Incline Shoot'em up goodness (review and discuss)

[Morenatsu.]

noobs should 1cc garegga

 

[Matador]

I can´t help it but I have been trying a lot of classic shmups in the last days, what a fascinating genre.

My favourites so far that I can play without dying every few seconds:

For verticals: V-V, Soldier Blade and 19xx
For horizontals: Thunderforce III and Gates of Thunder.

Tatsujin and Raiden are dope but I suck at them

I think I´m gonna focus for a while in Soldier Blade and Thunderforce III to see if I can beat them because they are great, the music is killer and don't seem so hard.

 

[Chanel Oberlin]

I'm not a fan of the genre but as a kid I had and enjoyed a game named Twin Hawk (Daisenpu) in the vein of 1942, for the MegaDrive/Genesis. Good music, graphics and reasonably accessible. I used to get to the final section of the second loop without continues. Recently watching a longplay I discovered that after that second loop, the aircraft gets more and more upgrades, something I didn't know. How is this game regarded by purists?

 

[Great Deceiver]

I can´t help it but I have been trying a lot of classic shmups in the last days, what a fascinating genre.

My favourites so far that I can play without dying every few seconds:

For verticals: V-V, Soldier Blade and 19xx
For horizontals: Thunderforce III and Gates of Thunder.

Tatsujin and Raiden are dope but I suck at them

I think I´m gonna focus for a while in Soldier Blade and Thunderforce III to see if I can beat them because they are great, the music is killer and don't seem so hard.

Another hori that I forgot to mention is Lords of Thunder - really cool shmup with a bangin' guitar/metal instrumental soundtrack (heavily influenced by Vinnie Moore). The PCE version is by far the best gameplay wise but the sound mixing in the Sega CD version is better - the problem with this version is that they overbuffed the melee attack and it's way too easy as a result.

Thunderforce III is a great game and on the easier side, definitely possible to 1CC without going mad.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I'm not a fan of the genre but as a kid I had and enjoyed a game named Twin Hawk (Daisenpu) in the vein of 1942, for the MegaDrive/Genesis. Good music, graphics and reasonably accessible. I used to get to the final section of the second loop without continues. Recently watching a longplay I discovered that after that second loop, the aircraft gets more and more upgrades, something I didn't know. How is this game regarded by purists?

Daisenpu/Twin Hawk is one of the Toaplan classics and it's a good game but not one of my favourites. The Genesis version is much easier than the arcade (especially the original JP version), but still a great accomplishment to almost get a 2nd loop clear.

You say you're not a fan of the genre, why is that?

 

[Chanel Oberlin]

You say you're not a fan of the genre, why is that?

I don't hate them but I find more pleasure in other arcade genres. Also I'm not good playing them and the only reason I could (sort of) git gut at Twin Hawk is because it was the only shmup I had growing up. Now that I'm older I find them hard to get into, I wish I could do better when playing something like Thunderforce IV, I enjoy the audiovisuals these games tend to pack.

The other shmup I learned to enjoy was Ikaruga for the cube although I needed 2-3 continues to beat it and all semblance of keeping an orderly performance with chains disappeared after the second stage.

 

[Matador]

Great Deceiver or whoever. Do you recommend to disable V-sync for retroarch? In the menu says is recommended to be enabled but I usually disable in games in general.

 

[fork]

noobs should 1cc garegga

Garegga is shit. Completely retarded scoring and difficulty management. You have to suicide regularly in order to beat the game. Most degenerate shmups out there.

 

[Morenatsu.]

noobs should 1cc garegga

Garegga is shit. Completely retarded scoring and difficulty management. You have to suicide regularly in order to beat the game. Most degenerate shmups out there.

Bro, I said GAREGGA not BAKRAID. And stop being a pussybitch and 1CC it already

 

[fork]

Garegga is worse than Bakraid. But that's shit and shittier, both are terrible.
I'd rather spend the rest of my life trying to 1CC DOJ or 2-loop DoDonPachi than a single day training Bakraid or Garegga.

