With a tiny handful of notable exceptions (Ikaruga ~6 years old), R-Type Final (~4 years old) and Gradius 5 (~3 years old), not many major or recognizable shooters make their way over here. The few that do (often hampered by poor ports or ugly translations) often go unnoticed.
Now, unfortunately, a lot of really cool shooters are arcade only. While getting into arcade games is cheaper than you might think, it's still a bit more of a pain than most people are willing to go through.
It is possible to play a good number of these via emulation, at least the older ones, and a few did receive console ports of varying quality. Most pre-2000 shooters can be played via emulation.
A fair number shooters are still being ported to consoles in Japan, and can easily (and not excessively expensively) be imported. I ordered quite a few online from US importers without paying any sort of heinous price premium - though they tend to go out of stock, you can still find them with a bit of searching.
A lot of Naomi games are ported to the Dreamcast, yes, that zany system that just won't die in the deluded hearts of gamers lives on, courtesey of random arcade ports.
There are several other companies producing and releasing shooters in the arcades in japan, and a fair number of those do receive home ports - all you need to do is know they exist, then import them.
I apologize for the cruddy screenshot quality and the ultra-bad youtube videos, it's hard to find good screenshots of these, since there aren't very many good US fansites for shooters
The shmups forum has lots of shooter talk on the latest releases, it's a good place to go for information, and they have some phenomenal systems faqs for various shooters.
http://shmups.system11.org/viewforum.php?f=5
It's easy to discount shooters as being simplistic, but it isn't until you start examining the mechanics at work that you begin to realize just how complicated some of the more recent games are. This is especially true if you're playing for a 1 credit clear, or working on a real high score - mashing continue and beating the game in 15 minutes is rather missing the point entirely.
Some of these games have some really elegant and interesting scoring mechanics that encourage or force you to play a certain way to be really successful. Some are more lenient than others, allowing room for your individual playstyle and skill. Most are not even remotely apparent when you're diving in with no prior knowledge - yes, you really do need a manual for a shooter.
Here's a link to the ESP Galuda faq, since I think it's one of Cave's more newbie-friendly manic shooters. The other would be Mushi, since it can be played in modes that feel considerably less manic than the others presented here:
http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=134
======================================================
Cave
One of the forerunners of the manic shooter genre, beginning with DonPachi, formed from the remnants of Toaplan, the company that did some cool older games like Batsugan.
http://www.cave.co.jp/
http://www.world-of-arcades.net/Cave/cave.htm
DoDonPachi - released in 1997, a sequel to DonPachi, and a very cool game. One of the earliest truly manic shooters, with buckets of bullets being thrown at you, and an unforgiving chaining system.
There was actually a direct sequel to DDP, other than DaiOuJou, but it was developed by a Taiwanese company and was not, as far as I know, especially good (DDP II)
DDP allowed you to choose from a variety of fighters (fast and front focused, slow and spread focused, or fucking weird), and then farther allowed you to choose to focus your power on either your spread shot or your beam shot. The spread generally made the levels easier, and a stronger beam generally made bosses easier.
DDP also had absurdly cool bombs, allowing you to either drop a normal screen clearing bomb that would do dick all to a boss (except save your ass), or to use a bomb while firing your beam, which would supercharge the beam (ideal for raping bosses).
Naturally, high scoring involved using no bombs, chaining enemies perfectly, and not dying - oh, and you could only access the real last boss by looping the game, and it would only loop if you kicked enough ass the first time. Right.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6xUTX7u1Qg
======================================================
The sequel to DDP, DoDonPachi DaiOuJou (2002 - DDPDOJ), was murderously unforgiving. With practice, I was able to get to the last boss in DDP after a few weeks on one credit. DOJ locked me down hard on the third stage boss.
DOJ was notable for having an absurdly awesome 'Hyper' mode, allowing you to unload with monstrous beams of energy or screen clearing wide shot. Unfortunately using it increased the difficulty, so while it was fun to use, the only real way to utilize the Hyper system without making the game even more impossibly difficult was to chain from Hyper to Hyper, which is even harder than chaining successfully in DDP. Fun game, but too hard for my tastes.
Much like DDP, you could choose a fast or slow ship, but then you could pick a 'doll' (ie, jlolibot), customizing the ship for spread/laser, or both, but at the cost of maximum bomb stock.
Hyper mode, shots showing hori mode on the ps2 version (it supports tate as well)
DOJ also had (at the time) one of the most insane true last bosses ever, the source of many a confused comment from a youtube video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w06PacV5FRY
DOJ also has a seriously kickass soundtrack, proper nerds in the audience might recognize the name Hitoshi Sakimoto (who also did songs for Battle Garegga, and a few others)
DOJ is available on the PS2, you can import it and play it with any ps2 capable of running japanese games.
