Shmups, or “shoot ‘em ups” are a genre of video game I have loved since I was a young boy. The earliest one I have any real memories of really diving deep on and getting good at is Thunder Force 4 on the Mega Drive, an intensely difficult title that ate up a staggering amount of my time with that system. I probably played one or two previous titles before that but my memory is hazy. However the one thing that is undeniable is that even to this day, despite the genre becoming as niche as it’s become, it’s a type of game that I have loved dearly the whole time.
Like most genre of game, shmups come with their own series of sub-genres. The big over arching ones being horizontal and vertical. This is self explanatory as it’s simply referring to the direction in which the screen does its scrolling. There’s also a 3rd type that I’m unsure what the internet at large likes to call which is an over the shoulder type game. You know, something like a Starfox. Not a fan of this style personally but I wouldn’t say I hate it. A game like Iridion 3D on the GBA might piss me off but you can give me a Lylat Wars or a Panzer Dragoon and I’ll have a grand old time.
Then there's the other big distinction of your regular vanilla shmup and bullet hell. The first kind being something like Darius or R-Type where the enemies shoot directly at you in easy patterns but some kind of other factor may make things more complicated. The second being something like Touhou or Mushihime-sama where the stage itself doesn’t really factor in at all but the enemies and bosses shoot at you in extremely dense patterns that require some of the prior types skills but mainly boils down to memorization and the ability to adapt to the odd curveball. I have no qualms with either type. I prefer bullet hell but I do love a bit of Raiden, Darius and Thunder Force too.
The type of shmup I absolutely can’t fucking stand doesn’t even really come down to a sub-genre really, at least not one acknowledged by online communities as such. The type of shmup I absolute cannot fucking handle is the type that I’m going to name “checkpoint shmups”. Let’s say, for example, you’re enjoying a bit of DoDonPachi in the arcade. You misjudge the space between some bullets or a stray shot escapes your focus and you eat shit and explode. A couple of power-ups fly out of your ship, it disintegrates and a new one flies up the screen for you to power on and keep fighting. When you eat shit too much, a full power appears, you pop in another coin and keep going. This is the kind of shmup I like, when I die the instant chance to re-power a little and the constant forward momentum feels good. But then there’s a game like Gradius and good lord does Gradius fucking piss me off. You’re flying around, having a good time and then a stray bullet blows you up or you run into a wall trying to avoid enemy fire. The ship explodes, the game stops dead in its tracks, the screen cuts to black and then knocks you back to a checkpoint in the level with no powerups. Sometimes it may give you one notch on the upgrade meter but most of the time it doesn’t. You lost a bunch of progress and now you’re weak as shit so even returning to that point feels like an impossible chore. MAYBE if you’re lucky and the checkpoint was by some enemies that drop upgrades, you can claw it back but upon that first death, your run is basically over unless you’re some kind of shmup demi-god.
THIS is the kind of shmup I can’t stand. Nothing kills my motivation to keep playing more than the game stopping me dead in my tracks to knock me back a few meters through the level. Gradius is a particularly bad example of this too because in that game, ship speed is tied to your power up meter and you need about 2 points in it for the game to feel even remotely playable. You die once, lose all your speed and weapon power and now segments that were at first easy suddenly become impassible without a great deal of practice and the only way to get that practice is to die and restart over and over. The very epitome of unfun dogshit in a genre of game where short, quick play sessions are one of the main draws. It’s mainly found in early entries in the genre and isn’t used as much today but that just means that going back to experience “the classics” is an exercise in frustration rather than fun nostalgia.
Shmups are great, even the ones that piss me off like Gradius I still enjoying playing up until the moment I suffer my first death. Bottom line though, in a genre like this, don’t kill the momentum because of a single mistake and if there’s any developer out there who has made a shmup like this within the last 10 years, sincerely, fuck you. Patch your game and take that shit out. Now excuse me I’m going to go play some Deathsmiles
