Shoot the Core! - Gaf Shoot ‘em Up (aka Shooter/SHMUP) Reference Thread

Raptomex said:
So what's the consensus on controls for shmups? Joystick/Arcade stick or controller? I've heard several people recommend a stick for some shmups on the Dreamcast like Neo XYX, DoDonPachi, and Fast Striker just to name a few. Does anyone use a stick for Saturn and/or Genesis shmups? Is it that much better?
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Sticks are always fun. That said I tend to use a pad for the 16-bit systems and Saturn...simply because that is how I played them back in the day. A game like Gradius III and the Thunderforce series feels odd on stick, to me. DC I go between the two since the controller is very cluncky and the buttons are tiny/hard. Anything modern...360/Wii and up gets played on a stick of some sort.

General for me: horizontal on pad, vertical on stick.
 
sixteen-bit said:
It comes down to personal preference like you'd imagine. Some games like Soukyugurentai even support true analog control so some people might even prefer using analog sticks.
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Well I've been looking into getting some sticks to try them out. I've been mainly playing the shmups I mentioned for Dreamcast and even the run and gun game Gunlord. But the Dreamcast controller in general was never one of my favorites. I love Galactic Attack on Saturn so I play that alot. I recently got the Saturn stick so I've been using that and it works. Works well for DoDonPachi as well.

I'm just using my Wii as a glorified GameCube and emulator so I have the homebrew channel installed and I have it hooked up to my CRT television for playing older games. I've been playing a lot of Genesis and SNES shmups. I'm wondering if a USB arcade stick would work on it? The mayflash one says it would. It's cheap, yes, but I'll probably replace the parts in the future.

Good sticks seem to expensive from what I've researched and it would be nice to have one that could work on multiple platforms.
 
As other have said any digital input will do as long as it's accurate, what is important with shmups especially bullethell is the speed at which it takes to press an input. Long throw fightsticks are no good that's why most stick users plumb for Seimitsu.

I swap between my LS-32 stick and 360 pad depending on mood and type of shmup, I've found they both have their strengths, with sticks I can move around the whole screen much better, I wouldn't play Guwange without one. Pads I'm better at little micro tap dodges that's why many Touhou players use keyboard.

(I'm no stick expert and can't answer your Wii usb question) but imo easy modding is important since most sticks are meant for fighters and you'll likely end up swapping it out with a seimitsu that uses the same mounting plate (Madcatz Brawlsticks/SFIV fightsticks are v easy to mod, Brawlsticks which I use are said have more reliable electronics than it's earlier incarnations and would be my choice for 2nd hand) just don't buy a stick with none std arcade buttons. Some types of Qanba sticks work on multiple systems.
 
Raptomex said:
Well I've been looking into getting some sticks to try them out. I've been mainly playing the shmups I mentioned for Dreamcast and even the run and gun game Gunlord. But the Dreamcast controller in general was never one of my favorites. I love Galactic Attack on Saturn so I play that alot. I recently got the Saturn stick so I've been using that and it works. Works well for DoDonPachi as well.

I'm just using my Wii as a glorified GameCube and emulator so I have the homebrew channel installed and I have it hooked up to my CRT television for playing older games. I've been playing a lot of Genesis and SNES shmups. I'm wondering if a USB arcade stick would work on it? The mayflash one says it would. It's cheap, yes, but I'll probably replace the parts in the future.