======================================================
ESP Rade (1998), and it's sequel ESP Galuda (2003) (which then received a sequel of its own, ESP Galuda 2 (2005))
Rade was notable for it's 'human' characters and enemies, rather than entirely ships. Otherwise, its significant gameplay mechanics were a bomb 'energy meter' that could be used for short bursts of invulnerability, or charged to blast bosses. The scoring system encouraged killing enemies point blank, quite fun.
It was also possible to set the order of the first several stages (something very common in Psikyo shooters), providing some variation for the beginning of the game (handy, when you spend so much time replaying the early stages of most shooters). Depending on the order, the difficulty of the stages and bosses would change.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s3gljIB8Ho
======================================================
ESP Galuda (2003) is a) available on the PS2 and b) one of the most forgiving manic shooters out there, making it a highly recommended title if you'd just like to check out one game on the list.
It has a couple of nifty systems. For one, under certain circumstances, if you get hit, it essentially auto-bombs, making it considerably more forgiving than most other manic shooters.
In addition, it's core gameplay mechanic involves transforming (and transgendering, but whatever), a process that slows down the action onscreen, giving you more time to dodge. This is actually tied intimitely to the scoring system, as certain enemies will actually pump out more bullets (despite them moving more slowly) while in slowdown, and killing them while in slowdown transforms bullets into golde.
While not transformed, killing 'popcorn' (small, weak) enemies gives you green crystals, used to sustain the slowdown transform mode.
Another game with great music, and quite a bit of fun.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aaA7hLXGCs
======================================================
Mushihimesama (2004) in addition to being a mouthful, is a bit of a departure for Cave. It has a unique mode select that allows you to choose the overall pacing and intensity of the game. On one end, it feels rather more like Raiden - very fast bullets, lots of nasty stuff aimed at you, but generally less giant fields of slow moving pain (the slow burn manic style, especially noticable in Galuda where you can slow down huge patterns). On the other, it feels like the enemies are simply pouring buckets of bullets down on your head.
This time around, you get to fly around as a magical bug princess, yay! (whut) fighting off hordes of evil bugs (whut). Rather than the ship/character select typical in Cave's other games, this time there are a variety of shot and option types that can be picked up while playing, each with different spread patterns and usage.
Mushi is available on the PS2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU5jzrsR9Uc
Note this video is not representative of the game as a whole, you can play it on much more relaxed settings, this is just show-off material.
======================================================
Ibara (2005) is one of Cave's more recent games, and is unique for several reasons. First, it is very, very similar in feel to Battle Garegga, a popular shooter from the company Raizing, who also did several other pretty cool shooters (Armed Police Batrider et al).
Garegga was unique for its incredibly vicious rank system. Almost everything you could do in the game actually made it harder - including firing your weapons! Dying would lower your rank, so playing the game well was this insane mix of high scoring techniques to rack up extra lives, suiciding to lower rank, and repeating through to the end. Needless to say, without an understanding of the rank system at work here, playing it 'normally' just felt like an exercise in frustration as the enemies and bosses got ever more difficult.
So then - Ibara is a strange item, as it is a product of Cave, but largely designed by the Raizing team, so it looks like some of Cave's more recent work, but plays and feels a lot like a spiritual sequel to Battle Garegga. This is not to my personal tastes, but it is unique. Like DOJ, Galuda, and Mushi, it is available on the PS2.
Oh, also nipples/panty shots. Whut.
======================================================
Since Ibara, Cave has done a sequel to Mushi, Galuda 2, the Ibara sequel Pink Sweets (notable for even more panty shots).
This year, there's Muchi Muchi Pork, which I don't even know how to describe. I found a brief article on a banned site, just google for it. It involves pigs and a lard meter.
and Tenshi No Juusha
which I have no clue about
======================================================
When I started this post, my intent was to go over a bunch of companies, and show just how many companies are actively making shooters, and how many have home ports that can be imported - but I quickly realized that just covering Cave would take me hours (which it did, and this is skin deep coverage).
Cave's older games are probably best played emulated (specifically DDP and Rade, though I believe DDP has a PS and Saturn port, I don't think either is great)
Dodonpachi Daioujou, ESP Galuda, Mushihimesama, and Ibara can all be imported for the PS2. DOJ and Galuda came out from Arika, and Taito published Mushi and Ibara.
