Japanese Vertical Shooters

[Sephroth57]

Ive recently become infatuated with insanely difficult vertical shooters, mainly japanese ones because US ones arent THAT hard. Im wondering besides the ones in MAME, are there any downloadable or free trial versions of really hard vert shooters out there? They dont have to be japanese but i would prefer them

[hyiu]

dreamcast has one that is VERY hard...

also.. gameplay is different than normal shooter...

you have joystick and 3 buttons...
1 is fire.... press as fast as you can...
1 is bomb... will discuss later...
1 is color change.... you're basically white and black... (theme)

and enemies comes in white and black theme also...

if you're different color, your fire will be more effective...
(faster to die...)
if they fire you with the same color as you're now...
you can absorb them and save as charge for your bomb...

so... you're in the mist of shooting them... sucking up them fire... and all that... very hard shooter....

Sorry... I donno the name in English...

[Generic Eric]

dreamcast has one that is VERY hard...

also.. gameplay is different than normal shooter...

you have joystick and 3 buttons...
1 is fire.... press as fast as you can...
1 is bomb... will discuss later...
1 is color change.... you're basically white and black... (theme)

and enemies comes in white and black theme also...

if you're different color, your fire will be more effective...
(faster to die...)
if they fire you with the same color as you're now...
you can absorb them and save as charge for your bomb...

so... you're in the mist of shooting them... sucking up them fire... and all that... very hard shooter....

Sorry... I donno the name in English...

Ikaruga
There was no US release.  On the other hand, you can find the same game on GameCube

[abrannan]

The beautiful part about Ikaruga on the Dreamcast (I don't know about the Gamecube version) is that you can set it up to run vertical (rotated) on a TV or montior.  This also holds true for Gunbird 2 on the dreamcast, though that's available on MAME as well.

Ikaruga is usually mentioned alongside Radiant Silvergun as the pinnacle of the hardcore Shmups.  Radiant Silvergun was available on the Sega Saturn, but I have yet to find a way to play it myself.  

Check out shmups.com for more selections and recommendations.  Sometimes they reference shareware shmups for the PC.


As a side note:  If you want to see more shmups released in the US, buy the shmups that are.  Show'em there is a market here.  Off the top of my head, recent releases (last year or so) for current consoles:

Mobile light Force - Playstation
Mobile Light Force 2 - PS2
(these are translations and re-names of two decent Japanese shmups, and are a good bargain.  I believe you can get both new for under $20 combined)

R-type final - PS2 (no, it's not vertical, but it's a good shooter anyway)
Ikaruga - Gamecube
Gradius 3, 4, 5 - PS2 (again horizontal, not vert)

Any others people can think of?

[DYNAGOD]

http://www.shmups.com
all the shooters yours grey matter can handle  

[crashdmj]

Some good ones I enjoy are:

1) Perfect Cherry Blossom and it's twin 2) Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (Shareware available and its awesome, otherwise the guys at shmups.com forum can give you a website for the full version)
2) A7Xpg 3) rRootage  4) Noiz2sa (all similar from http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/index_e.html) Not neccesarily your traditional ones but fun nonetheless!
5) Warning Forever (great boss after boss battle)

Many more: Here is some sites that are helpful (or signup for the Shmups.com forum and look up "homebrew or doujin or pc games" EDIT* Im crashdmj on that forum also:
http://ka1.hp.infoseek.co.jp/shooting_list.html
http://www.fevereon.com/shmups/
http://ballisticzen.org/
http://www.shootthecore.com/
(This is the shop that sells Jap games such as Perfect Cherry Blossom which I fell in love with): http://shop.himeya.com/

[crashwg]

Pardon me for my ignorance, but what is shmups?  Is it some sort of abreviation?

[crashdmj]

Its a term adopted for shoot-em up (Shmup)!

[Trenchbroom]

Its a term adopted for shoot-em up (Shmup)!

Yes, back in the 80's we used to call shmups "shooters" but that name has been co-opted by the first person shooter craze (i.e DOOM type games).  So now we have to use the dumb word "shmups".

They will always be shooters to me.

[DYNAGOD]

its no wrose than the term "supergun"
at least shmup has some semblance of what it really means..
do a google search on supergun and all you get is saddam husseins plans to build some mega gun in the desert..
search for shmups and all you get is glorious japanese side scrolling goodness

[Dave_K.]

Any others people can think of?

3 more newly released shooters for the dreamcast:
Border Down
Castle of Shikigami 2
Psyvariar 2

more info:
http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=15;action=display;threadid=16647

Also don't forget Zero Gunner and Mars Matrix for dreamcast.

[Sephroth57]

cool thanks for the good links, ill check that stuff out =)