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Incline Shoot'em up goodness (review and discuss)

Falksi

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Great Deceiver & Licorice either of you play Steel Empire on the Megadrive?

Just had my first go on it ever, and absolutely loved it. Only did a 1 credit blast and game overed around mid second stage, but will return to it later in the week when I've more free time t sit down & play it properly.

Be interested to hear your opinions on it if you have played it.
 

Nutmeg

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Steel Empire
Ah yes. Koutetsu Teikoku is on my to play list for sure.

The only thing that puts me off is the length. 1 hour is a lot for a 1-ALL.

This is my current "next 16-bit original shmup to 1CC list"
  • Koutetsu Teikoku
  • Thunder Force 4
  • Crying
  • Axelay
  • Nemesis 90 Kai
  • Undeadline
  • Scrambled Valkyrie
You can see Koutetsu Teikoku is at the very top.
 

Falksi

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Been playing this past few days.......

Elemental Master - Megadrive

TPAAc5F.jpg


If you talk about influential game companies I don't think many would include Technosoft in that bracket, but I would. They didn't release a massive amount of games, and those which they did make weren't Mario or Sonic levels of popular at the time either. Yes they definitely established themselves during their peak on the Megadrive, but they didn't stick around for too long after as well. But they very much remind me of a band like the Pixies or Therapy? though, in that if you were around at the time to ride their wave of games, their unique style & their sound especially really blew you away. Elemental Master came towards the end of their time with the Megadrive, and despite being a big fan of some of their earlier games (Thunderforce 3 & Devil Crash especially), I never purchased this. One of those weird things really, as by rights I should have.

Playing the game now, and it's definitely got that feel of "we'll do our best to make a good game, but we're getting a bit bored of developing for this system". Everything it does is decent-to-good, but there's a definite dip in quality with some of the areas from the previous games they made. In particular with the music. It's still a really good soundtrack, but these chaps made some utter belters and some of the best on the system in their earlier games. Whilst EM's still do an admirable job, they don't take things to that other level like Technosoft's earlier entries do, which is disappointing.

Like everything else, gameplay itself is generally quite good, just a bit lacking, and everything feels a little bit by the numbers. Typical Technosoft tropes show their face, such as stage selection & an emphasis on having to shoot in various directions to make it through the game. The action overall is fairly solid, and the level design interesting enough without being anything spectacular. But this game's big draw is simply in it's concept & what's in the package - dark fantasy, shooter action, Technosoft presentation & music, manga style cut-scenes, etc. It ticks nearly every box of what I'd love to see in such a game, and it's outer shell give you that to some degree.

But at it's core it just doesn't execute them all that well either sadly, and the package as a whole just isn't that much fun. There's plenty of niggly things to annoy, but by far and away my biggest gripe with the game, is that it doesn't make it clear enough when you've been hit. Apart from a little yellow flash, there's no real "feel" of getting hit, and it's not uncommon for it to bypass you all together. That stacks with two other major gripes too - namely the fact that it can be tricky to see some enemies sometimes, and that when you do take a hit you're vulnerable to another one almost straight away (unlike other games where you get a second or two to refocus). When all that combines, you can easily look at your energy bar one minute to see it full, to look at it again the next minute and see you've taken several hit, totally unawares of them or where they came from. It feels really skanky, and puts a real crimp in learning the game.

You also only get one life (albeit with an energy bar), and when you continue it's from the start of the stage too. All together this feels unbalanced & off. Throw in the fact that the play area feels quite restrictive, and also that the the bosses aren't particularly challenging either, and the whole thing just starts to feel like a bit of a letdown. The weapons are OK, but nothing spectacular, the enemies I'd describe exactly the same, and whilst there's no doubt that there is some definite fun & quality to be had out of the game, it ultimately leaves you feeling a bit short changed.

This is a game I absolutely want to love. Conceptually it's got everything which I want out of such games. Sadly, it doesn't quite deliver them well enough to cut it as well as it should have. Still enough to be worth playing mind, but personally I'm just a bit gutted.

:3/5:
 

Valestein

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Here's a Raiden game in all but name (if doing emulation, get the "new version" which has bug fixes.) and was in fact made by the same dev and the spacecraft from this would appear in later Raiden games.