I don't know if their more recent games will receive ports soon, and I completely skipped Ketsui (a really cool, arcade only helicopter shooter with constantly scrolling backgrounds and a funky lock-on laser weapon, with a scoring system that feels a bit like Rade's in play)
It's easy to throw a bunch of screenshots and some crappy youtube videos out to make a post about shooters, it is damned hard to describe exactly why shooters are so completely fucking awesome.
Until you've had the rush of your first 1cc clear of a seriously badass shooter, it's a hard thing to communicate. It's also really hard to get into them 'cold', where you're either new, or the last shooter you played was some godawful home port of a 15 year old arcade game. I'd be happy to answer any questions, as I'm able to - I know there are a few hardcore shooter fans in the GAF crowd, some much more knowledable than me about the genre.
My interest and enjoyment comes from two types of shooters - the really thickly atmospheric horizontal shooters (of which Cave has done precisely none, and which I haven't covered here at all), some of which aren't nearly as hard as the rougher games (R-Type Final is a decent example of this, I'd even go as far back as something like Axelay to describe what I'm talking about).
The second, and the one that got me back into shooters hard some years ago is the incredibly brutal manic shooter. From the first few seconds of playing DDP and raping a screenful of enemies with that uber laser, I was hooked. Dodging a screen full of bullets is a real rush as well, a feeling I don't get from very many other games at all (high level fps competition is all that comes to mind).
I can think of a lot of reasons this genre isn't very popular in the states, but I can't think of any good reasons that a gaming community as well educated and hip to obscure games as GAF seems so oblivious to it.
It does take a bit of work to keep on top of games that aren't coming out here, and then a bit of cash to actually import them, but if you find your preferred niche in the shooter genre, you can have a lot of fun.
Cave's excessively manic offerings are only one style of shooter, there are others, including horizontal games, ripoffs of popular shooters, and others, more atmospheric horizontal games, games focused more or less on scoring, on hard stages, or hard bosses, on custom routes through levels, on strange systems, or just outright weirdness. Some have more forgiving shield systems or mechanics that outright let you play with bullets - Takumi's excellent Mars Matrix and Gigawing series was entirely focused on messing with giant loads of bullets with no fear.
They aren't all incredibly difficult, though it does take some skill to become proficient, you can play and enjoy a wide range of shooters without needing some of the absurd technique demonstrated in some of the exhibition videos I posted (every boss in every shooter is not DOJ's true last boss).
And please, no more UN Squadron #1 lists, it hurts me.
Now, unfortunately, a lot of really cool shooters are arcade only. While getting into arcade games is cheaper than you might think, it's still a bit more of a pain than most people are willing to go through.
It is possible to play a good number of these via emulation, at least the older ones, and a few did receive console ports of varying quality. Most pre-2000 shooters can be played via emulation.
A fair number shooters are still being ported to consoles in Japan, and can easily (and not excessively expensively) be imported. I ordered quite a few online from US importers without paying any sort of heinous price premium - though they tend to go out of stock, you can still find them with a bit of searching.
A lot of Naomi games are ported to the Dreamcast, yes, that zany system that just won't die in the deluded hearts of gamers lives on, courtesey of random arcade ports.
There are several other companies producing and releasing shooters in the arcades in japan, and a fair number of those do receive home ports - all you need to do is know they exist, then import them.
I apologize for the cruddy screenshot quality and the ultra-bad youtube videos, it's hard to find good screenshots of these, since there aren't very many good US fansites for shooters
The shmups forum has lots of shooter talk on the latest releases, it's a good place to go for information, and they have some phenomenal systems faqs for various shooters.
http://shmups.system11.org/viewforum.php?f=5
It's easy to discount shooters as being simplistic, but it isn't until you start examining the mechanics at work that you begin to realize just how complicated some of the more recent games are. This is especially true if you're playing for a 1 credit clear, or working on a real high score - mashing continue and beating the game in 15 minutes is rather missing the point entirely.
Some of these games have some really elegant and interesting scoring mechanics that encourage or force you to play a certain way to be really successful. Some are more lenient than others, allowing room for your individual playstyle and skill. Most are not even remotely apparent when you're diving in with no prior knowledge - yes, you really do need a manual for a shooter.
Here's a link to the ESP Galuda faq, since I think it's one of Cave's more newbie-friendly manic shooters. The other would be Mushi, since it can be played in modes that feel considerably less manic than the others presented here:
http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=134
======================================================
Cave
One of the forerunners of the manic shooter genre, beginning with DonPachi, formed from the remnants of Toaplan, the company that did some cool older games like Batsugan.
http://www.cave.co.jp/
http://www.world-of-arcades.net/Cave/cave.htm
DoDonPachi - released in 1997, a sequel to DonPachi, and a very cool game. One of the earliest truly manic shooters, with buckets of bullets being thrown at you, and an unforgiving chaining system.
