9.5 is definitely a sleeper hit. I usually find the spinoffs not nearly as enjoyable as the mainline series but these “freeze bullet” games are super fascinating. There’s a direct follow-up with 12.5 and a softer follow-up with 12.8 as well, so look forward to those. I love STG that prioritize other methods of engaging with enemies/bullet patterns beyond simply shooting back (I’ll refrain from making this about Kiki Kaikai…). There’s so much creativity to explore with alternative mechanics like this. Pure STG is obviously lovely but it’s so exciting to take away something so fundamental to the experience and finding so much depth in trying to replace it with something entirely different
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Blue Revolver: Double Action dropped yesterday after an eight year wait. lots of interesting changes across the board and the rank curve is gentler now. if there was ever a time to check blue revolver out, now’s a good time.
I feel for danbo, he’s a swell dude and he really went through it trying to get this thing finished and im very parasocially proud of him. I want this game to do well for whatever reason… blue revolver is probably a masterpiece, a really thoughtful and well-executed game in the cave/raizing tradition and if you have any affection for the danmaku lineage i really think you owe it to yourself to give it a shot and post scores here for funsies
blue revolver is notably also the only example of cool and attractive psytrance that is not even slightly cringey
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I’m not super shmup skilled, but I loved Blue Revolver and thought it had a lot of thoughtful touches. Had no idea about the big update!
I’ll give this a go this weekend.
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I was hopping around on SNES games on the Switch earlier with my nephews. One of them wanted to play EDF and he had a total blast with it despite bumbling around. I thought I’d get him a really good shmup to play and quickly realized I have none on the Switch.
Can someone recommend me a Switch shmup that has an easy mode or is an arcade port that I can just pour infinite credits into?
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Mushihimesama!!!
… If it didn’t get delisted a couple months ago!! It’s a travesty. Cosmo Dreamer, Graze Counter, and Hazelnut Hex are three others I’d recommend as being great for beginners, and all wiith pretty different priorities and styles. I think between those three, nearly all bases are covered wrt learning to love STG.
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I’m going to float Drainus out for a horizontal scroll recommendation. Got some good spectacle and punch to it.
Includes
- Easy Mode
- Optional Collision bumpers, ship collides with walls instead of exploding
- Multiple replenishable hitpoints before death
- Defensive bullet eating barrier button
- On sale
Maybe reasons not to:
Shot customization between stages might bring things down.
Arcade mode supports infinite retries, but is unfortunately not unlocked at the start. Normal game has per-stage checkpoints.
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The Darius collection (whatever one has Darius Gaiden on it, I want to say Cosmic Collection) might also be a good call. Darius Gaiden has a ton of cool music, a bunch of branching stages a la OutRun, and lots of cool fish bosses.
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Just picked this up thanks to your post! Had it wishlisted but I missed the huge update.
I haven’t even started playing the game proper yet, but I’m in awe of these menus lol. It’s got a stage select, a mission mode, lots of customization options, extras to unlock, full tutorials. Really well done; a whole lot of work went into this I can tell.
(Also FYI it’s half-off until the 21st)
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i woke up today with a desire to play deathsmiles for the first time….
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Thanks everyone for all the great recommendations. Think I’ll go with the Cozmic Collection for now because I’m pretty sure they would think Darius Gaiden is the coolest and it’s probably the most straight forward. I don’t play much shmups despite really liking them and the little bit I’ve played of the Darius games I enjoyed, so it’ll be as much for me as anything.
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I really want to buy this but I shouldn’t right now. Ah heck it I’ll take a look at the steam page anyw-
I vaguely remember getting a bit crazy during the last winter sale but I completely forgot about this.
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incredible that they updated Blue Revolver, a game released SEVEN years ago instead of just re-releasing a new version like the developers of old used to do. AND FOR FREE?!
back in our day they’ll add one character, change the colors of the lifebars, and mess with the scoring system, and i would happily pony up another $70 to import it from lik-sang
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unexpected free time atm so, recent news dump
- Crystal Breaker, the latest game from Terarin (Missile Dancer, Terra Flame and many other STG) is out now on PC and Switch—it’s another caravan-style vertical STG with an aggressive scoring system and an every-stage-is-its-own-caravan format (and there’s a free demo):
- Redneg All-Stars Swing-By Edition came out on the Japanese Switch eShop yesterday, with an EN option—this game’s by doujin dev Outside, maker of the recent Like Dreamer and Cosmo Dreamer, and is an expanded commercial remake of their old free boss rush game Redneg All-Stars; this new paid version’s been available on PC for a minute, and it probably won’t be long until it’s out globally on Switch if you’d rather not import. (It’s also a little hornier than the thumbnail might suggest.)
