Are Shooters/SHMUPS a meme genre?

Why do all the "top games" in this genre flood the screen with bullets and expect the player to autistically memorize and micro manage every minute movement?. Is this actually fun?, was it ever meant to be?. Whenever I watch videos on the subject and play these games for myself, I can't help but think this is the "retro gamers'" equivalent of twitch shooters like Apex Legends. Where much less strategy is involved, and it's more about that memorization and pure reflex. A sugar and caffeine high, more or less. The youtubers who speak highly of the genre basically admit they find it hard to play anything else because it's like crack to them. They get addicted to the speed of the game. I think we need to discuss this, bros.

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  1. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    Unlimited continues.

  2. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    >Are Shooters/SHMUPS a meme genre?
    yes

  3. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    Yeah. I prefer the older games that couldn’t do that so they had to innovate. They also had more rng so instead of memorization they required quick reflexes and strategy.

    • 6 months ago
      Anonymous

      >Yeah. I prefer the older games that couldn’t do that so they had to innovate. They also had more rng so instead of memorization they required quick reflexes and strategy.

      Bullet hells are only for autists, usually. Try playing aerofighters, silpheed, parodious, astro boy, after burner climax or pop n twinbee

      >Bullet hells are only for autists, usually. Try playing aerofighters, silpheed, parodious, astro boy, after burner climax or pop n twinbee

      Yep. When you can't rely on autofire or brute force memorization by playing the game thousands of times until it becomes muscle memory. That I can respect. It's almost similar to pinball players. Even if you play a game thousands of times, the ball will never move Around the exact same way as a previous game. So pinball players have to focus on reflexes and strategy.

      • 6 months ago
        Anonymous

        bullet hell have rng too, both old and new shmups have varied set pieces and in general the only thing that danmaku is different from older shmups is in using more micro than macro dodging, but that's it.
        all shmups require memory, strategy and coordination of the eye to be succesful, reacting will just cause you to hit another bullet after dodging the first one instead of being on a good position to dodge everything by strategy and good hand eye coordination to move yourself to the good spot, there are some reflexes but they aren't more important than on platformers for example.

        • 6 months ago
          Anonymous

          Pretty much. People that make these assumptions don't play the games, they just watch a Jaimers video and draw their conclusions.
          Bullet hells aren't much more difficult nor require more memorization than your average arcade beat 'em up or run and gun, but since they look so much crazier they're branded as autist games for no reason.

  4. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    Bullet hells are only for autists, usually. Try playing aerofighters, silpheed, parodious, astro boy, after burner climax or pop n twinbee

    • 7 months ago
      Anonymous

      >parodious
      Pedophile game

      • 7 months ago
        Anonymous

        Explain, Sir failed abortion Twattard

  5. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    >bros
    You're not a bro to anybody here, gen z-er. We like arcade gameplay here.

    Go discuss movie games on Ganker, why even come here

    • 7 months ago
      Anonymous

      Because Ganker is just anime porn and reserved for modern AAA slop. And yes, I consider you my brother 🙂

      • 7 months ago
        Anonymous

        I guarantee you play nothing but the equivalent of old AAA slop like Zelda and Mario titles.

        • 7 months ago
          Anonymous

          NTA but damn this gatekeeping is hella cringe

          dunno whose approval ur trying to get

          • 7 months ago
            Anonymous

            Why do you model your speech after a sassy black woman on an anime/gaming site? That's cringe.

  6. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    yes, it's a meme
    no one actually buys them and they're for purely autistic gamers
    but for that reason alone they are pretty based

    • 7 months ago
      Anonymous

      >gen z talking about gen z games
      People from the 90s like the games that came out back then. You wouldn't know. Nobody cares about the taste shift of the 00s, which is just modern gaming with bad graphics and not true retro, and is also when games started to suck.

      If your idea of "great games" are those from the 00s and onward, you really don't have a clue about real gaming.

      • 7 months ago
        Anonymous

        Holy basado.

