Insert coin: PC shooters and a discussion about them

[siegarettes]

Wow, next time I see this game at $20 I might not be able to resist.

Man don't remind me. It was 20 over on toysrus online and i didnt buy it cause im working my backlog. It was so damn tempting.

[sabrage]

Man don't remind me. It was 20 over on toysrus online and i didnt buy it cause im working my backlog. It was so damn tempting.

Yeah, I saw that too, but I'm glad I held out now.

[siegarettes]

Yeah, I saw that too, but I'm glad I held out now.

Well that is fantastic news!

[squareking]

Bump with some non-newsy-words from Cave regarding PC releases.

[Kodeen]

So I'm just now really getting into this genre, I got Fast Striker on Dreamcast and it just kind of got the ball rolling. Currently playing Jamestown, I saw a mention of the Gundemonium series on Steam but not the Exceed series. Are those any good?

[sabrage]

Gundemonium and Exceed demos here.

[Kodeen]

Gundemonium and Exceed demos here.

Awesome link, I'll have to check out quite a few titles on there. Thanks!

[sabrage]

That same site is also very good for imports, with prices a fair deal better than most Ebay listings. I can't comment on most of the games from that list, but Warning Forever is a good bit of fun. Sort of like a twin stick boss rush without the second stick (a description I can only hope will make more sense upon playing)

[victory]

Kodeen: The best stuff you can play on PC is arcade ports via MAME, but you should play Tumiki Fighters. It's really good. Pretty much the only PC native shooter I have put a decent amount of time into.
http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/windows/tf_e.html
One interesting thing about it is how much your playstyle and tactics change once you get better, and how they change again once you get a feel of how the scoring works and spot some subtle details of how the mechanics work. I remember still getting "aha!" moments after having played the game for 10+ hours. It's a really fun game to figure out, so don't watch a youtube video and deprive yourself part of that pleasure.

[mashakos]

I grew up when shmups were all the rage, so I always have a soft spot for them. Muscle memory is a strange thing; I keep hearing about how these Cave shooters are so hard. Yet almost 20 years since I last played R-Type I could beat Dodonpachi on my iphone in one setting (on medium arcade admittedly).

The Dreamcast really impressed me with the quality and variety of it's shmup collection. Since I didn't own one at the time, I'd occasionally see an amazing in-game photo of a 3d shooter online and pause to reconsider getting one. Now that Dreamcast emulation has reached a level where you get perfect response times and no glitches in most games, I've located and collected two (used) great titles which I thought might be relevant here:

Ikaruga

Best shmup ever.

Border Down

video
Very innovative game progression mechanic where instead of continues you get separate level paths every time you die.

[mashakos]

Back in the day I used to love Xenon 2 Megablast.

R-Type, Xenon 2, SWIV, Walker, Project X ...
Those were the days!

[Mohorovicic]

Best shmup is Audiosurf.

[mashakos]

Well, it did start as a PC shmupdiscussion, but I think we pretty much covered everything of note and moved on to MAME/Console shmups. And I hate talking about Neo-Geo games because it reminds me of how damn badly I want a CMVS, and that abominable price makes me sad..

lol, you're getting the authentic Neo Geo experience right there. I remember getting heart palpitations back when I was 10 or 11, a buddy at the school yard was telling me that Neo Geo would be releasing a console. The heart palpitations? That was because I heard how much a cartridge cost...

[mashakos]

I've seen a few PC ports of arcade games on the shelves back in the nineties along with shareware standards like Tyrian which everyone mentions and the less mentioned Raptor and DemonStar.

I got DemonStar Secret Missions 2 bundled free with a Saitek joystick.
In addition to the game being very well made (it's more xenon than Jap bullet hell), the game supports force feedback! It's a novel approach and actually quite enjoyable with a FF joystick.

[mashakos]

Just saw this:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012...-pc-next-week/

Exciting news! I love the aethsetic of this game, was not expecting a PC port.

[Kodeen]

I grew up when shmups were all the rage, so I always have a soft spot for them. Muscle memory is a strange thing; I keep hearing about how these Cave shooters are so hard. Yet almost 20 years since I last played R-Type I could beat Dodonpachi on my iphone in one setting (on medium arcade admittedly).

The Dreamcast really impressed me with the quality and variety of it's shmup collection. Since I didn't own one at the time, I'd occasionally see an amazing in-game photo of a 3d shooter online and pause to reconsider getting one. Now that Dreamcast emulation has reached a level where you get perfect response times and no glitches in most games, I've located and collected two (used) great titles which I thought might be relevant here:

Ikaruga

Best shmup ever.

Border Down

Very innovative game progression mechanic where instead of continues you get separate level paths every time you die.

I'm currently collecting for Dreamcast which is how I started getting into these. I'll get these eventually, but both (Border Down in particular) are quite expensive.

On Wii there is a disc called 'Ultimate Shooting Collection', which has Karous, Radio Allergy and Chaos Field. It costs about $15 for a new copy, whereas those three games would cost $200-$300 for the Dreamcast versions.

Anyway, PC games. I was looking at Steam and noticed that Capcom has published a few of these as well. I'll have to look into those as well.