Shmups

[hazeredmist]

Let’s do this

[KSubzero1000]

Yeeeees!

PS: Why does every other user on this forum have a spousal supervisor, super clean tables and a pint in every picture, though? The plot thickens.

[hazeredmist]

Yeeeees!

PS: Why does every other user on this forum have a spousal supervisor, super clean tables and a pint in every picture, though? The plot thickens.

To address your points:

- It's easier to let her be the boss (I pretend it's my decision that she's the boss)
- I moved some washing / the boy's toys out of the way for the benefit of the picture If I panned out a bit you'd see a rather different scene...
- Beer makes EVERYTHING better. Except reactions of course. And senses. And work tomorrow

[Stanshall]

Nice one, champ. DDP Resurrection is probably the best first DDP game to play, in many ways. Go Strong Style and let the auto bombs look after you. I love the shiny golden star medals, so garish!

[hazeredmist]

Well that was a blast! After some goes with an Xbox pad, a proper sesh with the stick was in order. I played all the way through 1.5 Novice mode and it was exhilarating. Constant fun. Used quite a few continues but felt like I did OK, and my underspecced laptop performed well. I guess it's good when the games you want to play on a PC are low intensity in terms of resources they require...

So, DonDonPachi. Presenting my n00bism here but what's the deal? I played through a "DonDonPatchi" in MAME on my retropi, but it certainly wasn't this, albeit with the ultra-fun Cave personality present. And Stanshall, you mention that this is the "first best" DDP game to play. So is this a big series of games? Apologies, a Google search would probably get me answers but I prefer asking you lot, as a Padawan.

Seems to be a ton of other modes, and things I don't really understand yet:

- arrange
- black label

I've seen these mentioned in other game discussions, so are they Cave things or genre things?

I think this and Crimzon Clover are my favourite games at the moment, along with Rolling Gunner. Incredible.

[Stanshall]

There are a good handful.

Dodonpachi is one of the original bullet hell games, pioneering, basically perfect straight off the bat. It stands up extremely well today in every respect and many of the bullet patterns and enemy wave patterns in Resurrection are straight out of the original DDP.

DDP 2 isn't by the same people, it's very average.

DDP Daioujou is probably the best, certainly my favourite. Amazing soundtrack, extremely playable, very challenging to play for score with some really deep tactics and tough execution to manage your combo chain. It's a masterpiece beyond my skill level. I'd love to get a 1CC one day but it's unlikely.

DDP Resurrection you're starting to get into. It seems pretty accessible, the hypers are really powerful and great defensive tools, as well. Auto-bomb is handy, it's very flashy, some great novel level design ideas. Lacks a little bit of the grit of the earlier games, to my mind.

DDP Saidaioujou is very good, quite shiny. Very polished sheen. Very DDP in level, wave and bullet pattern design but kind of redundant, too. The 360 mode is pretty interesting and fun. It feels like a modern shiny take on DDP, which is great, it's just a bit shallow in some respects.

They also made some mobile only games which don't interest me.

As for the DDP Resurrection modes, they're genre things but also very much Cave things. Give both BL and Arr. a good go. They're quite different and both more chaotic and exciting than 1.5 mode. BL allows you to cancel more bullets into gems. Arrange gives you higher score medals if you point blank enemies, like in another Cave game, Ketsui. It's often referred to as Ketsuipachi for this reason and uses the Ketsui medal sprites which is why you have the big numbered cubes which look a bit out of place. Awesome mode though!

[hazeredmist]

Thanks man! All noted.

[KSubzero1000]

Well that was a blast!

It legitimately made me crack a big dumb smile upon reading that. I was worried you wouldn't like it!

So, DonDonPachi. Presenting my n00bism here but what's the deal? I played through a "DonDonPatchi" in MAME on my retropi, but it certainly wasn't this, albeit with the ultra-fun Cave personality present. And Stanshall, you mention that this is the "first best" DDP game to play. So is this a big series of games?

Yes, DoDonPachi is a series of games and CAVE's long-running flagship series. You can think of it as the equivalent to Civilization within the turn-based strategy genre: The big, bold evergreen series made by the most prominent developer that has come to define the genre in many ways. They all feature red, green and blue ships as well as bee motifs.

The series includes:


DonPachi, which came out on the Saturn and PS1. A bit rough around the edges, but definitely playable. You can purchase it on the JPN store if you have a PS3.

