The Socratic Shmup Society
a primer[/i]

/!\ We have an IRC channel on irc.whahay.net! it's better than #g&d.  join #shmup today!! /!\

Hello gamingworld posters and games enthusiasts.  My name is Kef and I know games.  you might say I've been around the games block a few times.

sure, RPGs are cool if you like boring words and waiting for your enemy to hit you before you hit back, and sports games are ok if you like pretending to be an  athlete while you stuff your fat pig face. But the best and most hardcore genre of games possible? It's no contest. Shmups.

Shmups, or shoot-em-ups, are games in which you shoot them all up without getting shot.  It's a genre that combines reflexes, memory, strategy, and raw skill into a seamless and delicious concoction.

whjat kind of shmups are there??

i'm glad you asked, because there's a lot.

BULLET HELL
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hellsinker


play this, play it. play it now. play this game.

extra stage fight, basically a boss rush

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chorensha 68k


Oldschool, but the gameplay is great and arcade-like.

lasto bossu
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ether vapor
The most impressive part about this game is that it is under 150mb, yet looks like this.
stage 1
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touhou the video game

touhou the video game.

involves flying magical girls and frilly dresses.

there's way too much to say about it, so I direct you here for more infos.

This section was too long, so I cut it down to two games in the series.

Touhou 8: Imperishable Night


Stage 4 lunatic, boss mode


Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism


stage 4 lunatic

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Ikaruga


Somehow I forgot this the first time.  It introduces a 'polarity' system: black bullets only hurt you when your ship is in white mode, and vice versa, so much of the strategy of the game revolves around knowing when and how to switch modes.  It's for the Dreamcast and Gamecube.

Stage 4

Radiant Silvergun


A spiritual prequel to Ikaruga, although it's not strictly a bullethell game.

Stage 5A

SCROLLING
Similar to bullet hell games, these are not quite as manic. 

FIXED
Space Invaders and similar.  You typically are only able to fire in one direction, and are restricted to just one axis of movement.

RAIL SHOOTER
Star Fox is probably the most well-known example, as well as Panzer Dragoon and others in the series.

RUN N GUN
Though different from the typical spaceship or anime girl shooting games,  these are still worth mentioning.
Metal Slug series
Contra


/!\ this thread is still under construction so don't whine if i didn't include Anime Girl Shootathon or Space Invaders just yet /!\

So now we can open the floor to discussion.  I'm wanting to try new games all the time, I'll edit the op for you if you want I guess.  But I probably won't

anyway the SSS is an exclusive members group, but if you want a piece look no further than IRC.  become a man.

When I grew up, I shmup.

how is this socratic?

do you guys play shmups and then ingest hemlock?

err, this is fine and all, but i don't see there being that much space for discussion, especially not for an irc channel

i mean there are no online multiplayer shmups, so chatting like that would just be "hey whats your fave" "lol that one"

and yeah, hectic bullet hell shmups are fun, but GOD

touhou is fucking

ugh

i mean ok, the gameplay is sorta decent, but it definitely isn't the funniest i've seen

mix that with the horrendous traumatic headache inducing theme and fucking lame/nonsensical/what the fuck man anime storyline (WHICH A BAZILLION PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET KEEP TRACK OF AND CAREFULLY TRY TO EXPLAIN EACH PART OF THE "CANON")

but the bullet hell thing goes pretty well in touhou.

if it wasn't for the fact all of the touhou games ran at 46000fps on my pc for an obscure reason.


WHERE IS THE GRADIUS LOVE

WHERE IS MY HIGHWAY HUNTER LOVE?!





EDIT: where is bisse, he could add alot to this conversation

i'm sure he's pretty knowledgeable, mr.shmup compo 2007(or was it 2006 i forget(no it was 2007))


super edit: did you know touhou is like 10 years old and has always been made by one single guy

do you know why

i bet he has no friends (even though that shit ought to be ultra popular in japan)

I notice that most of these are 'bullet hell' shmups. While that's all well and good, I prefer the more traditional shmups. Maybe I'm old fashioned. Varth was one of my favorites. Oh my god that game was amazing. It was a bitch to beat, but it was amazing. And the thing about these games that don't send a BAZILLION bullets at you at a time is, your hit-box is usually bigger, and the bullets are a lot faster. Though, since Japan had bullet hell craze and they are the largest source of shumps, it's hard to find games that don't throw a gazillion bullets at you. If anyone can uh, find some of the more traditional games, I'd love it if they could post them here.

