"Not a real fan of xenon 1 but xenon 2 is soooooooooo AWESOMENSS its just.. awesome :)
I dont remember rambo 3 but I remember rambo first blood part 2 on the c64, good music. its just another foot soldier shmup tho.
played the original rambo text adventure. its crap. the parser is unforgiving and bad. lots of bugs. made by the same company as the first indy jones text game, which is good but again very hard because of bugs and lack of detail given to the player (lots of text description but not enough.. info to solve some puzzles)."
"Wow! Amazing post MARK, very infomative and interesting thanks!"
"Matt, you say that you wonder whether Commando and Rambo-like games are shumps. Well in my opinion Commando, Rambo and the like are Shmups. It's just that the avatar is not a spaceship. There are quite a few Japanese Shmups on the MSX for example, that actually have a little man-figurine running/walking/flying over a scrolling landscape where you need to shoot at all kinds of foes - so those games are actually more closely related to the 'classical image' people have of shmups - and the little human figure can easily be exchanged for a spaceship and gameplay is identical. But indeed games like Chaos Engine, Alien syndrome are shmups too - according to my definition.
Perhaps a the way the game area is used does make a little difference between the sub-genres. There's games that don't have a landscape or playing-field that scrolls by. Then there are games that have a playing-area that players do have to interact with - sometimes controlling the direction in which the playing-area scrolls. But there are also games where the avatar is forced into a forever moving playing field having to avoid and or destruct all sorts of obstacles.
But any game featuring an avatar emitting high-speed projectiles - with mass or just with energy - with the objective to destroy foes could be called a shmup right? "
"Mark Vergeer wrote:
Perhaps a the way the game area is used does make a little difference between the sub-genres. There's games that don't have a landscape or playing-field that scrolls by. Then there are games that have a playing-area that players do have to interact with - sometimes controlling the direction in which the playing-area scrolls. But there are also games where the avatar is forced into a forever moving playing field having to avoid and or destruct all sorts of obstacles.
But any game featuring an avatar emitting high-speed projectiles - with mass or just with energy - with the objective to destroy foes could be called a shmup right?
I think the part about the playing field is where I'm having problems. When I think of SHMUPS I typically think of a ship on the bottom or left of the screen; you can move about but the actual path is pre-determined (Blood Money) or fixed (Galaga). By "controlling direction of playing area scrolls" I assume you mean games like Ikari Warriors and Commando. Then there are also those examples where the path is fixed and you do have to avoid crashing into the walls and such; I'm trying to remember if River Raid is like that; I know Killerwatt fits that profile.
Also thinking of some of the odder hybrids and variants, such as Wizball and Contra. Are these SHMUPS? What about the various racing games that let you shoot (Rock'n Roll Racing, just to name one.)"
"I have to concur with your definition, Mark. The "master" genre is "Shooter" or "SHMUP" in this case, then you can break them down into sub-genres. You can also argue that FPS games like Halo and Call of Duty 4 are shooters as well, of the FPS variety. You can then further call them "adventures". Regardless, categorization is very difficult, particularly as games continue to evolve and incorporate more and more what were at one time "pure" genres into one."
"Quote:
What is it about the games that makes them so durable? Is there an explanation for this 'golden age'? What is needed to gain some more insight into the genre's appeal?
That's the question I'm really wondering about. Granted the SHMUP isn't as popular as it was in the 1980s and early 1990s, but it's arguable that at least some of the gameplay principles are still alive in FPS and such. Dispatch wave after wave of anonymous bad guys. I'm guessing part of the fun is the constant tension and action, but probably now it's more about the audiovisuals and seeing what clever gimmicks and innovations can be introduced to the genre.
I know I'd be bored to tears playing Space Invaders more than a few rounds, though the disintegrating shields were and remain a neat idea. I always preferred Galaga because of the neat mothership/capture gimmick, which adds a surprising amount of variation to the gameplay.
This is another genre that really loses something when you move from the arcade to the TV games; I'm thinking of those really tall screens you had for games like Galaga. Definitely not the same XP on a standard TV because you lose that space needed to make aiming more difficult."
