[SHMUPtheory]

Omnicron: Think Less; Do More

2011-09-02T20:46:00.004-04:00

Always on the hunt to satisfy fresh shmup cravings, I recently came across this short little gem called Omnicron. The visuals and audio are deliciously retro, while the controls are a bit more modern, employing command of the WASD keys over the traditional arrows. Of course every shmup needs a gimmick to stand out from the pack, and this title is no outsider. In addition to moving around with WASD, you have a separate reticle controlled with the mouse that can destroy blue bullets with the left mouse button. The right mouse button summons a screen-clearing seizure-inducing bomb that requires a meter to fill up before each use. Combined together, these two mechanics constantly fight each other for attention, requiring you as a player to play two games with one mind.

Two's Company
At first the struggle to focus on movement, dodging, mouse aiming, and proper clicking is overwhelming to the point of declaring impossibility. This harkens back to the days of thinking you're able to tackle dualplay without seriously considering dropping the rest of your hobbies. It's only until you assign priority to the mechanics that they begin to pay off.

Movement and dodging are king. The movement of the reticle is needed only in times of need (or compulsive score hounding). Dictating this front-and-backseat authority not only makes the game playable, but allows your mind to work on multiple levels without knowing it.

Involuntary Success
Soon enough the reticle will seemingly target anything blue on its own; your ship will weave through the upcoming traffic of pain with confidence. This is the point at which you stop thinking and start doing. It happens in any game once your body has adjusted to its demands. Ever zone out during Tetris (or in my case, Lumines)? Same thing here, except losing happens more often and way more easily.

This of course doesn't immediately spell victory. The final boss, whose final form is hard to predict with how its forms transition, is the centerpiece of the game, asking you to utilize all of your recently learned skills in a flurry of fulfilling challenge.

Here Today, Bomb Tomorrow
Unfortunately, the game is a rather short one. Aside from one final boss and an introductory level seemingly included as a training sesh for said boss, there is little in the way of something to keep you busy. I would naturally cite this as a shortcoming, as it's clear the full potential of this unique mechanic wasn't even close to being wholly exhausted. However, what little time I had to explore the world of Omnicron was enough to warrant a closer look at the memories and experiences it immediately creates.

The good news is that gems like these come around all the time. There are always crazy game developers, many of whom need only wear a pair of underwear to be "ready for work", churning out a vast array of mindful explorations of the world of game design. Luckily many of these games end up being shmups. Personally, I find many shmups pass through the radars at IndieGames and ShmupsForum, though they can really be found anywhere if you simply look.

Download Omnicron!

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

Inferno Means Hot

2011-08-01T10:40:00.005-04:00

Despite the general feeling that there aren't as many shmups coming out as frequently as we'd like, the truth is that many are slipping under our radars - far more than I'd like to admit. And I'm sure there are even more that have slipped past me, hopefully to be discovered in the future at a time when they can still be appreciated. Luckily, I stumbled across a little gem late last year, a game that few had heard of (and, according to its sales, not too many had played). Usually I'll try out a game, give it its chance, and then move on when I get the idea. This shmup, however, had me (us, actually), playing from start until finish without pause. I speak of course about Inferno, an Xbox Live Indie Game.

Part of a monthly series of releases from developer Radiangames, Inferno is the standout title among the herd, designed less as a screen of stuff to shoot at, but as a journey through spaces requiring strategy to survive - an adventure shmup, if you will.

Geometry Wars Meets... Something Else
I had to convince one of my friends to play the game with me, as it supported co-op up to 4 adventurers. In doing so, I did my best to nail the concept by marrying two well-known titles: Gauntlet and Geometry Wars. Lo and behold the developer himself cited these games as his own inspiration for mashing up genres.

While this specific genre-blending convergence is no stranger - the idea appearing previously in Geometry Wars Galaxies for Wii - the execution has been fairly lacking, feeling like the same ole arena, but with a few walls in the way. Inferno is indeed just an arena of walls and enemies, but the layout of the levels harkens back to a day of battling from room to room, inching closer to the goal with every successful enemy slain. I would say it's close to the claustrophobic progression in the dungeons of Diablo, though with far less clicking.

Co-op Circles
Working together with my friend was just as integral as understanding the importance of saving that last bomb. He and I discussed the best plan of action to take on each room. We chose complementary weapons sets so that both of us could look out for each other in different scenarios, or sometimes both chose the same brute force and mowed down walls of circles together.

It was a fun experience, to simply communicate and understand the dangers, their weaknesses, and deliver an exacted attack to progress forward. The levels are designed to teach you and to scare you. For example, a wall of hundreds of weak enemies are piled against the other side of a door, trying their best to hone in on you. It's not until you willingly unlock the door (by going right up to it) that you can progress, in effect releasing them as well. The tension that builds up before that door is opened is delivered with great effect.

Not a Corner In Sight
The aesthetics to the game greatly helped extend the playability of the experience. Actually, all of the shmups in Radiangames' series have a unified visual and aural motif, reenforcing circles (i.e. radians) in the enemies, player, weapons, levels, effects, and menus. Meanwhile, sound effects have a distinct lowpass filter and grunge to them, making the games almost identifiable by audio alone. These stylistic choices were no doubt made for efficiency to get a new shmup out each month, but they also provided something both pleasing and easy to digest as more advanced input was introduced in later levels.

Inferno is of course not without its faults, though they are few and far between the successes that stemmed from this Indie Game. The weapon upgrades are a bit linear, allowing little trial-and-error to find the ultimate combination to address any situation. Also, the final boss, while extremely powerful, has a flaw in its behavior that allows the player to constantly attack with little consequence. However, these hardly put us off during our journey.

The $1 Night
Inferno is a game that I wanted to play because I miss the old days of going through a game co-op with a friend, and also because I like shmups a lot. The sense of adventure, strategy, challenge, surprises, secrets, and rewards were more than enough to keep us glued to our seats, a length time I'm pretty sure went over 5 hours. We played on the hardest difficulty ("volcanic"), which at times we regretted, but later found pride in once we accomplished seemingly impossible odds.

When all was said and done, the two of us had spent 10 man-hours dredging through an unknown indie shmup, enjoyed ourselves the entire time, and created a night of fond memories. All for $1. One dollar. If you like shooting things and moving around through spaces as much as I do, I invite you to play Inferno and create your own experiences, too! (though I believe the price has increased a little since I purchased it)

Here's the release trailer, which is sadly one of the few videos floating around of some of the more intense moments in the game:

For a more uncut look at gameplay, here is a playthrough of the demo:

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

June Happenings and the Final Theory

2011-07-01T00:00:00.003-04:00

When I first created this blog, my intent was to get out a few ideas I had surrounding shmups. I wrote them all down in my sketchbook one particularly motivating day in February 2009. Back then I was posting once a week, eager to get all of these ideas out before they went stale. To my surprise, the blog took off, gaining readership by hundreds of people from around the world. Simon Carless himself asked me to crosspost my words of bullety wisdom to the then-new Gamasutra Expert Blogs. Things were great (i.e. chains were high), but then I started to run out of ideas. I slowed down to posting every two weeks, then to roughly every month, until I stopped posting for the latter half of 2010.

The Final Countdown
To this day, the site has gotten 20k+ views, excluding any feed readers out there (untrackable), so I'd say this has been pretty successful, especially for a blog without any ads, marketing, or under-the-table networking deals. I had gotten a few requests here and there during my lull to write some more SHMUPtheories. So I decided to make it my New Year's resolution to post a new something or other on the first day of every month in 2011. So far so good, but I don't see much of a future in 2012.

I'm not exactly saying this year will see the end of my writing about shmups and their theories. I see myself only writing from that point on when I think of something profound once again, something that captures my thoughts and doesn't let them go until I reason with them and walk away with a greater sense of understanding about the world revolving around bullets and superplays. Or maybe to boast about 1CCing Ikaruga (...one day, my old friend). Or maybe to get all giddy about RS3. Or maybe to continue touting my love for Treasure (♥). Who knows!

Around The Arena
This month, instead of focusing on some quirky quality about an element of a piece of a whole that makes up some obscure shooting game that only a handful of us have heard of, I'll instead give a bullet buffet of things happening in the world of shmups. Time to spread the love:

A chap by the name of BulletMagnet - a much respected aficionado in the shooting-things-up world - has lovingly put together a *FANTASTIC* write-up on everything shmups, appropriately entitled "Shmups 101: A Beginner's Guide to 2D Shooters". It's long, thorough, accurate, and filled with more nostalgia than the sound of inserting another quarter into a Galaga cabinet.
Cave, continuing to get hot and steamy with their love for porting arcade classics to the small screen, is getting ready to release Death Smiles for iPhone and iPod Touch. There's apparently some kind of live stream going on today (July 1) to show off some deathly gameplay (7:00am EDT, 8:00pm Japan), with the game releasing July 7th at a temporary discounted price. Get it.
Child of Eden came out. You've already played it. I haven't completed it yet, so no spoilers. I'll likely be covering this bad boy later in the year once I can pick my jaw up off the floor and collect my mental euphoria into coherent internet babble.
Eschatos and MuchiMuchiPork/PinkSweets combo pack are both still sold out or expensive everywhere. Does anybody know where these gems are available to a boy in the USA for less than $80? I've already accepted that importing is expensive, but maybe somebody knows of a secret shop somewhere I haven't heard of (worth a shot!).

Moving On Up (Highscores, I Mean)
I think I might have something special planned for the final scheduled [SHMUPtheory] of the year / ever (???). I've decided to not keep my posting intervals regular because, frankly, I've already said what I wanted to (and that was 2 years ago!). Even though more things will come to me that I will certainly want to talk about, there is an entire world out there of other things I'd also like to be talking about (referring to either videogames in general or life itself; can't decide).

I'm working fulltime on videogames, and making indie games in my freetime. Needless to say, games are still very much a significant part of my life, and will continue to be as such until basically the end of time. If I'm not making them, I'm playing them. If I'm not playing them, I'm discussing them. And when none of that is happening, I'm probably sleeping (which means I'm dreaming about them).

Until next month, keep those shots comin!

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

Eschatos: Forcing Perspective

2011-06-01T04:16:00.005-04:00

It's great to see a team come together and try to push shmups to new limits, allowing us to enjoy the same old formula but with a splash of vanilla to keep it fresh. Many styles and choices in gameplay have worked really well over the decades, making such a game that much more respectable for trying something different. Eschatos is not that game.

For what it's worth, Eschatos is a buffet of past successes combined together to not only impact a sense of nostalgic charm, but to also show us why we love what we love, with style. Besides the obvious audible nods to soundtracks of the 90s, there are a few humble design principles employed that are finally able to be appreciated thanks to technology catching up with ideas. My main focus is on the game's occasional forcing of perspective, bringing a much-feared depth to those bullets.

This may sound a bit familiar to my post about a forced perspective for bullet-dodging in Sin & Punishment, but this time things are different. For one, there is no gravity to worry about, so the working plane is strictly two dimensions. This makes maneuvering much easier to calculate, knowing there are still just four possible places to which to move in order to survive.

However, with this sudden perspective change, bullets closer to you move faster. This is good. It's exhilarating and pumps adrenaline when you need it the most. The problem with this is that you get less brain power to keep an eye on where the boss/enemy is located at the top of the screen (who, because of perspective, is slightly smaller than intimidating). Luckily (and smartly), the developers made the decision to angle your shots generally towards the center, to kind of mimic shooting into the distance. The result causes your bullets to gravitate towards the boss, missing at times, but sink into its meandering mantle much more accurately than you'd think when you aren't paying attention.

This is nothing new to us, of course. This was one of the selling points of RayStorm back on Playstation (and now in HD on XBLA/PSN). However, RayStorm's forced perspective wasn't extreme enough to cause any additional thrills the game would have had in flat mode. Coupled with the added difficulty in judging if bullets were on a collision course, and this was simply a novelty execution that would need some time for refinement. I'm not saying it's been perfected here, but I am saying it was a step in the right direction.

To say that Eschatos executes past designs with style is an understatement. Knowing its audience, the original Judgement Silversword (a WonderSwan gem) is included in full with the game, satisfying the player's palette to a point of contentment. The price tag might be a bit steep for those outside of Japan, but a region-free disc means that it's money that would definitely be well-spent.

Here's the middle chunk of gameplay from Easy Mode. Headphones recommended if you like hearing what you listened to when you were 15 years younger than you are now.

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

[Not Your] Everyday Shooter

2011-04-30T00:22:00.005-04:00

A few obvious releases aside, most indie shmups - especially western releases - tend to fall a bit short from being noteworthy entries in the grand timeline of shooting games. Many are too slow, or too lackluster, or too much of an intensity plateau, or something else that prevents them from standing out. They aren't something you'll remember, a game that allows you to take experiences with you when you're not playing anymore. Nostalgic games aside, a long-lasting shmup needs to know exactly where it's coming from and exactly where it's going. One such title is Everyday Shooter by Jonathan Mak, a delightful breath of fresh air to come to PS3 and PC.

