What is your favorite Shoot-em-up?

[thelostsoul]

@udb23 Its maybe part of nostalgia, because I played Silkworm on Amiga as a young one and so its the definitive edition to me. I was pretty disappointed about the sound effects on the Arcade. Thought it could be the emulator.

[UDb23]

@thelostsoul Interesting comparison. The real arcade had better sound than that in the video.

[pjft]

@udb23 @thelostsoul The only version I played of Silkworm was the ZX Spectrum one, and I loved it quite a bit. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I set up P2 as the helicopter, playing with the joystick, and just left it on autofire. Then I played the jeep myself, and if I had it shooting aiming forward, but still pressed the button to aim further down I believe it shot at a higher speed rate (certainly a glitch, but who am I to complain?).

My memory may be tricking me, but I think I made it fairly far in the game playing it that way - of course it was kind of cheating, and perhaps the conversion was a bit on the easy side, but yeah. That was fun.

Never played SWIV but it was certainly marketed as related to Silkworm in the magazines at the time, which I found weird with it being top-down. :)

[Clyde]

@thelostsoul It's interesting that the only home version with in-game music like the arcade is the NES version. That said, the sound effects on Amiga were the best in that video. I can't judge the better arcade sound @UDb23 mentioned since I've never seen the arcade version myself, I played the game on Amiga back then.

[ultrakev9]

@sp I second this. Raiden DX is perfect in nearly every way.
No other game in this genre has ever allowed the player to do such catastrophic damage to the environment and no other schmup that I've ever played has allowed you to shoot down flying enemies and have them crash in to the ground and land on and destroy ground-based enemies. The attention to detail, design, sound, everything has never been matched, even by Raiden 3, 4 or 5.

[Ecks]

@ultrakev9 said in What is your favorite Shoot-em-up?:

@sp I second this. Raiden DX is perfect in nearly every way.
No other game in this genre has ever allowed the player to do such catastrophic damage to the environment and no other schmup that I've ever played has allowed you to shoot down flying enemies and have them crash in to the ground and land on and destroy ground-based enemies. The attention to detail, design, sound, everything has never been matched, even by Raiden 3, 4 or 5.

You do know is all version of Raiden Fighters could be played on the Pi smoothly they would actually be better and while yes Raiden DX does have the iconic plane just feels a little boring after awhile using the same thing over and over again and one game which i honestly find cooler is Varth: Operation Thunderstorm.

[inorite]

I'm a bit surprised with all the TG16/PC Engine titles listed, not a single one of you listed Blazing Lazers. Quite honestly, I still to this day think it's one of the best games on that system and that's saying something as it was a launch game.

I also really enjoy Raiden on the PC Engine as I felt that PCE soundchip was better at producing music than the FM chips used in arcades at that time.

[ultrakev9]

@inorite - I'll never dispute that Blazing Lazers/Gunhed was a terrific shooter. Weird weapons, speech(!), good tunes and fast pace.

I still think from the level of detail that Raiden DX is superior. It's an upgrade over Raiden 2 and improved everything it could without screwing up what was already pretty perfect.

I still don't think there exits a schmup game that has shown the sheer density of particles and flying debris that Raiden DX pulled off. The death of the final crystal boss is a perfect example. Must be a thousand pieces of crap flying all at once with practically no slowdown or flicker. For the year it came out it was and still is spectacular.

[meleu]

My top fave is River Raid (atari2600). But sometimes, when I'm with masochistic feelings, I try to beat @lilbud's score on Phoenix (arcade).

[lilbud]

@meleu

[ultrakev9]

Raiden is just a greatly enhanced River Raid without the bridges and fuel tanks.

[mediamogul]

I love 'River Raid'. it's not only one of the greatest shooters of all time, it's also one of the most remarkable programming feats to be found on the 2600. It was developed by Carol Shaw, who four years earlier became the first woman to ever design and program a video game. In a time when most games might have up to three or four levels that would then repeat at a harder difficulty, 'River Raid' delivers an infinite amount of progressively harder levels that are all uniquely arranged. What's more, it delivers those infinite levels using only four kilobytes of space. Carol Shaw had the idea to use pseudo-random generation to achieve this. The difference between random generation and pseudo-random generation is that the latter allows for predictable level generation in that, while always being generated on the fly, level two will be constructed the same way every time the game is played. This of course also means that level one million, four hundred and twenty seven will always be constructed the same way if you're good enough to get there. Apart from the technical side of things, it's just a lot of fun and consistently shows up on top ten 2600 game lists, usually cracking the top five.

[thelostsoul]

Sidenote, River Raid for the Atari 2600 was banned in Germany in year 1984 and it was the first videogame ever to get a ban (in Germany). If I am correct, the ban was canceled 2002.

[mediamogul]

@thelostsoul

Despite being isolated to Germany, I wonder if that makes 'River Raid' the first singular video game to be banned in an official capacity. It's strange to think of it in the same company as 'Wolfenstein', 'Carmageddon' and 'Mortal Kombat'.

[thelostsoul]

@mediamogul There was at least one game I heard of, an arcade racer game or somewhat. Let me Google...
https://www.shortlist.com/tech/gaming/a-brief-history-of-banned-video-games/5785
Death Race (1976), Banned in: Various arcade halls across the US, Why: "Gross" violence

The ban for River Raid was raised because of the World War history and sensitivity for the subject in Germany.

[mediamogul]

@thelostsoul

Ahh, 'Death Race'. I should've guessed. Talk about longevity, that unlikely property is still seeing action, with 'Death Race 4' just being released a few months ago.

[lilbud]

Wasn't Night Trap banned in the US during the Senate hearings on violent video games?

[mediamogul]

@lilbud

It was considered and Sega announced at the time that a censored version was planned. However, even after a re-release, the game remained for sale intact, albeit with a newly minted 'M for mature' ESRB rating, which has since been downgraded to 'T for teen' in subsequent releases. Anyone who would have actually been tasked with sitting down and reviewing the content for an official judgement would have seen right away that it was much ado about nothing. In a somewhat candid exchange between senator Joe Lieberman and the game's designer, Rob Fulop, Lieberman even admitted that he had never actually seen the game.

[lilbud]

@mediamogul I don't even really see how a game like Night Trap could even be considered T for Teen. At most it is probably E10+ or just E for Everybody.

There's stuff in Roblox that could be considered more violent and inappropriate.

Maybe just the fact that I wasn't around during the games original release and backlash. But I really can't understand how at one point that game could be considered inappropriate.

[mediamogul]

@lilbud said in What is your favorite Shoot-em-up?:

Maybe just the fact that I wasn't around during the games original release and backlash.

No, I think you have a pretty accurate take on the content. Most anyone who actually played games during the era would likely agree with you as well. The backlash really only came from reactionary parent groups and politicians looking to make a name for themselves. On one hand, 'Night Trap' was unfairly lumped in with a lot of games that were arguably pretty violent for the time. On the other hand, it was the controversy that helped make a pretty average FMV game a financial success. I love B-Movie horror, especially from the 80s, so I have an affinity for the game and play the DOS director's cut semi-regularly, but I can't say it's a particularly great game. However, there is hilarity in its approach. Having the girls sing the title song, for example, is either an unintentional master stroke of cheese, or a genius self-aware parody of the times.

"Oh, look at Meagan!"