I don't know why, but I haven't been able to get into shmups. The only ones I played a lot back in the day were Xenon (the first one), Blue Max, Deluxe Galaga, and Blood Money. My friends loved 1914 (or whatever it was), but I tend to get bored with it pretty fast. Now that I'm a bit older, I can certainly appreciate more the audiovisuals and gameplay innovations, particularly when you can see how many new things have been added since Space Invaders and Galaxian.

My dad probably contributed to my negativity by condemning all shmups as "clones." There was a period back in the 90s where it seemed that every game that came out was a shmup. There must be hundreds available for the Amiga during that time period. I guess it was just a trend like today's obsession with first-person and now third-person shooters. But really, not every new game can be something as bold as Lemmings. The great bulk of developers are content to follow the trends and work within the established formulas, and probably damn glad of it. Just imagine how difficult it would be if all new games had to be as original as Frogger or Q*bert. We might have a lot of bizarre games, but I doubt many of them would be playable.