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 There used to be a shmup thread a while back, but the OP got himself banned and the thread was eventually closed. Since shmups are still a thing of sorts I figured I'd make a megathread for discussions of all kinds. WHAT IS A SHMUP? A shmup (shoot em up) is a 2-dimensional game where you control a plane, spaceship, person flying through some weird power, etc and destroy enemies while trying to set high scores (or simply surviving). They generally come in two flavors: Horizontal (side view) or vertical scrolling (top down view). Sometimes they alternate between the two or try new things like an isometric view. Some shmups are "memorizers" that require knowledge of the stage, others can be "bullet hell" with a small hitbox and loads of enemy shots blanketing the screen. Shmups are NOT first person shooters. Just to clear that up. Here are some examples of some well known shmups: Gradius  One of Konami's best known series, and the first game on the NES to utilize the Konami Code. Fun horizontal scrolling shmup with a power up "bar", ripple lasers, Options (clones of your ship) and sometimes punishing difficulty if you die with full power ups. Konami seems to have abandoned the series as of now, sadly. Gradius Gaiden is probably the best, with some neat twists on the game's formula (you can rearrange the power up bar as you like) and stages (the classic volcano stage now has a black hole that sucks in the volcanoes and your ship's missiles!) Raiden  What started as one company's tribute to Toaplan (see below for more on them) became its own franchise with a kickass red (or blue) ship, fairies, and some pretty outstanding weaponry like the famous purple toothpaste laser. Also has its own spinoff series called Raiden Fighters which awards players for doing crazy stunts like letting tanks survive. R-Type  A slow moving horizontal shmup with an indestructable "Force" pod that requires knowledge of the stage design to get far. Tough as nails but rewarding when you know what to do. R-Type Delta was the series' crowning moment, Final is okay too for the sheer number of ships you can use (101!) Darius  An ultra widescreen horizontal shmup with giant mechanical fish. Later games ditched the wide screen for more cinematic action, but Dariusburst AC recently brought back the feel of the original arcade cabinets. DoDonPachi  Started as DonPachi and is one of the most well known "bullet hell" games from Cave. Has the par for course small hitbox and bullet swathes, and a chaining system that utilizes your ship's shot and laser for big, big points. Also contains a giant loving bee as the true final boss, if you can get that far. Touhou There's a whole thread on it in ADTRW. Relatively popular bullet hell shmup with a predominantly female cast and a bunch of lore behind it. __________________________________ Where do I get shmups? MAME is always an option for most shmup titles, but if you want to buy them, there are a lot of home console ports of arcade shmups out there. The Xbox 360 has had a relatively decent amount of arcade shmup ports and some original titles too, but keep in mind some of those are region locked and will not play on a US 360. Three games I know that will work are Mushihimesama Futari, Eschatos and the upcoming Ginga Force. Other consoles with a relatively large or prominent shmup library: PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16: There are TONS on here. I can't recommend the Star Soldier games enough, and on CD you have stuff like Lords of Thunder, Spriggan and Nexzr. Saturn: Great arcade ports of Batsugun, Image Fight, X-Multiply, Battle Garegga, Rayforce, Darius Gaiden and much more. And of course, you have the outrageously expensive Radiant Silvergun. Soukyugurentai is also awesome (just make sure you get the Otokuyo version if you use an Action Replay for your imports, because the original release has bugs when used with one) Dreamcast: Ikaruga, of course, and also G.Rev has Under Defeat and Border Down on there. NG.Dev Team has been releasing new shmups on there too as well. Oh, and don't forget Mars Matrix and Giga Wing. There are also tons of PC shmups, most of which are independently made and come from Japan. Several have been brought out in English now. Here are a few. Gundemonium Collection: 3 bullet hell shmups by indie dev Plantine Dispositif. Very fun and well worth the price. Ether Vapor: AWESOME shmup that switches between vertical, horizontal and occasionally other views for bonus sections. The version on Steam is the new "Remaster" edition with the ability to play without