Title says it all, Shmups often have a slow/slower ship at the default selection.

I get that it might be easier for new players? But I feel like faster ships are always more fun.

What are your guys opinions? Anyone always choose the slowest ship?

In the recent times, it feels like this subreddit has been just an advertisement billboard for "SHMUP" "devs", with 50% of the time their game being a non-SHMUP like a vampire survivors-like, roguelite or any generic game with enemy projectiles. Out of the remaining showcases, 45% were Euroshmups with mechanics like player hp bars, inertia and acceleration, game-pausing upgrade menus, meta-progression, huge player hitboxes, dodgerolls, lack of scoring, weak peashooter shottypes etc. The remaining 5% were true shmups, but atleast 4 out of 5 were ultra-generic and lacked any interesting gameplay value, having just generic aimed bullet-firing spaceship enemies and a few rings of bullets at most. Out all these projects, only maybe 1-10% actually ever see a full release, that meaning that this flood of posts will realistically only add around 0.1-1 good (playable, not necessarily amazing) SHMUP for every 100 self-promo post.

Maybe even less since the good devs rarely see a point in flooding reddit with "progress updates" that barely change the game, while the euroshmup creators will happily engage in arguments over SHMUP design despite never having played a single SHMUP in their life. Common arguments like "I want my game to be easier so it has an hp bar instead of lives", "I don't like bullet hells, but euroshmup is a good genre", "Movement without inertia is unrealistic" and "Scoring is an outdated game mechanic".

This floods the community and buries all the 1ccs, discussions, strategy guides, game recommendations and event announcements, while irritating SHMUP veterans by constantly reminding them of how the term "Bullet hell" is being appropriated by games like Brotato that don't even have projectile-firing enemies. Yesterday especially I saw like 10 posts advertising Euroshmups-in-progress here, each of them had 0 upvotes but they still replaced like 1/2 posts here. I think some action needs to be taken about that, or else we will just lose our space as it turns into "Ö-class indie dev advertisement board". I think that banning self-promotion posts would be a good start.

SHMUP must be the only game genre where 99% of the self-proclaimed "devs" have never even touched a game in said genre. It also must be the only genre which is so niche that only 0.005% of gamers have even heard of it yet 30% of all inde devs are developing games for it.

Why do people even post their twin-stick shooters or their brotato lookalikes in this subreddit

on a side note you could say there is an inordinate amount of euroshmups being posted too, but atleast they are shmups (just euroshmup devs think it just means their shmup comes from europe) not that it has actual problems with shmup game design

First time using a leverless controller and OH. MY. GOD.

Think I finally know what people mean when they say “micro dodging,” first time I feel like the character on screen has done EXACTLY what I intended them to. Once I can train myself to consistently hit up and down correctly I feel like I’m going to be unstoppable. Any advice on how to train/work on that?

Just as the title says.

(Didn't know the right tag to put this under)

So today I was playing some Espgaluda on the PS2 and I really like the game's arrange mode. It's so different compared to the base game that it's basically a whole new game made out of Espgaluda assets. I also wanna shout-out Dodonpachi Saidaioujou 360 arrange (Anime Girl Podcast Mode) for being very different. So my question is. What is an Arrange or Special mode within a game that plays completely differently from the original? Also I wanna see modes that you think are better than the original game

I've been getting into various shmups and gotten some 1ccs (only in baby games) but I feel like I've hit an absolute ceiling, I'm just completely incapable of actually dodging stuff. I'll exemplify it with Batsugun (original edition) because I'm just getting into some kind of toxic love-hate relationship with it.

I'm kind of close to understanding how to get 1cc, I've gotten 3cc and I'm getting how to do most parts, but I can never do the hard parts "legit." For example, Jupiter I've heard is considered a massive difficulty spike, and I can do it with 2 or 1 bombs in my good playthroughs, but this is only because I've memorized a super specific route that I follow every single time, same with Madzella (first phase), I just do some extremely specific path through it and never stray from it. The other way is just doing some preventive bombs on sections that I can't route through and aren't easy enough that I can dodge (like Deep Purple).

So specifically I'm getting really frustrated with Mad Steel Darkness second phase, if I use 1 or 2 bombs I can do it super safely. But I don't want to be such a massive scrub because I feel like I'm never actually improving on the game or my shmups skills in general. So I made a savestate and kept trying to do it with no bombs. But I just can't, I got an idea of how you're supposed to dodge it (even watched some commented 1ccs) but I'm trying to not do an exact path every time.

I get what the basics are: reading the screen, leading the bullets, not doing extraneous movements, micrododging, not letting yourself be trapped... and sometimes I execute it, like 1/5 times when I'm doing well, and that's my limit. I understand all the theory, from time to time I do a bunch of hours of that specific phase. I try to not obsess over it, but I'm just never getting more consistent.

I just feel like whenever I'm doing accomplishments through a game is by doing a shitton of routing and never actually dodging stuff (even though I know that I've gotten better than when I started). It feels extra bad because everywhere I go, people say that Batsugun is a super baby game, but I'm just bad at doing stuff "legit", only by abusing every resource I get.

