eShop has a bunch of shmups on sale right now and I’m trying to decide what to grab. What’s everyone’s opinion on Castle of Shikigami 2? A spooky shmup seems fun and stands out. While I’ve only played the PC Engine version of OG Darius, how does G Darius compare? Taito of the late 90’s was great, but I’m curious if it plays as smooth with the transition to 3D models. Lastly, if I’ve never played Raiden, should I grab IV or V?
G Darius is great but Darius Gaiden in the Darius collection is the one to get if that’s also on sale. If not G Darius is a pretty fun time. And probably Raiden IV. Raiden V is a fairly bizarre video game full of barely audible/readable dialog that flows throughout while you’re focusing on bullets and trying to parse the strange hd textured low poly landscapes you’re flying over. It’s worth a youtube search for a longplay, but probably not the best place to start.
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Much appreciated as always! Oh man, I’ll definitely grab Raiden IV. My personal pet peeve in games is text or dialogue during a game that’s really fast paced and requires intense concentration like a shmup or combat heavy game.
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I really do recommend tracking down a video of it, it’s something to behold.
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Under Defeat coming to everything this winter
And Mamorukun Curse! In 2025
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Seconding Raiden IV. RV was completely unplayable for me after the second or third stage. It was much too difficult to see what was going on and where bullets were against the environment and the other nonsense that was going on.
In other news I’ve introduced Ms LeFish to Game Type and now she knows the delights of “PARKOUR”.
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Both of these are a lot of fun, excited for more people to have fewer excuses to not play them!
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Sharing this really good write up about a small stg and stg adjacent game developer by this thread’s own @gsk
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I didn’t click with Under Defeat when I played it on 360 so I’m going to give this another go
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I played through Steredenn: Binary Stars which does that, and I thought it was okay. Not saying someone couldn’t make something incredible in that vein, but I do prefer tightly designed experiences.
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I was much younger and less experienced with shmups when I tried it, but yeah, I could not wrap my brain around the control scheme. I will buy it again to support, but I’m tempted to pull my PS3 copy out in the meantime. Seems like it might also be better suited for a stick, which I don’t have.
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I played Raiden IV X Mikado the other day and really didn’t enjoy it. I couldn’t see bullets and I didn’t enjoy switching weapons as much as I did in other Raidens. It kept making me think that it’s a bummer that the Raiden Fighters games didn’t get ported to consoles after the 360 version. BTW, that became a bit of thing in Europe. It was supposed to be released by the publisher JoWood but they went under and it never got released despite a gold master supposedly existing for it. I had a NTSCJ 360 which the US release ran on so I could play it but I know a lot of shooter likers in Europe were pretty annoyed.
Anyway, they should release those games again. I really enjoyed the Fighters series in a way that I haven’t enjoyed mainline Raiden games.
And speaking of Mikado, that reminded me that I went there a couple of weeks ago and played DaiOuJou and Ketsui. Cave games really are the coolest looking games and playing them on cabinets ruled.
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feeling a lot of envy seeing those cave games on cabinets!!
I’ve been following the Shmup Beginners List made by various Shmup community members, and it’s been a much more focused and balanced ramp up for the genre for me. So rather than bouncing between a bunch of different shmups, I’ve been proceeding through the list based on my skill level.
So far I cleared Blue Wish Resurrection Plus - Heaven 1CC (with autobomb) and DoDonPachi Resurrection (DFK) 1.5 - Novice 1-ALL, Strong Style, Type B.
BWRP I somehow got on my first try, which was a surprise. DFK took a couple weeks of practice, level 5’s spinning laser wheels just totally kicked my butt.
I think next will be Touhou 8 on Easy or maybe some more DFK. I really like the mechanics of DFK with the hyper, the two shots, the bees, there’s a bit going on but once it clicked, it was a lot of fun.
How do you all keep track of your 1CCs, if at all? I copied that spreadsheet I linked and made a customized version for myself.
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one of the most fun ways I’ve seen (though not the most practical) was from this reddit post where someone made a photoshop pin board and made “pins” of all the games they 1CC’d. I’d love to do this with real pins, honestly.
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Shooting games have always been a sort of meditation for me. Albeit a stressful form of meditation, I’ve found I can’t think about anything else when I’m playing. I’ve gotten to the point where I stopped keeping track of my 1ccs for two main reasons. First, I definitely feel I gain the most while learning and playing around with mechanics (more of a journey, not the destination kind of mentality). Second, there are so many modes these days! I believe my copy of Futari with the DLC has something like 10 different modes I can clear.
That said, I do keep a notebook by my systems that I write in after each play session when I try or finish a game to document my thoughts.
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I started playing STGs this week, after finishing Sin & Punishment on the N64. Snagged Touhou 6 and 10 and have been goin’ crazy on ’em since Monday.
I set my sights a little high from the start… as in, I started up Touhou 6 and played on Hard from the get-go. I can get about halfway it on a single credit now! But I haven’t even beat 10’s first boss on Hard. The drop from 5 lives by default down to 3 is wiiild. So I’ve decided to throttle it back and instead first try and finish the games, using continues, on Normal. Got to the last boss of Touhou 6 yesterday and was summarily trounced, so here’s hoping I can knock it out tonight! Having fun so far, and bouncing between games is helping me hold my interest.