DoDonPachi (aka DDP), which is also on the JPN PS3 Store. It's widely regarded to be a significant improvement over the first one and a genre classic.

DoDonPachi DaiOuJou (aka DOJ) which came out on PS2 and Xbox 360. It's supposed to be even better than the previous two and is regularly celebrated as one of the very best shmups ever made. Unfortunately, it's region-locked so I haven't played that one and I don't know of any legal way of playing it at the moment.

DoDonPachi Resurrection (known in Japan as DoDonPachi DaiFukkatsu and abbreviated as DFK), which came out on Xbox 360 & Steam and is the one you own. It's the one with the most content as well as being comparatively accessible for newcomers, which makes it a perfect entry point like Stanshall said. It's the only one to have ever been localized outside of Japan, as far as I know.

DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou (aka SDOJ), which came out on Xbox 360. Thankfully, this one is region-free, although the second hand prices tend to be rather prohibitive. I think it's a fantastic game, although most people tend to hold it in lower esteem than some of its predecessors for some reason.


CAVE has plenty of other heavyweights in their repertoire, like Ketsui, Akai Katana and the Espgaluda & Mushihimesama games, to name but a few, but DoDonPachi is basically the center of gravity of everything.

Needless to say, I'm sure they can all be emulated one way or another on MAME or something.

Seems to be a ton of other modes, and things I don't really understand yet:

- arrange
- black label

I've seen these mentioned in other game discussions, so are they Cave things or genre things?

I think you might find Arrange modes in other games, but they're mostly CAVE trademarks. Basically, Arrange is a catch-all term to indicate any sort of novelty mode that has some significant variation from the main mode, be it in terms of offensive options, enemy layout or scoring system. I'd say you can safely ignore them at first.

Black Label usually denotes some sort of post-release content aimed at experienced players. In the case of Resurrection, the Black Label mode is a more difficult version of the main game with more dense bullet patterns, a new attack gauge and a new final boss. Thankfully there's a Black Label Novice mode if you're curious!

1.5 Novice & Black Label Novice are simply easier versions of 1.5 & Black Label, respectively.

Here is a handy summary of all the different modes.

I think this and Crimzon Clover are my favourite games at the moment, along with Rolling Gunner. Incredible.

Hey... Hey, guys?

...I think he gets it now.

[Stanshall]

Citation needed.

[hazeredmist]

Surprised there isn't more about Rolling Gunner disappearing from the eshop. Still gone, still no news. No articles online. Mental. Big shame for the dev, it was really gaining traction (though the lack of interest in the disappearance perhaps tells a different story?)

[Stanshall]

It's a strange one but there have been plenty in a similar boat and I'm sure it'll reappear. It'll be something completely innocuous where Nintendo are just typically crap at communicating.

[KSubzero1000]

If it somehow never reappears again and it turns out that I missed out on my one and only chance to play this game properly, I would be very upset.

Footage looks intriguing and the enthusiasm surrounding it has propelled it near the top of my Switch priority list.

[KSubzero1000]

You're a pc gamer now, a trailblazer riding the bleeding edge of gaming technology, you can import it via economy airmail on dvd from japan. It'll only take a month to arrive.

Well I wouldn't call myself a "gamer" let alone "pc", and I certainly reject the suggestion that I might be labelled as some sort of compound "pc gamer", but thanks for the pep talk. Always good to have a backup plan, in any case.

[Michiel K]

Huge blindspots in my shmupertoire.
I remember someone on reddit telling me during the score competition that the chaining was a lot more lenient in daifukkatsu than the other games and I think it's waaay too short in that game.

The chaining window isn’t all that different, it’s just that your multiplier starts decreasing when you drop the chain and continues from the number it’s at when you start a new chain. In previous DDP games, your multiplier immediately resets to 0 when you drop the chain. Somehow, the pain isn’t lessened much though, as you have stopped optimising your score all the same.

Haven’t had time to get back into Futari Black Label, but I fired up the ol’ PS2 late last night and had a few goes at Psyvariar Revision. My first go, I fed 5 credits to get to stage 5 and on my last go I reached the stage 4 boss on a single credit. Tiny bit proud of myself.

[Stanshall]

Haven’t had time to get back into Futari Black Label, but I fired up the ol’ PS2 late last night and had a few goes at Psyvariar Revision. My first go, I fed 5 credits to get to stage 5 and on my last go I reached the stage 4 boss on a single credit. Tiny bit proud of myself.

