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[SecondWind]

Hi! I'm pretty new to these forums but I wanted to talk about Arcade Shoot 'Em Ups. I don't have a lot of experience with the genre, but I've played a few in Arcades recently and I think they're pretty good. I recently played DoDonPachi, which if you've never played it is a pretty old bullet-hell/crazy difficult shoot 'em up. It has some really interesting properties and I wanted to talk about those.

First of all is the control scheme. It has really simple controls: move, shoot, and use bomb. If you quickly press shoot, then it fires a quick burst of bullets from the ship, and if you hold down shoot, it turns into this huge beam of focused damage. The quick shots are really useful for destroying smaller enemies and clusters, because you can really produce a large area of shots if you just spam the shoot button. The focused beam, however, is really good for bosses and large enemies when you don't have to deal with small mobs and you can just focus all your damage on one thing.

Another interesting piece of the game is the bomb. The bomb works like I assume it does in other shoot 'em ups, where if you press the bomb button, all the enemies on the screen are destroyed. Aside from destroying all the enemies on the screen, it also destroys all the projectiles, so you can use a bomb in a tight spot where you can't dodge shots. Think of this like the blank in Enter the Gungeon if you've played it.

If you combine a bomb and a shot, meaning you use a bomb and immediately shoot, the shot power is amplified a lot, especially when you use the focused beam shot. When I was fighting bosses in the game, I would just spam bomb+beam and it sort of obliterated the boss health bar in no time.

Cool mechanics like this are why I liked DoDonPachi so much, and I think it makes that game stand out in the huge crowd of old arcade shoot 'em ups. What are some interesting shoot 'em ups you've played and what makes them so good?

[eyeliner]

Turn to NeoGeo / CPS1 / CPS2 games for inspiration. Lots of samey-but-not-quite games.

I think most shoot them ups are trash.

[Manuel Magalhães]

R-Type Leo is excellent.

[Squire Grooktook]

Long time genre fan and enthusiast here. I know pretty much all the genre classics, as well as some of the more obscure but interesting doujin games released in recent years. For me, the beauty of the genre is its absolute simplicity and simultaneously infinite depth. Your controls and view are absolute, and the only limit is your brains ability to perform intense mental gymnastics and spacial reasoning that other genres only touch upon.

My favorites:

Cho Ren Sha 68k
Mecha Ritz
Touhou 3
Dangun Feveron
Battle Garegga
Ikaruga
Hellsinker

For me, the basics for a great shmup are:

-An exciting "gauntlet" based structure based around single sitting play sessions.
-Well paced level design with lots of variety. Nothing should overstay its welcome, and every pattern should require a different strategy
-A balance of randomness vs static patterns, to keep you reacting and improvising but also promote strategy and planning.
-A unique mechanic to give the game its own distinctive fighting style and flavor.
-A scoring system that rewards finesse and encourages replay and competition for better and better scores.
-Overall patterns, pacing, level design etc. should have an overall theme. A creator stamp. "high movement" like Psikyo's games, or "methodical/don't panic" like Radiant Silvergun. Etc.

If you want interesting mechanics, you might like these:

Ikaruga: lots has been written about this one. All bullets come in one of two colors, and you can switch between the two colors to absorb like colored bullets (opposite colored bullets will destroy you). Enemies take more damage if you strike them from the opposite color.

Esp Galuda I and II: From the makers of Dodonpachi. Allows you to slow down time, making dodging easier. Beware though: slow it down for too long, and time will start to rubber band and speed up.

Guwange: Also from the makers of Dodonpachi. Holding down the fire button vastly slows your movement, but summons an extremely fast moving familiar that mirrors your inputs, slowing bullets in its path and annihilating enemies it touches. One of the most unique games I've played for its feeling of controlling two symbiotic entities, and for its breath-taking Japanese mythology themed world and atmosphere.

Mecha Ritz: Unique adaptive difficulty system ensures you'll almost never game over, but awards you higher scores for pushing it to more and more chaotic extremes through high finesse play. Once you get good, the game becomes a manic rollercoaster.

Dragon Breed: You're riding an invincible dragon that can protect you with its tail. You can also disembark for short run and gun sequences. Incredible art direction, that's best described as "Heavy Metal Naussica with copious lovecraft and h.r giger influence".

Tales of Alltynex: Cult classic trilogy of 3 doujin games, each with different mechanics.

Mars Matrix: Unique "one button" control scheme. Mash to use your standard shot, release and then press to perform a melee blast, hold to deflect bullets back at enemies (consuming your recharging energy meter) and hold for a long amount of time to perform a devastating finishing move (at the cost of draining all your energy). Also has an extremely flexible but almost infinitely deep scoring system.


I could probably write a small essay here, but that should be fine for now.

[Samaras-Sama]

R-Type, nothing else

[zizulot]

Used to play R-Type on Snes , well I liked that one a lot, Played it recently like couple of months ago, dunno why Im not looking for genre more.