Seriously, Abstract?
Described by its creator as an "album of musical abstract shmups", it's... well it's basically that. But there are hundreds of "abstract" shmups out there, many being created in such a style because their creators aren't quite sure what to do with visuals, or feel they can't create something more tangible, or perhaps they legitimately want to push the medium and visual style to complement the gameplay.

Kenta Cho's games immediately come to mind, a marriage of abstract colors, shapes, and sounds combined with an overwhelming array of lights, movement, and good ole fashioned bullet dodgin'. In Everyday Shooter, Mak takes things in a different direction, instead using his visuals and audio to create a narrative that is told in the space between the bullets.

To start things off, the player controls a square. It kind of warbles around as you move, but it's more or less a square. The real treats come from how enemies present themselves, how they attack, and how you can make them all blow up. There's a hidden trick in each of the 8 levels to chain together an explosion or combo to both destroy many enemies and to get a score boost (in later levels you'll end up saving your life as well). These instructions are not provided, their solutions all the more rewarding when discovered without the aid of the all-too-tempting Internet.

On top of each level having different enemies and chaining patterns, they also are played almost completely differently, as if the player is jumping from one game to another. And yet they're all tied together because of the soundtrack, consistent controls, and the on-going unspoken relationship between the player and the environment.

He Had One Guitar
The music and sound effects themselves need special mention, as they all come from a guitar. Distortions and other tubular effects are applied to create some variety, but from start to finish, the only sound you'll ever hear is a 6-stringed plank of wood with some holes here and there. The dynamic range of tracks and sound effects clearly demonstrate the versatility of a guitar as the end-all device for which to craft our audible experience.

Simplicity for Simplicity's Sake
The controls are your standard twin-stick duo, two pairs of four keys on the keyboard if need be. There are no powerups, no bombs, and no continues. The only things to collect are energy bits, left behind by destroyed enemies. Collect enough and you earn an extra life. It's simplicity like this that only echoes the charm and transparency of the game and its message. Your focus is clear and your goals obvious, thus allowing you to make your mark and perform without unnecessary distractions.

Story Through Experience
The ways in which enemies and bullets are used to tell a story are just ingenious, in each level. I would think that personal interpretations will vary from player to player, but here are a few elements that I personally enjoyed:

Level 2 is a network of hubs. They connect to each other, working together to put an end to your dominance. Each time you destroy the main HQ, they rebuild their community, only this time more powerful, with new weapons and a more tightly packed neighborhood. Not to say that you're the villain destroying their creation, but this simple visual representation of connectedness demonstrates motivation, willpower, determination, and (my favorite) hustle.

Level 3 is a level without bullets. In their place are robots, all controlled by an all-seeing eye. The reversal of the robots' directions halfway through the level is mirrored by the guitar's chord scheme being played in reverse. It's this subtle touch that helps guide the narrative along. By the level's end, the eye's vision is blurred, its reign diminished as it makes its final blink.

Level 7 is such a stray away from the rest of the levels that it feels like a calm before the storm (more on that below). It's a serene world of worms and raindrops, bringing the scale of your world and the tensions involved to insignificant sizes. Despite quite a few hectic moments to be found here, the experience captures the soothing repetition of a light drizzle.

Level 8... what do I say about this? You fight the wind. Spoilers, folks, but the final boss is wind. I don't think I've ever seen that before. In any game. The way to know where it is is to pay attention to how it affects the objects around it. The fact that you can fight the wind and win is more than enough incentive for me to want to play through the game again just to exact my justice on that invisible foe who so often prevented my deserved victory.

Review Score:
I really didn't want this to come off as a review, but rather an incomplete list of reasons why this game excels at what it set out to do. Calling it "Everyday Shooter" was just another tongue-in-cheek decision to help set this game apart from the constant flow of mediocrity we too commonly put up with.

If you haven't played, and if you like shmups, then you owe it to yourself to buy this gem and just enjoy yourself. Everyone else should either buy it too, or load it up again and re-experience what you already knew was enjoyable. It's by far the most fun I ever thought I could have with a square.

...Okay, maybe second most fun.

Here's a low-res clip of Level 3. It's kind of sad to only see low resolution captures of this game from 3+ years ago. Alas.

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

That Was The Sound Of You Winning

2011-04-01T03:51:00.007-04:00

I recently read through this plea to Roger Ebert in defense of videogames being art, despite his popularly permanent claim that they never were, nor will they ever be. I really don't want to get into that discussion, not only because no one has ever made a good case for it either way, but because humans are still having trouble figuring out what "art" is in the first place, let alone if a videogame can be considered one. I bring this up because of a mention of Radiant Silvergun in that letter, noting the change in audio during the final battle against the human-like mass of all evil in the universe (if confused, please go play). At that point, I was again reminded how important sound is to an experience like that. It's probably the most important factor in a videogame's success.

What Did I Just Listen To?
As I've heard in many places, "The best sound design is transparent." That is, a sign of truly successful audio engineering in an experience is when the audience/player doesn't complain about it afterwards. Listening is passive. You can't focus your ears like you do your eyes to something visual; you can only pay attention to it more (and to other senses less). It's this reason why sound is the easiest way to subliminally get into a person's head without him or her knowing. And if that sound was meaningful for play? Then it'll not only enrich the experience, but make you remember it well after having played.

We should all be aware of how sound is used in movies: Orchestras tell us how to feel at any given moment, regardless of on-screen content. A lack of music lets us know that the current moment is important (or someone is about to appear in the mirror behind the supporting character who's about to die). The hero's gun is always louder than the enemies' guns. All punches and kicks are amplified so you can hear how they feel to the recipient. I could go on, but I wanted to address audio in games.

Hearing Is Fun Again
Games today look pretty cool. They have a way to go before we finally say, "Sweet, graphics can no longer improve." As for audio, the surface has barely been touched. It's pretty easy to make music for a movie, since that movie will play out identically every time. You can shape the music specifically to make every ounce of the movie stronger through smart sound decisions. Games, however (obviously), will not be the same experience between any two people. This is why it's so much more complicated to create that perfect experience. While one player may get a pretty good string of audio in his playthrough, another may get stuck in an area and hear the same segment loop over itself to the point of disgust. This is why scrolling shmups are the closest to being able to control an environment, as the developers will know exactly where in the level you'll be at any given time.

So I'd like to take a closer look (listen?) to some of my favorite levels from shmups I'm sure I've linked to far too often by this point, pointing out areas that help improve the experience through audio. I'm not saying that these following examples are the height of human accomplishment in audible excellence. I'm also not saying that other games never even tried. Most AAA games today have so many fancy audio techniques going on that I'm proud to see (hear?) so much effort being put into something we'll never visualize. However, they're not shmups so I'm not talking about them.

Radiant Silvergun

As mentioned in that argument for games as art, this segment of the game makes a drastic change from epic synth orchestra to a choir of sadness. It was a perfect switch to cement the fact that the rest of humanity and existence is gone by this point, and only you are left in this world to destroy that which created hatred (spoilers? Seriously, just go play). This is the only one of my examples that is just a looping sample, but in contrast to the rest of the game's soundtrack it makes a deep impact. Also of note is how certain audio motifs from the main theme are still buried within the harmonic schemes heard here, avoiding a complete sense of disconnect.

ESP Galuda II

The way the music starts in the first level was actually a selling point for me importing this game for lots of money from Hong Kong. I know this genre of electronic JPop-y music isn't up everyone's alley, but there's some smart stuff going on. The beat doesn't really kick in until the player gets his first powerup. The music takes a breather just as the first large enemy explodes, creating a sense of wonder in what was just accomplished. The finale of the piece doesn't conclude until the player has finished off the miniboss. The most complex portion of the music starts when the screen floods with enemies/bullets for the first time. All of these cues to the gameplay hidden in the audio have been a staple of Cave's games in recent years, so not only do these practices exist throughout the rest of this game, but they can be found in almost everything they've put out in the last 10 years.

Death Smiles

This one is just weird. Though to be fair, this is a game centered around Halloween and general ghosts, ghouls, and goblins. The final boss, closely resembling Death (complete with scythe), is accompanied by Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor. The song has always been an icon of grim times, so it's no surprise that it's used here. I'm only pointing this out because the rest of the game's soundtrack was totally original in composition. This kind of took a gamble to break the 4th wall and remind you that these developers have been doing homework and researching how to make your experience better. And I know this has been done many times in games over the decades, even with this piece in particular. I'm just saying it worked well. It made the experience creepy. It's possible they tried to create something original, but similar to Bach's piece, failed, and just used his since it's in public domain now. Either way, it successfully creates the perfect mood against a pretty menacing final boss.

Ikaruga

I would have to say that all of Ikaruga's tracks are beautifully composed to match the experience going on. The music here not only helps to enforce emotional connections to what's going on, but also plays a vital role in providing cues for when certain patterns are going to appear (for score hounds like me, naturally). This level is by far the most complex (visually), and the score here does an excellent job of capturing that chaotic nature of movement, interaction, frustration, and hopefully success.

Listen Up
So the next time you recall a game you love, try thinking about the music that went along with it. It's likely you'll immediately be whistling main themes and boss battles. This is not only because you heard them so many times, but because you enjoyed those experiences. You've heard a lot of annoying commercials in your life, many times, but to ask you to recall their jingles would be a little more difficult (thank goodness).

And the next time you play a game, don't bother paying any more attention to the audio than you already do. After all, it's supposed to be transparent. It's likely you won't even be able to spot the best uses of the medium. And for that, I'm glad.

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

Difficulty: Way Too Hard To Be This Easy

2011-03-01T00:01:00.005-05:00

A Challenge of Choice
Shmups are one of the few kinds of games out there that are, from the start, as easy or as hard as you want them to be. Sure, you could make up your own implicit rules for any game to make things more interesting (my favorite new way to play a game being the Green Demon Challenge from Mario 64), shmups are naturally a bipolar beast. The question is: Would you rather beat it right now, or get a highscore later?

If you don't care about score; if you aren't interested in rank mechanics; if you don't want to earn your power-ups; if you don't care about second loops; you are probably one to want to simply beat the game. Fortunately for you, most shmups grant infinite continues, allowing a fairly uninterrupted session from title screen to final boss upon first playthrough. Some games, like Ikaruga, require you to earn your free credits through extended playtime, but the point is that they're eventually available.

Going Back for Seconds
And once you beat the game on your first shot by blazing through those continues? Maybe twenty minutes passed by. Over an hour if you were playing Radiant Silvergun (♥). Then what? If you didn't like the experience, you'll just move on to something else. If you liked it, how many times more will you play until you're tired of pressing Start to your heart's content? I would love if someone at this point realized the true potential of playing that same game with the intent of using less continues (preferably zero), but I am just a dreamer.

The truth we'd love to ignore is that once you get to see everything you'll be getting in a game, there's not much drive to go ahead and get good at it. Conversely, if you were only given as much of the game as you had earned, many people would be turned off by such strict filtering of game to the point of giving up (or "moving on to something else").

The Little Shmup That Could
Hydorah, a free and AMAZING game, does precisely this. I say amazing (nay, AMAZING), because the developer chose to keep some shmup rules from several decades ago: If you get a game over, there are no continues. The only way to get far in the game is to get good at it. How does one get good? This requires many plays through the game, starting with the first level, until the game has been beaten. What this amounts to is becoming exceedingly skilled at the beginning of the game, being fairly competent through the mid section, and being a vulnerable wanderer of hope in the final stages.

If you had the ability to replay stages you've unlocked, that would be great. If you had the ability to gain continues as you progressed through one session, that would be great. However, these great things are not in the game. In fact, there is a warning screen preceding the title screen - not to inform about the potential of seizure-inducing visuals, not to let us know about the relationship between winners and drugs, but to tell us how hard and unrelenting the game is going to treat us.

So, to say that this game is AMAZING is simply saying that I am amazed that this type of game was both created in modern times and accepted as rightfully as it would have been 25 years ago. To be fair, the entire game is a love letter to shmups of yesterdecade, namely the horizontal quarter-fests Gradius and R-Type. I'm glad this game exists. For every Hydorah that comes out - a polished, fine-tuned, intelligently-crafted game that harkens back to the days of dedicated skill-gaining power-hungry leaderboard overtakers - there are always dozens of relatively easy freeware/browser shmups that lack any sense of direction, challenge, flow, etc. Those games, unfortunately, have no hard method to play (unless they're poorly designed and are hard without reason or the ability to gain the necessary skills to overcome specific obstacles).

Why Try
This choice-driven difficulty is something special. You could be attempting a world record, get blind-sided by a strangely-generated bullet pattern, and then merrily give up and play the rest of the game using continues, no switch needing to be flipped. You could also do the opposite I guess, but your score wouldn't be all that impressive by the end (and wouldn't have any such notation on your ranking).

And let's not forget that score is only one drive to get to the end of a game on few credits. Simply beating any of these giants on a single credit is enough of a self-confidence boost to keep one feeling exceptionally proud for much longer than would be deemed healthy. There's also bragging rights, being able to play the true last boss of a game, getting all of the Achievements/Trophies, etc.