There was actually a direct sequel to DDP, other than DaiOuJou, but it was developed by a Taiwanese company and was not, as far as I know, especially good (DDP II)
DDP allowed you to choose from a variety of fighters (fast and front focused, slow and spread focused, or fucking weird), and then farther allowed you to choose to focus your power on either your spread shot or your beam shot. The spread generally made the levels easier, and a stronger beam generally made bosses easier.
DDP also had absurdly cool bombs, allowing you to either drop a normal screen clearing bomb that would do dick all to a boss (except save your ass), or to use a bomb while firing your beam, which would supercharge the beam (ideal for raping bosses).
Naturally, high scoring involved using no bombs, chaining enemies perfectly, and not dying - oh, and you could only access the real last boss by looping the game, and it would only loop if you kicked enough ass the first time. Right.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6xUTX7u1Qg
======================================================
The sequel to DDP, DoDonPachi DaiOuJou (2002 - DDPDOJ), was murderously unforgiving. With practice, I was able to get to the last boss in DDP after a few weeks on one credit. DOJ locked me down hard on the third stage boss.
DOJ was notable for having an absurdly awesome 'Hyper' mode, allowing you to unload with monstrous beams of energy or screen clearing wide shot. Unfortunately using it increased the difficulty, so while it was fun to use, the only real way to utilize the Hyper system without making the game even more impossibly difficult was to chain from Hyper to Hyper, which is even harder than chaining successfully in DDP. Fun game, but too hard for my tastes.
Much like DDP, you could choose a fast or slow ship, but then you could pick a 'doll' (ie, jlolibot), customizing the ship for spread/laser, or both, but at the cost of maximum bomb stock.
Hyper mode, shots showing hori mode on the ps2 version (it supports tate as well)
DOJ also had (at the time) one of the most insane true last bosses ever, the source of many a confused comment from a youtube video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w06PacV5FRY
DOJ also has a seriously kickass soundtrack, proper nerds in the audience might recognize the name Hitoshi Sakimoto (who also did songs for Battle Garegga, and a few others)
DOJ is available on the PS2, you can import it and play it with any ps2 capable of running japanese games.
======================================================
ESP Rade (1998), and it's sequel ESP Galuda (2003) (which then received a sequel of its own, ESP Galuda 2 (2005))
Rade was notable for it's 'human' characters and enemies, rather than entirely ships. Otherwise, its significant gameplay mechanics were a bomb 'energy meter' that could be used for short bursts of invulnerability, or charged to blast bosses. The scoring system encouraged killing enemies point blank, quite fun.
It was also possible to set the order of the first several stages (something very common in Psikyo shooters), providing some variation for the beginning of the game (handy, when you spend so much time replaying the early stages of most shooters). Depending on the order, the difficulty of the stages and bosses would change.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s3gljIB8Ho
======================================================
ESP Galuda (2003) is a) available on the PS2 and b) one of the most forgiving manic shooters out there, making it a highly recommended title if you'd just like to check out one game on the list.
It has a couple of nifty systems. For one, under certain circumstances, if you get hit, it essentially auto-bombs, making it considerably more forgiving than most other manic shooters.
In addition, it's core gameplay mechanic involves transforming (and transgendering, but whatever), a process that slows down the action onscreen, giving you more time to dodge. This is actually tied intimitely to the scoring system, as certain enemies will actually pump out more bullets (despite them moving more slowly) while in slowdown, and killing them while in slowdown transforms bullets into golde.
While not transformed, killing 'popcorn' (small, weak) enemies gives you green crystals, used to sustain the slowdown transform mode.
Another game with great music, and quite a bit of fun.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aaA7hLXGCs
======================================================
Mushihimesama (2004) in addition to being a mouthful, is a bit of a departure for Cave. It has a unique mode select that allows you to choose the overall pacing and intensity of the game. On one end, it feels rather more like Raiden - very fast bullets, lots of nasty stuff aimed at you, but generally less giant fields of slow moving pain (the slow burn manic style, especially noticable in Galuda where you can slow down huge patterns). On the other, it feels like the enemies are simply pouring buckets of bullets down on your head.
This time around, you get to fly around as a magical bug princess, yay! (whut) fighting off hordes of evil bugs (whut). Rather than the ship/character select typical in Cave's other games, this time there are a variety of shot and option types that can be picked up while playing, each with different spread patterns and usage.