"Matt Barton wrote:
I think the part about the playing field is where I'm having problems. When I think of SHMUPS I typically think of a ship on the bottom or left of the screen; you can move about but the actual path is pre-determined (Blood Money) or fixed (Galaga). By "controlling direction of playing area scrolls" I assume you mean games like Ikari Warriors and Commando. Then there are also those examples where the path is fixed and you do have to avoid crashing into the walls and such; I'm trying to remember if River Raid is like that; I know Killerwatt fits that profile.
River Raid is an automatic top-down scoller in only one direction. It's definitely a SHMUP, about as pure as you can get in my opinion.
Quote:
Also thinking of some of the odder hybrids and variants, such as Wizball and Contra. Are these SHMUPS? What about the various racing games that let you shoot (Rock'n Roll Racing, just to name one.)
I would argue that the primary genre of "Rock'n Roll Racing" is "Racing", with "Shooter" much further down the line. Again, I'd have to say that the majority of games really don't fit neatly into one genre, particularly once you start to get into gaming in the early '80's, but you can usually identify a master genre, then provide as many sub-genres as are necessary to complete the profile. Something like "Elite" might go like this: "Simulation>Adventure>Strategy>Action", for instance, with casual reference as just "Simulation". It seems to me that's as fair as any other type of designation system. Otherwise most games would be "hybrid", particularly today."
"Matt Barton wrote:
That's the question I'm really wondering about. Granted the SHMUP isn't as popular as it was in the 1980s and early 1990s, but it's arguable that at least some of the gameplay principles are still alive in FPS and such. Dispatch wave after wave of anonymous bad guys. I'm guessing part of the fun is the constant tension and action, but probably now it's more about the audiovisuals and seeing what clever gimmicks and innovations can be introduced to the genre.
I know I'd be bored to tears playing Space Invaders more than a few rounds, though the disintegrating shields were and remain a neat idea. I always preferred Galaga because of the neat mothership/capture gimmick, which adds a surprising amount of variation to the gameplay.
This is another genre that really loses something when you move from the arcade to the TV games; I'm thinking of those really tall screens you had for games like Galaga. Definitely not the same XP on a standard TV because you lose that space needed to make aiming more difficult.
I DO think there has been a significant renaissance of the shooter genre on the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade, particularly the latter. That's a perfect genre for downloadable low-cost games, since there are countless ways of presenting it, from one single large screen (like Geometry Wars, which also features independent movement and firing, another idea resurrected from the Robotron days) to the classic scroller. The higher resolution of HDTV has certainly made the newer games more akin to what you're describing as well, though of course we no longer have the classic arcade/vectrex model of the vertically oriented versus horizontally oriented screen. Really the only ones that have those screens anymore are cell phones, and those are hardly ideal shooter platforms (and frankly I think that orientation on phones will be going away too to the widescreen paradigm).
It's interesting you mention Space Invaders. Obviously that was a phenomena like Pong was. Certainly at the time it seemed much fresher and longer lasting than it is today because our sophistication has evolved, while the game itself has not. Nevertheless, it's still an evergreen game concept. Certainly it may bore you today, but the idea of constantly improving your score is timeless and no doubt would have made it more appealing to you back then and perhaps even now if indeed there was a way to compare your play to someone else's in it. That's the "hook" in Xbox Live Arcade, this whole Gamerscore thing and keeping track of your high scores for everything and all the achievements you've unlocked. Trying to beat your friends - and being able to see all that info real-time - is a big incentive to playing "just one more game". I know I've done that on multiple occasions just to get a better public high score or to add a few points to my Gamerscore. There's nothing like a little friendly competition to reignite the competitive juices and make each game just a little bit more fun than it otherwise would be."
"Bill Loguidice wrote:
the idea of constantly improving your score is timeless and no doubt would have made it more appealing to you back then and perhaps even now if indeed there was a way to compare your play to someone else's in it. That's the "hook" in Xbox Live Arcade, this whole Gamerscore thing and keeping track of your high scores for everything and all the achievements you've unlocked. Trying to beat your friends - and being able to see all that info real-time - is a big incentive to playing "just one more game". I know I've done that on multiple occasions just to get a better public high score or to add a few points to my Gamerscore. There's nothing like a little friendly competition to reignite the competitive juices and make each game just a little bit more fun than it otherwise would be.
