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Author Topic: Warp's Weekly Shmup  (Read 21334 times)

WarpRattler

  • Paid by the word
« on: September 20, 2009, 12:06:21 PM »
To try to enlighten some of you guys to some wonderful games of my favorite genre (as I often do in many other threads), I'm starting this thread.

Each week I'll talk about a different shoot-'em-up.
Sometimes it'll be a classic arcade game.
Sometimes it'll be a rare and/or expensive console game.
Sometimes it'll be a PC STG.

About the only thing I can guarantee is that for obvious reasons, there will be no hentai shmups or anything else that would go against the rules of the forums. As such, I will not post links to ROMs or to sites that carry them. With PC shmups, if the game is available for free or cannot be easily purchased by English speakers, I will post a link to a download of the full version; otherwise, I'll post a link to the demo version along with a purchase link.

I'll also place a link to each week's article in this post.

Week One: Blue Wish Resurrection Plus
Week Two: Gyruss
Week Three: Flash Attack
Week Three And A Half: Zero Wing
Week Four, Part One: Kingdom Hearts II's Gummi Ships
Week Four, Part Two: Kenta Cho
Week Four, Part Three: Ketsui Death Label
Week Four, Part Four: Twinkle Star Sprites
Week Four, Part Five: Two Nintendo-Developed Shmups
Week Four, Part Six: Quarth
Week Four, Part Seven: JiroSum
Week Five: Bullet Candy Perfect
Week Six: SPAC3 INVADERS EXTR3ME and Space Invaders Extreme 2
Week Seven: Quickie Vector Games
Week Eight: Mikku Sumaruchipurai Supairaru STG
DOS Week, Part One: Outer Ridge
DOS Week, Part Two: Galactix
DOS Week, Part Three: Major Stryker
DOS Week, Part Four: Xatax
DOX Week, Part Five: Raptor: Call of the Shadows
« Last Edit: November 19, 2009, 06:08:13 PM by WarpRattler »

CrossEyed7

  • i can make this whatever i want; you're not my dad
« Reply #1 on: September 20, 2009, 12:25:09 PM »
There are hentai shmups?
"Oh man, I wish being a part of a Mario fan community was the most embarrassing thing about my life." - Super-Jesse

WarpRattler

  • Paid by the word
« Reply #2 on: September 20, 2009, 12:46:47 PM »
Quite a few of them. The sad thing is that some of them play really well, but their chances of being well-known are basically ruined by the fact that they have hentai images as cutscenes.

Glorb

  • Banned
« Reply #3 on: September 20, 2009, 01:29:56 PM »
No, the sad thing is that they have hentai images as cutscenes.

Anyway, I think this is a cool thread idea. Also, I had no idea that you liked shmups, Warp.
every

The Chef

  • Super
« Reply #4 on: September 20, 2009, 01:34:06 PM »
He's named after the ship from Gradius. :|

WarpRattler

  • Paid by the word
« Reply #5 on: September 20, 2009, 03:08:28 PM »
Blue Wish Resurrection Plus
x.x
PC (free)
One player only
x.x Game Room

After Toaplan (makers of fine games like Batsugun and not-so-fine games like Zero Wing) went bankrupt, its former employees continued to create shoot-'em-ups. Some of them founded Cave, the company responsible for such games as DoDonPachi, Dangun Feveron, ESP Ra.De., DeathSmiles, and Ketsui. Cave's vertical-scrolling games (that is, every game they've made aside from ProGear and DeathSmiles) follow a standardized "five stages, two loops, assload of medals" system that has come to be associated with the company. In the doujin shmup world, it is a commonly copied style due to its amazing versatility. One doujin developer, x.x, makes nothing but Cave-style games, though he keeps them to a single loop. Blue Wish Resurrection Plus is x.x's most recent full release, a remake of the sequel to his original Blue Wish.