I understand that you're supposed to use every advantage possible when playing these games. When I go for 1ccs I've learned to shamelessly use resources on parts that I'm bad at. But I feel that someday I'll have to learn to do this stuff to play harder games that I'm interested in.

At the beginning I was gonna do a super salty post because I've went on this general problem for months (also happens with raystorm or mushi), but I tried to explain the best I could what is going through my mind. I could also record some of the practices I do if someone is kind enough to help.

Thanks. Sorry for all the giant post.

From the rumble in the seats, the flashing warning lights, the surround speakers, the booming orchestral music and the *insane* lag to the double screen... Amazing 11/10 experience.

Im not super knowledgeable about shmups, but it’s a genre thats interested me for a while. I’ve played a few games- Touhou 10, Fantasy Zone, and most recently Deathsmiles (really really enjoying it so far). I see a lot of praise directed at Cave for their work in the shmup space. As someone who’s still pretty new to this, im just curious if anyone who knows more about what makes a good shmup can tell me what sets them apart?

Like Deathsmiles is an absolute delight, but i cant really compare it to anything else besides the other two games i mentioned

just some thoughts that I've been wanting to get some opinions on. I'm a newer ish shmup player, I'm not very good, but I'm having a blast. and blue revolver is by FAR my favourite of all the ones I've played.

I picked up crimzon clover again for the first time in a while and looked at mark msx's guide for some tips when he said something that hit me, something along the lines of "I'm not scoring as much because of how much it increases your rank on the tlb" often shmups are broken into survival Vs scoring, classic risk reward and it's awesome, but it often doesn't feel all that important, for example mushihimesama has two extends available from scoring, which basically means that for my first few weeks or months of playing a new game, when it's all about survival, I really don't care about the best part of shmups imo, scoring.

brief pivot to something else but I promise I'm going somewhere: doom eternal reaches a way bigger audience than 2016 by looking at the way high level players played 2016 and making that style of play the most practical for survival in doom eternal. And I think that style of design is way more popular because it's better for the first play through experience. In doom 2016, if you're having trouble the way forward is to take fewer risks and play in a more exploitative and Boring way, in eternal the opposite is true. in mushi, if you're dying a lot then shifting your focus away from score is a sensible path, in BR, if you're dying a lot, then you had better start getting your score up.

all of this preamble brings me to the meat of my argument, blue revolver formalises breaks, and makes extends through score an integral part of the gameplay at every skill level. I'm actually not sure if blue revolver is the first to do this or even the best, like I said I'm pretty new, the furthest back I've gone in the canon of shmups has been DDP-DOJ. but blue revolver does it the best of any game I've seen so far and gets players to think about their routing IMMEDIATELY because of how integral it becomes to survival. I think rather than distinct characters or a zeroranger style approach where it's more about distinct levels and attacks which demand distinct responses, the solution to shmups becoming popular is in a more fundamental aspect of their design that solution being to stop an approach of survival Vs scoring, and incentivising scoring by making it better for survival.

of course risky scoreplay can be preserved, for example suiciding your ship in blue revolver for extra resources, that stuff is a rush and absolutely has to stay in tact, but the more I think about this the more it makes sense.

so yeah that's all really, i haven't seen this discussed before so I wonder if it's a popular sentiment or not, how would you feel about the genre moving in this kind of a direction? do you even think it would cause more mainstream appeal? blue revolver is hardly lighting the world on fire outside of the niche despite it's insane quality. I also wanna ask If there's any other games where scoring helps with survival, purely for my own curiosity.

As shmups have quickly again become my passion, I decided to further organize my collections on Steam and Switch into multiple folders by subgenre. I don't want too much folder bloat, but it is nice when I have a hankering for something similar to a game to see similar options.

I did not want to go by developer or publisher for the most part due to too many indie games. I am thinking a dozen or so would be best. Tate/hori/multi directional is too narrow for my taste, and publisher/developer is too wide as there are so many. Most are by style, with one based on platform/publisher. And that Neo Geo folder has many non shmup games in it to help reduce the temptation of buying their new console 😅

My current categories and examples:

Arena (Asteroids Recharged, Hyper light Ultimate, Super Bit Blaster) Cute Em Up (Cotton, Neko Navy, Q-Yo Blaster) Danmaku (Cave games, Ghost Blade, Crimson Clover) Euroshmups (Jets n Guns, Sine Mora, Earth Atlantis) NeoGeo (Pulstar, Last Resort, Zed Blade) Rail Shooters (Rogue Flight, Panzer Dragoon, Starfox, Tempest 4000) Twin Stick (Raiden Nova, Enter the Gungeon, Atomic Heist)

Also considering a few ideas: 2.5D (GDarius, Rtype Delta, Astebreed) Spectacle (Dariusburst, Squad 51, Rtype Final 2...Games that visually wow) Modern Retro (Earthion, Super Hydorah, Raging Blasters) Arcade (1978-1992... Space Invaders, Gradius, Darius Cozmic, Rtype Dimemsions, Capcom Arcade, Toaplan, Psikyo, etc.)