I couldn't agree more with this analysis, Bill. I also think the "achievements" idea is brilliant and certainly refreshes the (ahem) stale gameplay of many of the classics. Just a raw high score doesn't convey much; it's much nicer to see if you were able to complete a round within a certain time limit, without missing a shot, etc. To my mind, the more small goals you can affix to a game the better. That's yet another reason why games like WOW have triumphed over so many single player games that just don't offer that degree of goals, rewards, and competition. It's an intoxicating mixture, to be sure.
I can see how a shooter can give you that, too, of course--that was part of the "bonus round" aspect of Galaga, and I can remember impressing friends by clearing the bonus rounds perfectly (even though it was a simple enough matter of memorizing the paths). People seem drawn to expertise and enjoy (though we may not admit it) showing off. What'd be even better for the achievements/competition aspect would be some way to automatically capture "instant replays" of really excellent players or new world records. That's probably where this is headed, and no doubt more will be done to promote and publicize the best players (interviews, commentaries, etc.)"
"Matt Barton wrote:
What'd be even better for the achievements/competition aspect would be some way to automatically capture "instant replays" of really excellent players or new world records. That's probably where this is headed, and no doubt more will be done to promote and publicize the best players (interviews, commentaries, etc.)
There are a few games that do this now, actually, at least on the 360 (not sure how many games on the PC or PS3 this has crossed over to). It's actually a useful feature in racing games where you can watch a replay of how top players take a course, so you can see what the best line is, particularly when it comes to taking a turn. It's really amazing how the online experience has evolved in just a few short years to pretty much encompass every type of customization you can think of, to spectator modes (you can watch others play fighting games, for instance), etc. In some ways again, it ties back to recreating that long lost arcade feel in the comfort of your home."
*************************** Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
"Not a real fan of xenon 1 but xenon 2 is soooooooooo AWESOMENSS its just.. awesome :)
I dont remember rambo 3 but I remember rambo first blood part 2 on the c64, good music. its just another foot soldier shmup tho.
played the original rambo text adventure. its crap. the parser is unforgiving and bad. lots of bugs. made by the same company as the first indy jones text game, which is good but again very hard because of bugs and lack of detail given to the player (lots of text description but not enough.. info to solve some puzzles)."
"Wow! Amazing post MARK, very infomative and interesting thanks!"
"Matt, you say that you wonder whether Commando and Rambo-like games are shumps. Well in my opinion Commando, Rambo and the like are Shmups. It's just that the avatar is not a spaceship. There are quite a few Japanese Shmups on the MSX for example, that actually have a little man-figurine running/walking/flying over a scrolling landscape where you need to shoot at all kinds of foes - so those games are actually more closely related to the 'classical image' people have of shmups - and the little human figure can easily be exchanged for a spaceship and gameplay is identical. But indeed games like Chaos Engine, Alien syndrome are shmups too - according to my definition.
Perhaps a the way the game area is used does make a little difference between the sub-genres. There's games that don't have a landscape or playing-field that scrolls by. Then there are games that have a playing-area that players do have to interact with - sometimes controlling the direction in which the playing-area scrolls. But there are also games where the avatar is forced into a forever moving playing field having to avoid and or destruct all sorts of obstacles.
But any game featuring an avatar emitting high-speed projectiles - with mass or just with energy - with the objective to destroy foes could be called a shmup right? "
"Mark Vergeer wrote:
Perhaps a the way the game area is used does make a little difference between the sub-genres. There's games that don't have a landscape or playing-field that scrolls by. Then there are games that have a playing-area that players do have to interact with - sometimes controlling the direction in which the playing-area scrolls. But there are also games where the avatar is forced into a forever moving playing field having to avoid and or destruct all sorts of obstacles.
But any game featuring an avatar emitting high-speed projectiles - with mass or just with energy - with the objective to destroy foes could be called a shmup right?
