BunTorrent

What i love is how continuous it is. Suiciding is as much for bombs is as much for rank, leading to scoring and thus high rank and thus repeat. A million little things to care about.

My fav version of this system is Ibara, with its level and mechanics (hadou gun!) really emphasizing this angle.

The real question is: this or part II?

Try Ibara, it's Garegga 3 (not Bakraid, that's DDP Gaiden)

Also all shot reverse shot fans need to study the last minutes of Chaplin's City Lights

I do find it funny that proscenium staging, once derided as canned theater in a cinematic context, ends up feeling perfectly at home in a VN or top-down RPG context. Turns out it's always been a good format, just needed the right context to shine e.g. what are you trying to capture?

Scoring is really fun there imo, esp. on MBL. You zip around the screen all the time, trying to OCD catch items like in Dangun. Option positioning also gets extra fun when there's suicide bullets on Death mode (Hades Castle <3). Kinda wish there was a way to enable that for all levels.

Subbed because of that video.

Sounds like the true NMK fan experience. Curious which games you are referring to? I think my favorite of theirs to play for score is Macross II, but ive never dug into more esoteric stuff like Psychic 5 or Saboten Bombers.

I sampled this a few months ago. Its aesthetics didn't grab me, but that's a boring answer.

I played this because I liked Spartan X. I guess I'm finding a hard to time to return to enjoying sth so free in mobility. Dunno if i would've enjoyed even a hard mode version of this. Never say never tho.

Which is funny cause a lot of CAVE shooters have decent scores. Seems like the relentless education of STG fans did pay off.

A forum post that says: "We need a timeline in this thread. Teach the pretenders all about the genre that Contra failed to invent or define. I am feeling frisky. I'm gonna do arcade up to '87 and include Thexder because I want to. Jump Bug (1981) - okay, so there is no actual running in this game, but you can jump like crazy and shoot the crap out of aliens and skeletons and jesters and bat things and jellyfish. Moon Patrol (1982) - yay Moon Patrol wooooooooo Elevator Action (1983) - was just playing this. Awesome game. Legend of Kage (1984) - This game. Damn. 8 way ninja star throwing, scrolling all over, jumping like crazy, shot deflecting. Cooool. Ninja Kid (1984) - fun game from UPL!! Son Son (1984) - Capcom brings co-op to the world of the run n' gun. Thexder (1985) - You can turn into a jet and shoot lasers everywhere. Wiz (1985) - This game has mysterious powers. Seibu fell pretty far from this with the Raiden series, tbh. Rolling Thunder (1986) - Better than Shinobi. Xain'D SleenA (1986) - So good. Karnov (1987) - Karnov is a sexual Tyrannosaurus. Contra (1987) - you could do worse than Contra, I guess. Brings a lot of what came before into a solid package. Mutant Night (1987) - Pinnacle of the genre. Psycho Soldier (1987) - Catchy theme and fun gameplay. Ninja Kid II (1987) - I can't tell the difference between this and the first one. Shadowland (1987) - Starring Anthony Hopkins." Link: https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?p=661141&hilit=mutant+night#p661141

You remind me of this post, which always made me laugh a bit because of stuff like the Seibu claim. Some games in here are legit good tho when i finally got to them so maybe it was cooking.

Tbf, i doubt a lot of arcade fans have either. It's a bit of a cult game.

Im still impressed by how pressuring the seemingly messy patterns in this game are. Most stress inducing homing missiles ever. The fact that you had to aim with your weird lobbing cannon is just icing. The game allows permanent boss HP lowering and it's still hard.

I remember but can't find that one interview where a Mad Men cinematographer said you should sometimes watch movies mute to learn the visuals. That's coming from a (in)famously talky genre of films.

I'd go as far to say that you should watch silents completely mute. This is a bit ahistorical as these things tended to be scored live anyways, but the remove means the visuals have to absolutely stand for themselves.

Old maze games like Mr. Do, Bagman, and Bomb Jack have some really fun scoring systems imo. I'm also trying to study how Irem's Lode Runner ports play. Non shmup scoring guides tend to be lacking.

Wonder Boy is a platformer where you sort of self-autoscroll, tying score to items, time and health.

It's kinda a thing with early action stuff. Slow, unwieldy, yet basically every move counts.

Opened my eyes to a lot more VGs when I went with the perspective of economy. "If I only had these limited tools, how can i still entertain?" Suddenly a lot of choices make sense.

It's really funny to hear that both this and CE were directed by Iguchi, who said that he's not much of a Pacman fan lol.

Also Namco's back catalog is really bottomless, isn't it?

(Ludus = structured, rule-based play. Agon = competitive, skill-based play)

Man, play, and Games (1961, p.31): "Ludus, in itself, seems incomplete, a kind of makeshift device intended to allay boredom. One becomes resigned to it while awaiting something preferable, such as the arrival of partners that makes possible the substitution of a contest for this solitary pleasure. Moreover, even in games of skill or contrivance (e.g. patience, crossword and other puzzles) which exclude or regard as undesirable the intervention of another person, ludus no less inspires in the player the hope of succeeding the next time when he may obtain a higher score. In this way, the influence of agon is again manifested. Indeed, it enriches the pleasure derived from overcoming an arbitrarily chosen obstacle. In fact, even if each of these games is played alone and is not replaced by an openly competitive one, it can easily and quickly be converted into a contest, with or without prizes, such as newspapers organize on occasion."

Caillois of Man, Play, Games fame described this natural desire for evaluation that stems from the competitive nature of skill based games. 11 years before Pong.

There's also the interesting inclination for games to "end", the same way a book or a novel might end. This upends the traditional way of playing, and it is not without merit, but it is also not an inherent virtue. Survival and scoring conflict here, of two similar but distinct impulses.

Video games introduced computers as a referee, which comes with its plus and minuses. The plus is that it is very exact and instant in feedback, but there's none of the negotiation that comes with human play. Scoring is a way to simulate that competition.

The thing you are picking up about the survival / scoring distinction does show that it is somewhat a compromise. Ideally you "play" a game, like how you pick up badminton or chess. There's no point where you "finish" either of them, just the point where you stop playing.

Didnt know you were on bsky! Your 1cc videos are a great resource. Definitely watching this soon.

The loops thing is a tricky part of these early endless games. They don't even give you the false sense of mastery that comes with a 1cc because those don't exist here. The same way you can't say you get chess because of a couple of hundred elo games, these are meant to be played, not finished.

Appreciation is at such a low point I'd trust the Category:Maze games on Wikipedia to find interesting games than I trust fan lists haha

Bog, i did a pre85 arc tour. It's really cool how devs then embraced helplessness. Weird gravity / inertia in asteroids-likes, slow speed and severe shot limit in fixed screen stgs, even multi directionals like Berzerk was slow, big, and require aim. They'd make GnG arthur look like Bill rizer

your rhythm game posting is making me so curious. Any good recs? I dont live near any arcades that have them, but ive seen footage and they look really cool.

www.arcadearchives.com/en/title/

Also Hamster's ACA series has a lot of nice surprises

If you can tolerate using google translate, these two japanese fan lists should keep you busy for a long time: arcadefan.web.fc2.com/history.html & w.atwiki.jp/gcmatome/pag...