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A few days ago, a friend and myself hijacked his roomate's flatscreen television for some awesome tate mode HD shmuppery. Finalburn in effect, we preceded to play both Guwange and DoDonpatchi in 32" glory. From this experience, I gathered that the amount of skill to play games such as this as accurately as one could play alone is a completely different kind of skill altogether. In cave games especially, it gets to the point where there are so many processes going on onscreen that its very difficult to even process those that apply to your own character or ship. When another is applied to the mix, a whole new set of processes is added, even if you can reduce it just to that some of the enemies your ship will not have to handle. That being said, identifying which ships are important for you to take care of and which will most likely be destroyed, which powerups you can get without completely screwing over player 2, but most of all, which bullets it is that you must prepare for and dodge, this proves taking precedence in Cave games in general. Not to mention that every time your partner's ship approaches yours, you have to pay attention to what it is that they are firing at, dodging, and possibly catching for you. Mechanics like bullet slowdown in Guwange make it even more ridiculous to process this all at once. PLus depending on who you play with, you may or may not get a "GET BACK ON YOUR F*CKING SIDE." Sadly, I don't really have many people to play shmups with, so experiences like this that actually make me think are particularly isolated. It's interesting regardless.

Labels: commentary

So in my desire to combat the neglect that I have perpetrated against this blog, I'm going to write an article. It may be well written, punctuated, and capitalized, maybe even spelled right. And it is technically about a hentai game. But why? Why would I write about such a thing? Well I'll tell you why. So there's this game called Divine Sealing. It is a terrible, boring, badly designed badly executed shooter, with levels punctuated by short stages of a girl talking to you and somehow ending up naked, with no visual explaination. Somehow the game manages to segway from flying around through different planets to staring at a girl take off her clothes, each time with gradually decreasing visual quality, but such is the joy of early 90's MSPaint hentai. Not that they ever assumed you'd even play far enough to reach such stages, plus with a horrifying point combo based power up system, getting there is almost not worth it. In fact, its very seriously not worth it, but I was bored and had save states and some amount of skill deploying them, which in a shooter is actually a necessary thing. Regardless, this still doesn't give me any good reason to write about this pile of Genesis filth. It's because there's this secret amazing totally bullsh*t weapon you get if you don't suck for long enough. It seems so small and dumb, but when it happens to you in the game you're like, gee, that's somewhat clever of a design in this incredibly terrible game. What I'm talking about is the fifth level of you weapon, possible only from dodging and killing quite actively. The character shot sprite, a traditional two bullet non-animated block, that takes on a brand new path, rather than the simple and previous out in a different direction upgrades of the previous point tiers. This block spawns on both sides of your ship, and begins a circular path, low distance, no rotation, non animated. It essentially creates a saw blade beside your ship, making the destruction of enemies who get too close no longer something to worry about. And why all this lead up to this crap development in the middle of a crap sandwich? To give you a prime example of always being able to find something to take away from anything you play, 1cc, or throw on the ground. So you don't have to play this. But just know. I'm checking these things. Even if just for the addition of complexity to one of the simplest shooters I've ever laid my bias on.

Labels: review

good day. ufo picked up the latest milestone shooter for eventual us release.
now i can stop complaining that milestone made another shooter and nobody told me.

Labels: commentary, progear

back into some of my shmuppy habits, i picked up mars matrix for the dreamcast the other day and found that it had some features that greatly changed how the game could be played, leading to some interesting conclusions on how i play shmups. the right trigger i believe auto pierces over and over, only factoring in pierce reload time. this technically should be stupid overpowered and make the game too easy, but the disjointed unaimable incredibly short ranged weapon really interrupts the flow of the game, as it is traditionally something i only use rarely or on accident, when the game forces me to as i begin streaming fire. there is also an autofire function, but autofire generally makes me sloppy and i error more often. also notable additions are gallery mode which i do not know how to unlock exactly past buying the function itself, the ability to buy more credits and lives, as well as level playthrough videosTHE COMPUTER DIES TWICE, invincibility mode, which would just make to game too easy though easier to get your gun higher than six, which is the highest ive ever managed to get it, and the addition of a second version of the game which i feel is kind of the rejected sprites version, or the we made dodonpatchi version. but takumi manages to pull it all off smoothly and ridiculous with the bullets still doing their best to make me crazy. someday maybe theyll make me a new shooter to hate and play over and over and over again. maybe.
also sorry for lack of posting. maybe more insightful things like this.

Labels: commentary, mars matrix

cave seems to be having a bit of trouble these days making their arcade masterpieces more accessable in general, with apparently highly buggy versions of dai ou jou black extra and the upcoming ketsui port which i believe is still ds only which is total nonsense in my opinion but regardless i am happy to discover that mushihime sama is on its way to the 360, though thanks to microsofts hate for humankind, regionlock will hinder me from probably ever playing it. another hilarious not is that SNK is in the process of developing a shooting gae based on king of fighters characters, which sounds like a dojin game to me but hey whatever makes you happy. im sure characters i want in it will not be and the main characters that have always been the main characters will remain the main characters I LOVE YOU K999. also sorry for not posting ill try and make up for it.
i still have to hit up shootthecore and find some downloads for you three.

a pretty big repository of cosplay photos of characters from fairly notable games like dodonpachi and esp ra de, mostly starring three people in the various roles, with some pop n' music thrown in or good measure. plus guwange of course, which is totally rad for me. here.

