Incline Shoot'em up goodness (review and discuss)

[Spark Mandriller]

Best starting point I guess is Gradius 1?

Original Gradius is pretty rough. Gradius II has better bosses (and they don't reuse Big Core five times, what the fuck is with that), better hitboxes, more interesting level design, and four weapon sets instead of one. You can still try Gradius I if you want, but if you're not finding it that fun just remember that II is a huge improvement. Or you can skip all the way to Gaiden, since Gaiden is incredibly good. And also lets you rearrange the powerup bar, which makes recovery much easier. Though that does suck when you play any other Dius and have to get used to options being in slot 5 instead of 2 or whatever.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Original Gradius is perfectly playable today, but I agree that Gofer is better in every way.

I recommend the PCE-CD port of Gofer, which is easier/fairer than the arcade version and has an awesome redbook soundtrack.



Gaiden is awesome and so is V. You can't go wrong with any game except for IV (worthless except for novelty value).

IMO the hardest Gradius is the arcade version of III. It's great, but very very unfair with practically unrecoverable checkpoints. The SNES port has hideous slowdown but that actually makes it more playable.

 

[gabel]

Horis suck.

 

[Nutmeg]

Ah Matador was asking about Gradius in particular not Horis in general. Yeah I would second Gradius 2 PCE. The Gradius spin-off Salamander on PCE is also very good, better than the arcade version or the re-skin Life Force.

 

[Morenatsu.]

salamander 2 is awesomeness i luv it

I recommend the PCE-CD port of Gopher, which is easier/fairer than the arcade version and has an awesome redbook soundtrack.

Isn't that music just the same as the arcade version...?

 

[Great Deceiver]

It's pretty similar but has its own distinct flair. Here's the original arcade:



To be fair arcade Gofer OST is one of the best of all time. It sounds uncannily good for a board from 1988.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Ah Matador was asking about Gradius in particular not Horis in general. Yeah I would second Gradius 2 PCE. The Gradius spin-off Salamander on PCE is also very good, better than the arcade version or the re-skin Life Force.

I actually prefer the NES version of Life Force out of all the Salamander ports. The Gradius powerup system gives it a unique flair and I love the 2A03 representation of the soundtrack.



Some of this is nostalgia for sure as it was one of my first shmups. I played it on release and it was also my first shmup 1CC/1 life clear which felt like an incredible accomplishment at the time, but the game is very easy.

 

[Nutmeg]

My first shmup was Raptor Call of the Shadows lol

 

[Falksi]

Prestigious gentlemen of the SHMUP thread, I'd be interested to get your top 5 or 10 SHMUPs please?

 

[Nutmeg]

Probably something like:

Guwange
Progear
Raiden Fighters 2
Batrider
Outzone

Going by what I've been firing up lately.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Prestigious gentlemen of the SHMUP thread, I'd be interested to get your top 5 or 10 SHMUPs please?

I go through phases so it's difficult to make a list, it really depends on the mood. But something like this:

Mahou Daisakusen/Sorcer Striker
Gradius V
Slap Fight MD
Mushi Futari
G Darius

 

[Matador]

Prestigious gentlemen of the SHMUP thread, I'd be interested to get your top 5 or 10 SHMUPs please?

I played less games than the sages in the thread, but tried a fair amount.

1. Dodonpachi. 1CC: best visuals, gameplay it´s not full modern degeneracy, but has enough refinements. Great bosses and level design (except stage 5 second third clusterfuck), ships feel great (much better than DOJ). Difficulty is hard but right after you 1CC an easier game like Batsugun or Futari Black Label.

2. Batrider. 1CC. Best of the old schools ones I tried hands down. So many cool ideas, so much quality content, I dig aesthetics, lots of ships, easter eggs, great level design and just enough esotheric. Has full old school arcade charm without the annoyances. It´s the peak of the genre before bullet hell. Easy 1CC for Normal course if you control rank.

3. Dodonpachi DOJ Black Label. (50hours trying to 1CC this). Very tough, ships are underpowered or don´t have enough bombs for non authists, and encounters are nasty. But best bosses in the genre, they are all masterfully designed.

4. Parodius Dah! (not played a lot, but instant love), best hori I tried.

5. Futari Black Label. 1CC: great art, great danmaku gameplay, reasonable difficulty. Best game to learn bullet hell.

Honorable mentions: Slap Fight, Sorcer Striker, V-V, Outzone

 

[Nutmeg]

Very glad to see Slap Fight MD getting some love. Matador were you playing Slap Fight MD or the arcade version?