Unlike most doujin games that follow the Cave style, x.x's games are easily playable and enjoyable by humans and shmup gods alike. His games include multiple difficulty settings and a very forgiving auto-guard. (Auto-guard is a [usually] optional feature of many newer shooting games where if the player would be killed, the game triggers a bomb to wipe out all bullets on screen and give the player a short invincibility period. Typically, auto-guard uses the player's entire bomb stock. However, x.x's games only use a single bomb when auto-guard is triggered.) Blue Wish Resurrection Plus includes x.x's standard Heaven-Original-Hell difficulty selection, auto-guard, and an option to accelerate enemy bullets (which makes for a much harder game). Someone with some experience with the genre will likely blow through Heaven (and possibly Original) with acceleration off on their first credit. (Incidentally, there's a "true" final boss that can only be fought by playing through Hell difficulty with acceleration on using a single credit. Good luck.)

Players have a choice of four ships: Blue Wish (wide standard shot and compressed focused shot), Blue Hope (wavy standard shot and an unbroken laser beam for its focused shot), Blue Peace (straight standard shot and homing focused shot), and Eden's Edge (options which pull into the ship for a focused shot). By pressing the bomb button instead of the shot button to select a character, an alternate-color version of each ship can be chosen. For the first three ships, this means instead playing as Red Wish, Red Hope, and Red Peace, but in the case of Eden's Edge, the player ship becomes the girl from Eden's Edge. There is no gameplay difference when using any of the alternate ships.

As with most shmups nowadays, the player has a very small hitbox that can be seen while using the focused shot (it's that small dot that appears on the ship). This allows for enemies to have bullet patterns that cover most of the screen but have tiny gaps for the ship to fly through. Blue Wish Resurrection Plus has an interesting feature where if enough enemy bullets are on screen at once, the game will slow down (this is actually the game doing this and not performance issues, as evidenced by the framerate counter remaining at a constant 60 on my netbook - another great thing about this and many other doujin shmups is the fact that it has super-low requirements), allowing the player to more easily dodge bullets during more intense patterns. The number of enemy bullets that need to be on screen for this to happen varies with the difficulty and whether or not bullet acceleration is on.

As with most doujin shmups on PC, Blue Wish Resurrection Plus allows players to save replays. Replay files can be shared with other players, and also act as demos when the game is left sitting at the title screen. Note that replays can't be saved if the game is paused even once. Here are a few of my replays (all with auto-guard on):
This is my best score for Original completion with acceleration off.
Almost finished Original with acceleration on, but I completely screwed up in the last stage.
Finished Heaven, acceleration off.
Finished Heaven, acceleration on.
Just put these in the replay folder and you're all set.

In conclusion, Blue Wish Resurrection Plus is a really fun game that offers a challenge to players of any skill level. I don't advise messing with auto-guard until you've got everything memorized, though - it can get pretty brutal. I advise anyone who enjoys this to also check out Eden's Edge, which is a bit less challenging, and its work-in-progress sequel Eden's Aegis.

(Well, there's week one. I've talked about BWR+ a bit in the past, but I've expanded on it a lot more here. Later weeks will probably have some pictures, by the way. I just didn't want to put any in here. Feedback, your own replays, and other relevant posts would be appreciated.)
« Last Edit: September 21, 2009, 03:46:45 PM by WarpRattler »

« Reply #6 on: September 20, 2009, 07:02:23 PM »
Ummm... Is it just me, or did Warp totally rip Glorb's thread idea and change it to shoot-em-ups?

WarpRattler

  • Paid by the word
« Reply #7 on: September 20, 2009, 07:04:23 PM »
As such, I will totally steal Warp's idea

Glorb

  • Banned
« Reply #8 on: September 20, 2009, 07:22:51 PM »
bobman, have I ever told you I love you?
every

WarpRattler

  • Paid by the word
« Reply #9 on: September 20, 2009, 07:32:49 PM »
Your love is unwarranted. As most of us know, bobman has a disorder that causes him to not notice times and dates, leading him to believe things happened earlier or later than they actually did.

coolkid

  • Totally Not Banned
« Reply #10 on: September 26, 2009, 07:54:11 AM »
You must do Zero Wing next for great justi- *shot*

But seriously, do Zero Wing next. Not because the memes, because I heard it was quite difficult.
Kick! Punch! It's all in the mind!