    • 7 months ago
      Anonymous

      Why are Battle Garegga, R-Type Final and Sin and Punishment on a list of Cave shmups?

      • 7 months ago
        Anonymous

        This is from Cave's sales and why they don't make shmups any more (they're unprofitable)
        courtesy of mork msx

    • 6 months ago
      Anonymous

      >Deathsmiles is the only one with relatively high sales
      >Is the only game Cave releases outside of Japan during the era
      Gee wiz

  7. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    I enjoyed Ikaruga because you could actually move in it

  8. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    >are shooters/shmups a genre?
    yes
    >is this actually fun?
    yea I enjoy a good shmup, but I also like other genres like action platformer, JRPG/SRPG, adventure, puzzle, fighting. even a casual player can appreciate shmups, they're fun for what they are, and they have depth if you want to go deeper.

  9. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    Because the discourse has been hijacked by Touhou and Cave Black folk. Play the classics. Be it Space Invaders, Xevious, Gradius, R-Type, Raiden, or so on.

    • 7 months ago
      Anonymous

      I'd say the perfect route to getting into this genre is
      >Space Invaders
      >Galaxian
      >Galaga
      >Xevious
      >Gradius
      >Gradius sequels and spinoffs
      And at that point it will definitely click

  10. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    >an action game is about memorization and reflex
    No shit

    • 7 months ago
      Anonymous

      Don't be a jackass, many games are "action" games but you don't have to be an obsessive basement dweller to git gud at them. Bullet hells are just obnoxious.

      • 7 months ago
        Anonymous

        They're not as hard as they look, the hitbox is tiny in those bullet hell titles. Scroll shooters as a genre aren't any harder than, say, classic platformers. Are Gradius games really harder than classic Castlevanias? Games used to be hard, if you don't like it you can savescum and play on easy mode

        • 7 months ago
          Anonymous

          >Are Gradius games really harder than classic Castlevanias?
          Yes.

        • 7 months ago
          Anonymous

          I'd say Gradius is more unforgiving that Castlevania. In Castlevania, you frick up and die? You lose your subweapon, rune upgrade, and power down to the leather whip. The thing here is after you die, there's going to be a candle right in front of you to at least upgrade the whip to the short chain whip and you can get your momentum going again.

          You die in Gradius, you lose all of your powerups and potentially spawn in a checkpoint that demands a higher movement speed, one that you don't have. Then you're stuck in consecutive loss hell until you game over. Castlevania also doesn't have an invisible mechanic where the game becomes harder the better equipped you are.

          • 7 months ago
            Anonymous

            Fair enough

      • 7 months ago
        Anonymous

        >Am I just being a whiny homosexual who can't understand when a game isn't for me?
        >No, it's the niche subgenre with a core fanbase that's wrong
        I know this is the typical bad faith /vr/ game thread but honestly how do people like you walk around in everyday life with such a lack of self awareness?

  11. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    The big issue with gradiuses is that if you lose a life you lose 18 lives right at the same spot.

  12. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    Play Chicken Invaders instead of the autistic ones.

  13. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    Anyone else enjoying the first 5 Touhous on Neko Project II? I just love their simplicity and OSTs. The rest are a bit flashy for me.

    Please pardon my double post. I got warned for posting a lewd Reimu.

    • 7 months ago
      Anonymous

      The fourth and fifth ones are pretty fun.

  14. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    >less strategy is involved, and it's more about that memorization and pure reflex
    This is some mad cope gibberish. Memorization and reflexes are opposite things, so which is it? Also, if you think strategy is separate from both of those things I'm gonna assume you haven't played any challenging game in your life.

    That said, Caveshmups are a complete novelty and part of the zoomerfication of the genre.

  15. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    >I want to play a shooter, but I don't want to have to dodge bullets. I just want to shoot targets with no challenge
    ok

  16. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    games that take no skill when your hitbox is the size of a .

