December Together Retro Poll

[Nemoide]

I've got a lot of retro shmups in my backlog: Lightening Force, MUSHA, Gley Lancer, and the first 3 Touhou games for Windows are at the top of the pile.

[nullPointer]

I've always had a morbid curiosity regarding bullet hell shooters, and this month may provide the proper motivation to just go for it. In the past I've talked myself out of the idea being as I'm not 'hardcore enough', lol. But what the heck; I say bring on the bullets! ALL THE BULLETS!

If I were looking to play an early example of a bullet hell shooter, which of the following titles would be a good one to start with?

Batsugun
DonPachi
Radiant Silvergun

And secondly, of the titles listed above, what are the preferred home ports?

[MrPopo]

Of those three, I'd say DonPachi would be your best bet. Batsugun is more on the hardcore end; there's stuff going on besides "dodge the things", and Radiant Silvergun similarly has the color matching gameplay that complicates things. DonPachi is nice and simple. A thing to keep in mind with bullet hell is that there are a lot of shots that you never have to worry about; if there's a fan of bullets you really only care about the ones coming near your ship, and the rest is just to look pretty.

[noiseredux]

I wouldn't even call RS a bullet-hell. Donpachi is great, though. Go with that.

[Sarge]

So, out of curiosity, are we going to potentially include stuff like overhead run-and-guns like Mercs in this category, or is this specifically geared toward the traditional auto-scrolling shooters? I'm also guessing that platforming elements would not count?

[MrPopo]

I'd say anything platforming is right out. Mercs, that's one of those auto scrolling top down games, right? I'd allow it, but I'd encourage you to only go that way if you really don't have any traditional shmups to play.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Someone should play R-Type Delta. It’s the Demon’s Souls of shmups. I beat it, it it almost cost me my sanity. (You unlock free play after six hours of gameplay. It took me another six-hour credit feeding marathon after that just to see the end. Good times!)

As for me...I’ll probably play Alpha Mission, Vanguard, Zaxxn, or some other archaic shmup. Either that or another Fantasy Zone game.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Yeah I'm gonna for go vintage scrolling shmups. I have plenty on the Atari 2600, NES, SNES... Could give Blazing Lazers a shot too.

Trouble Witches Origin, the game on Steam, is a port of a 2007 game? Anyone know? It's one of the few "modern" shmups I own but haven't sunk much time into.

@prfsnl_gmr
Do you own the Atari 2600 and/or Intellivision ports of Zaxxon? Neither system could do the 3D properly, so the game was pretty much reinvented from the ground up. Wild stuff.

[alienjesus]

This is the list of unfinished shmups I have to play:

Gate of Thunder (PCE CD)
Gley Lancer (VC - Mega Drive)
Hyper Dyne Side Arms Special (PCE CD)
Layer Section (Saturn)
MUSHA (VC- Mega Drive)
R-Type (TG16)
Super Star Soldier (PCE)
Super SWIV (SNES)
UN Squadron (SNES)

I'll probably a little bit of all of them and then try and focus on one to be the one to beat this month. Gate of Thunder or UN Squadron are likely candidates.

[noiseredux]

oh shit, y'know what just dawned on me? The Namco Museum on Switch has TATE mode. And my FlipGrip should be here soon. So Galaga or Galaga 88 are probably good ideas now that I think about it.