Why would I join this bullsh*t

Umm, why did you post like 10x Touhou games? No offence or anything but just one would be enough because they look pretty much IDENTICAL in both appearance and gameplay and the thing with shmups is that they all absolutely all need SOMETHING that makes them stand from every other shmup because the gameplay is so similar. There's like 15 games in the series but the only difference seems to be different 8 year old anime girls flashing on the screen and new bullet patterns.

But anyways, some personal favorites would be any Parodius game because they are hard as shit but really fun and breath of fresh air to the spaceships+aliens theme. Music is also pretty cool because it's mainly remixes of classical music.

That said, I didn't really like Gradius all that much because I could just pick a Parodius game instead and I find them to be 10x more fun.

Another thing I'd like to say is that stay away from Castle Shikigami or whatever the fuck its called those games are the worst garbage I've ever seen. I bought Castle Shikigami 2 for the PS2 for about 3 euros and I regret wasting such an amount of money for that piece of shit that wasn't worth even 1 cent.

Basically, it's your average vertical shmup but instead of spaceships you have these flying anime characters who scream every shitty anime one-liner ever made in an incredibly annoying/high-pitched voice but you can barely hear that (which is a good thing but I muted the game anyway because the music was also really fucking bad) because upon inserting the game my PS2 went apeshit and you could barely hear your own thoughts over the fan going crazy. I guess it was trying to kill itself because I put that garbage in it. It's the only PS2 game I have that does that.

But the list of faults doesn't stop just to the fact that it has anime all over it and some terrible overheating problems or whatever caused the PS2 fan to go crazy. The music is shitty at best and the graphics have some pretty big issues. A lot of you probably know about how some PS2 games you can set the refresh rate at 60 or 70 (I'm pulling these numbers out of my ass because I can't remember what the real refresh rates are, but something like that). Well Shikigami also has this option and with the higher setting all the text in the game is barely readable, it's just this blurry mess. Now because it's an anime game it's no loss if you can't read the dialogue but trying to navigate the title screen menu is impossible, you just have to guess what you are clicking and there are a few ingame question boxes but I still haven't figured what it is, I guess a save? I don't know.

There's around 5 stages total and you can breeze through them with ease most of the time but just to make the game have a bigger lifespan there are a few spots per each stage where they just throw 1000x enemy ships and bullets at you and you die and have to start over. You can't really kill anything in this game and it's not because you don't have enough firepower it's because when you kill an enemy ship it drops coins. Why is this a problem? The coins are 5 times as big as the enemy bullets in this game and the bullets, well, they are barely visible if you playing on the higher refresh rate but even if you aren't you won't notice them before you die. So basically if you kill enemies the screen will be swarming with coins with a few bullets hid among them and you will die because you can't see the bullets from all the other shit.

So does it have ANY redeeming factors? No. It doesn't.


PS.
Cybernoid isn't really a shmup, so you can scrape that off the list, it's more like an exploration game but whoever made it spent like 3 seconds making it and it isn't worth anyones time.

I'm not a fan of shmups but Ikaruga definitely needs to be on that list.

and holy fuck at this guy's dexterity

also i just noticed

"we're better than #g&d"


every channel is better than #g&d

mostly.

they're mostly all better than G&D.

Mostly.

how are any of these games different?

i like to direct ships through 2 pixel spaces for hours at a time. i also like to thread needles.

Man, why is everyone hatin on shmups? SHMUPs are where its at now!

And how could you forget about R-Type? 

Sorry guys I know the OP sucks.  It's just that I did it when I was half asleep and also nobody helped.

I'm going to fix it up tonight and add non-bullethell games and maybe condense touhou and stuff so don't shit your pants just yet.  Peace.

Raystorm, Under Defeat and Einhander are the only shmups I can get down with.