  17. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    They were most action packed games on the market until Street Fighter, Mortal Combat and other fighting games arrived with their complicated chains of combos and fatality etc. Next came more advanced than before FPS games because wooh look at me I are solder nao I haz pew pew pew sick and kill enemies with it en masse and it has more flat learning curve. Shmups get "killed" pretty much for same reason serious fast paced arena shooters are dead (yes Quake 2 and 3 style FPS gaming is pretty much dead and most of people still playing it are old geezers remembering when it came, these 2 newer Quakes don't count as situation looks pretty much the same if not even worse). What is that reason to sum up? Casuals. Yes, fricking casuals. They were increasing population of people gaining access to gaming and outnumbered fanatics who would practice 8 h a day for month to learn bunny hopping tricks on one specific map memorizing layout etc. They became too small market when you can address much larger mass of newcomers to gaming. That pleb don't like complicated steppy learning curves and months of practice. They want fast and simple stuff to get satisfaction. They approach games like teenager approaches masturbation. Fast relief pf urge of entertainment over hours of edging of practice needed to reach climax of passing to next level.

  18. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    You don't need to "beat" games to have fun with them. Getting to the third stage of most of them is a moderate challenge that anyone could enjoy.

    • 7 months ago
      Anonymous

      I "completed" (using continue en masse) Batsugun several times today. It's pretty much entry level bullet hell but I don't feel like it gives me a lot of fun. Too many colors at once are fricking disorienting. I'm mostly classic caravan shmups guy I like simple limited color schemes and not having whole screen filled with vomit of whole rainbow spectrum where you barelly can see if what is going toward you is a bullet or a powerup. Fun bullet hell to me was stuff like Green Legion. I vote for limiting amount of colors.

      I'm testing Recca tonight.

      Also scoring systems barely even evolved since like mid '00s and are mostly just dumb "you hit something within n ticks of clock? cool we give you extra points". Is it really all that devs can implement? We no longer run that stuff on Zilog 80 or Motorola 68k. There is a lot of computing power to be spent on game logic, ai etc. Yet they still program games where enemies happily ignore the fact that you are shooting at them. HALLO? Most beat em up have evolved in that regard. Why are shmups lagging so much behind?

    • 7 months ago
      Anonymous

      I'd say skill based games are most fun when you are good at them, when you are getting close to mastering the controls.

      Playing shmups as a novice is like playing a game with the controller upside down, even if you manage eventually to get to third stage, it will feel just awkward. And that's because none of the skills acquired in other genres translate much into the shumps.

  19. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    >It's another "I'm too tactical and creative for training a skill" episode
    It doesn't matter how fast you calculate. A downie will blitz you before you put pen to paper if he has the solutions memorized and the methods trained perfectly. Memorization and training are also pillars of strategy and that's the God's honest uncomfortable truth. Shmups make lazy gays frustrated because they have to face the fact that time restrictions exist and some things can't be intuitively solved in a split-second. The kind of perseverance they require is actually worth cultivating for the real world.

  20. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    Being intelligent and memorizing things is not autism

    Try again drug addict (that’s right use words incorrect and I will with you also) pretending to use medical vernacular

  21. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    Memorization of patterns of certain units is acceptable. Necessity of memorization of at what time game spawns like literally one enemy down the screen like in case of Batsugun is a questionable design choice. Arcades are also literally screaming for more randomization to increase amount of quarters being spent at cabinet. Fighting against PRNG feels more natural than memorizing moronic spawns. Forces more tactical positioning.

    • 7 months ago
      Anonymous

      Let's say a section has a difficulty of 8/10 predominantly memo, and another section is also 8/10 predominantly rng.
      Why is one better or more enjoyable or more fair?
      In the end people whine about difficulty, if it comes from memo they blame memo, of it comes from rng they blame rng. Shitters are never happy

      • 7 months ago
        Anonymous

        you can frick up PRNG no doubt. But when you at least do some basic effort to take in account consequences of using it you can introduce both variety that makes every run a more unique experience and avoid moronic situations when enemy unit literally impales ass of player who happened to have been positioned exactly at the section of screen down the game area at wrong time because developer(s) decded to put that event literally in one place of the game and no unit ever spawns in that area before and afterthat event. PRNG allow you to distribute chances more evenly avoiding such one off events and training player to expect units spawning in certain areas - even behind them. You have generally more smooth experience if your brain sees spawns as consistent.