I think the part about the playing field is where I'm having problems. When I think of SHMUPS I typically think of a ship on the bottom or left of the screen; you can move about but the actual path is pre-determined (Blood Money) or fixed (Galaga). By "controlling direction of playing area scrolls" I assume you mean games like Ikari Warriors and Commando. Then there are also those examples where the path is fixed and you do have to avoid crashing into the walls and such; I'm trying to remember if River Raid is like that; I know Killerwatt fits that profile.
Also thinking of some of the odder hybrids and variants, such as Wizball and Contra. Are these SHMUPS? What about the various racing games that let you shoot (Rock'n Roll Racing, just to name one.)"
"I have to concur with your definition, Mark. The "master" genre is "Shooter" or "SHMUP" in this case, then you can break them down into sub-genres. You can also argue that FPS games like Halo and Call of Duty 4 are shooters as well, of the FPS variety. You can then further call them "adventures". Regardless, categorization is very difficult, particularly as games continue to evolve and incorporate more and more what were at one time "pure" genres into one."
"Quote:
What is it about the games that makes them so durable? Is there an explanation for this 'golden age'? What is needed to gain some more insight into the genre's appeal?
That's the question I'm really wondering about. Granted the SHMUP isn't as popular as it was in the 1980s and early 1990s, but it's arguable that at least some of the gameplay principles are still alive in FPS and such. Dispatch wave after wave of anonymous bad guys. I'm guessing part of the fun is the constant tension and action, but probably now it's more about the audiovisuals and seeing what clever gimmicks and innovations can be introduced to the genre.
I know I'd be bored to tears playing Space Invaders more than a few rounds, though the disintegrating shields were and remain a neat idea. I always preferred Galaga because of the neat mothership/capture gimmick, which adds a surprising amount of variation to the gameplay.
This is another genre that really loses something when you move from the arcade to the TV games; I'm thinking of those really tall screens you had for games like Galaga. Definitely not the same XP on a standard TV because you lose that space needed to make aiming more difficult."
"Matt Barton wrote:
I think the part about the playing field is where I'm having problems. When I think of SHMUPS I typically think of a ship on the bottom or left of the screen; you can move about but the actual path is pre-determined (Blood Money) or fixed (Galaga). By "controlling direction of playing area scrolls" I assume you mean games like Ikari Warriors and Commando. Then there are also those examples where the path is fixed and you do have to avoid crashing into the walls and such; I'm trying to remember if River Raid is like that; I know Killerwatt fits that profile.
River Raid is an automatic top-down scoller in only one direction. It's definitely a SHMUP, about as pure as you can get in my opinion.
Quote:
Also thinking of some of the odder hybrids and variants, such as Wizball and Contra. Are these SHMUPS? What about the various racing games that let you shoot (Rock'n Roll Racing, just to name one.)
I would argue that the primary genre of "Rock'n Roll Racing" is "Racing", with "Shooter" much further down the line. Again, I'd have to say that the majority of games really don't fit neatly into one genre, particularly once you start to get into gaming in the early '80's, but you can usually identify a master genre, then provide as many sub-genres as are necessary to complete the profile. Something like "Elite" might go like this: "Simulation>Adventure>Strategy>Action", for instance, with casual reference as just "Simulation". It seems to me that's as fair as any other type of designation system. Otherwise most games would be "hybrid", particularly today."
"Matt Barton wrote:
That's the question I'm really wondering about. Granted the SHMUP isn't as popular as it was in the 1980s and early 1990s, but it's arguable that at least some of the gameplay principles are still alive in FPS and such. Dispatch wave after wave of anonymous bad guys. I'm guessing part of the fun is the constant tension and action, but probably now it's more about the audiovisuals and seeing what clever gimmicks and innovations can be introduced to the genre.
I know I'd be bored to tears playing Space Invaders more than a few rounds, though the disintegrating shields were and remain a neat idea. I always preferred Galaga because of the neat mothership/capture gimmick, which adds a surprising amount of variation to the gameplay.