- The arcade version of the original Cotton just hit Arcade Archives—this game’s been remixed and converted many times, but straight unaltered reissues of the original are few and far between:
- After an extended delay, ININ finally released the second volume of their proposed five-volume Irem Collection series, which contains the vertical STG Air Duel alongside the arcade and/or home versions of the proto-Metal Slug run-and-guns Gunforce and Gunforce II/Geostorm; the previous Irem Collection wasn’t especially well-made, so I wouldn’t grab this blindly:
- Toaplan successor studio Tatsujin recently released Amusement Arcade Toaplan for smartphones: it’s a Capcom Stadium-esque free hub offering emulated versions of 25 Toaplan arcade games and a customisable pretend-arcade frontend with 3D cabinet models you can arrange and so on; Tatsujin/Truxton is free and a few other games have free trials, but beyond that, ya gotta buy 'em ($6 each). Again, I haven’t tried these so I can’t vouch for them or compare them to the multiple other versions of these games that are currently available, but they do have bluetooth controller support.
- As a prelude to a brand-new Karous game, Milestone successor studio RS34 is crowdfunding a port of the original Karous for Switch: they’ve handily passed several goals, including Switch and PC ports, and with a month to go, I expect they’ll hit their ultimate goal for a PS port as well:
- Mikado’s hosting a City Connection stream on December 1, 20:00 to talk about P-47-II MD (“THE FREEDOM STAR”), a remix of the NMK/Jaleco arcade game P-47 that was produced for Mega Drive but never released due to publisher/platform politics—City Connection’s president has demoed it many times before, and the doujin publisher Habit Soft announced an official cartridge release several months back, so I suspect they’ll use this stream to announce the release date and open pre-orders: https://www.youtube.com/@MIKADO4649/
play Blue Revolver Double Action
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- City Connection’s new port of G.rev’s Under Defeat port came out in Japan today (Switch / PS / Xbox): this is a modern port of the HD X360/PS3 version with all the DLC and some other little extras, like visible rank display, subtitled radio chatter and a second arranged soundtrack by Shinji Hosoe, Ayako Saso & Takahiro Eguchi, and it was supposed to be out globally today but got pushed back to “early 2025” at the last second, presumably due to limited-print shenanigans. (The JP Switch/PS versions had their non-JP languages removed, but it seems they may still be present in the XB version.)
- P-47 II MD, an authentic remixed Mega Drive adaptation of the arcade game P-47 that was shelved by Jaleco in 1990 for Reasons (implied to be pressure by Nintendo), is being officially released for the first time: it’ll be out on “MD-compatible cartridge” on March 13:
- Global orders are up for Chouyoku Senki Estique (FC) / Changeable Guardian Estique (NES), a new horizontal transforming-mech STG from Cat Hui Trading, the indie company helmed by Mega Drive Mini/Game Gear Micro director Takayuki Komabayashi; shipping begins on December 16. Lotsa veterans worked on this one: Jemini Hirono, PAC & Daigattai Kodama (ex-Compile), Shinichi Sakamoto (ex-Westone), Shinji Hosoe & Ayako Saso (SuperSweep, ex-Namco), etc etc
- out of nowhere: Dodonpachi Saidaioujou’s coming to the Switch eShop on December 19! The port’s by Live Wire, the same folks behind the recent delisted ports of Mushihimesama, Dodonpachi Resurrection and Espgaluda II as well as Radiant Silvergun, and it’s explicitly based on the X360 version… which was not an especially good port, but all their previous ports received some degree of touch-ups and I’d like to think they understand the assignment. (The port’s JP-language-only and hasn’t been announced globally, so it might be another game left to languish at the whims of a limited-print publisher.)
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This week’s Arcade Archives is an STG, Viper Phase 1 by Seibu Kaihatsu! Should be pretty interesting!