    • 7 months ago
      Anonymous

      >like in case of Batsugun
      what? Batsugun is barely memo-intensive at all and has zero punishment for death.

      • 7 months ago
        Anonymous

        >Batsugun is barely memo-intensive at all and has zero punishment for death.

        no comments

        • 6 months ago
          Anonymous

          You don't have any clears so of course you have no comment. Leave the discussion shitter

  22. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    I hate the bullet hell sub-genre. This fricking trend needs to die because any time I see SHMUPs with beautiful looking sprites, they end up being these disgusting OCD fests. I want more games like the classic Raiden and Donpachi games which focus on the player getting good at the game and not the player getting good at the choreograph of the spectacle.

    • 7 months ago
      Anonymous

      Get good grandpa

    • 7 months ago
      Anonymous

      >old shmups mma
      >new shmups crossfit

    • 7 months ago
      Anonymous

      Donpachi is a bullet hell.

      • 7 months ago
        Anonymous

        yes, but differs from what came later- the full screen vomits and microscopic hitboxes

        like only way to improve devs were seeing in that genre was to increase complexity of patterns and shrink hitboxes in proportion to player character sprite.

  23. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    People freak out over the so-called bullet hell genre but DonPachi (the first of the series) is pretty entry-level. I've shown this to nob and they enjoy it. Anyone can 1CC the first loop, plus it doesn't have the drawbacks of Gradius/R-type (a.k.a. you lose a life past stage 3 and the game becomes almost unplayable).

  24. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    The problem is too many people recommending boring shmups like Radiant Silvergun and not enough fun and colorful cute 'em ups like Cotton and Parodius or mech shooters like Android Assault, Hyper Duel, or Wolf Fang

    Spaceship shooters in general are literally a dime a dozen, there's like thousands out there and they all look the same, and being that they are Japanese people will insist that they are all 10/10, even if they're not

    • 7 months ago
      Anonymous

      Nothing bad about space shooters, especially when they go into the organic and monstrous route. I like the ones with odd themes like Bio-Hazard Battle and Wings of Wor. Elemental Master and Phelios is great as well. Hiw about a Run n' Up like Atomic Runner?

    • 7 months ago
      Anonymous

      >Android Assault, Hyper Duel, or Wolf Fang
      Theses are cool.

  25. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    They are rage games, if you enjoy raging at the screen you'll enjoy these games.

  26. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    This thread motivated me to play a few more Saturn shmups I missed, so here goes
    >Batsugun
    Boring. No CD audio, feels like it could've been pulled off on Genesis, but not as good as other Genesis shmups like Thunder Force III and IV or Gley Lancer
    >Battle Garegga
    Surprisingly good. Not something I would go out of my way to play normally but probably one of the better Saturn shmups. OST is surprisingly decent
    >Dodonpachi
    It is definitely in the bullet hell/danmaku category but maybe not as polished as later (Dreamcast) bullet hell games. Seems mostly fine except for the fact that the emulator crashed after like Stage 3 or so.

    Finally, with all of the wonderful SEGA and Capcom content it has, it's still easy to ignore most of the shmups on Saturn. They aren't terrible but it's not really what I came for. SEGA CD and TurboGrafx on the other hand are a different story

    • 7 months ago
      Anonymous

      Is there a comprehensive list of games between which SHMUPs I should play on Saturn over PS1 and vice versa?

      • 7 months ago
        Anonymous

        Some of them like Einhander and Radient Silvergun are console exclusives, hence this thread

        [...]

        otherwise it's really down to your preference. With most games there is really negligible difference between them.

