You should play shmups.Don't worry about finding one that's "easy" or "for beginners"; they're all hard, just pick what you think is the coolest or best one. The only difference is time, and the really good ones have enough depth to not get tiresome. You just have to change your mindset, credit-feeding is acceptable for practice but it's not beating the game. Chase the 1cc. Easily the most gratifying experience in gaming.Also "memoslop" isn't real, it's a meme non-players made up to describe routing
>>12129235Is picrel from a game? That's nice art.
>>12129238It's from Battle Garegga.
Man this is a bad genre for someone with low self-esteem as me. I can't help but to feel useless when I lose even in the ones that are considered universally easy like Sonic Wings 2 or Sengoku Blade. I always end up losing lived on the third stage of each and my pride forces me to reset not on continues but upon losing a single life, my mentality being "if I even lose or use bombs this early I have no hope for what comes next"Help me overcome my intrusive thoughts.
>>12129542Sengoku Blade's not actually considered easy, the Japanese have a 1-ALL of it rated at a 24/50 which is higher than Ketsui.https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?p=1157621
>>12129235There are some easy ones but overall it's better to go for a game you like rather than collecting easy 1ccs for the sake of it
>>12129578On the flipside though, there are a lot of "easy" games that are also really good, like Batsugun
I like beating games. I don't like leaving games unfinished. But games like Judgement Silversword feel impossible to complete legitimately -- especially the optional end-game levels and boss rush modes. I feel pretty competent in my gaming ability, and my ability to improve and get better, but these games are brick walls for me. I know I can't improve enough to master them to the level required to beat them.Still fun tho
>>12129542>the ones that are considered universally easy like Sonic Wings 2 or Sengoku BladeWho told you those are easy games? Video System/Psikyo stuff is extremely hard in general, and those aren't even the easiest games in their catalog. Sonic Wings 3 and Special are a lot easier than 2.Actual beginner-friendly shmups are Batsugun Special, Mushihimesama and Deathsmiles.>I always end up losing lived on the third stage of each and my pride forces me to resetMake a savestate on stage 3 and practice it instead of replaying the first two stages.>my mentality being "if I even lose or use bombs this early I have no hope for what comes next"This is often true.
>>12129595Batsugun Special is easy but the original version definitely isn't, especially if you use type A and C ships.
>>12129235Do you restart when you take a hit? I did a new 1cc today and now I want my new run to be less sloppy, but I keep getting hit by the dumbest things
>>12129632If I'm going for a 1all yes, otherwise I will learn easy recovery spots and keep going if I die near them. 1cc runs of checkpoint-based games like R-Type are a lot more impressive when skillful recovery is showcased.
>>12129632Depends on the gameBattle Garegga you basically don't need to restart that often, since you need to die anyway so any accidental death can basically be passed off as "I was eventually gonna do that anyway"For CAVE shit, if I die in the first 2 stages I might restart, otherwise nah. Restart syndrome is bad for you, makes you play less consistently.
what's the deal with the tranny characters in espgaluda
>>12129982I'm intrigued too. Kakusei is 'awakening' and the characters turn their opposite gender, but there's no lore reason for this, seemingly. CAVE made a game about fat chicks, The Author's Barely-Disguised Fetish is clearly showing.>>12129664And yeah, this. Usually quite a lenient first extend score, at least in Batrider. Even if you suck at medals you'll get one to correct early mistakes by stage 3/4.
>>12129550I'm checking that list, interesting. What does 1-ALL or 2-ALL mean?>>12129628Answering to you and the previous replay too, I can't remember where I read about Sengoku Blade being on the easy side, for some reason I just had that fact really firm in my brain. At least knowing it's hard puts me a bit at ease.I'll give Batsugun and 1943 Kai a try to see how I fare in those.
>>12129542We support you anon, struggle is the will of life
Jeeesus, if 1943 Kai is considered "easy" I don't think I have hope>>12130356Thanks anon
I think I made a mistake picking garegga as my second shmup (but its ok)you dont pick your shmup, you have to let the shmup pick youis it true no one finished it the first year of its release?
>>12130348>What does 1-ALL or 2-ALL mean?1-ALL is just beating the game and 2-ALL is looping it. ALL just means the game doesn't have loops. Some games like CAVE games have second loops that are significantly harder and different than the first loop, like Ketsui's Omote and Ura loop or DDP DOJ White Label taking away all your extends. Don't feel like you have to loop to "beat" the game, this shit is more for insane score players.
>>12130586Cool, thanks. I think I'll try to get gud at Batsugun Special, I feel I can actually do this one with practice. I don't care if it's on the easier side, for me it'll be a achievement.Just got it on Steam.