Another nice helicopter shmup (there's also the original game but I prefer this one)



Two late '90s WW2 themed shmups from Capcom.




I'll look through my Steam library later for lesser known shmups to post on here.
 

Falksi

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Here's a Raiden game in all but name (if doing emulation, get the "new version" which has bug fixes.) and was in fact made by the same dev and the spacecraft from this would appear in later Raiden games.



Another nice helicopter shmup (there's also the original game but I prefer this one)



Two late '90s WW2 themed shmups from Capcom.




I'll look through my Steam library later for lesser known shmups to post on here.


Love the look of that. Will add that to the "to play" list"
 

Nutmeg

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get the "new version" which has bug fixes.
Opposite is true. New Version introduced bugs. Biggest being that in new version you can't get the destruction bonus in all stages.

Basically the old version had the special weapons with limited ammo, and some players didn't like that so Seibu did a QnD "new version" but IMO old version has more coherent design. At least on paper. I haven't spent a lot of time with either.

Also World of Longplays is a scam. Use ReplayBurners instead. Higher quality footage and the players don't cheat.
 

Nutmeg

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Been playing this past few days.......
1CC'd this one.

I found the dragon spider boss quite challenging. Also good music when fighting that guy. Final boss theme was great too, and a great fight.

Opening gets me pumped every time.



Stage 5 and 6 music is much weaker than the rest. Shame, otherwise I'd love those stages as much as the first four which I absolutely love.



How can one not enjoy magicing goblins and slimes to this metal chip tune march.

The play is very, well, manic. It's a great example of a living memorizer, where you have to memorize the challenges and have an approach in mind too, sure, but execution requires constant movement.

There's a hidden mania difficulty (well hidden in the hidden options menu - press A and start on the title screen to access) which I've been using upon replays, but my 1CC remains on default settings.



This guy has handcam and everything. But just look at how beautifully this plays. Constant motion, constantly switching shooting direction. Very fluid, very dynamic.

I wish all wizard type characters in fantasy games played like this. Alas.
 
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Valestein Viper Phase 1 is in my opinion the hardest Seibu Kaihatsu game. It's fucking brutal and I have real problems seeing the bullets. Love the soundtrack! Unfortunately, being a Seibu arcade game, it runs at a non-standard refresh rate of 54hz, so most people will have trouble emulating it properly because of 60hz displays - either sped up to meet the 60hz refresh (making it effectively impossible to clear) or with stutters because of non-integer multiplication. The only ways to solve the problem is to play it on a CRT or use a G-Sync monitor with an emulator capable of syncing to the game's exact framerate.

1944: The Loop Master is indeed a Raizing/8ing game, I used to own the board but sold it a long time ago. Didn't like it much, it's quite a weak game especially compared to their earlier outings. I'm usually not a fan of horizontal vertically scrolling shooters, with very few exceptions (Mars Matrix for instance, which is great). Capcom's own 19xx from 5 years earlier is a much better game.

Falksi Steel Empire is on my play list, but I've played a lot of Progear no Arashi, which is a sort of spiritual successor by Cave, it's one of their rare hori games and came out on the CPS-2. Check it out:



Licorice I love Elemental Master but I never 1cc'd it. I should go back to it sometime, great BGM and I love the graphics.

Tehdagah Gradius V is one of my top 5 favourite shmups of all time. I play it regularly still. It's one of the rare shmups where it's acceptable to play on an analog stick, too - the game has true analog movement. I still play it on an arcade stick, though.

Gradius V is a full-blown top notch production game, still graphically impressive today, and a glimpse into what could have been if good developers were given enough money to make a polished product. People often forget that shmups were once a mainstream genre, and a lot of people (even casual players) were drawn into them because they looked amazing and were very easy to get into. Some of my very earliest videogame memories are of shmups (Defender on the 2600, Life Force on the NES when I was 8, Forgotten Worlds on the Genesis when I was 9).

I think the full-autistic scoring mentality and degenerate gameplay, to the detriment of interesting level design and cool looking shit, were among the main factors why the genre died for good. And I'm a huge fan of scoring systems.