        Nothing bad about space shooters, especially when they go into the organic and monstrous route. I like the ones with odd themes like Bio-Hazard Battle and Wings of Wor. Elemental Master and Phelios is great as well. Hiw about a Run n' Up like Atomic Runner?

        >I like the ones with odd themes like Bio-Hazard Battle and Wings of Wor. Elemental Master and Phelios is great as well.
        Agreed, in fact I played Bio Hazard Battle a few months ago and found myself enjoying it a lot. One of my favorite shmups (Lords of Thunder) is also neither a space shooter nor a cute 'em up. I like it when shmups explore different themes like this. DeathSmiles is another cool one albeit borderline not /vr/. The next ones I want to try will probably be the few that made it to N64, the fact that there's only like three leads me to believe they're probably very good, especially since one of them is by Hudson Soft.

        • 7 months ago
          Anonymous

          I recently got to play Star Soldier Vanishing Earth (the Aleck64 version if there is any difference). If you're used to pure 2D SHMUPs, this one is not gonna feel as uniform as those because of the switch to true 3D while respecting the original 2D framework of the original series. It does feature a few abilities that caught me off guard like being able to deflect bullets back at the enemies. Once you get used to the 3D-ness of it, it's a really fun game.

          • 7 months ago
            Anonymous

            I'm playing it for the first time right now and it's honestly probably one of my favorite N64 games already. It's cool to see shmups and 2D stuff on this system

            • 7 months ago
              Anonymous

              There is a 2D Japan only Bomberman games on the N64 but that's not a SHMUP. There is a 2D run n gun called Bangai-O on there though.

          • 7 months ago
            Anonymous

            All the games in the Star Soldier series are good, except probably the NES game.

            • 7 months ago
              Anonymous

              The NES game is bullshit. Having to go through two loops and also the bullshit top and bottom layers fricked me over all the time.

    • 7 months ago
      Anonymous

      saturn batsugun does have arranged soundtrack

  27. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    The only good shmup is Tyrian 2000 because it strips away all the artificial difficulty bullshit arcades rely on to suck quarters and instead focuses on actually being fun to play.

    • 7 months ago
      Anonymous

      My displeasure with Tyrian 2k is that the controls do not feel like they were designed to be played on a digital input device like a dpad or arcade stick. It feels like you need a legit "3D" movement joystick like the Wingman or just a mouse. Otherwise, I like how the weapon system works where you can straight up map your main guns and the side guns to individual buttons each.

    • 7 months ago
      Anonymous

      The problem with stripping that away is that a good arcade game was designed to still be beatable: very hard, but doable. Tyrian 2000 is just not as smooth or interesting as a good Gradius, even if Gradius doesn't pull any punches.

      • 7 months ago
        Anonymous

        >good arcade game
        Those don't exist. Arcade games by nature are byproducts of late stage capitalism duping children into spending all their money under the guise of flashy graphics thinking they're playing a fun fair game when in reality it's barely above a slot machine when it comes to fairness.

        • 7 months ago
          Anonymous

          They do exist. There is a difference between a game that exists solely to bring money and a game like Metal Slug or Gradius, and that difference is the latter being fair and actually fun, which is also why they got ports way after their arcade debut.

        • 6 months ago
          Chud Anon

          >Arcade games by nature are byproducts of late stage capitalism

          arcade machines operate on a rental model. You’re renting time on a machine that you can’t afford at home. It’s like renting a Ferrari for a weekend when you daily drive a Corolla.

          Back when Atari games were colored blocks and the machine made bleep and bloop noises arcades had fast scrolling action games with rich graphics and full sound tracks. They mogged home consoles all the way to 5th gen when the PSX and N64’s 3D was low poly and ran at 20 FPS, arcades were doing fast paced 3D in high definition.

        • 6 months ago
          Anonymous

          >cult jargon bait
          I guess it is the SHMUP thread.

