Bullet Hell Shoot 'em up

[Grey M@a]

Is it really a big group rather than a niche? In a way, I am surprised that not many Western developers have attempted to re-create those type of games, but then, I thought it could simply be due to market research suggesting that it's a risky market.

One thing I meant to ask regarding the gameplay in those games, is how well do the skill transfer from one game to another? I tend to find that FPS tend to lend themselves pretty well, hack and slash, Japanese RPG etc. all seem to translate pretty well.

Would being able to pass a challenging game like Mushihimesama on manic setting give a reasonable chance that you'll beat those type of games on normal first try? Since I am only starting on those type of game I am wondering how much my progress is due to memory and how much is due to actual skills.

Very hard to say if the skills carry across but for me each shoot em up either goes to the next level of ridiculous or down the R-Type/Nanostray route, then you have your bullet hell games, then your boss rush games, your old school 2D scrolling shooters.

Across genre's you can map your skills and the bullet hell games which I tend to play its all about working out the patterns and then doing the smallest twitches of a controller to get between the bullets coming at you. Your side scrolling ones is literally learning the patterns of what's going to come on screen and in what wave and the old 2D vertical shooters its simply hit what you can as it comes on screen.

It's a dying, well maybe I should say limited section of the gaming world now that people won't buy them in the majority though there are really huge groups all over the net who love, eat and sleep shoot em up's. The problem is, my generation, 80's kids and those through the 70's grew up with the spectrum, atari, c64's and amiga's that were littered with shmups by the bucket load. The early 8 bit and 16 bit consoles keep them coming and then the Playstations and Xbox's hit the market to cater for the newer generation of gamers and the shmup trickled off. I suppose when these games land on the market its the likes of myself buying them. Not sure why the shmup doesn't appeal to the younger gamers of today. Would be interesting to get the view of a gamer who's first contact with a shoot em up was the likes of nanostray on the DS, or the raiden series in the states.

It does seem though that the supply of shooters now is either through XBLA, PS Store or Wii Ware You have your geometry wars, 1942 and Ikaruga on XBLA, not sure whats on Sony's and Nintendo's online services and then the only other one I know that is coming to XBLA would be Raystorm but once again a rush of trailers for it and it was shown off at E3 last year and then nothing. No release date on the devs site and nothing showing on the XBLA release lists. Fingers crossed Raystorm HD will still be released. The last one I bought on XBLA was Death by Cube and it's a bit of a let down.

[TooNice]

My guess is that shmup just don't 'look' so impressive compared to modern games. Well, they do (IMO) when the screen is filled with bullets, but we live in a generation where most games are 3D, looking ever more realistic, while shmup has more 'cartoony' (anime) feel to them.

The depth of gameplay is evolving (Ikagura is definitely very original), but I guess it's quite hard to add twists to the concept of 'shoot the enemy and dodge their bullets'. For all the modern look of recent games, the gameplay is still relatively retro. But I am just guessing here, I like it anyway

There is one game I tried at the arcade while I was in Japan that was pretty fun called Senko no Ronde DUO. It's a bit of a hybrid beat'em up/shoot'em up (you may already know it as it's the sequel of a game released on the X360). It's going to be released in Japan on the X360 this year.

[HSK]

I liked Project X and Silkworm/SWIV on the Amiga.

also Walker!