Good sticks seem to expensive from what I've researched and it would be nice to have one that could work on multiple platforms.
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the agetec dreamcast stick is pretty sweet. I actually bought one for psyvariar 2 and ikaruga when I was first starting out, and it's held up pretty well. you can find them for about $40-100 too.

it's kinda hard to track down, but there's a psx to saturn controller converter which is great... since I'm not really a fan of saturn sticks. I also haven't used the astro city saturn controller either tho. might work pretty well for ya
 
SOME-MIST said:
the agetec dreamcast stick is pretty sweet. I actually bought one for psyvariar 2 and ikaruga when I was first starting out, and it's held up pretty well. you can find them for about $40-100 too.

it's kinda hard to track down, but there's a psx to saturn controller converter which is great... since I'm not really a fan of saturn sticks. I also haven't used the astro city saturn controller either tho. might work pretty well for ya
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On Amazon the agetec Dreamcast stick was about $100 but I just looked now and it was recently sold I guess. No more. But lucky for me I found one on ebay for half the price. I have no real experience with sticks so idk what's really good and what isn't. I want to learn how to modify controllers and sticks anyway so I plan to do so in the future. I may get another well made stick down the line for the future but I want to see how much I use what I have now. I think I would use the sticks more for vertical shmups more than horizontal.
 
Steredenn is a shmup on Greenlight that looks to have some great looking sprite work.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=375439529

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMAmQLODcTg

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Super Galaxy Squadron on Greenlight

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=296907241

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SFEgRvCC2k

F6E1CA0E4154DE2959ABF2F5E48CF14D25DCA0FF
775602F72160B286F7619324AE59E8CE0B6A1728


Stardust Galaxy Warriors on Greenlight

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=354480997

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3abkGZ-yhto

637x358.resizedimage
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I made a thread so maybe we can show Taito our interest on a console/PC port for DARIUSBURST Another Chronicle EX. You can find it here. Give it a read if you're interested.
 
Getting some SERIOUS Raiden Fighter vibes from Super Galaxy Squadron. That is now a must have for me. Voted for them all, but that is by far the standout on that list.
 
AlabastreAizo said:
I know that community thread exists, but I don't want to ask them. I want to ask people who like shmups. I believe a lot of people in the Touhou community like the games for other reasons.
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I was wondering about this myself the other day, is Touhou popular because it's a series of shooting games, or despite it.

From what I played, they seem decent. I only played the demos of a couple games. Aesthetics aside (magical girls) they were technically well balanced; the shooting and flying felt good. That was roughly 10 years ago though. No idea about modern Touhou.
 
Touhou games are pretty good, I played the shooters from 6 to 10 and they have beautiful bullet patterns, good music and good controls. Graphics are quite bad though, especially the character portraits are hideous, but it's not a big deal. If you like bullet hell shooters, they're worth a try. Can't say anything on the latest games.
 
Two relevant pieces of news, shmuplords:

--The first public demo of BLUE REVOLVER, a new indie YGW-style danmaku game, was released today; it's only one stage long but it's very promising and already quite fun. There's no trailer just yet, but you can download the latest version and see their blog at http://bluerevolverstg.tumblr.com/

EDIT: here's some footage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6Vby9HNRAU


--The guy behind the shmuplations website has just started a Patreon in order to try and establish a regular schedule of new translations, including original materials and material sourced or chosen by fans. His site is the best resource for translated STG interviews on the net and he's sitting on a huge backlog of untranslated material, so if you appreciate his work, throw him a couple bucks: https://www.patreon.com/shmuplations
 
@MUWANdo said:
Two relevant pieces of news, shmuplords:

--The first public demo of BLUE REVOLVER, a new indie YGW-style danmaku game, was released today; it's only one stage long but it's very promising and already quite fun. There's no trailer just yet, but you can download the latest version and see their blog at http://bluerevolverstg.tumblr.com/

EDIT: here's some footage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6Vby9HNRAU


--The guy behind the shmuplations website has just started a Patreon in order to try and establish a regular schedule of new translations, including original materials and material sourced or chosen by fans. His site is the best resource for translated STG interviews on the net and he's sitting on a huge backlog of untranslated material, so if you appreciate his work, throw him a couple bucks: https://www.patreon.com/shmuplations
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Blue Revolver looks nice. I'll try it out when I get home.

As for translations. I'd really like to see the story heavy Black Art translated. You can buy it on playism's Japanese website, but the story and skills menus are all in Japanese.
 