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Viper Phase 1 is a goodun, get it
- Angelian Trigger hit the Japanese Switch eShop today: it’s a pseudo-3D rail shooter from Pixel Co.ltd (Horgihugh, Space Runaway, Xelan Force, etc) with art design by Akihiko Kimura (Emerald Dragon), music by Akari Kaida (Breath of Fire, various Mega Men, etc), sfx by Super Sweep’s Ayako Saso, etc etc:
- Also out on the Japanese Switch eShop: Cho Aniki Collection, an emulated two-pack of the two PCECD Cho Aniki games with some basic extras (if you’ve played any of the other Edia-produced collections for Valis et al then you’ll know exactly what you’re in for). This was a crowdfunded collection, and they did hit a stretch goal to reissue the SFC sorta-fighting game, but that’s coming separate from the collection… so yeah, ~¥9K for two PCE games:
- also out today in Japan, retail-only: Akeaka NEOGEO Collections vol.1 & vol.2, a pair of no-frills 10-packs of Arcade Archives Neogeo games. To my knowledge, they’re not truncated like Taito Milestones’ ACA repackages; they’re exactly the same, but on a cart, sort of. I mention 'em because there is a STG on each volume, but probably not the one you want… the game choices are odd overall (fuck Top Players Golf, for real) but they did at least give Shock Troopers its due. (Also, reminder: Hamster’s already announced “ACA Neogeo 2”, ie they’re going to be reissuing all these games again for newer consoles with additional features including online multiplayer, in case you needed another reason to hold off on these comps.)
- speaking of Taito Milestones: Taito Milestones 3’s out globally today on Switch, offering ten more current and future Taito ACA releases in one collection, sans some ACA-exclusive additional leaderboards and whatnot. They consciously tried to pick games westerners would care about for this one, which means ya get Bubble Bobble, Rainbow Islands and a bunch of harder-edged games (including the one STG-adjacent game, the never-reissued mobster-themed Dead Connection):
- also out globally on Switch: RIKI 8BIT GAME COLLECTION, an emulated collection of five homebrew Famicom games/all-star chiptune albums by JP homebrew dev RIKI—only two of 'em are actual games, and only one’s a STG, but there are contributions from loads of STG composers, so give them a look if you’re into tech-demo stuff, as the games are certainly well-crafted:
- City Connection’s put out patches to address Wolf Fang Skull Fang Saturn Tribute’s PS4-on-PS5 bugs and other issues, and they have a patch coming for Under Defeat HD that addresses some very how’d-they-miss-these graphics issues released to a memory leak
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- Live Wire’s Switch port of Dodonpachi Saidaioujou is rolling out worldwide, $35—I’ve yet to try it so i can’t speak to how it compares to the X360 version, but I can tell you they haven’t bothered to translate it: DODONPACHI SAIDAIOUJOU for Nintendo Switch - Nintendo Official Site
- the Egret II Mini’s third expansion pack, Arcade Memories vol.3, came out in Japan today—it adds 10 more games via SD card, and they’re mostly obscure and/or never-ported (details). You can’t really buy much of anything related to this mini anymore due to scarcity and an unexpected uptick in demand that Taito’s unable to address for a variety of reasons, so idk why I’m even bringing it up…
- Pixel Co. Ltd (Angelian Trigger, Space Runaway, Horgihugh, etc) put out a new trailer for Bounty Sisters, a game being made for Switch with Twinbee series designer Shuzulow.HA and ; there’s a specific subtext behind the participation of Shuzilow.HA and so many ex-Konami folk relating to a notorious crowdfunding campaign (mis)handled by a certain former Konami composer, which you can read about here.
- Sol-Deace, the NA/EU-exclusive cartridge version of Wolf Team’s Mega CD STG Sol-Feace, is getting its first Japanese cartridge release via Columbus Circle; the two versions are nigh-identical minus the music, but if you want an official-ish JP MD version, here it is:
https://www.columbuscircle.co.jp/products/?id=1733298301-485446&ca=22
- SNK announced vol.3 & 4 of their physical, Japan-only ACA Neogeo comps for Switch: vol3 includes Last Resort and Blazing Star; vol4 includes Pulstar and Ninja Commando.
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I recently went back to Psyvariar and Mushihimesama via their Steam versions and I’m having a blast, if I am otherwise pretty bad at both of them. Apparently I’d only played a couple hours of the latter but I feel like I’ve played it for longer over the years.
However, I can definitely say that I’m worse at shooting games than I was 10, 15 years ago. I’ve been going through the different modes of Mushihimesama and whilst I 1CCd Novice original after a couple of tries I’ve been struggling with doing the same for Novice Maniac and Version 1.0 Original modes, hitting a wall at stage 4 - I had one run on Novice Maniac where I lost four lives on stage 4! I am practicing though and I realise that this game is notoriously on the more difficult side of the genre but dang, I certainly feel worse than I did before.
It’s a similar story with Psyvariar. I’m mainly playing the most recent version (Delta? I forget) and I’m struggling to convincingly get by stage three without nosediving into a game over. I feel like I need to better understand the rolling mechanic in that game but I could just be screwing it up!
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thanks for making these posts! just wanted to mention that i really appreciate them!!
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