This post prompted me to get back into Psyvariar and I also just had a few really good fun runs. It's such a fantastic game, so intense once you start diving headfirst into the bullet sprays and banking on the i-frames as you LEVEL UPPPPP. I spent most of my time hammering that first stage in my usual fashion but it's just a brilliant game to play through, very repetitive enemy types and short levels but that makes it a total rush. The bosses are also great but the later ones are bloody hard! I thought I might try for a 1CC with my newfound OK skills but I'm way off taking down the last boss (and I don't mean Gluon). I used four continues in total on the last stage, with three on the boss! Quite a difficulty spike...

I've also been playing a bit of Radirgy Swag on the Switch. It's addictive and thrilling once you get going and keep picking up the speed up items and going into Overdrive but it's also kind of weird. It's impossible to dodge the bullets at that speed and the enemies seem to shoot more the faster you are, so you're constantly using your shield, recharging, shield, recharging, shield which makes for a strange dynamic. Throw in the melee attack and it's different to almost any shmup I've played (besides the other Radirgy games, to which it's basically identical in many ways!).

I also went back to Ikaruga to see whether I could 1CC that one, or whether it might be within reach if I just play purely for survival. Jesus Christ it's a hard game. The number of times I got trapped on some scenery or crushed by a moving block or whatever, or couldn't decide which colour when some bullet sprays overlapped each other. It actually made me feel anxious just firing it up but I had a look at some shamo_tx scoreboard replays and felt better after. Always good to see someone completely dismantle the game!

I took a few days off, basically, and it's been great dipping my toe back into some old faves on the Switch.

[KSubzero1000]

I know I go on about it but I have to talk about Blue Wish Resurrection Plus once again.

This game is brimming with quality design decisions. The ingot chute system being one of them: there are special semi-hidden spots all across the various stages that spill bonus items upon being activated by flying over them. This creates a very solid risk vs. reward system since the player is encouraged to put themselves in danger by flying further up the screen and activate the chutes as soon as possible in order to maximise their potential scoring output. I'm genuinely surprised more shmups don't have any similar mechanic.

The color palette is on point, the readability is impeccable, the four ships all play slightly differently from one another, there are several interesting functionality options and the soundtrack is also excellent if you like electronic music. It blows my mind that this can somehow remain a completely free game with these production values. They could put it on Steam and charge 10 bucks for it and it would be a perfectly fair asking price as far as I'm concerned.

I've just beaten my Heaven 1CC score, this time with Eden's Edge. I won't upload this one either because it's easy mode and I wasn't completely satisfied with my performance. But it was better than last time, at least. Hell might be above my pay grade but I really want to be able to 1CC Original at some point.

If you had told me last year that an eleven year old indie japanese bullet hell freeware that I would need to hack my laptop to play properly would be one of my favorite gaming experience of 2019, I would have had a hard time believing you. Yet here I am with my shameless shill.

There's a good argument to be made that superplays can sometimes be off-putting to newcomers, but this is a top replay and it's difficult to find any video of the easiest mode on YT, so it'll do. Needless to say, easy mode with WAIT ON is significantly more forgiving than this:



I hope somebody will give it a shot.

[hazeredmist]

I’ll download it! Didn’t really take in that this was free. Nice.

Btw, clips is right - you’re a gamer. And you’re a PC gamer too. I’ve accepted my labels, accept yours

[KSubzero1000]

I’ll download it! Didn’t really take in that this was free. Nice.

Wonderful! The download link should be easy to find, there is a reddit thread at the top of the google search that links to it.

The in-game options are in english, although the install folder notes etc. are partially in japanese. Ask away if you have any issue with anything. Also, if you open the game in full screen and the fps counter in the bottom right stays at 30 the whole time, that's the same issue I had and I'll have the solution for that as well.

[hazeredmist]

Installed! Nice one. Had a quick test, runs at 60fps, full screen so I'm golden. Also like the cheesy trance soundtrack It immediately looks fun.

Next I'll test the stick...

[hazeredmist]

Who said you could go to bed?

This has turned into a little rabbit hole, I've downloaded a couple of other freeware games now after seeing these on Reddit:

Hyrorah (I have Super Hydorah on my Switch wish list, apparently that's an expanded version of this - not a style I typically covet but I want to try the R-Type stuff too)
Cho Ren Sha 68K (seen a few recommendations for this)

*edit* Just saw you linked another free shmup. I will download it... I guess we can let you can kip for a bit now.