 

[Machocruz]

I like Garegga because of the art. That is all.

 

[fork]

Lol, graphics whore!
Have you tried to 1cc it? :p

 

[Great Deceiver]

Great Deceiver or whoever. Do you recommend to disable V-sync for retroarch? In the menu says is recommended to be enabled but I usually disable in games in GENERAL.

Vsync should always be enabled in RA. If you have a VRR-capable monitor also enable the "sync to exact framerate" option to get smooth scrolling in non-standard refresh games.

 

[Morenatsu.]

Garegga is worse than Bakraid. But that's shit and shittier, both are terrible.
I'd rather spend the rest of my life trying to 1CC DOJ or 2-loop DoDonPachi than a single day training Bakraid or Garegga.

look here bitchboi

any shmup with mah boi MIYAMOTO the DRAGON is best shmup EVAR

but to be serious. raizing is just fun and infinitely replayable unlike your precious gayve whose games make me bored after the first attempt of the month. except esprade. esprade is the best cave game. fight me. post your garegga scores. i daer u

 

[Matador]

Great Deceiver or whoever. Do you recommend to disable V-sync for retroarch? In the menu says is recommended to be enabled but I usually disable in games in GENERAL.

Vsync should always be enabled in RA. If you have a VRR-capable monitor also enable the "sync to exact framerate" option to get smooth scrolling in non-standard refresh games.

Another question. Do you (or players in general) enable turbo fire for old games like Raiden or that's considered too cheesy. Sometimes I'm tired of button mashing fire.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Great Deceiver or whoever. Do you recommend to disable V-sync for retroarch? In the menu says is recommended to be enabled but I usually disable in games in GENERAL.

Vsync should always be enabled in RA. If you have a VRR-capable monitor also enable the "sync to exact framerate" option to get smooth scrolling in non-standard refresh games.

Another question. Do you (or players in general) enable turbo fire for old games like Raiden or that's considered too cheesy. Sometimes I'm tired of button mashing fire.

I personally do use turbo for old games depending on my mood. The Japanese STG wiki I listed earlier deducts some difficulty points for using turbo, but who cares really.

 

[Machocruz]

Lol, graphics whore!
Have you tried to 1cc it? :p

Only game I ever 1cc is Metal Slug 2. I'm kind of like what Twitchfags call a "variety streamer". I rarely stick with a single game long enough to master it. Maybe retirement goals. And only the most beautiful kawaii of shmups for my elderly eyes, like BG.

 

[Morenatsu.]

I haven't 1cc'd anything. :3

 

[Spark Mandriller]

Garegga is shit. Completely retarded scoring and difficulty management. You have to suicide regularly in order to beat the game. Most degenerate shmups out there.

Garegga scoring is good though. Item chaining is the best type of chaining, and encouraging bomb use instead of trying to make you hoard them and never use them is a positive. There's some dumb stuff where you want to kill parts of enemies in specific orders, but overall it's good.
The rank control is shit though, yeah. And weird, because they put in a bunch of secrets like the way you can change your rate of fire or the special option formations, except you can't use them because they turn the rank even more crazy. Why are they even there then? Just as a trap? It's stupid.

 

[Morenatsu.]

Garegga is shit. Completely retarded scoring and difficulty management. You have to suicide regularly in order to beat the game. Most degenerate shmups out there.

Garegga scoring is good though. Item chaining is the best type of chaining, and encouraging bomb use instead of trying to make you hoard them and never use them is a positive. There's some dumb stuff where you want to kill parts of enemies in specific orders, but overall it's good.
The rank control is shit though, yeah. And weird, because they put in a bunch of secrets like the way you can change your rate of fire or the special option formations, except you can't use them because they turn the rank even more crazy. Why are they even there then? Just as a trap? It's stupid.

I mean, you don't have to kill things in specific orders, they give different points for killing with different weapons and it just happens to be that there's inevitably an optimal way to go about it. And those extra features can safely be used later in the game, when you need them more than you need to have low rank. But then again, I play the dragon so my gameplay experience is quite a bit different from the other ships.

