Kaboom Dragoon posted:

That's a fair point, actually. Okay then, here's a brief glossary of the most common terms and phrases you're likely to encounter in this thread. If anything needs further clarification or adding, let me know.

Shmup: short for 'shoot-em-up', a genre consisting of One Lone Ship auto-scrolling forth against endless armies of increasingly complex and elaborate death machines. Pronounced the way it looks. Also known as 'shooters'.

Danmaku: also known as 'bullet hell' or 'curtain shooter', this is a game/genre that is typified by complex patterns of bullets that the player has to weave between while firing back. The word 'danmaku' means 'barrage'.

Vertical shooters: Played top-down with the playfield scrolling from top to bottom. Classic vertical shooters include Raiden, the 194X series and TwinBee. Most bullet hells/danmaku games are vertical shooters, but not all vertical shooters are bullet hells.

Horizontal shooters: A side-view game, where the playfield scrolls from right to left (and sometimes the other way if the designers are feeling sadistic). Generally seen as being slower-paced and more methodical than their counterparts, these tend to be more about surviving waves of enemies, rather than waves of bullets. The genre is typified by games like R-Type, Gradius and Darius.

Touhou: the series that most people think of when they think of bullet hells. Created by a one-man programming team known as Team Shanghai Alice (Or ZUN, as the guy himself is known), the Touhou series arguably revitalized the genre in the eyes of the general public. The series has spawned enough fanwork and fan-made games to fill the Mariana Trench. Basically a Big Deal.

Cave: The other company folks think of when it comes to shmups, Cave are responsible for most of the major shmups of the last decade or so, with games such as the DoDonPachi series, Deathsmiles, Mishihimesama and Ibara. Also dabbled in the MMO market with the Shin Megami Tensei game IMAGINE Online.

Doujin shooters: games made by amateur teams, rather than professional companies, usually sold at Comiket (SDCC for amateur/fan manga artists/writers, programmers, etc). Games are usually limited print runs, only sold at Comiket, but word of mouth (and ) typically helps raise their profile. More than a few large franchises, such as Touhou, have started this way. More and more are steadily making their way West via digital distribution, and several, such as Crimzon Clover, have made their way onto Steam.

Top Screen: the top 20/30% of the playfield. Most high-level players will spend much of their time here, letting them kill enemies, chain combos and look pro as hell with ease.

1CC: One Credit Clear - finishing the game on a single continue/credit. Often a requirement for seeing the secret boss(es)/true final level in modern games.

Loop: When you finish the final stage of a game, many go back to the first stage again, this time on a harder difficulty. Sometimes this only occurs if you've met certain criteria, such as not losing any lives or using any bombs. Again, this is often a requirement for seeing the full game. Also known from the first loop onwards as the 'Ura' loop.

True Boss: a super-secret final boss that usually requires the player to go through an absurd number of hoops to see, let alone defeat. Many players don't consider a game 'beat' until you kill the True Final Boss.

Hitbox: consisting of a handful of pixels, this is the actual part of your sprite that takes damage. Bullets can appear to pass through your ship, but cause no damage until they collide with the hitbox. In modern games, the hitbox is clearly denoted in the very centre of your craft, letting you clearly see judge your room for manoever. In horizontal shooters, this is typically the canopy of your craft.

Bullets: refers to the shots being fired at you, not your own, often in nice, clear neon colours. 90% of the shots on any given screen won't affect you, something that many new players forget or don't realise, leading to many panicked deaths.

Suicide bullet: bullets fired out when an enemy dies. Often the prelude to death for the unsuspecting. Also known as 'revenge bullets'.

Pattern: the way enemy bullets are fired in in bullet hell-style games. Patterns are usually fixed, rather than random, allowing players to learn and eventually weave through these patterns. Touhou games are especially famous for their bullet patterns.

Bomb: your smartbomb. Clears the screen of enemies and often bullets. Usually your only form of defence, it's sometimes the only way to progress without losing a life, also known as 'panic bombing'. Some games will let you expend a bomb when hit ('autobomb'), rather than dying automatically, but this often comes at a penalty, usually to your score multiplier, sometimes locking you out of additional content entirely.

Chain: a method of scoring that increases a score multiplier. This can take the form of constantly destroying enemies or picking up tokens left after killing enemies.

Rank: Occasionally referred to as 'grade', this is a form of dynamic difficulty that reacts to how well the player is doing. Typically, the better the player does, the harder the game gets. Rank can also decrease if the player dies or performs badly. Rank is usually a hidden mechanic, but some games include a visible counter, allowing the player to manipulate it more directly.

Grazing: another scoring method, this relies on the player getting as close as they can to bullets, so that they 'graze' the ship's sprite. Not for the faint of heart as the game encourages what would be suicidal behaviour in most other games.

Milking: deliberately procrastinating on a boss or mini-boss to further increase your score or multiplier. This can be by destroying additional parts of the boss, killing minions or missiles, etc.

Popcorn: typical enemies that die in a single hit, occasionally tossing a bullet your way. No real threat (death will more commonly come at a bullet than a collision), they only exist to increase your score.

Score: The be-all and end-all of your game. This is what you're here for. In all games, the bigger your score, the more attractive you will appear to members of your preferred sexuality and the bigger your penis gets. Even if you're a girl. Typically features enough digits to only be expressed in mathematical notation, and that's if you're not even good at the game.

Easy Mode: Seriously. Don't do it.