A True Man
The only thing stopping you from truly sitting down and dedicating yourself to a shmup and showing it how much of a man you are (ladies - you can be men, too) is if you want it. It's as simple as that. If you wanted to get to the top of that leaderboard, you'd be watching YouTube superplays and buying a new arcade stick instead of reading this. You'd be turning your monitor sideways and RSVPing regrets all weekend long. You'd know that you can do it, and you will do it, with enough perseverance, dedication, and energy drinks.

Or, if you just want to see what the rest of the game is like, if you've given up hope for the night and just want to shoot things, if you suddenly realized that leaderboards don't hi-five you back, then you can just press Start and use a continue. Just make sure you know what you're missing when you're granted another chance.

Hydorah trailer, complete with lovably cheesy voice work:

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

Cave + iPhone: Pocket-Sized Anxiety (The Good Kind)

2011-02-01T00:00:00.004-05:00

It was only a matter of time until one of the current leaders of the arcade and console shmup world would delve into the untapped pockets of iOS device aficionados. Of course there have been many shmups on the iPhone ever since the App store opened up, but many of them were either homebrew experiments or ports of golden oldies from yesteryear. While those both have their place in the market, it wasn't until Cave decided to step into the game with ESPGaluda II that we would really see what the devices are capable of.

Transitioning
I would imagine the hardest part of porting this mammoth to a handheld device was to maintain the same level of intensity, challenge, and skillset we all know, love, and dream about from the arcade and console versions. While there have been several cutbacks in the art department (explosions appear to have half of their animation frames removed), the game for the most part looks just as I remember it, albeit at a lower resolution.

Most importantly of all, the framerate maintains a beautiful consistency of smoothness and the bullets are just as easily recognizable as I've come to expect from Cave games. These two factors very rapidly kill my enjoyment of a good shmup when poorly executed, but to be honest, the most important factor is of course controls.

So Much Touch!
Without a proper / well-implemented way to control a game, it's just not going to do well because people can't become amazing at it. Luckily for Cave, they've allowed other shmups to come and go (figuratively, since the App store is everlasting), finding out what input methods work the best for a device that has no buttons. The three major players have been:

On-Screen Buttons - These are cool if you are allowed to take your eyes off the gameplay every time you want to change direction. A shmup is usually not one of these games.
Accelerometer Control - This would be useful if you both lived in a glareless world and didn't have such precise movements to make in order to weave through your pending bullet grave. For more simplistic shmups, this is tolerable.
Touch-And-Drag - This breaks down into two categories for how the touch is registered:

Absolute - No matter where your finger is on the screen, your character will be right under it, or at least at a predetermined distance away from it. Some people like to call this cheating. It also doesn't let you see the hit zone of your ship since your own body part would be in the way all the time.
Relative - The character is moved the same distance and direction that your finger moves, no matter where you begin touching and dragging. This allows you to touch where there is nothing of importance, giving you a clear view of your character at all times. Cave went with this one.

The Difficulty Lump
Going with this control method immediately alters the feel of the game. Originally, the three playable characters had varying move speeds which correlated to their shot types (e.g. slow and powerful, quick and weak). It was a balance that made sense and didn't immediately cater to any one character. It fit play styles of the different kinds of players in the world.

Now, on the iPhone, all characters move as fast as your finger can. Technically, there is a maximum speed, sometimes causing a delay before the character arrives at its destination, but the point is that they all move the same speed. Now, the only differing factor is their shot types, which immediately makes the more powerful ones the obvious choices, unless you like a challenge or something (or want to dominate with a lesser-used character on the leaderboards).

And then they went and messed with the difficulty of the game itself. I have absolutely no problem with making tweaks to things with which people were already generally in love. After all, it's a drastically different device with different needs and circumstances. From what I understand, the hardest difficulty setting on the iPhone version is identical to the easiest version on XBox360. This can mean either the iPhone version gets way too easy, or that the XBox360 version gets way too hard. The answer is both.

Is the hardest mode on the iPhone still challenging though? Of course. However, I managed to beat it on a single credit within a few tries. For those that know me well, I usually don't do that. Ever. Especially with a Cave game no less. Did I still have fun? Definitely. I still come back and play it during downtime or unnecessarily long load times on another nearby device.

Despite these interesting choices and changes made for the portable version of one crazy shmup, the game still holds up. It still feels like a Cave game. The soundtrack certainly hasn't taken a hit one bit, which is a significant reason why I still play (with pink headphones, naturally).

Here's a crazy promotional video of the iPhone version. It's a bit pricey compared to most Apps, but if you're an importer, you know this is a steal. And it's in English this time ;]

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

Geometry Wars 2: My 2009 New Year's Resolution

2011-01-01T00:00:00.009-05:00

Catching Up
I've been getting enough requests over the months from friends, fans, and strangers for more SHMUPtheorizing. The reason I haven't posted in over six months is not because I ran of things to say. Nay, I still have much to share, probably more at this point. I've simply been busy. Since my last post, I've moved across the country, gotten a professional job making videogames at Namco, competed in two Flash game competitions (sorry, not shmups), and took part in various other activities that pushed this blog further down the priority lane. HOWEVER, the mere existence of this post should be more than enough evidence to convince you that [SHMUPtheory] is in no way dead. In fact, I'd like to release a new post every first of the month, and so I will. Starting today (Happy New Year, btw).

The celebrate, I'd like to share a milestone in my little world, a New Year's Resolution that I set for myself over a year ago. Actually, I think I made this promise to myself in December of 2008...

The Purchase; The Promise
I got my XBox360 a little late in the game, first signing into Live in December 08. My first purchase - without even debating it - was Geometry Wars 2. I had played the first and frothed over videos of the sequel. Though I also had Mirror's Edge (♥) at that time, I had to jump into the world of geometric bullet lust ASAP.

The achievements in GW2 were actually pretty quirky, usually requiring the player to pull off unorthodox playstyles (as was done in the first game if I recall correctly). The one that immediately captured my heart (i.e. time) was "Wax On, Wax Off", an achievement requiring the player to hug the entire perimeter of the gameplay walls in Pacifism mode not once, but twice. This was an ingenious way to trick the player into learning some advanced techniques of enemy manipulation fairly early into the experience. Once I got that achievement, I was hooked. There really wasn't a reason to play the other 5 modes (hyperbole, but still...).

The Challenge
Simply playing Pacifism for chuckles is not enough incentive to become obsessed. The true drive, as you all well know by now, is the Leaderboard. At the time, the highest score was just under 3 billion points (:O). My best was 300 million (._.). Needless to say, I had a ways to go. I decided at that point that if I surpassed one billion points, I would be content with my success, being placed comfortably among the top 100 players in the world. To attempt to get any higher would be to aim for first place, a feat that would never end as players continually gain skills over time.

For those unfamiliar, Pacifism mode sees the player not shooting, but dodging endless waves of blue rhombuses that spawn from the corners. To combat their growing forces, orange dumbbell gates appear randomly throughout the playfield, creating a proximal explosion when you fly through them. As vets know, the real challenge is in trying not to die by flying into the dumbbells and not so much getting swallowed by a sea of blue predators (though that is usually how the top scorers meet their end).

False Positive
I had spent almost a year working steadily on my dream score, only managing to come up with 478 million. The thing to keep in mind with this mode is that the score increases exponentially as your multiplier increases more linearly, so I was actually only a few more cycles away from my goal. The only problem is that after 100 million points, the amount of enemies spawned each time is significantly high enough to warrant a change in strategy, resulting in hurried movements, snappier decisions, and less time to react to sudden gate appearances.

One day I couldn't connect to Live, so I played around for funsies offline. Lo and behold, I had a shot at the title; However, I got a little too excited at my accruing success which led to my demise at roughly 780 million points. How did I almost double my score out of nowhere? It's a combination of both that exponential increase in score as well as my lack of pressure, thinking this was "just a practice run". There apparently is never just a practice run. Unfortunately for me, offline scores couldn't be uploaded to the Leaderboards upon reconnection, but who cares since it wasn't even a billion? If it were over a billion, I would have sold my Xbox and taken up a life of fly fishing. Okay, that's not true.

Really? Like this?
So then one day, sometime in October 2010, I broke not only my record, but my goal I had set almost two years earlier. And what was I doing? Chatting with a friend on Skype. Not paying attention. Not stressed. Just messing around with an analog stick while I talked long-distance with an ole chum. And yet I scored 1.2 billion points? Sometimes I don't understand how the mind concentrates and behaves under varied conditions. It's an accomplishment like this that tends to force one to reevaluate the training regimen required to accomplish a taunting task. Perhaps the next time I want to pull off something amazing, I should not even be focusing on it, instead relying upon chance, fate, ease of mind, and the warmth and positivity found through comradery.

What Now?
Well, I'm about done playing Geometry Wars 2, at least Pacifism mode. I may not be in the top 100 like I had planned - as players' scores have surpassed the 9 billion mark - but I still feel more than satisfied with my accomplishment. As of this writing, the top score is trailing the rest of the world with 9.123 billion points. Second place is at 7.819 billion, while I am #296 with 1,274,579,875 points. To be in my original goal range of the top 100, I'd have to surpass 2.162 billion points. While that would just be awesome, it's probably best to smile, enjoy the moment, and move on to something else.

I still really want to beat Ikaruga on one credit, though. Once I accomplish that, I won't have any more reason to say there is something in this world I cannot do. My success in Pacifism mode has rewritten what I had originally thought was the ideal state of mind and body in which to attempt a highscore/perfect run. It looks like I'll have unpredictability on my side to help me complete the game, namely Chapter 4.

Because the game has no replay mode, it's pretty cool that this guy recorded himself getting one of the highest scores in the world. Note how he swoops into his gate explosions to collect as many multipliers as possible, tempting the Game Over Gods. Great stuff:

Next Time, on [SHMUPtheory]
As I mentioned earlier, I plan to have a new [SHMUPtheory] post every 1st of the month, so hopefully I'll be able to keep up for a good while so you don't have to be disappointed when any given 2nd of the month rolls by without an update. Let's call this one of my New Year's Resolutions of 2011 :]

Also, for those interested in playing my Flash game competition entries I mentioned earlier, here they are, including my game [Yesterday] which recently won 1st place!

[Together] (Aug 2010)
...But That Was [Yesterday] (Dec 2010)

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

Bosses

2010-06-19T21:23:00.009-04:00

Bosses are entities that have been in shmups since the beginning (okay, early '80s). Almost every scrolling shmup since then has had at least one by the end of the game, at the end of each level, or sporadically throughout the entire game. If a particular game ended a level without a boss, it would immediately feel as if something were missing, some challenge - a test - to prove one's worth to be able to continue to the next section. And then, sometimes, a boss has issues - it's easy, it's weird, it's unfair, etc. As I've learned in the world of story telling, the ending is the deal breaker. It can make a poor experience tolerable, make an amazing experience mediocre, and in some special cases, turn a waste of time into a reason to live.

The important thing to keep in mind when dissecting what exactly makes a good boss is that there is no universal answer. The boss must be dynamic in both design and execution, tailored specifically to the level in which it resides. Generally speaking, there are five main factors to consider when designing a boss: difficulty, variety, length of battle, pay-off, and character.

Difficulty
If this is the first boss of the game, make sure anybody who's at least trying will beat it without losing all of his or her lives. Losing on the first level - even if there are only a handful - is a buzz kill for even the most seasoned of veterans.

The types of attacks don't necessarily have to mimic the same enemy types seen earlier in the level, but they shouldn't be so vastly different that the boss and level feel separated in function. A level with homing rockets can have a boss with homing lasers. This is a simple evolution of what trials the player has already passed. You can also have the boss use weapons that won't be seen until the next level. The key is transition. If a boss uses attacks completely unrelated to both the theme and enemies found earlier in the level, it will feel unattached (and so will the player).

Variety
The player is going to want an intense battle. Intensity is not found through force, but through dynamism. The more varied attacks from the boss, the better. Many shmups visually separate the boss's health bar to show when the current attack pattern will end and a a new one will begin. However, within each of these sections of the boss's health, multiple different kinds of attacks can be cycled on a loop until the player dwindles enough health.

The weapons themselves can be the same, but the ways in which the player is to both dodge and attack should be different to some degree. If a player needs to find a sweet spot to camp and shoot, then find a different sweet spot for the next pattern, there wasn't a change in strategy. Thusly, the player won't be as engaged upstairs to feel as if he or she is up against something of challenge. Keep them on their toes, even when they know what pattern is coming up next. If they don't have to think during battle, then they won't think much of the boss when it's gone.

Length of Battle
Relatively speaking, if you know what you're doing to a boss, it's okay to defeat it in half the time it should normally take. On the other hand, if you have no idea what you're doing, it shouldn't take four times longer than expected to defeat it. The sense of accomplishment from grinding a tedious and unfulfilling battle is quickly diminished, no matter how great the pay-off (discussed below).

Globally speaking, the time it should take to defeat a boss should be relatively proportional to how long it takes to get through the level. Radiant Silvergun takes over an hour to complete not only because the bosses have such lengthy battles, but also because the levels themselves are lengthy. The durations of boss battles in Touhou games follow this same formula, as do most R-Types, Gradiuses, and Cave shooters. There are of course exceptions, such as having all or most of the final level be a boss battle, because the player expects to have one grand finale at the game's end. Consider this the one free pass you get.