This is another genre that really loses something when you move from the arcade to the TV games; I'm thinking of those really tall screens you had for games like Galaga. Definitely not the same XP on a standard TV because you lose that space needed to make aiming more difficult.
I DO think there has been a significant renaissance of the shooter genre on the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade, particularly the latter. That's a perfect genre for downloadable low-cost games, since there are countless ways of presenting it, from one single large screen (like Geometry Wars, which also features independent movement and firing, another idea resurrected from the Robotron days) to the classic scroller. The higher resolution of HDTV has certainly made the newer games more akin to what you're describing as well, though of course we no longer have the classic arcade/vectrex model of the vertically oriented versus horizontally oriented screen. Really the only ones that have those screens anymore are cell phones, and those are hardly ideal shooter platforms (and frankly I think that orientation on phones will be going away too to the widescreen paradigm).
It's interesting you mention Space Invaders. Obviously that was a phenomena like Pong was. Certainly at the time it seemed much fresher and longer lasting than it is today because our sophistication has evolved, while the game itself has not. Nevertheless, it's still an evergreen game concept. Certainly it may bore you today, but the idea of constantly improving your score is timeless and no doubt would have made it more appealing to you back then and perhaps even now if indeed there was a way to compare your play to someone else's in it. That's the "hook" in Xbox Live Arcade, this whole Gamerscore thing and keeping track of your high scores for everything and all the achievements you've unlocked. Trying to beat your friends - and being able to see all that info real-time - is a big incentive to playing "just one more game". I know I've done that on multiple occasions just to get a better public high score or to add a few points to my Gamerscore. There's nothing like a little friendly competition to reignite the competitive juices and make each game just a little bit more fun than it otherwise would be."
"Bill Loguidice wrote:
the idea of constantly improving your score is timeless and no doubt would have made it more appealing to you back then and perhaps even now if indeed there was a way to compare your play to someone else's in it. That's the "hook" in Xbox Live Arcade, this whole Gamerscore thing and keeping track of your high scores for everything and all the achievements you've unlocked. Trying to beat your friends - and being able to see all that info real-time - is a big incentive to playing "just one more game". I know I've done that on multiple occasions just to get a better public high score or to add a few points to my Gamerscore. There's nothing like a little friendly competition to reignite the competitive juices and make each game just a little bit more fun than it otherwise would be.
I couldn't agree more with this analysis, Bill. I also think the "achievements" idea is brilliant and certainly refreshes the (ahem) stale gameplay of many of the classics. Just a raw high score doesn't convey much; it's much nicer to see if you were able to complete a round within a certain time limit, without missing a shot, etc. To my mind, the more small goals you can affix to a game the better. That's yet another reason why games like WOW have triumphed over so many single player games that just don't offer that degree of goals, rewards, and competition. It's an intoxicating mixture, to be sure.
I can see how a shooter can give you that, too, of course--that was part of the "bonus round" aspect of Galaga, and I can remember impressing friends by clearing the bonus rounds perfectly (even though it was a simple enough matter of memorizing the paths). People seem drawn to expertise and enjoy (though we may not admit it) showing off. What'd be even better for the achievements/competition aspect would be some way to automatically capture "instant replays" of really excellent players or new world records. That's probably where this is headed, and no doubt more will be done to promote and publicize the best players (interviews, commentaries, etc.)"
"Matt Barton wrote:
What'd be even better for the achievements/competition aspect would be some way to automatically capture "instant replays" of really excellent players or new world records. That's probably where this is headed, and no doubt more will be done to promote and publicize the best players (interviews, commentaries, etc.)
There are a few games that do this now, actually, at least on the 360 (not sure how many games on the PC or PS3 this has crossed over to). It's actually a useful feature in racing games where you can watch a replay of how top players take a course, so you can see what the best line is, particularly when it comes to taking a turn. It's really amazing how the online experience has evolved in just a few short years to pretty much encompass every type of customization you can think of, to spectator modes (you can watch others play fighting games, for instance), etc. In some ways again, it ties back to recreating that long lost arcade feel in the comfort of your home."
***************************
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.