WarpRattler

  • Paid by the word
« Reply #11 on: September 26, 2009, 08:38:03 AM »
I was actually planning on doing one of these on Zero Wing at some point. Not because of the memes (which aren't in the arcade version) or because it's difficult, but because it's a blatant ripoff of basically every successful horizontal-scrolling shoot-'em-up that came before it.

Not next, though. The next one is going to be of one of my favorite Konami shoot-'em-ups, one that a few people here hate but I love. Possibly Zero Wing for October 4th (more on what's going on with that tomorrow).

WarpRattler

  • Paid by the word
« Reply #12 on: September 27, 2009, 11:41:25 AM »
Gyruss
Konami
Arcade (MAME-compatible), NES, GBA, Xbox Live Arcade, and others
1-2 players (alternating)

Gyruss is...well, Gyruss is kind of hard to categorize. The best way to describe it is Galaga meets Tempest.


Why would I deposit a coin when it's on free play?

In Gyruss, the player's goal is to travel to Earth. In some versions, a small amount of backstory - about the pilot having to fight his way through invading aliens to return home, or something like that - is given. The player starts two warps - stages - away from Neptune.


Pluto isn't a planet in the arcade version. It is one in the NES version.

The game plays very much like Galaga, with waves of ships flying in and settling at a fixed point away from the ship, and sometimes leaving stragglers to collide into the player. The point of view is similar to Tempest - the player sits at the top of a "tube," looking in. They can move their ship around the tube.


Planetomically correct!

Upon reaching a planet, a bonus stage will begin. These are ripped straight out of Galaga: forty enemies, bonus for each wave fully destroyed, one hundred times the number of enemies destroyed for the point bonus at the end, 10,000 point bonus for destroying them all. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."


Lots of destruction going on...

The three ports listed above vary in a few ways. The NES port, considered by some to be the definitive version of the game, contains more stages, more weaponry, boss fights, and other extra stuff. The GBA compilation Konami Collector's Series: Arcade Advanced includes Gyruss (as well as Frogger, Time Pilot, Scramble, Rush'n Attack, and Yie Ar Kung-Fu). Entering the Konami code at the title screen of each game will unlock a special bonus, which could be enhanced graphics, extra player options, and/or bonus levels. Inputting the Konami code at the Gyruss title screen will start the game at a special set of "black hole" stages, with the player having four extra lives to start instead of two. These stages are brutal, but the player is rewarded with a permanent dual-shot (and four stages worth of extra points) if they survive. The XBLA version has an optional "enhanced" graphics mode, leaderboards, a lame multiplayer mode, and Achievements.


This is what I got when I was playing to get these screenshots. Not hard to beat.

Gyruss is my favorite non-standard Konami shooting game. Simple gameplay, not too difficult, and loads of fun. Great audio, too - possibly the most memorable part of the game is the extensive use of a synth version of the beginning of Bach's Toccata and Fugue.

(Pretty cheap game, too - obviously you could emulate it in MAME for free, but if you want to pay for it, the XBLA version is 400 MS Points, and Arcade Advanced is only $4 used at GameStop. I don't know what pricing looks like on the NES version, unfortunately - ask Chupperson, or wait for a possible Virtual Console release.)

Fun fact: the guy who made this also made Time Pilot, and after being fired from Konami, he went on to make 1942 and Street Fighter.

Chupperson Weird

  • Not interested.
« Reply #13 on: September 27, 2009, 11:57:25 AM »
Where I work I think it's about $3 on NES. We sell Arcade Advanced for more than $4 though, so the pricing isn't exactly relative.
Definitely worth that $3 though.
That was a joke.

Glorb

  • Banned
« Reply #14 on: September 27, 2009, 12:01:22 PM »
Aw hellz yeah, Gyruss is where it's at.
every

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