As far as mid bosses go, they should never take longer to beat than the end boss (obvious yes, but still apparent in some shmups floating around online). This not only lets down the player with more battling after the mid boss, but the end boss is already considered a push over before the battle even begins (given previous playthroughs). Having an easy decoy boss that leads into a surprise harder boss is great, though the effect is only successful the first time around.

Pay-Off
The pay-off isn't necessarily just about the bonus points, collectible gems, bonus life, piece of triforce, or even a granted entry to the next level. The pay-off is what the player has gained by defeating the boss, whether it comes from programming within the game code or an experience that's been developed within the player's soul (too deep?).

This one is probably the hardest to explain, mostly because it's a different experience with every player. There's a rush that can be created through clever pacing of attacks and a false sense of impending doom.

Recent Cave shooters (Mushihimesama, ESPGaluda2) love having bosses that spit out everything they're made of immediately before being killed off. This creates an immediate thrill and sense of danger for the player, but it doesn't last so long as to erase his or her extra live stock within seconds.

Ikaruga's boss in Chapter 3 does the same thing, except instead of filling the screen with bullets, the whole boss spins radically faster and fires its lasers at a higher frequency (all while you're trapped inside).

In this sense, the boss battle intensity itself is a diagram of the level's difficulty leading up to and including the boss. To put it simply, the end of the boss battle should be more intense than the beginning.

Character
This kind of ties in with the thematic connection of attacks between the boss and the level in which it resides. Here, character is meant to describe the purpose for the boss being at the end, the reason why your progress is being halted by this dominating force. Everything is under subconscious scrutinization by the player: the reason that it breaks apart the way it does, the way in which it explodes (loyal readers must know by now how imperative it is to me for there to be a satisfying explosion for everything), the way it reacts to obvious flaws in its armor system, the sounds that are made when it charges up an attack / releases a final blow / gets angry at your skills, etc.

The villain is always the most important character in any story. Obviously, without him, there wouldn't be a hero (or anti-hero), yet there can still exist a villain without someone to combat him. It's in this sense that the villain is the source of there being any conflict (i.e. a hero cannot create a conflict, only solve it).

Great villains in cinema are tied very closely with movies that are successful. Biff from Back to the Future. Jafar from Aladdin. Dr. Evil from Austin Powers. Captain Hook from Peter Pan / Hook. Agent Smith from the Matrix. Darth Vader from ...yeah. I could go on, but these villains aren't just bad guys. They have a story behind why they turned out the way they are. And in turn, they behave in their worlds in response to whatever it is that ticked them off in the first place.

The same goes for videogames, although [unfortunately] they hardly ever seem to be as developed as those found in the movies (and to be honest, there really is no excuse). Sometimes a boss is never seen until the final battle. Sometimes we only know about the boss through cutscenes. Every story has two sides, and it's a bit unfair to the player to only see one side and not have the opportunity to enjoy what's going on behind the curtain.

Some excellent bosses in videogames would be GlaDOS from Portal, Donkey Kong from Donkey Kong, and the Stone Like from Ikaruga (and Radiant Silvergun?). All of these bosses / villains made themselves present throughout the player's gameplay experience, providing both a motivation to move forward as well as a satisfying pay-off at the end. To be fair, the Stone Like never was seen until the end, but everything that it put the player through was a marvelous final exam of everything that the player was supposed to learn throughout the game.

Putting It All Together
So what have we learned here? I, for one, know that I expect a lot when it comes to a good boss battle. However, I don't consider my expectations to be set too high. After all, we're talking about a boss battle here. This is the final challenge standing between the player and what the player set out to do: play the game.

The boss is a summary of what came before. It's a vision of what to expect next. It's the whole of the parts (which in turn shoots parts of the whole back at the player). It's the element by which to judge the entire game, as the boss itself is what the game eventually leads to.

So, the next time you play against a boss and feel remarkably underwhelmed, perhaps this attempt at categorizing the reasons will assist you in understanding why. Or, if you're developing your own boss to terrorize others, hopefully you've learned something along the way that you can implement into your creations (or at the very least, disagree with me hardcore and set out to prove me wrong :D)

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

One Credit Completion

2010-05-09T15:18:00.004-04:00

Within the circles of those who continually test their mettle against the forces of constantly scrolling antagonistic affiliates (relatively speaking), there at one point or another comes into discussion a mention of the one credit completion, the 1CC, the accomplishment for which there is no reward other than the drive to keep pushing forward to gain another (conditions permitting). The 1CC is the friend of the challenge-seeker, the foe of the casualite, and a distant cousin of the credits screen.

I've mentioned this little thing before, but for those who enjoy caressing their eyes over its description, a one credit completion, in shmups, is the art of playing an entire game from start to finish without ever losing all lives, thereby not using any continues. Yummy. It gets a bit more complicated when you break down how to accomplish this in any given shmup, but the general strategy is the same: Get a lot of points, earn a lot of lives, abuse systems to maintain a possibility of survival, and fail... over and over.

Failure Is Only An Option At First
There are of course variations to the methods for gaining such a title, which include playing for survival (dodge everything), or using tool-assisted software (a demonstration of a different caliber altogether). The real treat that we've all come to see is to witness a human putting his all into one joystick, a set of buttons, and doing what countless others before him could only hope to accomplish.

The issue I have with the lore surrounding this skill is the slew of misconceptions surrounding its existence. I've read many attempts to cleanse the reputation of the 1CC and its achievers. They all do a good job of clearing up some air, but it's hard to convince someone from the other side that something once thought to be a waste of time is actually something worth fighting for. Opinions are just opinions I suppose.

There are people out there who buy/try a shmup, play it in its entirety one time, credit-feed the countdown whenever necessary (sometimes dozens of times by the final levels), beat it, and walk away with a cheap sense of thrills from various arrays of bullets and boss designs, never desiring to understand what greater accomplishment lies just beneath the surface. Something was lost along the way.

The 1CC and Me
What's my personal drive for attaining the 1CC? Pulling off a 1CC means that I fully understood the rules by which a game is bound. It means I have control over what was designed to be impossible at first glace. It means I overcame the obstacles that stopped me countless times before. It means I understood something fully and could actually perform the necessary skills when the time came for it.

Is this not the same feeling that people get when they build a car from scratch by themselves? The same feeling of building a house from the ground up? The same feeling of winning the final round of Hold Em on national television? All of these people worked hard to get where they got. They learned from their mistakes, from others like them, pushed passed the point where others gave up, and went the distance.

Other kinds of people would have just given the car-in-progress to a mechanic, or the second floor's completion to a group of construction workers. A shmupper would have pressed start to continue. There's nothing wrong with this. The car gets to drive; the house gets to be lived in. But what do you tell the kids to teach them about motivation, personal drive, and self-worth?

Okay, those may be a bit dramatic, but the ideals behind these accomplishments are the same. People want to do things entirely on their own, without the help of a continue option, to prove to the world that they are not spineless drones to challenges that give up and never try again.

Never gaining a 1CC is fine, too. It's even okay to stop trying on one particular game. The point is that you should always be pushing yourself to learn, to grow, to gain something from your experiences that you can take with you. Sure, you could live in that house that you built, but you could also take what you've learned from 1CCing a shmup and apply it to managing your personal business more efficiently, to driving on the highway both more efficiently and safely, or to composing that concerto the world's been waiting for (the one that looks easy, is difficult to play, is fun to listen to, and takes generations for people to dissect and fully appreciate).

I know there are various Achievements and Trophies given out for 1CCing a game, but those aren't worthy of representing the blood, sweat, and blisters associated with going those extra 100 miles. The real reward comes from within. It can't even be shared with friends who don't know about its roots without sounding like a cheap brag. Those friends need to experience it for themselves, and I don't mean having them only play one credit to see how challenging the game really is. They need to experience the thrill of gaining a title few in the world have ever held in their hands.

Everyone needs to 1CC something in their life.

A Plumber's Dance
Take this guy for example. He beat Super Mario Bros. by playing on a dance pad. Granted, it took only a week of practice, but he has a sense of accomplishment that no one else in the world can feel. The best part of all is that his joy is shared in raw form on camera, especially during the final level where we hear his yearning to touch that axe and solidify his journey to that point. And what does he do after the credits? He asks the community what game he should beat on a dance pad next.

He's taking what he gained, what he earned from pushing himself to achieve this goal, and applying it to something new. Personally, I think he just enjoys the thrill of that final moment, where it all comes together and he knows that he pulled off what he set out to do.

On the subject of shmups, it's fun to know that there are people on the other side of the spectrum that are not satisfied with the 1CC alone. They yearn for an even greater accomplishment: to both 1CC a game and to hold the highest score in the world for said game. Granted, a higher score implies more bonus lives which in turn implies an "easier" time 1CCing a game, but the added dangers and challenges of going for those higher scores is more than enough to warrant the quest for such an endeavor.

Rocky Said It Best
My point is, the 1CC is not a worthless art and a sign of someone having no life. Everybody does something in this world. Everybody is striving for something. However, not everyone will be able to continue after having failed. It's those that can push themselves to their limits and keep moving forward that are deserving of what they've earned. Some of those people play shmups. But this way of thinking goes for anyone and everyone.

I respect anyone who doesn't give up, and I look up to anyone who can get up after having fallen down. Whether or not any of them are trying to 1CC is irrelevant. I just wanted to let some open minds understand why the 1CC is not a goal exclusively for the elite; it's a waypoint for anyone desiring better things, a stronger being, and something onto which to grasp in order to find value and meaning in this chaotic world.

You and I both know it would be tough to have a dedicated post to the 1CC and not end with a video of courage and strength. Below is part 1 of an 8 part video of someone recently 1CCing Gradius III on Very Difficult mode. This game is one of the hardest of them all to 1CC, especially on the highest difficulty. Has it been done before? Yeah. Has it been recorded before? Probably. Does this guy feel any less accomplished? Will he continue pushing himself to accomplish great things in life? I think actions here speak louder than words.

[Full YouTube playlist here]

Additional Links:
- The 1CCers of the Shmups Forum
- Shmups Forum discussion on how to practice shmups
- SuperPlay! A database of videos of people being really good at shmups.

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

Treasure: The Thrill of The Chase

2010-04-03T00:01:00.001-04:00

Patterns in gameplay have existed since... well, since the first two videogames were released. They both had visuals and most likely interactivity as well. However, I'm talking about a pattern much more specific. In fact, I've only seen it done three times, and from the same company at that. Oh, Treasure (♥), how I unceasingly find intrigue in your existence. Read below to learn (and hopefully relive) "The Thrill of The Chase!"

The chase to which I refer can be found in Radiant Silvergun, Sin & Punishment, and Ikaruga. Though these games contain dozens of bosses, midbosses, subbosses, and minibosses, this chase occurs but once in each. Over the course of the three games, it has changed shape to accommodate both the mechanics of the game it's within and the undying thirst we have for a knowingly-conquerable challenge.

The basic recipe for this thrill chase is that you are either chasing or being chased by a subboss while avoiding both enemy fire and environmental hazards at a brisk pace. It's a workout for both the brain and the fingers, forcing the player to utilize all the mechanics of the game to not only win the chase, but to survive in general.

Radiant Silvergun: Stage 2 Midboss
Silvergun's is the most complex of the three, though it's probably the most manageable after a few go-arounds. There are sometimes split paths offered that are a win-lose situation: You may have an easier time surviving for the next 3 seconds, but the boss isn't losing health any faster. Consider this the pit-stop to give your rubber some time to cool off. This is also the only boss of the three games that attacks from both behind and in front of the player. I'm not counting Ikaruga (below) because the boss just sits down there, though you can still collide with it (and probably will the first few times).

Sin and Punishment: Stage 2-1 Midboss
S&P's version of the chase is the easiest to complete, though it's still no walk in the park. Besides the fact that there are split paths to follow in order to kill the boss quickly (time limit here this time), the game has bonuses littered throughout the chase to coax players into going for the major points at the risk of falling indefinitely. On the plus side, this boss doesn't fire back at you; he's kind of just concerned with running away from you, which makes you look like the killer. Regardless, the boss's actions give the player just enough split seconds to follow en route for a quick finish. This is the only chase of the three to also employ gravity as a mechanic, so timing [double] jumps is combined with strafing left and right, while of course collecting bonus points, firing a gun, and slashing floating bombs into the boss's rear end.

Ikaruga: Chapter 3 Midboss
This one is the killer. By this point, this is Treasure's third pass at making a chase that can really make the sweat drops glisten. Not only does this boss sway back and forth, but it constantly vomits out sprays from four companions as well as its own ugly mouth. On top of that, the sprays are alternating in polarity, so when one is crossing your path, you have to be ready to cut through the center stream and survive against an oncoming stream of the opposite polarity. I apologize for the skill level of the player in the video below. He actually does so well, you don't have much of a chance to appreciate anything (other than his dedication to turning a chase into t-ball practice).

This boss is known as one of the hardest sections in the game, which makes it all the more enjoyable to know that of all the changes Treasure made to the game for its XBox Live Arcade port, this boss had the most significant change. That change is that its companions spin in the opposite direction than they did in the arcade, Dreamcast, and Gamecube versions. Nothing too complicated for the pros, but you almost have to relearn this section from scratch, creating all new digital nightmares for your scoreboard to be plagued with when the console is turned off.

