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Mark Vergeer
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Joined: 01/16/2006
Western vs Japanese Shmups
Rowdy Rob wrote:

...
I'm curious about your frequent insults of "Western" shooters in the video. Those "Western" shooters looked pretty cool to me. They certainly looked more playable than the "screen-full-of-bullets" shooters you seem to favor. :-)

What is a "Western" shooter, anyway? Those games you demonstrated looked like clear descendants of Space Invaders, Galaga, and Xevious, all Japanese shooters. ;-)

Actually, this has got me thinking. Before the arrival of the "first person shooter" genre, was any Western shooter really that influential? (this month's Vintage Games "Defender" chapter notwithstanding).

Anyhow, cool video. It's good to see a wide variety of games on one platform in one video.

qoj hpmoj o+ 6uo73q 3Jv 3svq jnoh 77V

Thanks for the comments Rob. I am tired so this response / paragraph may be a little choppy...

To come back to my frequent 'mweh Western Shooter' remarks in the video. It is not that I don't like any Western shooter. It's just that the games I've shown are typical Western shooters with simple sideways movements and scarce bullets and the patterns have a robot-like mechanical feel. An extreme of the genre that I am not particularly fond of. Western shooters like Galaga / Galaxians, Gyruss are much more appealing to me than the Space Invaders-type of game.
The typical Japanese shooter may be 'the bullet hell game' to you, but to me it is something different as the bullet hell game is another extreme I am not particularly fond of although I do experience a brief sense of thrill and accomplishment whenever I survive more than 5 seconds on screen with such games. They are also boring to me.

The typical Asian/Japanese shooter for me is a game that has an organic feel to the movements of the opponents (aliens) instead of that cluncky Space Invader thing. There are also many Western shooters which adhere to this.

So what do I mean by good Japanese Shooters? Non-bullet hell games like these:
M.U.S.H.A
Aleste / Super Aleste
Dangerous Seed
Powerstrike 1 & 2 - gamegear versions noticeably different
Raiden I & II -
Gradius, Nemesis series - Nes, C64, MSX, Arcade, Gameboy, psx versions noticeably different and unique
Parodius - as above
Salamander - as above
Gunnac - many similarities to the Aleste games
Dodonpachi - although the latter may be a little bullet hell - like

Xbox 360: Lactobacillus P | Wii: 8151 3435 8469 3138
Armchair arcade Editor | Pixellator | www.markvergeer.nl

Armchair Arcade Editor

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