dialog scenes and some touched up graphics. Alltynex series (Kamui, RefleX, Alltynex 2nd): Out now! These are probably the most prolific indie Japanese shmups out there. They're from a small dev team and Kamui is widely considered one of the best Japanese indie shmup titles. Jamestown: A very cool vertical shmup that offers an alternate take on the 17th century British colonies. If you hate spending money, there are great freeware shmups too. Cho Ren Sha 68k is my go to recommendation, and the boss rush game Warning Forever is pretty awesome too. If you want a good fun Gradius type game for free, look no further than Hydorah. The Freeware Games megathread has a few others too. __________________________________ A few companies who have made mostly shmups: Cave: Makers of Dodonpachi, the "ESP" games (ESPrade, ESPGaluda), Mushihimesama and many others. Toaplan: Zero Wing may come to mind, but they also made Truxton/Tatsujin, Batsugun, Fire Shark, V-Five and Dogyuun. Eventually split up and formed into Cave, Gazelle, Takumi, and Raizing/8ing. Raizing/8ing: Created the Mahou Daisakusen series, Battle Garegga, Battle Bakraid, and Soukyugurentai among other titles. Known for insane "rank" (difficulty) that would adjust based on multiple factors like how much a player fired or got powerups. Takumi: Created Mars Matrix and the Giga Wing series...and that's it. Oh, they also made Night Raid, which was sort of a precursor to the two aforementioned games with a strange "hot/cold" scoring system. Seibu Kaihatsu: They made their mark with Raiden and the Raiden Fighters series, but they also made a game called Viper Phase 1 which is pretty awesome and its ship, the Judge Spear, is in the Raiden Fighters series. Compile: Not just the guys who did Puyo Puyo, they also made Zanac, the Aleste series and several other shmups you probably didn't know they had a hand in like Blazing Lazers. Zanac is notable for its AI controlled enemies which in turn inspired Raizing's rank system. Zeether fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Jun 24, 2013 |
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Dec 4, 2012 23:00
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Pr0phecy posted:I remember my first (and last) shmup. Tyrian 2000.
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Dec 4, 2012 23:11
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What a game and it's free on gog.
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Bovineicide posted:I'm on a bit of a shmup kick lately, and I've been playing a ton of Xevious on my 3DS this week. Are any of the sequels worth checking out? I honestly can't believe I flat-out ignored this game as a kid 
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Dec 4, 2012 23:33
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Ludicrous G. Gibs posted:This is the poo poo right here. Normal shmups are great, but these guys make games where you have to stop yourself from doing too well because the game will scale up its difficulty to kick your rear end if you do. It's more fun than it sounds - you're doing a sort of balancing act while you play. I added Compile to the list. Can't believe I forgot them, MUSHA is one of my favorite Genesis games despite being a bit easy. blowingupcasinos posted:If you're going to suggest MAME in the OP can you add really good freeware shmups and/or older shmups? I've been playing Hydorah, and it's just so sexy I have a hard time not talking about it. I've also been playing a Galaga machine at work because it's loving Galaga, and it's actually still kinda good. As far as older arcade shmups go, Xevious is pretty fun if you can stand the background music and Star Force is also great. Juno First is one I came across recently that I really like too. Zeether fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Dec 4, 2012 |
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Dec 4, 2012 23:39
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Geometry Wars and Robotron are sort of borderline shmups. You don't need a scrolling background to qualify as one, stuff like Space Invaders counts and some top down run and gun games like Outzone are technically shmups too.
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Dec 4, 2012 23:51
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Breaky posted:What does Gyruss qualify as? Because I spent many an hour listening to 8-bit Bach and screaming words at a 19" TV that my mom didn't want me to say. Speaking of which, Viewpoint is a good example of an isometric shmup. It has some pretty great music too, the boss theme has James Brown samples in it.