I hope I haven't missed other chase sequences in Treasure games of past. I'm relying on memory for Mischief Makers and Gunstar Heroes (which had a close call with the underground mine level), so if anyone can think of others, do share!

[Update: It's been brought to my attention that this chase can be found in two additional newer games: Gradius V and Sin & Punishment 2, both of which were also made by Treasure. Awesome. However, I can't offer too much insight on these, despite being able to easily find them on YouTube. I have this thing where I like to play Treasure games firsthand before spoiling anything online. I haven't gotten that far in Gradius V and S&P2 hasn't been released in the states yet, so I'll just have to assume that both of these chases are nothing short of thrilling. Thanks Evil_Toaster!]

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

Novice Ultra Mode: An Oxymoron For Us All

2010-03-09T02:03:00.010-05:00

Too Easy, Or Too Fun?
It's a well-established notion nowadays that the shmup - particularly the vertically-scrolling danmaku shooter from overseas - is a genre of gaming best reserved for those with determined hearts and as many quarters as they have reasons not to go easy on themselves. With that in mind, it's a breath of fresh air to see that Cave, the head honcho in professional modern shmup releases, has introduced a Novice difficulty into their home port of (deep breath here) Mushihimesama Futari 1.5. For a game that's popular on YouTube based solely upon its difficulty, it's wonderful to learn that the developer didn't want to shy away those who would otherwise use this game's existence as a reason to stick to their Mario RPGs (don't hate) and actually have a chance at completing a game. But then they made an Ultra version of Novice mode. Yes, this is where it gets fun.

Novice Original mode by itself is the tamest out of... thirteen possible modes there are in the game. It features very few slow-moving bullets and plenty of ways to milk your lives out. Auto-bomb is included here, granting you another chance to live in exchange for one bomb. This is a step up from Ketsui for DS, which would clear your entire bomb stock upon being poked by a pink dot. Take into account that the beginning of each boss will net you a bonus two bombs and you effectively have dozens of lives at your disposal (and no need to even hover over the bomb button).

Don't be fooled, though. The tweaked mechanics of the game don't hold your hand the entire way. If someone is playing a Novice mode, it's likely that he or she feels that it's the appropriate difficulty at which to play. Novice Original is great for people to get into the jive of playing a bullet hell shooter altogether. For those who have some shred of confidence, but not enough to be on bomb duty the entire time, Novice Ultra is the way to go (I am ignoring Novice Maniac, the in-betweener, as it's pretty much the average between my two points of interest).

Novice Ultra also spews few bullets at the player, also at a slow pace, but these comparisons are in relation to the original arcade release, found elsewhere on the disc. There's plenty of bullet weaving to be had, and even less hand-holding present (perhaps only a few fingers are gripped at this point).

Suddenly You're Amazing
The thing that makes this mode so thrilling is the illusion of you being awesome. The developer went through a lot of trouble to revise every single bullet pattern to create immediate dotted chaos on the screen, only to have it fall into a recognizable pattern with wide gaps for escape. There are very few moments of overlapping patterns, some of which come from the same enemy, effectively keeping your focus at maximum (and your sweat glands dry). On top of this, larger enemies' bullets disappear upon destruction, giving you a break just before your eyes dilate to their maximum. Once you get used to this little feature, you'll quickly go from Marty to Doc in expecting immediate danger to just disappear.

Just to prove how helpful this mode is, I 1CC'd Novice Ultra on my second try, having gotten to the final form of the final boss my first try. And the best part of all? It was a complete joy to play through from beginning to epic end. Though I didn't have too much difficulty lasting the entirety of the game, I had my mind gears churning out some finely-tuned calculations. This accomplishment is one of my two legitimate 1CCs, the other being a full 2nd loop clear in Star Prince in Retro Game Challenge (that counts, right?).

This Is Not A Review
So, the real question is, "Does Novice Mode really allow beginners/novices to get into the shmup club?" The short answer is yes. The long answer is no (I know, that's actually one letter shorter). It's definitely a step in the right direction, but I'm sure more can be done to help out those who aren't accustomed to bullet herding, max chaining, multiplier maximization, etc. Just what those things are, I am uncertain. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what evolutions of an old genre will pop up in the future.

I tried to keep this post away from becoming a review, but in all honesty, this is a fantastic port of the original. And the fact that it's region-free means that anyone with an NTSC Xbox360 can join in on the fun... for about 70 smackers. If you're interested in learning more about the game, BulletMagnet from Dtoid has a ridiculously detailed article covering every single aspect of the game.

Below is part 1 of a 4-part run in Novice Ultra. The rest can be found from related videos, but I suggest you discover the rest of the game with your own two thumbs.

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

The Anatomy of a Shmup

2010-02-17T19:06:00.008-05:00

If I haven't made it clear yet, I'm working on another shmup. This time, since I'm not restricted by a competition deadline, I've been paying close attention to the art behind creating shmups, both commercially and online. The big boys appear to be doing everything right. I only ever have a few nitpicks about them. If I ever feel like I don't like one, it's because of personal preference, not something that I can point out as being done poorly.

As for the indie shmups available for free or for a few bucks, they are hit or miss. Sometimes the design is ingenious, but the presentation is lacking. Sometimes the visuals are spectacular, but the gameplay is uninspired. Sometimes the game is pretty good, but could have been pushed further in various areas. There's a different reason for each game, but the importance here is that I'm taking notes on all of it.

Below I've gathered together a list of what I've observed over the months and years of playing. The ideas are in no particular order and only represent a fraction of my records. I thought I'd share them so you, too, can pinpoint a reason for any given game not being quite what you had hoped.

Keep in mind that not everything I say is required for every shmup. They each have their own place. Most of these notes are for scrolling and arena shooters, while some apply to any game or piece of art.

Enemy bullets should always be visible. The bullets shot by enemies should be visible on top of explosions, power-ups, other enemies, etc. The point here is that those bullets are your primary reason for not beating the game. Any time not spent being able to see them is time not spent preparing to engage them. If a foreground object is going to obscure the view of play, it's a good idea to make sure no bullets are on-screen. The only exception for hiding bullets is the HUD; for this reason, the HUD should be kept to a visual minimum.

Off-screen enemies should not be able to shoot. If the enemies aren't visible to the player, then how can a player even have a chance at feeling good about himself when dying from one of these bullets? This causes too much confusion, anger, and force quitting.

All bullets should have a ricochet/splash effect when hitting something. Without some sort of "splash" or "pop" effect to show contact, it makes it feel like either the bullets have no effect or they're passing under the enemy/obstacle in question.

Bullet collision should be accurate. This goes for any game where you can shoot and be shot at, but it's just a shame to be shooting something and having your bullets pass right by, or meeting the all-too-familiar death from a bullet that wasn't even in your area code.

If the player's ship has a small hitbox, make it obvious. I seemed to miss this point with my last shmup. The key here is to let the player quickly know his boundaries of death when in a crunch. Sometimes only a few frames of opportunity are available, during which time it's essential to be able to see where your sweet spot is.

The contrast between bullets and backgrounds should be high. This is something that's very important for survival, let alone for aesthetically pleasing visuals. An indie game for Dreamcast, Last Hope, had a special edition released that featured a higher bullet contrast. When Cave releases black label editions of their shmups, they oftentimes feature "darker background palettes". Also of note is that Cave has stuck with pink and bright blue colors for the bullets in all of their games. I guess they found the magic palette to make identifying bullets easiest.

Enemies should show some sign of being hit. If an enemy doesn't flicker or shake or shoot sparks when being shot, I can only assume that it is invulnerable to attack. The whole thing doesn't need to flash white (it really hurts the eyes with bosses), but there needs to be some indication of it taking damage. On that note, if an enemy is invulnerable (shields are up, boss hasn't settled yet, etc.), don't change a thing about it. Some games let your bullets pass through during these times, which is also fine.

Everything that is destroyed should explode. I'm almost completely serious when I say explode. As in fire and smoke. It doesn't seem to matter what the enemy is made out of; humans by nature love to see explosions and there's nothing more satisfying than watching something dangerous go up in flames. The Mushihimesama series gets around its insect/prehistoric theme by coloring its explosions blue, which in turn makes it look like a release of natural gas... or something. The point is, if you spend all that time pumping an enemy full of bullets, all of Newton's Laws say that it should explode into a fiery ball of satisfying pixelated splendor. And as far as boss explosions go, they better be a spectacular light show of gaseous fulfillment, including a screen-flooding flash of brightness that slows down gameplay.

There should be a sense of flow to each level. If you fast-forward through superplays of various commercial shmups, it becomes very clear that the design of each level is structured to force you to want to zig and zag all over the place. It not only keeps your wrists happy, but it never leaves you waiting in boredom. Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga both reward quick killers with additional enemies to shoot while waiting for the next section to arrive. It's okay to have nothing to do while being warned about a boss. For one, this gives your eyes a chance to focus on the text. Second, it allows you to build up whatever fear/confidence that its presence concocts in your body. Even arena shmups like Geometry Wars and Echoes provide a flow in where the enemies spawn.

The visual style should be consistent through all levels, enemies, effects, menus, etc. The fact that this is something that every artist ever in history should be considering, it's sad to see it ignored so often. It's as if every 14-year-old with a wicked idea and limited freetime has used the same animated GIF of an explosion in his game. I was one of them. It's great as a placeholder, but if the rest of your game is composed of clean vector gradient fills, your explosion will not only look out of place; it will break gameplay. This happens a lot with uninspired menus as well, where a generic font is used without proper formatting. The end result can only make a player frown, no matter how spectacular the rest of the game looks.

There should be "popcorn" enemies in every level. These are enemies that blow up (with an explosion) after being hit once (or very seldom). The key here is quantity. Popcorn enemies not only fill in empty holes of time between waves of more viable forces, but they also make the player feel like he's the coolest kid on his block (and if he's playing a shmup, he automatically is).

There should be a way to save yourself in times of need. The most obvious method of saving one's life is the bomb. DoDonPachi also has a super/hyper beam. Ikaruga has homing lasers. Radiant Silvergun has a sword that slices everything in its path. The key here is that the player should be able to get out of a sticky situation. Most of these moves make the player invincible for a short amount of time, which in turn allows him to get out of physical obstacles as well as enemy fire.

If an enemy appears out of thin air on-screen, allow time for the player to ready himself. Never have an enemy appear in the middle of the screen and fly off at full speed shooting everything its mother taught it. It's okay for it to accelerate to its destined speed, or wait a second before firing. There can even be an indication of its arrival before it even appears. Geometry Wars does this with particle splashes. Works wonders. Believe me.

Enemy health should be either shown or predictable. Ikaruga shows the health of every enemy you start shooting at via a thin bar on the HUD. For games that show you nothing, you should be able to tell how long you need to be firing at an enemy before it's destroyed. Things like relative size or the presence of armor are usually good indications. If an enemy takes way too long to die, or if it explodes rather quickly, it will feel off, break gameplay, and your bewilderment over the developer's choosing of its health will put you into a stumper just long enough to be swallowed by an oncoming sea of bullets.

The coming of a boss should be made clear. This can be done through a large warning sign, the sound of a siren, the sound of nothing at all, or simply a lull in enemies, signifying the coming of something large. If you don't know that you're fighting a boss, then you won't try as hard, and you also won't be as enraged when you come close to defeating it and ultimately die. Think of it this way: If you told Mr. Magoo that he just walked through a construction zone that failed its last safety and security inspections, he probably wouldn't be as emotionally struck as Lando Calrissian would feel if you told him that he just blew up the second Death Star and narrowly avoided being engulfed by its own flames (see? everything explodes). If you think that's a silly argument to make because Lando would have already known what just happened, you're right. That's the point. He knew the whole time that he was escaping certain death. The stakes were high and his adrenaline was pumping in return. The whole experience was a ride. And that's what a player needs to feel before the boss even shows its ugly mug.

An unwanted sound should be heard when the player is hit/destroyed. The thought of losing a life and having to insert another quarter is enough to make a player avoid death, but the more that enforces that feeling of dread, the better. I think Squares 2 does this the best. The sound of that buzzer is the last thing I'd want to resonate in my ears, especially after having heard a looping sample from Daft Punk. Daft Punk!

There should always be a way out of every situation. Here, I'm talking about designing the enemies and bullet formations such that there is definitely a way to get through, at least by the developer. I know players can lose focus and corner themselves into a tight circle of pain, but that's going to happen in any game. If you dodge the wrong way, you're only setting yourself up for failure. Half the "fun" of bullet hell games is learning how to manipulate the enemies into shooting such that you will have a measely crevice through which to escape failure. This is sometimes called bullet herding, which is kind of awesome. Even Space Invaders had this in the form of being able to hide behind your bases. That counts, right?

Separate simultaneous bullet patterns should have different-looking bullets. The human brain is a beautiful thing, capable of recognizing complex patterns faster than any super computer today could ever hope to match (note: computers do not yet have hope). However, given the added sensations of stress, danger, and really fast bullets in large numbers, it would be such a great help if separate patterns had varied bullets. This can be achieved through color, shape, animation, and even rotation. The Touhou games are especially known for having hundreds of bullets on screen, each pattern distintively careening towards you at varying paces of fear induction.