Mushi is available on the PS2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU5jzrsR9Uc
Note this video is not representative of the game as a whole, you can play it on much more relaxed settings, this is just show-off material.
======================================================
Ibara (2005) is one of Cave's more recent games, and is unique for several reasons. First, it is very, very similar in feel to Battle Garegga, a popular shooter from the company Raizing, who also did several other pretty cool shooters (Armed Police Batrider et al).
Garegga was unique for its incredibly vicious rank system. Almost everything you could do in the game actually made it harder - including firing your weapons! Dying would lower your rank, so playing the game well was this insane mix of high scoring techniques to rack up extra lives, suiciding to lower rank, and repeating through to the end. Needless to say, without an understanding of the rank system at work here, playing it 'normally' just felt like an exercise in frustration as the enemies and bosses got ever more difficult.
So then - Ibara is a strange item, as it is a product of Cave, but largely designed by the Raizing team, so it looks like some of Cave's more recent work, but plays and feels a lot like a spiritual sequel to Battle Garegga. This is not to my personal tastes, but it is unique. Like DOJ, Galuda, and Mushi, it is available on the PS2.
Oh, also nipples/panty shots. Whut.
======================================================
Since Ibara, Cave has done a sequel to Mushi, Galuda 2, the Ibara sequel Pink Sweets (notable for even more panty shots).
This year, there's Muchi Muchi Pork, which I don't even know how to describe. I found a brief article on a banned site, just google for it. It involves pigs and a lard meter.
and Tenshi No Juusha
which I have no clue about
======================================================
When I started this post, my intent was to go over a bunch of companies, and show just how many companies are actively making shooters, and how many have home ports that can be imported - but I quickly realized that just covering Cave would take me hours (which it did, and this is skin deep coverage).
Cave's older games are probably best played emulated (specifically DDP and Rade, though I believe DDP has a PS and Saturn port, I don't think either is great)
Dodonpachi Daioujou, ESP Galuda, Mushihimesama, and Ibara can all be imported for the PS2. DOJ and Galuda came out from Arika, and Taito published Mushi and Ibara.
I don't know if their more recent games will receive ports soon, and I completely skipped Ketsui (a really cool, arcade only helicopter shooter with constantly scrolling backgrounds and a funky lock-on laser weapon, with a scoring system that feels a bit like Rade's in play)
It's easy to throw a bunch of screenshots and some crappy youtube videos out to make a post about shooters, it is damned hard to describe exactly why shooters are so completely fucking awesome.
Until you've had the rush of your first 1cc clear of a seriously badass shooter, it's a hard thing to communicate. It's also really hard to get into them 'cold', where you're either new, or the last shooter you played was some godawful home port of a 15 year old arcade game. I'd be happy to answer any questions, as I'm able to - I know there are a few hardcore shooter fans in the GAF crowd, some much more knowledable than me about the genre.
My interest and enjoyment comes from two types of shooters - the really thickly atmospheric horizontal shooters (of which Cave has done precisely none, and which I haven't covered here at all), some of which aren't nearly as hard as the rougher games (R-Type Final is a decent example of this, I'd even go as far back as something like Axelay to describe what I'm talking about).
The second, and the one that got me back into shooters hard some years ago is the incredibly brutal manic shooter. From the first few seconds of playing DDP and raping a screenful of enemies with that uber laser, I was hooked. Dodging a screen full of bullets is a real rush as well, a feeling I don't get from very many other games at all (high level fps competition is all that comes to mind).
I can think of a lot of reasons this genre isn't very popular in the states, but I can't think of any good reasons that a gaming community as well educated and hip to obscure games as GAF seems so oblivious to it.
It does take a bit of work to keep on top of games that aren't coming out here, and then a bit of cash to actually import them, but if you find your preferred niche in the shooter genre, you can have a lot of fun.
Cave's excessively manic offerings are only one style of shooter, there are others, including horizontal games, ripoffs of popular shooters, and others, more atmospheric horizontal games, games focused more or less on scoring, on hard stages, or hard bosses, on custom routes through levels, on strange systems, or just outright weirdness. Some have more forgiving shield systems or mechanics that outright let you play with bullets - Takumi's excellent Mars Matrix and Gigawing series was entirely focused on messing with giant loads of bullets with no fear.
They aren't all incredibly difficult, though it does take some skill to become proficient, you can play and enjoy a wide range of shooters without needing some of the absurd technique demonstrated in some of the exhibition videos I posted (every boss in every shooter is not DOJ's true last boss).
And please, no more UN Squadron #1 lists, it hurts me.