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Dec 5, 2012 00:01
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Dangun is definitely fun. I love the voice when you get a certain number of flying disco men. "Bring it on down!" The true last boss is kind of a joke though, you're completely invincible during the fight unless you use a bomb Zeether fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Dec 5, 2012 |
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Dec 5, 2012 00:06
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Ludicrous G. Gibs posted:It's such a good game. As mentioned in the OP, it uses an adaptive AI system that ended up being modified into what you see in Raizing's games. There's a huge variety of subweapons and the AI adapts to what you're using. For instance, if you've got powerful but low-spread forward-firing weapons, it gradually ramps up attacks to your sides. If you're using a low fire rate weapon, you'll see a lot more popcorn enemies in an attempt to catch you between shots. There's a huge variety of weaponry available to the player, something like 40 different options spread out between four ships, and it takes all of them into account as far as I can tell.
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Dec 5, 2012 02:49
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I posted a link to Warning Forever in the OP, it links to TIGSource which is a database of indie games and not really a shady place as far as I can tell. Apparently the crazy Famicom shmup Recca is coming to the Wii and 3DS Virtual Console in Japan. I hope it can make it to the US too, but with the way the VC is so little updated... Anyway, Recca is really fun, it's got some insane sprite count at times and the backgrounds go wild too. I love the second stage where the background suddenly scrolls backwards VERY fast. Zeether fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Dec 5, 2012 |
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Dec 5, 2012 17:14
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Regarding Crimzon Clover, apparently some company picked it up for worldwide distribution. A rep from Nyu Media posted about it on Steam a while back but nothing's happened as of yet. http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=28283906&postcount=58 Also, another doujin worth checking out is Diadra Empty. It's like Defender/Fantasy Zone with a small girl riding a dragon and BIG bosses. The sense of scale is absolutely insane, and the music is beautiful too. There's also a cool "turbo" move that you use to dash past bullets with impunity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_scNTNVkKXA Zeether fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Dec 5, 2012 |
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Dec 5, 2012 17:38
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Sizone posted:Isn't Pedobear a random item in that game?  It's some hidden thing and I have no clue how it's triggered. The Warning Forever guy also made a circular shmup of sorts called Cyclone or something like that. You control a laser cannon that rotates in a circle and you have to chain enemies in a single beam shot, but your cannon can take damage easily when the laser is out so you have to watch out. The laser handily cancels bullets though and when you stop firing you get a shield. e: It's called Cyclops. Rayhound is fun too, check that one out. Zeether fucked around with this message at 04:22 on Dec 6, 2012 |
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Dec 6, 2012 04:20
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There's a game on Steam Greenlight called Heaven Variant that looks like some kind of cross between Einhander and Thunder Force. The devs have apparently been rehauling the gameplay or something but the game looks pretty awesome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n18u_7sYVxA
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Dec 6, 2012 19:40
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Dogbutt posted:So I'm trying to get my friend into Parodius, but I don't know which game would be best to start with. What do you guys recommend? Also, get the PS1/Saturn versions because they add a few new things.
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Dec 6, 2012 22:28
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If you want an easy shmup to clear, Gun Nac is not that bad. It tosses bombs at you a lot and I was able to beat it pretty easily. Turning on the "ricochet" mode makes it one hell of a challenge though.
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Dec 6, 2012 22:32
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InfiniteJesters posted:For any of you folks who have a copy of DooM 2 lying around, here's something nifty:
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Dec 7, 2012 03:11
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Basically, you have a dash move ("Turbo") that gives you a short period of invincibility when you use it. You get coins and can use them to upgrade it, if I remember right. Also, because the screen area is so wide you kind of need it to get to certain areas fast.
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Dec 7, 2012 15:24
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Gradius V gets loving insane on higher loops. This is what loop 255 looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxm82esJelk Of course, that's almost nothing compared to higher loops on ReBirth, where enemies will shoot massive bullet cones at you when destroyed. Seriously. The player in that video is also a really good Gradius player in general. (Although he does die a few times, but given the ridiculous amount of extra lives...)