Rayge said:
Super Galaxy Squadron Releases January 23rd on Steam.
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It looks fucking amazing. Can't wait! I need something to cheer me up now that my NTSC-J X360 needs to be sent to MS for repair. ;_;
 
SGS plays really decent. It's a hell of a lot better than the last shooter I bought (Redux: Dark Matters). I just came up on a glitch though. I died on the stage 2 boss with the ship in the 6'o clock position on the select screen and the game didn't stop or restart... just kept showing the boss shooting at nothing.

Other than that the game is playing great and looks great.
 
Rayge said:
SGS plays really decent. It's a hell of a lot better than the last shooter I bought (Redux: Dark Matters). I just came up on a glitch though. I died on the stage 2 boss with the ship in the 6'o clock position on the select screen and the game didn't stop or restart... just kept showing the boss shooting at nothing.

Other than that the game is playing great and looks great.
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Working on it! :)

Glad you dig, though. Hopefully have these nasty bugs nailed out tonight.
 
35 MB's!? Dude, not all of us can afford those fancy "gaming" PC's. Picked it up because why not? Can't argue with all proceeds going to charity either.
 
OK, Super Galaxy Squadron is 0 - 2 so far. No POV switch support means I can't move the ship or navigate menus with a 360 stick. Buttons work fine. Tried a pad, and there is no d-pad support here either. So I guess if you have a 360 stick with the LS/DP/RS switch (MadCatz I guess) you should be fine.

PS3 stick is dead in the water, no directional input (tried LS/DP/RS settings), nor button input.

Also, is it me or does Windows 8.1 (64-bit) freak out when you plug a Saturn USB pad in? In joystick properties 5 buttons are lit up all time time. I'm having no luck today.
 
@MUWANdo said:
Two relevant pieces of news, shmuplords:

--The first public demo of BLUE REVOLVER, a new indie YGW-style danmaku game, was released today; it's only one stage long but it's very promising and already quite fun. There's no trailer just yet, but you can download the latest version and see their blog at http://bluerevolverstg.tumblr.com/

EDIT: here's some footage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6Vby9HNRAU
Click to expand...

I finally got around to play Blue Revolver and I can't wait to see what the finished product will look like. They game has a lot of potential.
 
Just bought and played Super Galaxy Squadron. A few thoughts...

No problems with the controls. Plugged in my X1 controller via USB and all is well. Even though I don't use it, I'm surprised you can't use the d-pad.

Achievements aren't working at the moment?

I feel like there's a balance issue (at least in endless mode). For example, there are 3 different powerups you can get. If you have 3/8, 2/7 and 2/7 in those powerups, you'll be able to breeze right through enemies. It seems like you get too powerful too quick? At least in the first 2 minutes or so. Or maybe the ship I picked was too strong? I've tried with the Teal and Gold ships. I have to go back and play some more games to make sure this is what's happening.

Becoming too powerful too quick made endless mode boring UNTIL the 6-8 minute mark or so (it varies), where it became a bullet hell. Even with the very small hitbox of the ship, it became extremely hard to dodge. When you kill enemies, they drop energy which charges your hyper meter. During endless, you can sort of have a steady stream of your hyper but when the bullet hell starts, and you get hit (cause you WILL), you'll lose your powerups, which in turn makes killing enemies take much longer, which in turn makes it longer to build up your hyper meter. You have no choice but to die, lol.

I also played campaign mode and made it to stage 3. At that point, I didn't really have any powerups so killing enemies took longer than normal. Couldn't even kill some and let them just pass me by. Not really a complaint though. I just need to stop sucking so I can keep my powerups, lol.

No leaderboards? I see the "Scoreboard", but is that only for local play/campaign?

When my money goes towards more shmups on Steam, it's a great feeling. It's even better when that money is also going towards a charity. I was reading the steam forums and you guys released a patch for that one bug pretty quick. I appreciate that.

I wanted to take a few screenshots (especially of the bullet hell parts), but that option isn't working for this game.