Volt Catfish posted:

slowbeef will you ban me have me banned if I post Touhou

Magnetic North posted:

Something tells me that I might give away which shmup I'm thinking of doing by asking this, but... by any chance, is there a goon fluent in German who'd be able to translate some things for me?

Smash Daisaku posted:

As if I needed any more motivation to work on my Crimzon Clover high score run. I hope to have a good score attack vid to show off at some point!

AndyAML posted:

I'd be really interested in doing a Crimzon Clover endurance run. Would we be playing for score or survival?

Kaboom Dragoon posted:

I watched that stream and her reactions were a joy to behold: I don't think a single minute went by without her being surprised or excited by something happening.

SourceElement posted:

I'm gonna show off some Beat Hazard. Unlike other twin stick shooters, Beat Hazard's levels are all generated on the fly. The game also uses your own music library to generate the stage hazards. You can also choose the ships you fly in each level, with full workshop support to create your own ships. I'm using the Vic Viper from Gradius here.

There's no commentary because there's really not a lot to say about a randomly generated shoot 'em up level. So just sit back and enjoy the music!

Beat Hazard: Perturbator - Electric Dreams

Oh and I want to warn that this game starts off with a gigantic warning about photosensitivity and potentially siezure-inducing graphics. I've turned the effects down as far as they'll go -- which makes the game actually playable -- but if you're epileptic, you probably shouldn't watch the video.

drifterofhell posted:

Well according to steam Metal Slug 3 is a shmup, so would it be fine to do a coop run through for the thread?

Niggurath posted:

Would showing off some Luftrauser be alright for the thread? I'm not amazing at it but gently caress, do I enjoy that game.

Reive posted:

Is it okay to record videos of games already played?
I want to do a Hellsinker episode since that game is kind of complex and I actually know how to play it.

FrickenMoron posted:

Are you going to stream that eXceed game again slowbeef? It was pretty good, except the "artwork" for the bosses.

HMS Boromir posted:

I think if you gave another one of them a try and just didn't discuss the anime girls or creepy fans at all (and maybe held Ctrl to skip all the dialogue) you'd enjoy it more and the video wouldn't come out as awkward as the Scarlet Devil one did.

anilEhilated posted:

Not sure if it's because it's not up to the standards or I didn't make the post large enough, but my Raptor video didn't make into the OP. Just nitpickin'.

Jaimers posted:

And I think this version is worth showcasing just to show off how vastly different it is to Black Package. Because it would be easier to say what is NOT different.
Graphics, mechanics, bullet patterns, stage design, pacing it's all different. It's pretty much a completely different game.

Jaimers posted:

Or just 1cc I don't remember. There is a secret stage in any case.

FrickenMoron posted:

Hey slowbeef, what did you do to deserve that red title?

JamieTheD posted:

EPILEPSY WARNING (ALSO EYEBALL MELTING WARNING), THIS GAME IS VECTORS THAT GO REAL FAST

Okay, time for Torus Trooper!

Blind Sally posted:

What? Naw, you might as well. You even set aside space for "other" things and not only is this pretty neat, but it falls into that category.

Herb Stencil posted:

bathroomrage posted:

He also missed my Recca video, but I don't think I blame anyone for missing that eyesore.

Smash Daisaku posted:

Time to finally throw my video of Crimzon Clover: World Ignition into the thread. It's a really great game that you should all buy. This is a no-miss run of Original Novice (Type-II) with a secondary emphasis on scoring.

Jaimers posted:

Years and years later someone 1cc'd it anyway.

bathroomrage posted:

Also Astebreed is really fun but if the anime puts you off you might as well not bother.

Jaimers posted:

The pattern is aimed and it completely messed up because the player was so close to the boss when it was being shot.
The player still had invulnerability frames from the death so nothing hit him.

Jaimers posted:

For Inbachi you have to beat the game no-miss, no-bomb, get all bees in the game, have a rank of 30 or more and get a hit chain of at least 30,000 hit in stage 5. And on Expert it's rank 40 and 50,000 hits.

Inbachi's first form is doable but the problem is the final form. It's just way too fast and too dense with absolutely no down-time in it to hit her and it goes on forever as she has so much health. It's by far the hardest pattern Cave has ever made.
You can have max resources and still game over not having made a dent in her healthbar.
I personally can't dodge it for more than a second.

bathroomrage posted:

Well, it's more that people that would be bothered by anime shouldn't bother because of the constant, neverending anime chatter throughout the game and that that kind of person tends to overreact in the hugest ways.

Zellus posted:

I guess that explains why Konami thought Otomedius (where you play as anime girl personifications of Gradius ships) was a good idea. The sequel even got a US collector's edition that comes with an embarrassing pillow case.

IGgy IGsen posted:

Right now in the OP what's supposed to link to bathroommage's Aqua Kitty: Milk Mine Defender video actually links to Source Element's Beat Hazard video.

Speaking of Beat Hazard, I made a video as well that's missing from the OP entirely. It also misses some Jamestown videos by Herb Stencil and another LP by Highwang
There's also the Phalanx Videos here
I don't wanna come across as complaining about the lack of a complete op, I just wanna help make it more complete. There might be still more that are missing because surprisingly I didn't just go through the entire thread. I only mentioned and looked for things I happened to remember.

General Ironicus posted:

Why does the music sound like a jaunty carnival?

Jaimers posted:

Also someone feel free to do Dimahoo because I really cannot stand playing the game.
The nature of the charge shot makes the item drops feel horribly random so getting all ten sets before the stage 4 chests is super annoying.
You'll probably need this.