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Dec 11, 2012 03:26
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There are several Dezaemon games: the Famicom one (which has a translation patch), SFC Dezaemon (also has a patch and a BS-X version), Dezaemon 64, Dezaemon 2 for the Saturn, and Dezaemon Plus and Kids for PS1. One of the PS1 games is on PSN in the US actually if I remember right, but it's untranslated. Someone came up with a nifty tool for getting Dezaemon 2 save files containing games a while back as well. Zeether fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Dec 11, 2012 |
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Dec 11, 2012 04:27
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:There is a shmup on the PSX called Night Raid that has three different scoring paths as well. But in that game, the three different paths are: G-NET also brought us Psyvariar, which is pretty interesting because it has a mechanic of rolling the ship by making rapid movements with the joystick in order to "buzz" bullets and get temporary invincibility from leveling the ship up. Watching someone play it extraordinarily well is like watching the shmup equivalent of ballet.
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Dec 22, 2012 18:52
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:Yeah that Ray Crisis port is pretty tragic. It has loading screens mid stage which wrecks the flow of the game. The game music is supposed to be one long track that flows through the course of a single run (and there are 4? different tracks that can play based on your first? stage selection or something like that). Did they ever get music working in G-NET emulation? It was still broken last time I looked.
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Dec 23, 2012 23:34
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Fair warning, some of the Saturn USB pads on Ebay are (I think) knockoffs with weaker rubber inside. I remember hearing about that a while back. There's a type with "Play Sega" on it that's apparently really good and official.
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Feb 14, 2013 22:26
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WarpedLichen posted:So any tips on how to beat Battle Bakraid? It's one of my favorite shmups to play since I found it reviewed on shmups.com way back but I could never get good enough to get through normal mode without continues. Bakraid is kind of hard to clear without focusing on the chain mechanics to score high and keeping the rank down. The game gets pretty pissed if you survive for more than 1 stage or so and the only way to lower rank is to suicide. That said, you can play for survival (I cleared Normal Course on one credit once) but you should probably read up on how the scoring works outside of medal chaining (which becomes nearly pointless when you learn to chain enemies and get x64 off stuff for extended periods of time) Also, make sure you have all the planes unlocked. Flame Viper type C (press the C button on the plane select screen to select it, type C is stronger in terms of shot/bomb power and speed) is pretty much the only plane everyone uses. Zeether fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Feb 22, 2013 |
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Feb 22, 2013 13:44
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Takumi probably closed up shop after Gigawing Generations or became a pachinko/prize game manufacturer like most of the great shmup companies did (Technosoft  )
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Feb 22, 2013 16:21
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WarpedLichen posted:That's pretty sad, explains why all the videos I find online has people suiciding throughout. So there's no real point in trying to play through the game without ever dying?
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Feb 23, 2013 02:30
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You can also play Garegga at max rank and see how far you get. Soukyugurentai is my favorite Raizing game because it doesn't focus so much on rank and has some really nice graphics and music. It gets pretty tough later on, even one replay I saw of it had a few deaths because the bosses do not gently caress around in the late game.
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Feb 23, 2013 04:36
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Soukyugurentai does have rank but it doesn't seem too focused on rank management as opposed to Raizing's other titles that use it. In other news, Rockin' Android just announced their release of Cloudphobia, which is a cool "caravan" shmup with robots and a somewhat annoying "don't let enemies leave the screen" gimmick where you have to protect a mothership.
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Mar 10, 2013 22:14
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The Saturn port is perfect, but make sure you get Otokuyo, the updated version, because the original has problems with the Action Replay if you use it to play imports.
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Mar 11, 2013 02:30
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iastudent posted:Hmm, I might have to end up getting the Saturn version actually. I wasn't able to get it to work in shmupmame and after talking to Aquas about it, apparently there's a specific version of regular mame (between .13x or .14x) that will run it but the shadows are messed up. Yup, MAME has problems running some ST-V hardware titles like that and I think Radiant Silvergun too. Shienryu works great though.
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Mar 16, 2013 11:12
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This week's STG Weekly was on Nyu Media's upcoming "The Tale of Alltynex" release and they revealed a few things about it:
Stream should be uploaded to Youtube soon, but be warned they discuss the story of all 3 games so spoilers do come up. For a genre where story takes the backseat a lot of the time, the story tying the 3 games together is actually pretty interesting. Zeether fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Apr 13, 2013 |
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Apr 13, 2013 22:01
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There's now a kickstarter up for Tale of Alltynex to help finish the games off and to make some additional material: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nyumedia/the-tale-of-alltynex-japans-epic-shooting-game-tri I'm not sure what to think of the $750 tier.
