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And we come to the final Together Retro of the year in the new format, and the people have decided they want to engage in a shmuptacular. So get your shmup on! Hori, vert, bullet hell, or euro, it's all good. Strive for that 1cc if you want, but the important thing is to have fun with it. Such a classic genre that's so linked to retro is just the thing to wrap up this year's Together Retro.

I have two games to get through first, but I will get to UN Squadron (SNES) sometime this month.

The only Shmup I've ever really beaten has been Ikaruga, so I'm ready for the challenge and to continue dipping my toe into the genre.

Markies wrote:UN Squadron (SNES)

I often see this game get dissed by shmup enthusiasts, I'm glad you're not one of them. I really enjoyed UN Squadron when I beat it back in 1998, it's from the era of good Capcom.

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I'm close to beating my first shmup for this TR, I started practicing a few days back on it. Not quite there yet, but hopefully soon.

UN Squadron is a solid game, not sure why people would dump on that one. I've kept a copy of that game on my shelf since the 90s.

I rarely participate in these, but if the time works out, it wouldn't be a burden at all for me to pull out my shooters and put them into my Neo Geo. There's variety too from Andro Dunos, both Sonic WIngs games, Blazing Star, Captain Tomaday, Ghost Pilots, and Strikers 1945 Plus. And depending how you stretch a shooter, I guess Shock Troopers would count too.

All right, time to shoot!
I'm starting with Touhou Koumakyou ~the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil~ - the sixth Touhou game but the first one for Windows and therefore the first one in most people's experience. The series occupies a strange place in that it's probably the most well-known series of bullet hell shooters, but it seems that most Touhou fans I've met barely care about the games and focus more on the characters/music.

The music is amazing and doujin covers of songs are ubiquitous in weeby circles. My favorites are Chirumiru Cirno, Kero ⑨ Destiny, and Marisa Stole the Precious Thing.
But the on the other hand, the art is really ugly and amateurish. The gameplay never really blew me away but I feel like I've never given them the serious chance they deserve! So this month, I'm planning on playing at least the first three Windows games, since I'm crazed enough to own physical copies of those.
We'll see if I manage to beat those on normal difficulty! I'm definitely not aiming for 1CCing.

Nemoide wrote: Marisa Stole the Precious Thing.

You had me at "Dawn To".

Since I just wrapped up Warcraft II I'm ready to jump into this. I think I'm going to start with Robo Aleste, since I had a decent run going with that a couple years ago.

As someone who isn't a shmupper, what's up with the Touhou series? I know the core series consists of PC-98 shmups that were later ported, and some more recent sequels, but what's the deal with all the RPGs and other things on Steam? Are these official spin-offs, fan-games, what?

I played a bit of Trouble Witches last night. Though I got to a point where I felt like I was just sloppily credit-feeding so I quit. I need to practice the earlier stages. I had a good run some years ago and and made it to the final boss -- whereupon the game crashed. Hope that was a one-time thing and not a common bug.

Oh, and this game has some goofy DLC where you can play as additional characters. I think this one may look familiar.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/6913 ... r__Cotton/

So turns out that one of my Genesis AC adapters is bad; it causes signal interference. I didn't notice it before because I used to have it plugged into the 32x (I have a Genesis 2) and the interference was minimal, but when I moved I swapped them and it was causing major audio issues. Swapped them back and Robo Aleste sound good. But I tried out Kolibri and there was just a hint of audio interference, so I'll have to get a new AC adapter that'll hopefully be better.

Tanooki wrote:UN Squadron is a solid game, not sure why people would dump on that one. I've kept a copy of that game on my shelf since the 90s.

Agreed, I'm a fan. I'm terrible at shmups, but I always enjoyed playing UN Squadron. The aesthetic is solid, the game controls well, and I liked having options for approaching the various levels and doing playthroughs in different pacings depending on how I feel at the time.

UN Squadron is a rather unique way of making a shooter more console-ish. The idea of leveling up and also earning money to spend on secondary weapons is something I haven't really seen done since.