Licorice and everyone else: have you ever played Nex Machina? I shilled for it quite a bit on the 'Dex when it came out a few years ago, but no one really shared my enthusiasm. It was designed by Eugene Jarvis (Robotron) and I think it's the best score-oriented game in recent memory and a true classic, standing tall with the greatest arcade games of all time. It's just a shame the developer (Housemarque) couldn't sustain their business model because "gamers" are retarded, so their latest project is a third-person shooter (albeit with some shmup elements, bullet patterns, etc).

https://housemarque.com/news/arcade-is-dead

 
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Those are all good games, the only one I haven't played is Rigid Force Alpha.

I still maintain that the very best shmup available on Steam is Crimson Clover. Everyone should own it, it's always on sale for peanuts.
 

Falksi

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Valestein Viper Phase 1 is in my opinion the hardest Seibu Kaihatsu game. It's fucking brutal and I have real problems seeing the bullets. Love the soundtrack! Unfortunately, being a Seibu arcade game, it runs at a non-standard refresh rate of 54hz, so most people will have trouble emulating it properly because of 60hz displays - either sped up to meet the 60hz refresh (making it effectively impossible to clear) or with stutters because of non-integer multiplication. The only ways to solve the problem is to play it on a CRT or use a G-Sync monitor with an emulator capable of syncing to the game's exact framerate.

1944: The Loop Master is indeed a Raizing/8ing game, I used to own the board but sold it a long time ago. Didn't like it much, it's quite a weak game especially compared to their earlier outings. I'm usually not a fan of horizontal vertically scrolling shooters, with very few exceptions (Mars Matrix for instance, which is great). Capcom's own 19xx from 5 years earlier is a much better game.

Falksi Steel Empire is on my play list, but I've played a lot of Progear no Arashi, which is a sort of spiritual successor by Cave, it's one of their rare hori games and came out on the CPS-2. Check it out:



Licorice I love Elemental Master but I never 1cc'd it. I should go back to it sometime, great BGM and I love the graphics.

Tehdagah Gradius V is one of my top 5 favourite shmups of all time. I play it regularly still. It's one of the rare shmups where it's acceptable to play on an analog stick, too - the game has true analog movement. I still play it on an arcade stick, though.

Gradius V is a full-blown top notch production game, still graphically impressive today, and a glimpse into what could have been if good developers were given enough money to make a polished product. People often forget that shmups were once a mainstream genre, and a lot of people (even casual players) were drawn into them because they looked amazing and were very easy to get into. Some of my very earliest videogame memories are of shmups (Defender on the 2600, Life Force on the NES when I was 8, Forgotten Worlds on the Genesis when I was 9).

I think the full-autistic scoring mentality and degenerate gameplay, to the detriment of interesting level design and cool looking shit, were among the main factors why the genre died for good. And I'm a huge fan of scoring systems.

Licorice and everyone else: have you ever played Nex Machina? I shilled for it quite a bit on the 'Dex when it came out a few years ago, but no one really shared my enthusiasm. It was designed by Eugene Jarvis (Robotron) and I think it's the best score-oriented game in recent memory and a true classic, standing tall with the greatest arcade games of all time. It's just a shame the developer (Housemarque) couldn't sustain their business model because "gamers" are retarded, so their latest project is a third-person shooter (albeit with some shmup elements, bullet patterns, etc).

https://housemarque.com/news/arcade-is-dead



Can't wait to play Nex Machina. Had it in my collection now for a few months, but waiting until I upgrade the PC to play it (was expecting to get it upgraded in Jan, but prob not be until Autumn time now.)

Progear no Arashi, looks awesome. Hope it's on the Pandora's Box I have.
 

Lutte

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People often forget that shmups were once a mainstream genre, and a lot of people (even casual players) were drawn into them because they looked amazing and were very easy to get into. Some of my very earliest videogame memories are of shmups (Defender on the 2600, Life Force on the NES when I was 8, Forgotten Worlds on the Genesis when I was 9).

The cart era of gaming was a wholly another world. Because there was so little you could fit on a cartridge, a lot of games followed the ethos of arcade game design that encourages replaying the same game a decent amount and getting better at it. So of course, what was "mainstream" for gaming at the time meant something really different from today. And even what counts as easy for the era involves more of a living pulse on the player than what people are used to in current times.