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Apr 23, 2013 18:16
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STG Weekly's newest episode is about Einhänder. Fantastic game, it's a shame there's not many good high scoring videos on Youtube (Nicovideo has some good runs but I'm not sure if they're high scoring) http://www.twitch.tv/stgweekly/c/2245392
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May 6, 2013 05:57
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tooooooo bad posted:
Blazing Star? The attract mode was very anime like. It also has a bunch of weird boss warning messages like "STAY COOL! SOMEONE WAKES THE NOISE UP!" and when you die it says "HEY POOR PLAYER!"
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May 17, 2013 07:38
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tooooooo bad posted:No that wasn't it, but thanks for reminding me of Blazing Star.
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May 17, 2013 20:17
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Raiden Legacy got an update on dotemu:quote:Fixed buggy portrait mode Pretty nice that they did that, I might actually consider getting it whenever it goes on sale.
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May 28, 2013 16:05
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Regarding the old Siter Skain titles: Alltynex for FM-Towns is the best of those. Raid Wind was made with an shmup maker for PC98 (STG Maker) and it shows. It's not bad but when you play a lot of the STG Maker games you can tell they were made using it because of the weird yellow squares used for bullets. Sucks that Cave is now going to fall into the mobile/online game trap now. At least they're still around in some way, unlike Milestone who had to completely shut their doors. Zeether fucked around with this message at 14:12 on May 31, 2013 |
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May 31, 2013 13:46
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I just bought it. So far I'm pretty bad at Kamui, decent at RefleX and Alltynex Second. I've had two instances of bosses timing out on me in RefleX which is a bad thing for score (Pisces ran off, then Gemini's laser half) so I think I might play for survival first. If you want to see a REALLY high scoring replay in RefleX (the one they showed on STG Weekly is decent but doesn't show the very last area) there's one on Nicovideo here: http://www.nicozon.net/watch/sm19006714 (click the "sm19007566" text to see the next stage). Scoring high is really tough to pull off, it relies a lot on waiting for enemies that fire blue bullets/lasers to pop up then trying to chain the reflect multiplier with your shot, while boss fights rely on damaging them enough then waiting for a reflectable shot to go off so you can bounce it back for the kill.
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Jun 6, 2013 19:43
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FirstPersonShitter posted:Are there any other games like Tyrian or Jets'n'Guns with persistant weapons to buy and kickin' rad music? Xenon 2: Megablast has a shop too but the music is only one music track that plays throughout the whole game and it's also kind of slow paced and doesn't seem much fun.
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Jun 7, 2013 02:47
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Llyranor posted:I've been playing a decent bit of the Alltynex trilogy this week. And the big final boss fight is a great lead in to Kamui's story...you fight two Kamui fighters alongside the final boss with your Phoenix ship which is now being piloted by presumably nothing but spiritual energy thanks to the pilot being bullet helled to death by the same big boss, and if you don't destroy the second Kamui fighter fast enough it seems to realize you're not the enemy, just in time for the final boss to blast it to pieces.
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Jun 24, 2013 02:47
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tooooooo bad posted:Rockin' Android's English version of Diadra Empty releases today. It got a bit of talk earlier in the thread. It's kind of like...crazy bullet hell Defender. Except not at all. Here's the trailer. It's available for download on Amazon now and apparently it's coming to Desura, Rice Digital, and Gamersgate at some point. This and their Cloudphobia announcement a while back surprised me greatly. Definitely going to pick this up when I can.
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Jul 2, 2013 05:13
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The 3DS Virtual Console in the US is getting Summer Carnival '92 Recca, which is from the guy who went on to do Battle Garegga/Bakraid and a few other games and is absolutely insane for a Famicom title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDW4SDvuxw0
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Aug 7, 2013 15:47
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