Camera-shake is a privelage, not a right. The effect always looks cool. Let's get that out of the way. The problem is when camera-shake is used when every enemy is destroyed, every piece of gold is collected, and every bullet is fired. Not only does this make for too much visual noise for the player's eyes (Cloverfield was under an hour for a reason), but it also dampens the effect. The less it appears, the more it'll mean for the player when it does happen. Trust me - less is more.

As I've said before, all of these suggestions are optional and in my opinion. They're all things that I've seen implemented beautifully in console/arcade releases and miserably emulated in free online Flash games. Since I'm making a free online Flash game, I'm going to do my best to maintain a level of polish and attention to detail that allows the game to stay together as a whole. Even a single out-of-place sound effect can ruin the entire experience.

To kind of drive these points home, I'd like to use the same identifying features from the screenshot of Ikaruga above and apply them to Space Invaders. Ya know, for fun.

It would be mean to point out the games that I feel could have been more successful, even by just following my suggestions above, so I'll just talk about the free shmups that did a lot of things right.

- Arcanacra: Excellent flow of gameplay, superb use of sound (The enemies/attacks are synchronized with the music), enemy bullets stay visible, enemies show signs of taking damage, there are popcorn enemies, and the boss explosion is worth the trouble. This is the best free shmup that I've seen do so many things so well.

- Cube Colossus: Excellent visual style (nice explosions), unique and useful control mechanic, bullet contrast against backgrounds, engaging sound design (especially when buying upgrades), ample warning before bosses and spawning enemies, and enemies have visible health and show signs of taking damage.

- Death vs. Monstars: visually and audibly unique explosions, a simple control mechanic that allows for quick and accurate aiming, popcorn enemies, a spectacular boss explosion, and enemy bullets that stay visible.

- Heavy Weapons: Great use of sound (especially of enemies spawning nearby), effects and menus match visual style of the game, and of course there are many popcorn enemies.

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

Ikaruga: The Art of Chaining

2010-02-04T00:01:00.006-05:00

Chaining. I've touched on this before, but I've wanted to do a video version for a long time. And, as it just so happens to be the one year anniversary of SHMUPtheory (Happy BDay, little guy), I felt like celebrating with something special. Below you'll find a 10+ minute video guide on how to chain the first chapter of Ikaruga, or at least how I do it. I spent quite a bit of time putting this thing together, especially when compared with how long it takes to type a regular post, so I hope you guys enjoy. Also, I realized it would probably be helpful to see the entire run without interruptions, so an additional uncut version is provided even further down.

Enjoy and happy chaining!

Below is the uncut version, since I realized it would make things a lot easier if the gameplay didn't pause every two seconds. This way it's much easier to learn timings (and sound cues).

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

Lag, Control, and You

2010-01-12T23:56:00.016-05:00

Talking about control isn't something that should be new to you. It's not some aspect of game design that slipped by your critical radar all these years and suddenly has been given new light. I'm sure you can still remember your thoughts when the Wii's controller was first unveiled; how impressed you were (and still are) at the SNES controller's simple, yet refined curves; how weird it was to see the Virtual Boy's double D-pad; how happy-yet-disappointed it was to see the Playstation controller evolve only under the hood - rather than on the outside - as each successive console was revealed. This is something that doesn't need to be said at all, as you should already know all of this. All of it. Still, though, I have things to say about control in relation to shmups. I'll try my best to stay on target.

First off, let's define something here: "control". Control is comprised of any and all aspects in games that allow you, the player, to interact with the game. The most prominent factors are some sort of input apparatus (e.g. a controller) and a monitor/television/Tiger Electronics LCD screen for viewing the status of a game. The factor I'm most concerned about is lag, which is no stranger to almost all other genres of games, especially fighters, racers, and FPSs.

Lag in itself means different things. We have:

1. Lag from human response time - This is how long it takes you to see something, calculate what you want to do, convert that to controller inputs, and make your body carry out those actions. This takes longer for more complex inputs (such as the infamous "The Mohawk").
2. Lag from controller-to-console-to-monitor - This is easily the shortest lag of all, yet it tends to gain the most hatred for ever existing. This also includes the online gaming route of controller-to-console-to-server-to-console-to-monitor.
3. Lag from game-related issues - Intentional slowdown, intense calculations, etc. This technically takes place during lag #2, but it deserves its own recognition.
4. Lag from Light - The time it takes for light to reflect off the monitor, travel through space, and into your retinas. I think I'll ignore this one.

And since we're all so visual nowadays, here are those same 4 kinds of lag, presented in one cohesive diagram:

Human Response Time Lag
In regards to response time, I don't have too much to say. This is the easiest lag to alleviate, though it takes the longest to achieve. The only way to make this lag go away is to keep on practicing until pressing buttons becomes second-nature. Luckily, practice in one game usually rolls over to other games, and even to other consoles. It varies from person to person. Some people are super quick at reacting, but aren't too accurate. Other people may take a few extra milliseconds to realize what's going on, but usually pull through. And of course there are people who are unfamiliar with their input device and have to look down at their hands more often than they look at the monitor.

Electronic Limitations Lag
Lag from the controller to the monitor is some kind of new-found beast in this generation. Back when we all had wired controllers and CRTs, no one even mentioned this. Now we've got Street Fighter IV vets who talk down upon wireless controllers' inferior speeds for sending input signals. There are forums dedicated to finding the right HDTV so as to minimalize the time it takes to process a composite signal into a digital format. Many HDTVs come with an option to switch to "Game Mode", which sacrifices cleaner visuals for less processing time.

As an avid fan and tournament-goer for Super Smash Bros. Melee, I can confirm for those out of the loop that pros will only play serious matches on CRTs. This is a fact across the United States and in international countries (I know you're there, Sweden, France, and Japan). Any HDTVs at a tourny are often used as the "just messin' around" TVs, the ones that are ignored during serious gameplay. Almost all players choose not to use the wireless Wavebird, despite its high review marks, to avoid any channel-switching shenanigans / battery-related tragedies. Does all of this attention to the saving of milliseconds make that much of a difference?

Yes. This is why MadCatz's billion-selling fight sticks have wires. They don't want any potential customer to doubt for a second that he or she will witness electric lag before purchasing one of these bad boys... especially when he or she will be dropping 150 big ones (i.e. dollars). Using HD cables on an HD console with a newer HDTV has become less of a problem. It's still there, but I feel technology is closing this short-lived chapter soon enough.

Intentionally Programmed / Intense Calculations Lag
When we press a button, we expect to see a result on the screen immediately (or rather, in such a quick manner that it feels instantaneous. Can't ignore physics after all.) If we press a button, wait, and then see the result appear on the screen, there had better be a good reason for it. Going back to Melee: if you try to jump, your character will first duck down and prepare for jumping, a Principle of Animation known as "anticipation". It makes the jump more believable, and only takes a few frames to accomplish. The game runs at 60 frames/second, so we're talking about a very short amount of time it takes to finally see your character leap into the air. This kind of lag is short enough to be ignored (...well maybe that's a poor example, as pros love to exploit this moment to wavedash all up and down their opponents' grills. It's hardly ignored at all and many players love to count frames to calculate how to achieve an added boost in--

Oh... right, shmups.

Intentional Lag in Shmups
The kind of input lag without immediate result that can really mess up gameplay can be found in many shmups. Let's look at Irukandji by Charlies Games. I hate to use this as an example, as I just love Charlie's other shmups to death, including the so-well-done (and 100% nsfw) Space Phallus, but I have a point to make here. The game takes place underwater. When you try to move, your ship takes a few frames to get up to speed, to simulate the water friction that would be found in such an environment. When you let go of movement inputs, the ship takes a few frames to slow down. This means if you want to move in a completely opposite direction than you currently are moving, then it takes about twice as long as usual to come to a stop, then start from rest and build that momentum back up to go the other way. The bullet patterns never get too complex to require intense weaving, and I totally understand that it's underwater and should feel like we're under water. But come on... this is a shmup.

I guess it makes little sense for a ship to be able to stop on a dime in any direction, but sometimes it's just needed. In shmups, it's almost always needed. And they're still tough as nails without any momentum lag. Plus, ya know, we have far more important things to complain about...

Here's a quick and dirty graph of the time it takes to reach full speed as compared with how much we should be tolerating it. I picked these games off the top of my head, so I can't exactly say they're accurately placed (especially since there are no numerical values for the axes). This graph is based simply off of my personal experience with them. Also note that the red bar exponentially reaches intolerability very rapidly.

Faster than Fast
It makes even less sense that most shmups allow your ship to move at full horizontal and vertical speeds when moving diagonally. The X and Y-axis movements are separate forces, so if you move diagonally, you actually end up combining their forces. Following Pythagoras, this means you'd technically be moving at ~1.414 times your normal movement speed. Ever wonder why speedrunners in FPSs move diagonally through worlds? Ever wonder why bunny hopping works so gosh darn well? Now you know.

That's all fine and dandy, but why don't more shmups force you to only move at your maximum speed? Many arena shmups impose this limitation, such as in Geometry Wars, but it's unheard of in vert and hori shmups. Why? Well, just think about it: As you wiggle through a swarm of pink death candy, you continuously hold [up] and sometimes press [right] to sneak through when an opening arises. If you could only move at maximum speed when moving in both directions, your vertical speed would slow down momentarily until you let go of [right]. This can very quickly become annoying and ultimately spell both your doom and a non-braggable NO RANK status at the leaderboard. It's cool with me to find this in arena shmups, especially when using analog sticks, since both your ship and the input device move in similar circular fashions.

Compensating for Something Small
It's possible to get used to sudden bursts and halts in speed as you weave in and out of certain death. It's possible to compensate for your ship's inability to change direction faster than in 0.2 seconds. It's possible for the mind to calculate everything happening on screen, tacking on an additional 0.2 seconds of leeway knowing that this one game was designed to feel more believable.

Back in the 56k modem days (33.3 for moi), we had to know when to let go of our sniper rifles' triggers in TFC, assuming the intended target would continue his trajectory and land under that big red spot just as the lag caught up and registered a hit. That was unnecessary skill, but we compensated. My point is, we shouldn't have to make that compensation, especially if the reasoning is because the developer(s) decided to make things not as responsive as they could have been.

True, there are plenty of instances where a little bit of intentional lag is passable, but when input-results become too delayed, the game isn't even worth getting good at. An exceptional exception is found in Mushihimesama Futari 1.5 (gazuntite) for Xbox360. The game intentionally creates gamespeed lag when too many bullets/killer insects are on screen (so as to emulate the arcade version). Your beetle-ship still responds faster than Lassie at an unsupervised well, but the whole game is slowed momentarily, allowing you to make even Neo a bit jealous.

Shameless Plug
And for those of you who were patiently waiting this whole time to make a comment about my own shmup's ship taking a little too long to move back and forth, I know. Trust me, I know. I obviously had my reasons, but I don't think they really make a difference at this point (especially after having rambled for much longer than was needed for something you already knew). If I ever make another shmup, rest assured you'll be stopping on dimes and moving at ~1.414 times your maximum speed all day.

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

How My Grandfather Won The War: Designing for One

2009-12-03T19:22:00.009-05:00

Movies =/= Games
You can spend your whole life enjoying something made by others, but it's not until you try to make one yourself that you realize how much effort needs to go into it. This goes for any craft, job, or project. My main focus here will be on games, though all forms of entertainment are within acceptable bounds for my thoughts. I mean, it would be so cool to only have movie directors write reviews of their peers' works, but then they'd be talking about aspects that we, as an audience, wouldn't really appreciate/understand. That's why I will accept Rotten Tomatoes and my local newspaper for what they have to say, since they represent the common movie-goer. Though as with anyone's opinion, it's just an opinion.

There are a lot of factors that go into enjoying a movie or not. The experience of movie-watching has enough to do with the surrounding environment, people, and events leading up to that 2-hour moment as the movie itself. Personally, I thoroughly enjoy the Super Mario Bros. movie each and every time I see it, despite the horrible reviews from critics and Bob Hoskins himself. I was a kid and anything magical that had to do with my Nintendo was a winner in my book.

But that's movies. One needs only a comfy seat and attentiveness to let the magic happen. At the very least, every person that watches a given movie is (more or less) watching the exact same thing (there are matters of screen size and audio fidelity, though insignificant at best). Such is not the case for games. Games are designed to follow a certain guideline of events and plots and adrenaline moments, but no two players are going to have identical experiences (or rather see the same series of events). That is precisely why a review of a game is more like one account of an experience out of many. I suppose you could count the different experiences that individuals would get out of a single movie, but at least they all watched the same thing. A novice to racing sims who constantly crashes into walls will dislike the game for entirely different reasons than a veteran who looks down upon the lack of tune-up features and varying strengths of snow tires.

The Competition
Thus we have finally arrived at what you came here to read: a brief peek into my mind when creating my recent entry for JayIsGames.com's CGDC6, How My Grandfather Won The War. I had been meaning to enter the prior competitions but had too much schoolwork on my lap to convince me I could complete whatever I designed. This time, school was summed up into a diploma on my wall, and my 9-5 job had yet to show its menacing cubicle-shaped face. The time was now (i.e. then).

