What is your favorite Shoot-em-up?

[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!"

[jbaudrand]

BattIe Squadron on AMiga, really enjoyed playing this one with my bros.

you can acces to DIP switch by pressing spacebar in the menu for selecting bullet speed, number of bullet etc... just like an arcade machine... Activating bomb by press fire and rotating joystick in circle with a xbox360 pad isn't as easy as doing it with my ziptick.

[pjft]

@mediamogul @quicksilver Apologies for necro-ing this thread, but I had an update on Ikaruga and the 20-second freeze.

It seems that's happening on more recent versions of the emulator (I just updated to find out that that's the case). However, on my previous version, which I had here from (it seems) February 2018 (might be the one that's on the actual 4.4 image), there's no such issue.

Now, while I'd rather be able to give you a proper commit for you to checkout the code and compile yourselves, if you'd want to trust my well-intentioned efforts, I created a tar archive of my current emulator binaries as a backup.

https://mega.nz/#!AFlWVIxL!UGkf5i-LAwHbYv7VuKPQxjaxNHgPiUE6y1Fr9nsTjKk

This should replace the contents of your

/opt/retropie/emulators/reicast

folder.

Hope it helps with Ikaruga!

[quicksilver]

@pjft I will give it a go, thanks!

[pjft]

@quicksilver you'll have to extract the tar archive and then copy it there with sudo cp. The old bios were in the RetroPie/BIOS folder, whereas in newer versions they seem to be under RetroPie/BIOS/dc. Just a note in case it doesn't load the ROM at first.

[mediamogul]

@pjft

Man, I've been missing this game. Thank you.

[pjft]

@mediamogul @quicksilver so, to close this Ikaruga detour off, just one more comment:

The game plays great in that build as it doesn't seem to have the issue (did any of you per chance test it?), and asides some visual issues like the borders (outside the game area) not being black, and a few visual effects missing (fog/clouds on the beginning of stage 2), I'm super happy for having gotten to play it!

One comment: don't run it from a CHD version of the ROM but rather a proper CDI or perhaps GDI. It might be that the ROM I compressed to CHD had an issue itself, but the CDI version I have runs at normal speed, while the compressed CHD version I put together from a GDI one I downloaded runs slower (gameplay) while the audio runs at normal speed. It is quite noticeable when set pieces have audio climaxing with specific on screen animation or action, but in the CHD version is not at all in sync, and the audio track finishes a while before the end of level 1 boss. I'll test out the actual original GDI source, as it might be faulty, and report back if I find that the original GDI I used has the same issue. If not, consider that when choosing the ROM version to keep.

[quicksilver]

@pjft I have not had a chance to test it yet. But my copy of the game is .chd so I'll have to look for an alternative copy.

[pjft]

@quicksilver well, let me confirm this tomorrow. It might certainly be the source ROM I got to compress into CHD that's faulty. I'll report back.