Labels: art, shmup

pretty rad site with rotate-able 3d models of various shmup shops, jst click the first link on the top that says webcg and click the various games, in case you can't work it.
here.

Labels: art, shmup

good darius screens site with information on the bosses from most of the games. though lacking in what it promises to a slight degree, good visual and strategy related content and giant mechanical fish. which i love.
here.

Labels: resource, shmup, strategy

here.
shooting game stuff.
another.
mostly just fanart.

Labels: art, touhou

a shmup i never thought i'd find, modeled after a pretty kickin ps1 rpg, baroque shooting takes the crazy enemies of baroque and puts you behind a cupid looking thing with an upgradeable gunstar heroes combining elements crossbow and charges you with the task of killing everything for no reason, to which i hope all of you would answer yes. get to it.

Labels: download, pc, shmup

a typical wednesday afternoon exhibits a good deal of cho worship, in the form of not only exploding anemy shard similarities and the rrootage normal version bombs and a great example of someone else other than that bulletminded azn regurgitating shmup systems into the flash environment at an acceptable speed. check it outttt. hur.

Labels: flash, online, shmup

another perusal of kenta cho's flash doodlings has produced two games, both basically built on the same engine but with different controls, both interesting examples of flash shmups.

for those of you who don't know, theres this english chap who's making some wonderful quality tshirts, most of which are shmup related, or at least videogame related. ive not got much money, and soon to have even less, so i havent had a change to pick one up myself, but as soon as i can i most likely will. andyway. chack them out, theyre pretty rad.

the sped up cracked out 1942 clone/homage/ripoff/whathave you strikers 1945 presents a very basic and simple executed premise. you are a plane, you have to shoot. there are almost no gimmicks or scoring strategies, short of just not getting shot, or possibly the charge shot which varies in usefulness from ship to ship, my personal favorite being the first ship with its "ill stay here and shoot this whole side of the screen so you can worry about less, though in later levels the charge time, however minixcule, still leaves you open for smashing. another notable difference or aspect of this game is almost a darius throwback, the final couple of bosses straying from the robotic mech warship design of the early levels and replacing them with giant pallete retarded crabs who shoot too fast. an obvious psikyo game, with the same powerups as nearly ten other games on the hardware GUNBIRD YOU KNOW I SAW THAT. just kidding gunbird. a fun fifteen minutes. i think it took eleven credits my first whole run ever. pretty lame right.
i need to learn how to be better at these games.
but no matter.
uh yeah.
check it out.

just a notable little shmupy thing that i found thanks to the glorious blogs i read each day, this shooter features pretty much nothing except an automatic complete level down every time you get hit, as well as some interesting and im convinced randomly generated little line based enemies, and the basic powerups with an interesting shot level up graphics. you can change forms with period and comma too, in adition to arrow keys and space as main contorols. could be pretty rad if expanded upon, but is intentionally small due to the nature of the contest, in that it is only 4k. chack it outtttt. here.

i very much enjoy realizing ingrown shenanigans in shooters that actually increase their depth. somehow i overlooked this interesting one in the game dimahoo, a fairly straight forward one with four characters including one with a giant comb sword for his pompadour and a group of necromancers that kind of suck. you fly around a fantasy world and make swiss cheese out of dragons and tanks and the like. the gimmick i discovered was that there is a charged shot with a motive. holding down shoot charges your shot, realeasing a special attack that transformes destroyed enemies into items. the items vary depending on the level of the charge, as the longer you hold it the higher the level. you can get all kinds of items, mostly weapons and armor, but also some joke items like a little cow and certain kinds of food. i didnt notice the unlocking of these items actually benefitting you in any way, but it adds another level of challenge to the game when you try and navigate bullets you dont have to for the sake of picking up the best items. when you finish it shows you all the items you picked up in your run, so you can brag about the items you got. its a simple gimmick that adds a good bit to the game. i good solid game too.
im going back through some of the shooters i used to play so expect more reviewy stuff like this i guess.

kenta cho is one of my heroes.
here.
this site is pretty amazing, with an online open source presentation of flash games and applications that people can make and share and i assume edit.

so theres this flash game called raiden x and its really kind of rad.
because i like raiden and stuff.
so then i play this raiden 2 straight slone/port whatever this is.
and im like. FFFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFFFF.
but its cool.
i just have to get better. it really shows how good this old shmups still are at challenging players, with still a ton of stuff going on at any moment. plus my favorite most glorious toothpaste laser. mmmm.
anyway. a relaly good fast mameless pc version. get itttt.
here.

today i came across a beautiful little game.
this game is called usapi. you play a rabbit head that a rabbit tore off itself and hurled into the sky, capable of firing carrots either forward and backward or side to side, a bizarre and actually kind of original mechanic that i don't see often enough, making those pesky caution signs so much less frightening but still as difficult perspectively. you battle the denziens of your badly drawn town who fire what else: poop. yes poop throwing slimes, poop pooping cats, and even some poop vampires that say "die" in english. wonderfully crude, kind of really well done, sans graphicall, but consistantly badly drawn and giving the game an even more original feel. i reccomend it. the game seems to inifinitely loop, with difficult getting harder through the three levels. check it out.
download here. rename the exe to something in english if it gives you a fail to load message.
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