There's also a "Hardcore" mode where when you die, you have to replay the stage from the beginning. During campaign, I can see this being done but endless mode? Nah, lol.

This is a decent game. It's not blowing me away but it's something I have no regrets with and I'll certainly play with more ships to see how different they are. As soon as the achievements are up, I'll work on them but after that, I can't really see myself playing it anymore. I can appreciate the work you guys put into this and I thank you very much.
 
Hispanicguy said:
I can appreciate the work you guys put into this and I thank you very much.
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Hey, thanks a bunch and thanks for the write-up! Super valuable to us going forward. Things like leaderboards and achievements should be working, but we may have screwed with something in the update. It's all noted down, really appreciate your time dude!
 
Just got these three in the mail from eBay today:

$_57.JPG


Got them altogether for $60, $20 per game plus free shipping, which was a pretty great price on Gradius Gaiden's part. Can't wait to get into it, been wanting it for a while and the price point for the bundle hit the sweet spot.
 
AaronWatermelon said:
Hey, thanks a bunch and thanks for the write-up! Super valuable to us going forward. Things like leaderboards and achievements should be working, but we may have screwed with something in the update. It's all noted down, really appreciate your time dude!
Click to expand...

No problem!

I just beat the game (1CC) on normal with the Gold ship. Saw the true final boss as well. Definitely some bullet hell in that battle :p But again, because of the small hitbox, it wasn't bad.

As for the achievements, I can see them now (but when you go to the store page, it says "steam achievements" but doesn't show the icons/number of achievements like it usually does. That's why I thought there was something wrong). Now it's a matter of actually getting them. Not sure what I need to do in order to get max bonus on the bosses. (Edit: After I made this post I started a new game and got the max bonus achievement on the first boss, lol. Might involve beating them as quickly as possible?). I ALMOST got the 15 mil achievement though. Finished with 14 mil :(

It's definitely not a bad game. Far from it. Enjoyed every minute of campaign and I plan on playing again in a few with a different ship.
 
Rydeen said:
Just got these three in the mail from eBay today:

http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTIwMFgxNjAw/z/RzYAAOSw7NNULo4E/$_57.JPG[IMG]

Got them altogether for $60, $20 per game plus free shipping, which was a pretty great price on Gradius Gaiden's part. Can't wait to get into it, been wanting it for a while and the price point for the bundle hit the sweet spot.[/QUOTE]

Nice haul. I need to get into Gradius more. The PSX and PS2 games/compilations are generally considered good right? Nothing horribly broken about them? I've had my eye on Gradius III & IV for PS2 for the longest time.
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BOTEC said:
Nice haul. I need to get into Gradius more. The PSX and PS2 games/compilations are generally considered good right? Nothing horribly broken about them? I've had my eye on Gradius III & IV for PS2 for the longest time.
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The III & IV compilation are decent, but Gradius Gaiden on PSX and Gradius V (by Treasure!) on PS2 are generally considered to be the GOAT Gradius games on the Playstation platforms. Gradius III on the compilation is good because it's the arcade port and doesn't have as bad of slow-down issues as the SNES port, and to be perfectly honest I'm not much of a fan of Gradius IV. Taking out the power-up edit mode and adding the "!" option that causes downgrades didn't sit well with me.
 
Rydeen said:
The III & IV compilation are decent, but Gradius Gaiden on PSX and Gradius V (by Treasure!) on PS2 are generally considered to be the GOAT Gradius games on the Playstation platforms. Gradius III on the compilation is good because it's the arcade port and doesn't have as bad of slow-down issues as the SNES port, and to be perfectly honest I'm not much of a fan of Gradius IV. Taking out the power-up edit mode and adding the "!" option that causes downgrades didn't sit well with me.
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I know all about V. Me and a friend played A LOT of Gradius V when it came out. Fan-fucking-tastic game. I think I burned out on it though, that's why I'm more interested in the ones no one talks about. Isn't there a Gradius I + II comp on PSX? I feel like I should have an arcade perfect Gradius I.
 
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