The steps toward creating the game out of thin air were a matter of balancing two factors: the theme of the competition and what I could actually make. The theme was "explore" and I was in the mood to make a shmup (shocker, I know). I figured that the idea for scrolling across a plane wouldn't cut it for exploration, and an arena shooter would firmly leave the player in one area, so I decided to create a mechanic that would reveal an alternate vision of the world through which the player would travel. To simplify that thought: The player shoots something that opens up paths to survive. In essence, the player would both be exploring how to get past each obstacle, and would be uncovering some visual piece of information to make sense of the world.

I wanted this mechanic to not only be in the spotlight, but to also be one of the few things to even worry about. That's why I chose to not have the player be able to move horizontally, so that more brain power could be used to focus on shooting. I also removed many of the standard conventions of shmups, including bombs, scores, and upgrades. The only HUD in the game is a single bar that decreases as the player rapidly shoots. Otherwise, the gameplay itself is the star of the show. In essence, this shmup was more of a dodge-em-up, in that you cannot destroy obstacles directly with your shots. You can only evade.

This made for some very fun brainstorming. Each of the obstacles in the game were specifically designed to cater to a different type of necessity of avoidance: the spikes are static and only appear at the edges, the flames create a vertical wall, the swinging tentacles create sudden and immediate danger to their left and right, etc.

Stream of Consciousness
The story itself was loosely based after the emotions I felt as a kid when hearing stories from my grandfather. They were outlandish, unpredictable, and quite enjoyable. The build-up of the story was so fun that it oftentimes made the ending lackluster in comparison, perhaps because I knew it was over at that point. This retelling of my childhood emotions through stream-of-consciousness is why nothing in the game really belongs together: orange spiky bursts followed by ambiguous tentacles, followed by a wave of shurikens. It's also why I chose to go with a cardboard theme, to solidify the child-like feeling of the game, and to hopefully endorse an exploration. That, and I tried the style before and really enjoyed it.

There was just one problem: the game was really hard. And even worse, I had designed it exactly as I had envisioned, leaving me at those dreaded crossroads of changing the gameplay to find something of equal merit that would satisfy a more acceptable difficulty. Now, this type of dilemma is no stranger to me, as I spent 18 months revising my Computer Animation thesis at Ringling until enough people were satisfied with it (basically, just the faculty, as friends always "loved" it and my partner and I were concerned enough with meeting deadlines while making changes and maintaining our original pitch as much as possible). The point is, change is good, and it's especially good when you have more and more people test out your game before it gets sent out to the masses for rapid-fire rating and [dis]approval. My game most certainly succumbed to a lack of playtesting before submission, resulting in me taking the easier, less effective route: build around the difficulty and cater to the skilled.

I realized that eventually, the player would run out of "juice" for shooting and inevitably be forced to dodge the oncoming obstacles manually until the meter refilled enough. Since I had no way of knowing where this would occur for each player, I made sure to design the entire game so that it could be flown through without shooting once. That's where I got the idea to reward the player for beating the entire game without shooting (a feat that, one month after submission, has been achieved publicly by less than a dozen people).

The majority of players were getting stuck in the first few seconds of the game. The reason? A life system that starts at 3, cannot be replenished, and forces the player to start at the beginning of the game after 3 deaths. Couple this with a foreign shooting mechanic (new to me, too) and it was a recipe for limited progress. I at first found this "within acceptable bounds" since the game takes less than 6 minutes to play from start to finish. The community at JIG was overwhelmingly verbal about this issue, so I submitted an update that would only set players back to the latest checkpoint upon game over. On top of that, the first two deaths became freebies, as the player would continue from the point immediately after the obstacle that caused his or her death (sans the boss battles).

My Personal Bruce Willis
I immediately saw improved results from players who persistently attempted to get through it, and I appreciated their efforts that much more. I knew from the beginning that this game would not be enjoyable by all, playable by even less, beatable by less than that, and only "truly" beaten by a select few. For some reason, I liked it this way. It reminded me a bit of Mr. Glass from Unbreakable, a villain who would ceaselessly create national tragedies to find the one man who was his opposite, a man that could not be broken (oh, right... spoiler alert back there). Though I really shouldn't gloat about feeling like an antagonist, especially in a medium where people come to get away from the stresses of life. I did get hooked on the feeling. I even designed the music and sound effects to promote simple, enjoyable gameplay in order to lure in the masses until I would find my Bruce Willis.

I did eventually find my Bruce Willis, though he exists in any player who completed the game without shooting once. One JIG member even went so far as to make an entire walkthrough of the game, explaining the tricks to getting around every obstacle, by both shooting and by purely dodging. This intentional difficulty was a risky move by me, especially for a competition where you want to receive the best judgment possible, by both the community and the judges. I did end up winning 3rd place though, and almost every person was impressed with my visuals (thank you, BFA ♥), but very few could say kind words about the gameplay, which is the most important aspect of any game.

The good news is that I agree with them. One member pointed me to a fantastic post at RetroRemakes that basically says, "There is no such thing as too easy." Some games are intentionally designed to be as difficult as possible(nsfw). Others do it unwittingly. And then some games want it to be difficult, but not immediately apparent. I do know that there is a small niche of players who crave masochistic gameplay, but I probably had no business trying to find them at a casual games website.

Oh, and the bad news? It's actually good news for me, but bad for "fans" of my game (you do exist, you do exist...). I'm not going to make the necessary changes to this game, not going to make it more for the masses and ultimately enjoyable by many. It was a competition entry, it served its purpose, I finished it, and I have other games I'd like to create. The good news is that I've learned my lesson on catering to varied skill levels, and am more than happy to (and looking forward to) allow the casual player to jump in and enjoy my work as much as those few dedicated individuals who would not stop at "Try Again".

Feedback Is Everything
The positive, constructive feedback from the JIG community (and partially from ArmorGames, many of whom were from JIG anyway) has been a wonderful help in pushing me in the right direction for my future work. I've had some people applaud my efforts, many more explain why it needed much improvement, and some who are absolutely convinced that it does not follow the theme of "explore" one bit. They all have valid points, and I thank them all for voicing their meaningful opinions, but no comments have as deep an impact on my future work as the collective bunch of 13-17 year olds (I checked; a few are older) that have such helpful words to share as:

"3 words, I... hate it"
"terrible game. one of the worst I have encountered on this site"
"Did your grandfather program this too? 0,5/10"
"Sometimes 'original' doesn't mean much. Take this game for instance, sure, it's unique. A beautiful unique turd. 2/10"
"-99999999999999999999999999/10"

Seriously, if I can win over people like this, then I've gotten everyone else as well. Besides, If I can't look back and laugh at stuff like this, then no one will end up having enjoyed the game. ;]

Also, here's a review from JIG. Now, to work on something new.

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

Ikaruga Pumpkin Carving: Halloween Harmony

2009-10-31T23:38:00.005-04:00

I know this isn't exactly a post that breaks apart the inner workings of gameplay and interprets them while comparing against similar games in a category, but I figure since it has everything to do with shmups (more importantly Ikaruga), and because I spent over 6 hours from gutting to cutting - roughly the amount of time spent writing a decent-sized SHMUPtheory blogpost - then this is more than acceptable to share with everyone. Afterall, it's Halloween. Full video and images after the jump!

It was a pleasure to work on this pumpkin, doing my best to balance the blacks with the whites (or rather the bright oranges with the dark oranges), much in the way that Ikaruga is best remembered. Not only was this project a challenge, but I had an added challenge of trying to stay away from my new TE Fight Stick I got this week, which would have gone to use in the playing of... well, Ikaruga (and maybe some SFIV when I muster up the confidence in Focus-attack-dash-cancelling). However, it's all done and I'm happy with the results.

And to answer the question that didn't just come to your mind: No, none of the roughly 100 kids that came to my door had any clue what they were staring at when they saw this... other than the fact that it was a pumpkin. Enjoy the rest of your Halloween and remember not to eat that candy too quickly!

Ikaruga: Line Graphs Don't Lie

2009-07-09T17:20:00.007-04:00

Graph definitely not to scale.
I suppose this whole fascination came about when I checked the Xbox360 leaderboards for all players in the world who completed Chapter 5 on Hard Mode with a rank of Dot Eater. There is only one. Even on Normal Mode, there are about 14. Chapter 4 has just over a dozen people who have even completed the chapter as a Dot Eater. Don't even worry about score at that point; completion appears to be enough of a reward. Combine this with my curiosity from why I rank so highly in Normal Mode without even touching the last 40% of the game, and the question comes to me: Just how many people play Ikaruga?

The only method I could think of was to scroll through the leaderboards manually. You can't just press UP from the top of the list, so I had to take the long route, 100 scores per screen, for 832 screens. My wireless controller went into sleep mode three times, once every 24,000 players, while I passed the time watching this fantastic tool-assisted speedrun of Mario 3. Naturally, I jotted down some data along the way, as the path to finding the worst-ranked player also reveals all players' scores at the same time.

For the sake of being fair in my analysis, this leaderboard is not a comprehensive list of every Ikaruga player in the world. Obviously, we have people who only played it in arcades (the lucky ones), on GameCube, on Dreamcast, or on an emulator (missing the point altogether). Then, for the people who have the Xbox version, there are those who downloaded it and never logged back in to Xbox LIVE (thereby never uploading a score for the board), those who changed settings from default, or those who only played on Easy Mode, Hard Mode, or a 2-Player equivalent. There are also guest profiles on those 360s that cannot have their scores uploaded to the online boards. Bummer. The point is: Normal Mode through all Chapters using default settings is what most people will play, as it's what happens if you keep pressing the A button at the title screen.

Knowing all of this, with what little merit this list has anymore, we can safely assume this is a good ballpark figure for the community as a whole. After over 30 minutes of rubberbanding the controller (Thank you, Gran Turismo), I can say that there have been 83,279 unique active players in Ikaruga. And the curve for those scores was fairly predictable (see image above). Knowing how brutally the learning curve treats players, the top score of 34.4 million points is quickly cut in thirds to 10.3 million by the 500th player. At 10,000 players, the score is at 1.3 million. From there, it has a steady decline in scores until around the 83,000th player, who has 11,100 points. The dead last player clearly had one goal in mind - to be the very last player on the list - with only 10 points. It appears others have tried to get the lowest score on the board, but many failed with 20 points. So far, only two people know the secret to getting a game over with only 10 points (something I can't figure out myself).

And speaking of low scores, I understand that the game is a tough cookie to play, let alone master, but many of these scores are just horrible. I'm trying my best not to be cocky about this, but if you just shoot at everything that comes at you without switching polarities or using homing lasers, you'll have about 200,000 points in your pocket by the end of Chapter 1, a score that about 20,000 people failed to acquire. If you just hold the fire button down and stare at the screen, you get a game over with 40,000 points, a score that over 4,000 people failed to acquire.

The only reasoning I can think of for these lower scores is that Ikaruga just wasn't the game these people thought it would be. Hype or word of mouth made them get the purchase, but the game was too intimidating, or some kind of Tom Clancy game came out that weekend and swept them off their feet. Everyone dies very early upon first playthrough. And for the next 50 to 500 playthroughs. But the more you play it, the more adept you'll become at simply surviving. These people may have tried, but they didn't continue trying, which is really the key here. Again, not their cup of tea.

An interesting trend I found in the scores is that duplicate scores never really appeared on the list until around the 70,000 player mark. I suppose this is just probability, as there are fewer digits available at this point (five, actually), allowing for fewer possible point totals.

So what have I gathered from all of this? Well, I now know I'm in the top 1% of the leaderboards, but I still have a few hundred hours of practice left until I beat the game. I'd say I've put in somewhere over 100 hours so far in my life. And I'm enjoying every moment of it. There appear to be tens of thousands of people who are no doubt trying their best to get the hang of the game, learning how to chain, how to survive, etc. In perusing forums for the game, I've seen that many beginner/intermediate players are still a little curious just how to go about chaining in the game. I'd be more than willing to put a video together explaining it, so do let me know if you're interested.

I also learned that if you want to be one of the few proud Dot Eaters in the world, give it a go in Hard Mode. I just tackled Chapter 2 last night, successfully pinning my name up alongside 40-some other brave souls in the world. I dare not venture into Chapters 4 and 5, as I'd hate to be the guy that undid the current guy's sole achievement in the world (though we all know it wouldn't happen even if I tried).

And to finish off the night, here's a wonderful little piece of information from the former top-ranking Ikaruga player in the world (now at a discomforting 4th place), who claimed that the game "is a joke," due in part because of how the port of the game to 360 saw the change in direction of the rotation of lasers that spin around a miniboss in Chapter 3. Kind of specific to be upset at the whole game, but I suppose few others deserve to say it than him. I, too, have been plagued by this minor change, yet it remains in the same collection of unreachable hurdles that the rest of the game has been known to present.

So anyway, let me know if a chaining tutorial would be up your alley.