 

[Matador]

Very glad to see Slap Fight MD getting some love. Matador were you playing Slap Fight MD or the arcade version?

MD version, but the arcade course mostly. Also tried the arcade, but given the MD quality, autofire button and extra course I sticked to it.

 

[Matador]

Probably something like:

Guwange
Progear
Raiden Fighters 2
Batrider
Outzone

Going by what I've been firing up lately.

I like Guwange a lot. But I´m terrible handling the familiar, I´m too clumsy too manage that. Some day I will try seriously.
Also we would have to mention Esp Ra De, another very cool Cave game that keeps great backgrounds, art style and cool original setting.

 

[Nutmeg]

MD version, but the arcade course mostly

Try the special version. It lets you jettison the extra wings as a bomb, completely changing the game, and making it IMO more interesting. It's only 10 minutes per loop so clearly designed for loop play. I believe I got a 1CC 3-? on it i.e. I made it to the third loop somewhere.

 

[Nutmeg]

Oh forgot to mention I've been playing Dangun a bit as of late. It's very fun for casual score play (i.e. not going for the 1CC but chasing score from the get-go).

 

[Falksi]

Some nice selections gents, quite a few which I've not tried in there actually, so looking forward to trying them.

 

[Morenatsu.]

garegga
esprade
outzone
ibara
illumination laser (for artfags)
soukyuugurentai
muchi muchi pork
donpachi
dai ou jou
mushihimesama original

It's pretty similar but has its own distinct flair.

I mean, it's just the arcade version with reverb. Sounds kind of cool but also makes it harder to hear. Seems like a typical thing for releases on CD?

 

[gabel]

Tatsujin Oh
Batsugun
DonPachi
DoDonPachi
DOJ
Mushihimesama
Mushi Futari
Ketsui

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Triggerheart Exelica -> Game that made me find out about shmups, free pass.
Dodonpachi
Radiant Silvergun
Mars Matrix
Crimson Clover World Explosion

 

[Morenatsu.]

Tatsujin Oh
Batsugun
DonPachi
DoDonPachi
DOJ
Mushihimesama
Mushi Futari
Ketsui

doggyuun >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> tatsujin oh no

even though they both suck

 

[Matador]

I share here the calculations of the bullet speed of the Dodonpachi DOJ Black label and its relationship with the Hyper rank.

http://www.mediafire.com/?2q36bkpz3uesm7v

I found it in this thread:
https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?p=673778#p673778

It also talks about the game rank which only depends on the time since the game started, the stage or temporarily being in hyper mode. Dying doesn't matter, and only affects the density of the patterns and the rate of fire of the enemies.

So the only thing you can control is the hyper rank (+1 by activating hyper mode,-3 if dropping bomb in hyper mode) and this only affects the speed of the bullets. Bullet speed increases every 5 hyper ranks (also temporal increase in hyper mode).

The M2 port that comes out in December for PS4 will have some of this information in the HUD:

 

[Matador]

This info can be very helpul for the 1CC, because the game is hard enough without bullet speed getting out of control. The strategy would be to bomb out hyper mode from time to time in selected tough spots, giving you kind of a double bomb that reduces your rank.

I can beat now first 4 stages with a reasonable amount of bombs to have a relaxed 5th stage.

The problem is I can only do that stage by stage, or maybe 2. I can´t do the 4 stages in one stand because I lack consistency. Only first stage is really easy, and even the boss has one tricky pattern.

2nd stage boss can easily kill you if you are not full focus, and third stage is easy but has 2 kill spots that shouldn't be bombed in my opinion, given what I have seen in stage 4 boss and whole stage 5.

So in my opinion the difficulty increase from Dodonpachi comes from these aspects:
- Weaker ships (even expert ones lack the damage that Dodonpachi ships had)
- Harder bosses, in part due to lack of damage, in part tougher patterns.
- Kill spots in stages 3-4 that shouldn´t be bombed and are hard to bomb on reaction
- Rank/hyper to be managed carefully. Aside from hypers increasing rank and more things in mental stack, If you die while on hyper your bomb stock don´t get expanded.

Some people talk about playing exy to have more firepower despite many less bombs, and that makes stages 1-3 easier to complete, and game feels better. But the firepower increase isn´t so big that you notice crushing high HP bullet spammers in stages 4-5, or really skipping tough patterns in bosses. Shoti ship with extra bombs is better for survival, period.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Have you tried regular DOJ? It's even harder than Black Label and the PS2 port is actually really good. You can play it on PCSX2 now that they've fixed the horrible latency with that emulator and it's eminently playable, I prefer to play it that way instead of through MAME because the sound is 100 times better on the PS2.