EDIT: lololol i forgot about those tanks in stage 4, but that's one of the only times that actually matters. The other being the stage 3 mid-boss, which annoys me with its circular pattern, but. I think it's a good idea. Fite me


Really, it's surprising to see any complaints about Garegga on the Codex, as I would have thought this game to be the shmup equivalent of the complex RPGs and immersive sims everyone knows and loves.

And, on the topic of fork's CAVE bias, I like CAVE, I wouldn't even complain about their later games either, like someone else did, but their games mostly come down to rigid routing that's the same every time, which is something that easily gets boring. I guess it's that ‘perfection in simplicity’ kind of design. And also, Ibara and such are also CAVE, so complaining that Garegga sux compared to Gayve is invalid because they got the Gareggaman himself. By the way, Futari is my least played of all of them that I have played, I don't really see the appeal when the original in Original mode is much nicer and less sequelly. Overrated. And Ketsui sux too.


Anyway what u guise think of mars matrix :3 its pretty kewl i thinkz

 

[Matador]

Found this neat trick to figure out input lag in retroarch in youtube:

If you press 'K' on your keyboard it will pause the game and the next time you press 'K' the game will move forward by one frame. When paused, press an input on the controller ( preferably the jump button if it's a platformer, or shoot button if it's a shoot-em-up). When you next press 'K' it will advance to the next frame. If it takes three frames for your character to jump or three frames for your ship to fire then you know that you need to run-ahead by three frames. This works near perfectly for all 8-16 bit games but is more demanding for later consoles and not necessarily supported.
This should be done for each game individually as every game released on real hardware may have it's own amount of input-delay.

I kept pressed the fire button. For batrider I had to press the K key 5 times to the shoot to come out (4 frames of delay or 5?) and dodonpachi 2 K key presses (1 or 2 frame delay?)

This will be perfect to adjust run ahead setting correctly.

 

[Morenatsu.]

imagine using retroarch

 

[Matador]

imagine using retroarch

What should I use?

 

[Great Deceiver]

Found this neat trick to figure out input lag in retroarch in youtube:

If you press 'K' on your keyboard it will pause the game and the next time you press 'K' the game will move forward by one frame. When paused, press an input on the controller ( preferably the jump button if it's a platformer, or shoot button if it's a shoot-em-up). When you next press 'K' it will advance to the next frame. If it takes three frames for your character to jump or three frames for your ship to fire then you know that you need to run-ahead by three frames. This works near perfectly for all 8-16 bit games but is more demanding for later consoles and not necessarily supported.
This should be done for each game individually as every game released on real hardware may have it's own amount of input-delay.

I kept pressed the fire button. For batrider I had to press the K key 5 times to the shoot to come out (4 frames of delay or 5?) and dodonpachi 2 K key presses (1 or 2 frame delay?)

This will be perfect to adjust run ahead setting correctly.

Yep, Batrider (and Garegga) are notorious for their high input lag even on original boards. The method you described for figuring out the latency is exactly the same one I use. In your examples, if you want next-frame response (discounting other sources of lag in your setup like display/controller latency), you should set runahead to the number of times you had to press the frame advance button -1 - so, 4 for Batrider and 1 for DDP.

Nevermind the naysayers, Retroarch with runahead is pretty much the best way to play shmups. Some consider using runahead a "cheat", but I say less input lag is always better. Next-frame response is so good.

 

[Matador]

Nevermind the naysayers, Retroarch with runahead is pretty much the best way to play shmups. Some consider using runahead a "cheat", but I say less input lag is always better. Next-frame response is so good.

Specially if they post passive agressive dark message, I request politely a clarification on the alternative, and after that they only react with the mystery emote instead of answering what they considers the best emulator.

It´s not like I asked for the answer to 2+2=? or something very obvious. Morenatsu.

I guess I expected too much from a furry avatar.