the regional distributor changed it out for "Street Fighter something-newer-than-2-but-we-can't-count-to-3". They never commanded the same respect or attention, and were never the same since.

Mind you, we have had some fantastic home shmups through the years, but no home setup can match the full-body experience of standing hunched over a cab, quarter-feeding your way through that damn 2nd boss in R-Type, explosions from other games surrounding you with tension that places you in the cockpit like nothing else can, dim ceiling lighting focusing your attention on the screen, the heat generated from dozens of CRTs cranking out their radiation, all while waiting for your greasy pizza and soda, the smell of which reminding you of the real reason why you battle wave after wave of alien ships who are hell-bent on your very destruction.

THAT, as any shmupper over 25 can tell you, is gold.

Thunder Force · Post by **Thunder Force** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 4:39 am

Since I started the other 'golden era' referencing thread, I'll answer this question in detail here.

The start of the 'manic era' was in some ways the end of 'golden era'. It's when the appeal of shmup games started to wane in the eyes of the majority of its players, and they migrated en-masse to rising genres like FPS, 3D space shooters (Colony Wars, etc), or even lightgun games. This was the end of the 'golden era', when shmup developers were forced to refocus their efforts to emphasize only design elements of 2D shmups that could not be "better" provided by the new mainstream genres they were losing market share to.

Developers of shmups were fearful of losing their remaining audiences, and so started catering mainly to their existing fanbase of experienced shmup players, hence the birth of manic shmups designed to appeal to the hardcore only - and mostly unapproachable by those outside the genre.

That moment when manic shmups took over, was the moment when the shmup genre cared more about keeping existing fans than making new ones, and the 'golden era' was over. Ironically enough, manic shmups have now become such a cult phenomenon, thanks in part to the global reach of the Internet, that they are attacting new fans. Albeit the re-growth of the player base has also been cleverly achieved in some cases by shmup devcos, by leveraging the wider appeal of anime character designs, for instance, rather than characterless spacecraft. This rampant anime influence in modern shmups is an aspect of the evolution of the genre, resulting from the desperation of developers to keep audiences.

But no matter how widely played shmups can get now, they can never reach the heights of their pre-manic 'golden era' popularity, because the conditions for their mainstream popularity no longer exist today... However this narrowing of focus by shmup developers to just their hardcore fanbase, has allowed for incredible refinements and purity of design in several modern shmups, unclouded by mainstream ambitions.

Alpolio · Post by **Alpolio** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 4:55 am

I'd have to say that the golden era was during the run of the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and the Nec PC Engine/TG-16. IMHO, they are the best shmuping machines ever made. I can still remember going to Toys-r-Us in the early 90's just to see all of the new shmups that came out each month!

Dammit... I miss those times.

The Coop · Post by **The Coop** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:06 am

Alpolio wrote:I'd have to say that the golden era was during the run of the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and the Nec PC Engine/TG-16. IMHO, they are the best shmuping machines ever made. I can still remember going to Toys-r-Us in the early 90's just to see all of the new shmups that came out each month!

Dammit... I miss those times.

Perhaps, but I think the Saturn proved itself to be a worthy partner to the Genesis/MegaDrive. The import scene was littered with shmups for the Saturn, which I think enabled it to pick up where the Genesis/MegaDrive left off. Really, I think the Saturn was the last system to truly have what one could call a "library" regarding the shmup genre.

thesuperkillerxxx · Post by **thesuperkillerxxx** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:10 am

Began with Raiden, ended with garegga!

Ha, top that!

Edit: we will change that to batrider!

yojo! · Post by **yojo!** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:41 am

thesuperkillerxxx wrote:Began with Raiden, ended with garegga!

Ha, top that!

I say it started with Tiger Heli and ended with Raiden. Toaplan was the God of the golden Era

Ganelon · Post by **Ganelon** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 6:45 am

The Coop wrote:Really, I think the Saturn was the last system to truly have what one could call a "library" regarding the shmup genre.

By now, the PS and PS2 probably have around the same number of shooters though...

Alpolio · Post by **Alpolio** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 7:34 am

Yeah... it's all true and all about the number & quality of the Saturn, PS1, and PS2 shmups. But, you could only get that fix from imports. I was actually able to browse the shmups on both the Genesis & TG-16 at Toys-r-us and these games still get as much play time out of me today as my 32 & 128 bit shmups. That's what makes that time period the "golden era" to me.

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 9:07 am

For me, the Arcade scene in general...died when Pizza Time became Chuck E. Cheese and started catering to little kids.

WarpZone · Post by **WarpZone** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 10:43 am

Wonderfully said, Thunder Force.

highlandcattle · Post by **highlandcattle** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 11:33 am

The eighties was the prehistoric age as most of those games are now totally unplayable or boring. The mid ninetees was the Homeros age with titles that everybody tries to emulate now but nobody can RSG, Ray series ,G-darius, the first Donpachi,Batsugun,...
then came the middle-ages were only a few companies survived an kept making shooters.Most companies died or when on to make other types of games

Now we are in the renaissance a lot of companies are comming back. ( Warashi, compile guys in the form of Mile-stone, Raizing guys@Cave,...)

So in conclusion the Golden Age still needs to come: Bring on the bombastic overkill days