I mean, shmups were a mainstream genres yes, but so were platformers, action/platform ala Mega Man, beatemup and fighting games. Fighting games are almost dead in 2021, I mean they're still made and there's still cool products out there but there's almost no player base and it's hard to know people IRL willing to play them locally with you, while it was easy as a kid to find people to do some SF2 and MK. Platformers are almost an entirely indie affair now if you don't count the horribly boring shit that are the 3d collectathon type platformers. Beatemup.. there's some decent ones every now and then, but few enough that we cream our pants when something like Fight'N'Rage and SoR4 comes out.

The genres of our childhood simply couldn't stay mainstream as gaming grew and publishers wanted to fund devs who make more globally appealing things.

We simply won't ever get something like Gradius V or G-Darius these days.

Talking of full prod, here's what I consider the most atmospheric, awesome stage ever made in a shmup :


The fucking FEELS when G.T comes stalking in the background before the real encounter.
 
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I mostly agree with your post, but re: fighting games, I owned an arcade and used to be into FGs hardcore in the mid-late 90s/early 2000s and can confidently say that the genre now is much healthier than it was during the dark ages of the early oughts. Remember Capcom Fighting Jam? KOF Maximum Impact? SF4 was a watershed moment that really turned things around, but as I hate playing FGs online, I just quit playing them altogether. I don't think they make any sense outside of the arcade environment/putting your money on the line and having to wait in queue until your next turn if you lost.

Platformers are still alive and well in the sense that Metroid style games are pretty popular, and some of them are even very good (Hollow Knight/Ori). Stretching the definition a bit, Nintendo also puts out some platforming stuff even though most of its output is ports of old Wii U games (which are still great, like Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze). Not as ubiquitous a genre as it once was for sure, but still alive even outside indies (although I agree that indies kept the genre alive through some rough patches - i.e. Knytt, Cave Story, etc.).

Anyway, G-Darius is awesome and Zuntata is so so good. OST sounds very alien:

 
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Lutte

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On the case of fighting games, I definitely didn't mean the games themselves but the lack of accessible community. I also don't like playing these onlines, but I don't have any friends who care to play these, even people I know who used to play games like SF2 when they were young are now mostly focused on shit like battle royale games, CoD, GoW or Halo. For some reason, we see solid games being made in this genre despite the lack of player base behind (most of them).

On the case of metroidvanias, the games you mention are all indie stuff. HK was made by like three people. So it's like I said, platformers/action platformers and derivatives are mostly kept alive by indies. As for nintendo stuff, I haven't played Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, but I'm really not fond of most 3d mario. I've enjoyed the Galaxy ones on Wii a fair bit though. I've once played one of their 2d side scrolling revival, the first New SMB on Wii, but it was thoroughly.. average and I never bothered trying the sequels stuff. I kind of lost interest in most of Nintendo's own franchises while the ones I really still cared about like Metroid (I greatly enjoyed the Prime series too) are pretty much abandoned.
 
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I recommend trying out Mario Odyssey, it's not exactly a platformer but there are lots of neat ideas in it. You can emulate it almost perfectly with Yuzu now.

Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze is IMO one of the best platformers in recent memory. It improves on Donkey Kong Country Returns in almost every way, is hard as balls and perfectly emulated through Cemu. Give it a try and I'm sure you won't be disappointed.
 

Lutte

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I'll give DK a shot, but I'm not sure I'm willing to bother with odyssey, I've seen some gameplay footage and it exhibits what I dislike the most about 3d marios/collectathon genres in general. I can get why some people might enjoy the more open worldy types but the downtime in between the actual fun moments (the segments where there's something to collect that actually makes you think a little) is just not for me.

The galaxy weren't perfect but they were tighter designed level wise than the average 3d mario game.
 

Nutmeg

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We simply won't ever get something like Gradius V or G-Darius these days.
Both had G. Rev staff involvement, and they're alive and kicking AFAIK. Just above Valestein posted Strania, which is a recent-ish game of theirs I adore. Plays a bit like Einhander with all the weapon switching. I already sang praises for Under Defeat, and Border Down is an absolute favorite, although a bit too hard for me to handle at the moment. The main G.Rev guy has said he intends to do a remake or sequel to Border Down at some point, but wants to put a lot of resources into it, because it's his pet favorite.

Border Down itself was a spiritual successor to both G Darius and Metal Black.