        • 6 months ago
          Anonymous

          You have to think of the 1980s economy of Japan and the relative affordability of a credit in those days. It wasn't too expensive to spend a few credits and gradually learn a game. It was actually quite affordable.

        • 6 months ago
          Anonymous

          >Those don't exist. Arcade games by nature are byproducts of late stage capitalism

          Then why they magically did best during state interventionism in interest rates?

  28. 7 months ago
    Chud Anon

    Contra and Metal Slug are fun pick up and play games to dick around in for an hour or so at a time. Never got into SHUMP’s though, I tried Earth Defense Force and UN Squadron and I didn’t feel compelled to play them on repeat or anything. The only one I keep coming back to is Galaga and that’s for nostalgia reasons.

    • 6 months ago
      Anonymous

      play gradius unironically, un squadron is very stingy on his upgrade system on home console and arcades and is very difficult for a first shmup.

      • 6 months ago
        Anonymous

        If you want him to drop shmups in a week yes tell him to play dadshit from the 80s

        Otherwise tell him to play
        DOJ ketsui Futari esprade dragon blaze tengai radiant silvergun mushi raycrisis cyvern guwange

        Etc

        • 6 months ago
          Anonymous

          Baseded

          • 6 months ago
            Anonymous

            those are great too but dadcool are awesome games.
            gradius makes people learn the fundamentals and is very dynamic in general, the only issue of gradius syndrome can be solved on easy versions and with using multiple credits, another game isn't needed.
            both new and old good shmups are great.

            • 6 months ago
              Anonymous

              awesome games too*
              it isn't wrong to start with a newer game but that gradius is a good starting point as well.

            • 6 months ago
              Anonymous

              Gradius games are very cool, but some of them can be very unforgiving and the arcade versions of 2 and particularly 3&4 are really tough compared to other stuff. The first game is very fun and friendly and the console versions of 2/3 are usually more forgiving.

              • 6 months ago
                Anonymous

                that's the reason i said gradius without a number, i should have specified that i was talking about the first one tho.
                don't play gradius 2 to start, even less the third one.

  29. 7 months ago
    Anonymous

    Sokyugurentai is so damn good, the lock on mechanic is fantastic you can use it as your main weapon, the bosses have a ton of personality and flare
    And scoring has rng to it but it makes it so you have to react well and improvise beyond your main route

    I don't see it mentioned much sadly

  30. 6 months ago
    Anonymous

    >Whenever I watch videos
    Then you should play them and see for yourself you fricking moron.

  31. 6 months ago
    Anonymous

    >Why do all the "top games" in this genre flood the screen with bullets and expect the player to autistically memorize

    I stopped reading here. It shows you do not have the slightest idea what you are talking about and cannot play these games at even an ameteur level. Nobody memorizes this stuff like in your screen shot. It's not possible. If your understanding of the genre is so bad you can say something like that nothing you say will be of value.

    People that replied to this person are idiots.

    • 6 months ago
      Anonymous

      >People that replied to this person are idiots.
      damn, the self-own

  32. 6 months ago
    Anonymous

    The best shmups are the pre-bullet hell kind. They need to bring those games back.

    • 6 months ago
      Anonymous

      Bullet hells take the fun parts of shmups and just crank them up

  33. 6 months ago
    Anonymous

    Motherfrickers better not be talking shit about Darius Gaiden, Cotton, and Thunder motherfricking FORCE IV in this thread or I'll have to start getting sweaty and smoke another blunt playing them one after another again after cooming to a gaming session of Steam-Heart's then rocking out with my wiener out to Lords of Thunder!

    • 6 months ago
      Anonymous

      >dont talk bad about these easy shmups i flail in with 0 results

      OH WOW EASY THERE BIG BOI

      • 6 months ago
        Anonymous

        I'm a big boy with lots of good boy points, ready to spend them, and play shumps with mommy gf while getting a sloppy toppy during my Sengoku Blade session. YEP! You don't want none, you lookin scared cause you really don't want none!!!

  34. 6 months ago
    Anonymous

    >post clears shitter

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