I heard japanese arcades wire up autofire buttons for games that don't have one built in, is there a standard for which button they use, toggle/hold settings, frequency, etc? I know there's some game specific reasons to change the frequency but I'm just concerned with the broad strokes rn
>>12129542I'm not a big fan of shmups so I'm biased, but this is how I learned to enjoy them casually:1- I only play Aero Fighters on zsnes2- don't use save states3- I DO use autofire (I used to think it's cheating but I changed my mind, it's way more confortable and besides you shouldn't care if others think it's cheating)4- play only 15min to 30min each day and play other genres if you want to continue gaming that day (this will happen naturally as you lose all your lives/continues)5- ignore the community 99% of the time: don't join their discords or forums or whatever, the only shmup related thing I'm interested in are youtube videos once in a whileI almost 1CCd Aero Fighters this way, though I admit I cheated here and there with save states for practice before
>>12130372You're supposed to pick the shotgun and spam it
>>12129630Iceman is actually pretty good, but it takes some time to learn the two shots and how to take advantage of the lasers. I find him almost as good as Beltianna. Playing as Jeeno is rough against bosses though
>>12129639Absolutely agree. I recently cleared R-Type 2 and it was one of my favorites 1cc so far. Every checkpoint is recoverable with proper routing and the game is extremely short (only 17 minutes). If I die on stage 2, 3 or whatever then I will keep playing just fine. Brilliantly designed game, the same certainly can't be said for Cave stuff
>>12130348You're probably confusing with Sengoku Ace. That's the first proper Psikyo game and considered one of the easiest. Sengoku Blade is the sequel and way harder. But Psikyo only makes hard games in general. The same can be said for Toaplan, Irem, Cave, etc. Their "easiest" games are still above average in difficulty.
I want to get good at this one but it's so hard for me I die on stage 2
>>12130529Where did you read that? Highly doubt it considering people 2alled DDP in like 1 month
>>12130758>Brilliantly designed game, the same certainly can't be said for Cave stuffnice dad larp
>>12130758DingDongwhatchi?.. just more cookie-cutter, boring "shots-everywhere" junk to BORE me to TEARS, sorry. Last one of these new games I tried was Ikaraga... Sorry! but I learned to play color-matching games when I was two, don't need to do it anymore! Deleted THAT computer application from my Dell desktop after about 20 minutes.R-Type, Gradius, Darius... those classics are a little more up MY alley. No TINY hitboxes to make the game look harder than it is, no half-naked japanimation cartoon girls, no gimmicky scoring to cover up the total lack of any real substance... just a little thing called good old-fashioned GAMEPLAY that seems to be forgotten nowadays... yep, I love all the super-duper powerups, and checkpoints.. yes recovery is HARD but not IMPOSSIBLE. You actually have to put in a little elbow grease to get your strength back! Something the little ones today could stand to learn from, if you ask me! They seem to want games where you can kill everything on the screen with one button press, right after inserting a coin! Instant gratification with no challenge. And personally, I usually prefer a "side-view" kind of shooter compared to a "bird's eye view" one, all those obstacles give levels a lot more personality, not such a common thing when every me-too game wants to look and play the same.Me, I've been playing a lot of R-Type part two lately. I can only clear a couple of boards on my first man right now. I may wear out my joystick before I can manage my one quarter win! But I don't quit! What can I say, I prefer a little hard work to getting a free handout! Playing some Wings of Wor on my Sega too, and Biohazard Battle. Great vintage stuff!
Danmaku, classic checkpoint-based shmups, Space Harrier-like shmups, aim-based shmups, run 'n gun, even garbage shovelware made by retards like Black Heart and Saint Dragon.They're all good. It's a great genre overall.
>>12130869>Black HeartYou'll never make me hate NMK ludo
>>12129542stop being an idiot
>>12129542Jesus christ dude lmao
>>12130670Really just depends on the game. Games with autofire built-in you obviously don't wanna set up any external autofire. A game like Darius Gaiden famously becomes much easier with 30hz autofire so you may want to start there and then lower it as you keep playing. Most older games are fine with 30hz. Some games have aggressive shot limits and may feel better with lower autofire rates, like the original Darius where you have that huge-ass widescreen so if you set your shit to 30hz your shots are gonna be travelling a while before you can shoot again.On Gradius 1 you need to have a separate autofire and regular fire button due to the way the laser works. Autofiring laser makes it do no damage.Also, in my opinion, autofire is fine in shmups but cheating in run 'n' guns. For example, the pistol in Metal Slug does as much damage as the Heavy Machine Gun. A lot of other run n guns also start you off on manual fire and give you autofire as a powerup.
>>12130793I don't doubt it considering how esoteric the rank system is and how necessary it is to manipulate it to winI assume most people just played it like a regular shooter and picked up every powerup and tried not to die at all at first
>>12130931To me, if the game has a setting for it, it's fair game, even on the Arcade Archive version of Metal Slug.The subway segment in X is a nightmare with just the gun.