Metal Black had an absolutely beautiful serious salaryman sci-fi mixed with psychadelics aesthetic. It also had beam duels (that were discouraged in high level play, a shame, and something Border Down fixed), and a very interesting shot that enveloped your whole ship so with auto-fire you could effectively ram things as long as you dodged the bullets.

The little moon is a dragon egg, so fucking cool:



I made some progress in this one, but no clear yet.

Although originally meant to be a Darius game, at the start it says it's project Gun Frontier 2 (part 3 being some weird fighting game), and the original Gun Frontier was also an aesthetic masterpiece. Play is fine, and IMO quite unique. Since it influenced Yagawa's work at Raizing (i.e. Garegga, Batrider, it's Yagawa's favorite shmup) you might be tempted to think it plays like a proto-Garegga but it doesn't. Out of all the games I've played the moment to moment gameplay is closest to Repulse (the fixed shooter by Crux I talked about earlier in the thread) as your slow movement makes any vertical maneuvers far too risky, and glues you to the bottom edge. But it does share the bomb system (but not the bomb itself. Under Defeat pays homage to the bomb itself), the bullet shape, and the interactive world with Yagawa's Raizing games.

Full of iconic moments, including this one copied by countless shmups since, from Raiden to Zero Ranger.



I also like this game's simple but super fair approach to rank: it's just your score. The better your score, the more the game wants to kill you. Noob mistake is realizing bombing the blue ships on stage 2 give you a huge bonus. Well you still have 4 more stages to go and if you raise your score to 800K or whatever on that stage good luck dealing with the rank. I treat those ships like a difficulty switch and avoid killing them at all, since I'm still going for the survival 1CC.

Anyway this is what I love about shmups. They're all so connected in their history. Glorious nippon steel. Folded over 1000 times. Plane wings sharp like katana.
 
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Lutte

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Both had G. Rev staff involvement, and they're alive and kicking AFAIK. Just above Valestein posted Strania, which is a recent-ish game of theirs I adore.

Looking up release dates, while it has been on steam since 2015, it's originally an arcade game released in 2011. Good game, but really not an example of how much activity we're seeing these days, I think most would agree. I mean, it's been a decade basically since. Time can really fly, eh?

Border Down is an absolute favorite, although a bit too hard for me to handle at the moment. The main G.Rev guy has said he intends to do a remake or sequel to Border Down at some point, but wants to put a lot of resources into it, because it's his pet favorite.

Border Down itself was a spiritual successor to both G Darius and Metal Black.

I never played that one. Do you recommend going with arcade emulation (naomi) or the dreamcast version? when you say spiritual successor to G-Darius it is like you're talking to my soul.
 

Nutmeg

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arcade emulation (naomi) or the dreamcast version
As you probably know Naomi and Dreamcast are essentially the same hardware. I've only ever played the DC version, which has the arcade game on it + a practice mode + an arrange mode. It's great.

The cart era of gaming was a wholly another world. Because there was so little you could fit on a cartridge, a lot of games followed the ethos of arcade game design that encourages replaying the same game a decent amount and getting better at it. So of course, what was "mainstream" for gaming at the time meant something really different from today. And even what counts as easy for the era involves more of a living pulse on the player than what people are used to in current times.
I remember "arcade perfect" being a badge of honor in gaming magazines during the 5th gen. I guess because finally home consoles were capable of reproducing 2D arcade games somewhat faithfully, and people were still excited by the prospect of playing those at home. Faithful reproduction of high end 3D arcade titles remained elusive, however. In 1996, Sega Model 3 games blew away everything except $50,000 SGI developer rigs. Scud Race still looks gorgeous, IMO. But the Dreamcast was the last system where library strategy either by wilful direction or zeitgeist had the arcade ethos. After that the content cult, which prior to that occupied some kind of growing avant garde among the critics, started becoming the main voice. "More content!" they would clamor "$100 (AU) is too much for a paltry few stages or tracks". A perfect arcade port, with multiple difficulties, practice modes, arrange modes etc. could only hope to get as much as a 7 out of 10. So what did we get instead? We got hours and hours of what arcade players call "dead space". Great.