As an aside, I visited Japan for the first time last September, and when I was visiting some arcade or another in Akihabara, I remember playing one of the Touhou games on a cabinet for a few minutes. “Hey I’ve heard of these before, I should check it out!” Thankfully a friend took a little video of the game — it was Touhou Perfect Sakura Fantastica, which the TH wiki tells me is actually a fangame and the first one to get licensed for arcades. Neat!
Also, @brettch, thank you for sharing that Beginners List document! I downloaded Blue Wish Resurrection Plus and enjoyed my first attempt. That’ll be a fun one to take head-on once I’ve gotten my fill of one of these Touhous!
I’m also tempted to look into a version comparison for the various Radiant Silvergun releases, I feel like that’d be a good time too. If anyone has an opinion about the Switch port, lmk, I see it’s on sale for $10 right now.
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All versions of Radiant Silvergun are great ports so no worries. Just a warning though, I’d put it in my top 3 shmups of all time, but it is fairly difficult, so don’t get discouraged if you feel like you need to go back to it later!
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all of the current ports of RSG are based on the x360 remaster from awhile back and are functionally identical except for input latency, which appears to be worse on newer releases since they are basically just emulating/adding compatibility layers on top of one another. i think the switch port’s input lag clocks in at 5f as opposed to the Saturn release’s 3f… which is kind of a lot if you’re the type to notice these things. the steam release has mods to reduce input lag :3 honestly i just emulate the Saturn version but the training features of the remaster are really worth it!
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Just got my xbox 360 hard modded cause and I had some OEM VGA cables just lying around and a VGA CRT already in TATE mode and uhh Muhsihimesama Futari looks astonishing!
Getting the mod done here it’s cheaper than buying the flasher needed to do it myself, so I just took it to a shop.
Still figuring out the video modes and I don’t think they are the same for all the games (haven’t installed then all cause downloading xbox 360 roms is really slow) but I’m beyond myself. Haven’t got DoDonPachi DaiOuJou looking good and I don’t know if it’s possible but Im freaking happy if just Muhsihimesama Futari looks this way. Will keep posting updates as I install new games and test new video modes.
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Ya’ll know I bought that Rainbow Cotton. The short of it is, Rainbow Cotton is still not an all-timer or anything, but the new tweaks help a lot and it’s great that we have Rainbow Cotton
At first, I misunderstood the intention of the new ability to paint targets. I was really excited for this addition, as painting targets is just one of the most fun things you can do in a shmup – I love it in RayStorm, I love it in Radiant Silvergun, I love it in Panzer Dragoon, I love it in Sin & Punishment, and I figured it would help alleviate Rainbow Cotton’s problem of “too much goin on here.” From the jump, it did not feel good; I was disappointed that it’s not a “paint your targets and release volley” situation, so much so that it took me a good few levels to figure out what the heck it was doing, as there’s no real sense of feedback (and again, too much goin on to try and learn something effectively). Turns out, you’re choosing a lock-on target for all of your fairies (Cotton’s typical satellite weapon) to hone in on and auto attack. This does absolutely miniscule damage, so that seemed like a downer. What it wants you to do, I think, is use that ability mostly to lock on to the power-up pots (which, as usual, you have to shoot to release power-up crystals). This actually eases a lot of the original’s pain, as those pots seem to take a lot of hits and leave you very little time to try and grab your crystal before it flies by, especially given the game’s “not-quite-there,” overly floaty handling of 3D space (it still does not feel nearly as good as, say, a Star Fox 64). Once you get in that rhythm of managing the fairy target while you do your own thing as Cotton, it’s pretty fun
What’s in the package is really nicely done, but it’s a spare lil package. If you like looking at Dreamcast games, you’re gonna like looking at this. Aesthetically, it’s just candy – that’s probably the best thing going here – and it seems to run at 60 fps on Switch. Hard to tell on input lag as Rainbow ain’t too fast in any world and I’ve only ever played emulated, but it does seem much more solid overall than ININ is known for upon release (probably because this is not a Sega Saturn game). You’re essentially getting a 20-minute Saturday morning anime episode here, and it appears to be upscaled quite well. So that’s all great. What’s not great is the lack of options that you’d expect for a re-release like this: you get the remaster, you get a “retro” mode (ININ says this “replicates the Dreamcast original as closely as possible,” but I’m not sure what the exact deal is here; the remaster seems built on the bones of the original, so I assume it’s the OG emulated nicely without the extras like widescreen, enhanced lighting and particles and gameplay tweaks that the retake adds)
This is presented in 4:3 with a CRT filter standard (I do appreciate that as I’ve noticed lately that 3D rereleases often lack CRT features when the original release absolutely would’ve been played on a CRT), but what’s odd is the lack of options across either version. You’re getting difficulty modes, the option to invert controls, the option to turn off the constant (I mean constant) barrage of infantilized anime squeals, and that’s about it – no save states, no filter options, no level select, nada. That’s kind of a bummer; my stance is that a vintage game package should give you the option to cruise through a game so that you can behold the work from start to finish regardless of skill level just to see what’s what, but that’s not an option here. You should be able to finish Rainbow Cotton, at least on “easy,” with a few tries, but even then, that means you’re going to be replaying the first few levels a bunch of times. More accessibility features would’ve been nice
But, it’s $20 to have a nicely presented version of Rainbow Cotton, plus an improved retake on Rainbow Cotton. That’s especially nice when your only other options are emulation or a $200ish dollar Dreamcast game. I’d have never predicted that I’d be able to boot up my Switch and play every single Cotton game (minus the pachinko one) in the year 2024, but here we are, and that’s pretty dreamy
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