>>12130670They never use toggle but you can if you want. Probably not a good idea on some games where there's reasons not to shoot sometimes but otherwise sure why not
>>12130935Holding on power ups for rank wasn't unheard of at the time, even if your rank management isn't perfect the game rarely gets as hard as the harder 2nd loops out there.
Is keyboard the best way to play these games? I've tried recently playing on a gamepad but it doesn't seem as responsive as keyboard. The game I tried only supported d-pad for directions, no analog. Is this a trend?
>>12131221Most shmups are digital movement only. There are some exceptions, like Gradius V I think has analog controls, but for the most part you're just working with 8 directions. Not like analog is bad or anything it's just a limitation of these games mostly being in the arcades.Keyboard is good, dpad is good, arcade stick is good. Pick whatever you want. Imo keyboard is probably the most precise but arcade stick is easily the most fun. Gamepad would be fine but I feel like your hands get tired a lot faster since most dpads and buttons require more actuation force than keyboard keys/arcade buttons and you're usually gripping the whole thing tightly
>>12131221On arcade machines they're played with a stick.Console shmups usually expect you to use the default controller of that console.On PC I use keyboard regardless of what shmup I'm playing.I don't think it really makes a difference, use whatever you're comfortable with.
>>12131227>>12131229I appreciate, thanks
Are there any CAVE games that are better on Xenia than MAME? I think I've heard Futari is better, maybe Muchi Muchi Pork too? Any other ones?
>>12131357I was just about to suggest trying Muchi.
This game is pissing me off I can't even get past stage 3 out of like 9.Is there a best weapon or something?
>>12129235I remember my first time beating Thunder Force III. Totally fucked up and forgot how to play the levels and barely beat the last boss with my last life of my last credit right before some bullshit was about to hit me because I literally did not remember WTF I was supposed to do the last few levels. Was kino.
any Raiden Fighters Jet fans out there? feel like this is such an underrated gem. very high skill ceiling but accessible and easy to learn, satisfying and relatively straight-forward scoring system, great level design (with a few puckish exceptions), a wide variety of ships and play strategies, and a relatively fair rank system. not to mention great graphics and animation, though the music could have been more memorable.i've loved this series ever since i first played RDF2 as a kid (on a cruise ship, weirdly). i've got numerous high scores on system11 but that's all i can say about that.
can someone please beat my Juno First hi-score.
>>12131926I haven't tried this one yet but I have tried Raiden Fighter 2 and it seems really cool, I might want to put more time into it once I finally 1cc Battle Garegga
>>12131954this was my first tryso not right now at leastbut this is a really cool game, i've never played a japanese arcade game that reminded me so much of the old Williams gamesI'll probably keep playing it
>>12132004yayIt's a fun little game and the sound effects are awesome. I'm sure the pseudo-3D scrolling would have blown my mind as a kid.Your warps replenish fully each stage so don't be afraid to use them all.
>>12131954>>12132004a little better this time
>>12131967yeah man, RDF2 is awesome. you go from two normal levels to this insane grind of a third that continually shifts directions and tests your mettle. just played this run inspired by (You). definitely try Jet once you've gotten used to rdft2, it's just refines everything and adds more depth
Time Pilot's pretty fucking hard
>>12129542You can do it anon!
>>12132237Thanks anon, decided to practice Batsugun Special. Got it on Steam and will also get the Saturn version for Switch in the future on sale.This one clicked with me and it's short enough to not be frustrating.
12 hours into Garegga and still haven't even gotten to Stage 6...... How over is it
>>12132325Just keep practicing anon. But that sure is a hard game to pick.
>>1213232512 hours is nothing, stage 6 will definitely rape you tho
>>12132334It's not my first shmup but all I had are shitclears on easy games before this game grabbed me by the ballsWhenever I'm not playing it I'm thinking about itThere's something about it that called to me
>>12132339I have done some credit feed runs and also have a save state there at a probably higher rank than it'd be in a real run with Wild Snail so I'm not going in completely blind at least. But yeah it's rough. I've basically figured out Junky Monkey to an extent but the main issue is the long and insane tank section before it.Then Airport. That's the real killer. I still haven't managed to get through the stretch of Blackheart 2 -> the ending at around 40% rank without losing all my lives.I usually play Snail (ABC) but I've tried a few runs with Gain and he's also good. His speed makes medal collecting a lot easier and the sword options are based. However, you can't really play as at low a rank with him as you can with Snail since he relies so much on his options. With Wild Snail you can just completely forego options until stage 5 and be fine since your main shot already has piercing and spread. So if I'm playing Gain I usually end up with a little more rank on stage 4 and 5 than I would with Snail, which makes a big difference.