It didn't help that about this time the Western world was starting to scratch the surface of the actual people behind Japanese games, and of course none other than Shigeru "break games away from the shackles of the arcade" Miyamoto is at the top of that scum bucket. The first Zelda is about the extreme end of how much consolificiation I can tolerate. Remove the save feature (save features were a mistake), give it a 1 hour timer, and you have a coin-op classic. Oh wait, Nintendo had a game exactly like that, co-developed with Zelda. It was called 謎の村雨城 and it was amazing.



Too bad this never got a sequel, and instead we got explicitly designed to have filler content (content! gotta have -content-) Zelda 3 instead.

It especially didn't help at all that Dreamcast's flagship title by (undeserved, according to some) arcade giant Yu Suzuki was a slow paced life simulator adventure game in which quality arcade ports occupied the spot of mere mini games. Look we've recreated the 80s in this much better and much more modern game and you can play all those backwards 80s games in it, how quaint! Can you imagine people used to pay money for that?

On a happier note, man, just watching that Gun Frontier replay I posted earlier while writing this has been a sublime experience. Why is shmup music so good?

 

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I want to emphasize how much of a labor of love Gun Frontier was. From a shmuplations interview

Also, this is a small digression, but… the selling point, graphically, for Gun Frontier was the waterfall in stage 2. Management was really insistent that this scene be in the game. They even said that if it wasn’t there, the development would be put on hold. Unfortunately the three frames of hand-drawn animation needed to be put together, and the only person who could do that work was me. But I had no time, and on top of it, I also had to write a report on our new character tool software. I decided to tackle these tasks during my summer vacation time.

As part of a cost-savings scheme, the company wouldn’t turn on the air conditioning if only one employee was working. The new character tool software was running on prototype hardware, so it didn’t have a fan installed, and after about an hour it would overheat. I had to do my work by constantly switching between the old and new character tool hardware, saving my work to floppy every time before it overheated. I remember how long it took to save a file, noisily clattering away. And there were times when it would overheat in the middle of saving and I’d lose everything. The temperature in that development room was over 40 degrees celsius as I hurriedly did my work. And with no one else there, I decided to strip down to my underwear and wrap a cool towel around my head…

So even today when I see the background animation for the waterfall, I feel a cool sensation run through my body. Management liked it too, and the project was allowed to continue.

At some point, a kindly security guard saw my half-naked self and took pity on me, and turned on the air conditioning for me for a few hours each day. Also, one of the hardware developers came back to the office for something he forgot and heard about me, and he brought a cooling unit about the size of an arcade cabinet into the office for me.

Even today I am grateful to those two. Without them, perhaps Gun Frontier would never have seen the light of day. But when I think back on myself then, living every grade schooler’s dream job!—when I think of how silly I looked there sitting in my underwear and covered in sweat… I can’t help but laugh at it all.

Pretty sad story IMO. Fuck Japanese companies and capitalism in general. Also get bad vibes from how Falcom treated it's employees. Koshiro's name doesn't appear in the credits for Ys Chronicles or Origin. How petty is that?

So yeah next time you play Batrider, or G Darius or whatever other awesome game has the Gun Frontier DNA in it think of this poor dude and the security guard who helped him out, who probably live super modestly to this day while the fat Ukranian Jew fuck that owns Taito enjoys his JAV girls in his private onsen or whatever.

Speaking of JAV, just remembered a random fact. The guy behind Soldier Blade went on to work as a porn director lol. So your favorite scene with Aimi Yoshikawa or Hitomi Tanaka or whatever might just have some shmup DNA too.
 
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Had a quick 3CC blast on 1944: Loop Master & 1CC go on Metal Black this morning.

Loop Master had some elements which I liked, I'll definitely be giving that a few goes, but Metal Black I really didn't take to at all. I'll still give it some more time coz I was literally only playing 5-10 min if that, but so far it doesn't sit well with me.
 
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5,903
Lutte Border Down has more in common with Metal Black than G-Darius, I would say. But definitely worth playing. It's one of those games that came out late in the Dreamcast's life.

Ah, the Dreamcast. Even though it was a very short-lived console, it was probably the last console I truly loved. Being an arcade nut, the sheer amount of (mostly perfect) arcade ports on that thing was just heaven. I still have fond memories of skipping college classes to play House of the Dead 2.
 

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