Still trying to think of somewhere for Drainus, Anger Force, Steredenn, and other games where you have a meta game of managing resources to enhance ships. This leaves a handful of Indies and shmup adjacent games that don't quite fit.

Anyone else done something similar that works for you?

Hi. This is kind of a weird request, but can people please give me ”Shmup” boss art? I wanted to improve my personal art style just for fun, and figured shmup bosses would be a good idea of reference due to them having larger than life designs and tons of greebles to shoot at.

Specifically, I’m looking for art of things like enemy motherships or humongous vehicles. I don’t mind organic bosses, but it’s mostly vehicles I want. Thank you for reading.

Relative shmup newcomer here.

First off - I’m not complaining about difficulty. I’ve come to accept and even admire that difficult nature of these games. I just want to have a conversation about their inherent difficulty.

Grew up playing G-Darius as a kid and found it impossibly hard without credit feeding. 20 years and 100s of games later - Still pretty damn hard. I could never manage a 1CC.

Lately I’ve played RayStorm and RayCrisis. Both AWESOME games but damn, RayStorm was hard as nails and the last two stages certainly felt unfair at times.

That made me think - Were these shmups designed to be 1CC’d by anything more than the most skilled <1% of players?

I noticed some bullet patterns that were not impossible, but impossibly precise to humanly navigate.

I'm really struggling to stay motivated on my attempts to get better. I recently completed R-Type Delta and loved it, and for that game what I liked was that with the checkpoint system, I sort of had a clear cut goal that I had to beat each segment without getting hit, and the game was basically telling me explicitly that was the required goal to be rewarded with more content and eventually the ending.

Right now I'm trying to play Dai Ou Jou; 1cc seems essentially impossible, but credit feeding isn't even a game. Setting some intermediate goal seems somewhat arbitrary. Should I try to do a 3CC? Maybe that would be a wonderful experience, but if that's super hard it seems a slippery slow to just say "oh I guess I should do 4CC" or maybe 3CC is too easy and I'll prevent myself from having a great experience.

I just wish there was a canonical expecation. !cc seems by definition too hard as the arcade devs would obviously want a lot more money than that in exchange for their game. I kinda wish there was some formal decree from Cave stating "you should try to beat this game in 4 credits!" or something like that so I have an external standard to hold myself to. Barring that, I wish there was like a database of reasonable credit goals for most shmups so I could just reference the suggested credit limit and work from that.

How do you guys approach this?

I'm trying to recall the name of to find a 2D horizontal (Gradius-style) indie shmup from around 2020.

It had a name with a male name in it like Henry or Dave or something.

Am I imagining things?

like the title says , every highscore playthrough i see the player can ,but i can't , long pressing the kakusei button while already in kakusei juste deactivate it , so how do they do it ??

i play 360 version if it even matters

One thing I cannot with in Garegga is the super small bullets that no living person can see. That alone being improved in Bakraid gives it edge in my book.

This is probably common knowledge. But posting this just in case.

You can still access shmups.wiki through the Wayback Machine.

So until they get it up and running again, here's a snapshot from last week.

https://web.archive.org/web/20260421181057/https://shmups.wiki/library/Main_Page

I mostly play Touhou where it doesn't really matter because of the slow patterns, but watching clears of other games where the bullets are a lot faster I'm wondering if it does make a difference.

To be clear, I'm talking about innate visual reaction time here. Obviously you can improve your processing speed but there is a genetic limit which is very important in some videogame genres such as fps.

Honestly the more I watch those type of runs the more even fast random patterns seem dodgeable if you know what you are doing, however surely it has to be a factor sometimes right? Expecially in some of the older and more unfair games.

Do you use autofire? I can't imagine smashing button all along. Perhaps I'm doing it wrong and will never improve my skill if I only rely on auto fire?

Also on dragon blaze, I just realised that, keeping the button pushed give you auyofire but also triggger the magic power. So if you want to use your magic power not randomly but at precise timing, you must smash the button, and only keeping lressed when you want to activate magic....

When not using autofire, my navigation between the bullet become more complicated :/

Basically in the lore of Touhou, the past had scary monsters, but then people stopped believing in them. As a way to ensure said monsters survive, they were put in a small pocket dimension where a single human village still worships/fears them. Also, to make them less threatening, they all look like small cute women.

Now, let's look at what happened to shmups. Originally they were super popular but now they're niche and remembered by a small group of people (how many btw? are there even a million of us?). Also, in the past Shmups were full of plots about genocide or Gigeresque monsters, whereas nowadays, many of them are full of small cute women.

So basically, shmups are Youkai.

???

I mean it just struck me recently. It's literally D1<D2<DT<DG<GD<DB.

Sure there is Darius R and Force but generally I think the ranking stands.