>mfw 1CC'd NES Life ForceActually pretty easy shmup
>>12130869People don't understand just how absolute kino Darius and Darius II are/were. Especially Darius II. Assuming that's a 3 screen cab there.
>>12132461I wish I could play Darius II properly sometime
>>12129235Ok but why is the D-456 the only separate label of the entire subcategory of fighter jet?
>>12132479I dunno, maybe someone here knows the lore
>>12129235Good OP sir, though I wouldn't say all shmups are hard>>12129542Like OP says, if you still need practice then either credit feed or use save states to quickly load the harder stages. Only way to get good at them is playing them over and over again, so if you keep restarting you never learn shit. Also I would recommend not relying on bombs much during practice, you may plan a few but it's better to learn how to dodge most things, then use spare bombs during a real run whether you screw up.If you have no idea how to deal with a specific section then feel free to check a replay, there might be safespots or strats that aren't too obvious at first.Once you are done with what you consider practice and have a plan to beat the game, you can start doing 1cc runs without feeding, states, or anything else. Restarting if you fuck up very early in those it's fine if you will be back there in a minute either way, but don't quit as soon things don't go exactly your way, pretty much every 1cc I got has me massively fucking up shit I consider easy and then somehow surviving a more difficult section with less lives/bombs.
>>12132461>Assuming that's a 3 screen cab thereIt is, it's a picture from the original Darius' first release
>>12132196Fun though, right?I managed to get to the final stage even if I couldn't beat it.
>>12132536>I would recommend not relying on bombs much during practice, you may plan a few but it's better to learn how to dodge most things, then use spare bombs during a real run whether you screw upThis is a good method in games like Outzone where bombs are abundant and meant to be used aggressively, but in games where they're limited it's best to always use them in the same specific spots that give you trouble and make them part of your routing. Not all patterns are worth mastering, sometimes it's more trouble than it's worth.
>>12133003I didn't say all sections and boss patterns, but MOST. If you have a lot of spares you will not feel as much pressure during a run.
not retro but i played gunvein today because I heard it had a good tutorial to teach shmups techniques but that's a lie, the tutorial is extremely basic and poorly done, game itself is fun and beginner friendly but it just looks like a cave ripoff with a lock-on mechanicalso played stage 1 of darius gaiden, cool trippy atmosphere
>>12133289>it just looks like a cave ripoff with a lock-on mechanicThis is bad why?
>>12129235Haven't played Garegga besides some credit feeding, how viable is Gain for clearing if I don't care about scroring at all?
How to play Shmups- play Space Invaders until you become a Space Invaders GOD- you're now ready to move on to Galaxian- repeat but you have to become god at every previous shmup before you play the next one because that's how they are designed
>>12133328>Implying there is something wrong with this
>>12133289>but it just looks like a cave ripoff with a lock-on mechanicThat will be every other indie shmup. Why every other? Because there are also 2hu clones.Tutorial is fine though, many techniques are game-specific so other than what it did there isn't much more to say in general terms. Guess they could tip you on overall strategy but idk, that's more up to debate compared to knowing how to stream bullets.
>>12133325He's among the easiest ships for a normal clear. Wild Snail (ABC) aka Golden Bat, Miyamoto (C) and Bornnam (ABC) are also good, but you have to play them to see which one fits your playstyle.Gain (C)>big piercing options can easily hit boss core and quick kill most of them>balanced speed>free extend when properly bombing madball 1 and 2>his big con is the lack of firepower when his options fly off screenMiyamoto (C)>strongest options of the game>fastest ship as well>can melt any boss HP even at high rank>has the same issue as GainGolden Bat>best main shot of the game to the point it doesn't even need options until stage 6>slow speed allows for precise dodges>his big con is his bomb, which behaves randomly and can aim the wrong targetBornnam>one of the lowest rank increase in the game>very slow speed>strong wide main shot means it doesn't need options most of the time (level 3+10Hz~15Hz)>free extend when properly bombing madball 1 and 2>lacks piercing, but it only affects the fight against Nose Laughin 2You can ignore medals, but I would recommend you to bomb the flamingos for one extra suicide.
>>12130840If you die on stage 2 of any Cave game then you're definitely restarting. A well designed classic shmup doesn't suffer from this restart syndrome, that's what I'm saying
>>12134425If going for just 1-all not really, for 2-all sure but the same can be said about any hard 2 looper, Irem 2nd loop recoveries are incredibly anal.
>>12129235>be me>play battle garegga again after not playing it for years>on a good day i can get to final stage>now can't even break the top high score>used to be good at this game>now i'm not, because i forgot all the tricks i learned>dieenjoyable but also insanely painful.
>>12131894I really, really fucking hate this. I got so pissed off I started using save states and it's STILL not fun.
>>12134516You either weren't as good as you think or haven't de rusted enough, you don't forget the grind on this shit