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

The Blame Game: It's Not Me, It's You

2009-06-18T17:21:00.005-04:00

So you're playing Raiden III, and you're just beasting it. You haven't lost a life, your bombs are out the wazoo, and that upcoming boss doesn't stand a chance against your maxed-out Crest toothpaste shooter. You're on top of the world, and then BAM-- You lost a life from some side-swiping peashooter, whose mere existence was dwarfed by your perfect run and blinding onslaught of explosions, medals, and hidden fairies. Was that really the way you thought it would all go down? You know you can't possibly continue this run knowing that you just let that happen to you. Your whole mindzone was destroyed by that one blind shot that snuck up from the rear, just when you thought the world was your bonus point.

I've come across very few shmups out there that result in both me seeing the pitiful end of a beautiful run and also have me blaming myself for the problem. I suppose there are people out there who, in all scenarios, will take a deep breath and say to themselves, "I will do better next time." For the rest of us, I think we've heard the phrase "Oh come on! That's just bullsh--" etc. time and time again.

Let's look at Raiden III. There's enemy ships designed specifically to shoot only horizontal bullets at you. In a game that's a vertical scroller, those familiar can attest that such a move is sneaky and grounds for punishment (to the game, controller, television, etc). It's hard for the eyes to judge whether collisions are going to happen horizontally (maybe one of the reasons the vertical line test in mathematics triumphs largely over any such horizontal equivalents). That's also why horizontal shmups have a pace that is slowed down, for more intricate observations that are much-needed in order to survive. This is also probably why Defender is so difficult. For anyone. And then there are those slow vertical shmups that suffer the opposite: unchallenging patterns in bullets and enemies that make you wish you had a reason to input your initials prematurely. I'm looking at you, Truxton II (but still, ♥).

So let's get to the games where I oftentimes keep blaming myself for a death. We have Ikaruga and R-Type. Both games are largely based upon memorization. Both of them definitely have unfair enemies that shoot horizontally. It's not like I'm warned any better about them coming. It's more about how predictable those enemies are. In Raiden (the series), I have a good grasp over how an enemy will shoot. The variable here is when that shot will be fired. That's really the key. Let's get Ikaruga out of the way and mention that everything is set to a rhythm that never disappoints, allowing you to know exactly when and why a bullet is coming your way. And even if you accidentally use your homing lasers, switch polarities, absorb all of the wrong color, die, and input your initials, whose fault was that? Well, you (okay, me. And it's always during Chapter 2-3). I've died hundreds (probably thousands) of times in that game, and not once have I blamed the game for a death.

R-Type follows loosely along the same lines. Scenarios are predictable enough such that you'll have a steady handle on what's going on around you. I suppose Gradius does some of the same, though sometimes the screen can become hectic enough for me to feel overwhelmed (dev's note: That was the point). I know these are supposed to vaguely simulate futuristic intergalactic space-travel against evil legions of badly-armored spacecraft, where randomness is the norm and dirty tricks are in. But seriously, twitch-based gameplay can really only go so far. If you've 1CC'd any of these unfair shmups, give yourself a pat on the back and go back to acing Death Smiles. I'll continue getting more than enough twitches with a game I have memorized from start to finish, but which I have yet to beat.

Perhaps it's personal preference, or maybe that I'm not fast enough for what those games demand. Whatever the case, I can only take so many doses of it until I've OD'd on failure. But then again, Michael Jordan missed over 9000 shots in his life. Which is why I get back on those horses, once enough time has passed to the point where I forget whose fault it was, of course.

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

Ikaruga: Practicing Faith

2009-06-04T19:48:00.013-04:00

For those of us who've gotten "A"s and "S"s at the end of each chapter of Ikaruga, this one is for you. For those who don't quite understand how to get past that ridiculous symmetrical bullet-dodging section of Chapter 2, this one is for you. For those who haven't gotten into Ikaruga (shame on you and your friends for not getting you into it), this one is especially for you. There's a quality in this game and few others that we've taken for granted. I haven't come across too many games in my time where varying levels of challenge, skill sets, and excitement can all be experienced from the same game without even changing the difficulty or settings. For the sake of simplicity found in Chapter 3: Faith, I'll use the entire chapter as an example of what you may have already forgotten (or soon will be learning).

Chapter 3 contains the longest intro of any chapter, which accounts for it being the most difficult to chain perfectly (Chapter 2 coming in a very close second). There are several pinpoint shots that must be timed accordingly with your position on screen in order to not get crunched by the oncoming enemies... but I think I'm getting ahead of myself. The real joy and pleasure of this game - at least for me - comes from three very distinct moments in realization and accomplishments.

First is becoming aware of polarities and consciously switching to anticipate a future action, whether it be for dodging debris, to absorb bullet fire, or to drain an enemy's health faster. Regardless of your reasons for fine-tuning this ability into the hard-wirings of your brain, there's a moment where you step outside of your body, take a look at yourself, and see how much you've grown adept at switching polarities without having to be told why. You're a shining star in the world - if only for that one moment. This one really only applies to the earlier chapters, as this skill naturally carries over into later levels. The other two are on a chapter-to-chapter basis.

The second moment in memorable Ikaruga milestones is in the feeling of taking down a boss. That doesn't just mean you took down a boss. That means you also successfully understood the majority of what was going on throughout the entire chapter, which is something that does not come on the first try. Even Chapter 1 has its hardships towards the end when two lanes of little guys fall from the middle while two large pods do a ballet about the screen's perimeter, with helpless little you trying to survive the crisscrossing of enemy bullet fire streams. Then there's of course, you know, all of Chapter 4...

The third and most important moment you can possibly have in Treasure's (♥) masterpiece is chaining a level from start to finish. This arrives in varying degrees, from knowing of the chains that should be tackled and how, to actually doing a full chain without losing a life. I don't know about some of you (okay, none of you, so keep in touch), but I never really understood chaining even after being shown the art by a friend. It wasn't until I watched a couple superplays that it at least made sense on paper. It's not until you go in and do it yourself that it'll really click and you'll begin to appreciate the work that was put into this game.

Many other shmups out there have a chaining system of some sort. While they, too, have a strict script of actors that appear on screen, strategically placed for the sake of a specific methodology for chaining, it's never more apparent and satisfying than in Ikaruga. Perhaps it's the simplicity of your firing that allows you to know for sure what it was you just blew up and what's left on screen. Maybe it's your ability to count to three in your head rather than space out your shots hoping that your meter doesn't run low (my fist remains clenched for DoDonPachi).

So let's get back to Chapter 3. Right off the bat, you're presented with a whole screen of dancing foes and these guys that run down the side and turn when at your position in y-coordination notation. Eventually I learned to do some backtracking on the screen in order to fake them out, but the superplay spoke of a different method. Watch the clip below and pay attention to how the double sets of three spinning enemies open up a hole just wide enough for a bullet to get through and destroy all three of the inside ones in a single shot. Also pay attention to how the side guys are tricked into coming for your ship as you lure them in prematurely. Pause at 0:17 and continue reading. We'll take a look at other sections soon enough.

And that's just how you start the intro. The whole screen was cleared, not an enemy was spared, and the chain is unbroken. Gorgeous. Keep in mind that this player is quite flashy with his movements and switches polarity for the sake of collecting a few extra pieces of enemy debris, making his final score a few thousand points higher than the rest of the handful of shmup gods out there who also go for the small details in life. Let's move on.

Below you'll see a section that comes up halfway in the chapter wherein the walls close in, making your area for movement quite tight. As if that isn't enough, gates start closing in on you at staggered positions, requiring you to watch your spacing even further. A series of enemies are found within these tight spaces, not really posing a threat as long as you're constantly firing. Upon the first few playthroughs, they're nothing more than an afterthought. Eventually, once you learn the method for chaining them, the whole sequence is seen in a new light. The formations of their arrival is no mistake, as you must fire a rapid shot at one column, then the other, for shooting straight-on will immediately break the chain. A few spherical stragglers break up the rhythm (our player here releases his homing shot as it yields more points in the long run. That and it's a lot safer than going past the destination hole to single-shot those guys). As for the second set of enemy columns, they may appear similar, but this time they need to be rapidly shot down the middle, as they're now approaching in even-odd formation. Take a look below and then pause at 2:30.

It goes by so quickly, doesn't it? That's probably a good reason why people have such a hard time getting into shmups, but I'll save that thought for another week. In the meantime, let's focus on the next segment. A miniboss appears behind you, rendering your past strategy of hugging the back wall useless (and putting all of your practice in dodgeball down the gutter. Well, at least I hugged the back wall). This forces you up a little bit and closer to a series of closing gates that each have a spherical friend (i.e. foe) waiting in place. Of course we all had enough to worry about, what with the closing gates and big metal thing chasing on our tails, so we just held down the fire button and didn't even worry about those bystanders. Little did we know that we needed to single-shot them all, in order, to achieve a full chain. The genius design of this section is that if you shoot rapidly, your line of fire will skip ahead to an enemy above the closest one, breaking the chain. This requires you to utilize the ability to change rhythms on the fly, weave through gates, stay above the miniboss (which really isn't that daunting. The fear factor is what makes him worth mentioning), and single-shot those suckers right before you have a head-on collision and have to tell Guinness to come back another day to see you hit that world record. Watch below. Then pause at 2:42.

As if that strict set of movements wasn't enough, you also need to remember to move out of the way because that thing that was chasing you before suddenly feels the need to scoot ahead and take control of the situation. Yes, memorization is key in this game, though there's a point at which you stop thinking about what's coming and your mind simply knows. It's hard to explain, but your fingers eventually do all of the thinking, allowing your brain to focus on other things happening on screen. Seriously, I can't be the only one who has a spectator ask, "How did you know to dodge that?" and my only response is, "I'm not too sure... I just knew."

Continuing along, once the miniboss is kaput, a series of seemingly randomly-spawned enemies appear on the screen. And when you shoot one, it only multiplies into two, until the entire screen is filled with a chaotic nonsense of bouncing sphere guys. Well, at least it was random to us at first. There's a very definitive pattern here, and our player below exploits it for all it's worth. He doesn't finish killing them off as this section is just a filler until the boss (or rather, a bonus section as a reward for killing the miniboss earlier than expected. Afterall, the entire game is synced to the soundtrack). Go ahead and watch to the end. We'll discuss the boss battle in a hot second.

Yes, so... a phenomenal performance on the final boss of Chapter 3. Our player's strategy was to weaken the outer units each to the brink of blowing up, then summoning a homing laser that destroys the bulk of them simultaneously. The remainder of them is finished off amongst some mighty angry laser action coming from the core, which is strikingly similar to one of the bosses in Chapter 3 of Treasure's previous shmup, Radiant Silvergun. And speaking of bringing back battles, that miniboss hearkens of another battle from Silvergun wherein you were chasing / being chased by a miniboss. That same battle seemed to evolve yet again in Sin & Punishment. One can only hope these foes make their spiritual reappearance in Project RS3 (or Sin & Punishment 2).

As you've seen (and hopefully experienced), there are quite a few layers of play packed into Ikaruga's deceptively simple design. Strategies change quite a bit once you play on the different difficulties, though the harder it gets, the more you have to achieve. It's design like this that really keeps me entertained, excited, and glad to be a part of the shmup community. Indie developers are constantly finding fresh ways to keep an old genre alive, while a few larger-scale companies out there are still dedicated to providing high-quality adventures in the skies (and seas!) that we've come to love.

And for those of you wondering why I never mentioned the fourth Ikaruga milestone - achieving a one credit full-game completion - I'm still working on that one. I've only been able to get halfway through Chapter 5 on one credit, so some of you may agree that I have a long road ahead :]

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

Where Have All The Shmups Gone!?

2009-05-20T16:27:00.008-04:00

Nothing saddens me more than to continually ask myself rhetorical questions, only to answer them with further questions that answer far less than I'd have hoped. In this case, I'm talking about the age-old question (more like the 15-20 year question), "Where have all the shmups gone!?" Yes, there are many answers I've heard / yelled to myself in the mirror at night, most of which I'll address below. Keep in mind that I'll be looking up no numbers, citing no facts from reference. This is all a fact of opinion, rather than an opinion of fact.

"What are you talking about? Shmups are released all the time. There hasn't been a year yet where no shmups are released. There's even more planned for the future!"
While this statement is completely true, it doesn't take into account the successful nature of said games. There's been a rather steady decline of shmup sales ever since the dawn of videogames. This in itself raises more questions, but I'll try to be brief.
It all started with SpaceWar! in the 60s, an arena shmup (in its most primitive of forms. Still fun to play today as I hear). The next videogame anyone even feels like talking about is Space Invaders, released in 1978. This is easily the game that jump-started arcades in the US and Japan. It became so popular over there that establishments called "invader houses" started popping up all over, specializing in only shmups. Oh, and it also caused a shortage of Japanese yen in the country. Awesome.
As we go through the 80s, we'll find countless innovations and explorations in gameplay that either started in or were done right in shmups: the highscore and life stock in Space Invaders, the bomb in Defender, co-op gameplay in Salamander, everything in Gradius...
There are dozens and dozens of shmups from the 80s that I hold high above almost all other games from the decade, both in arcades and in the home. Yes, it's a rather bold claim, but in good reason. Now, the interesting part is when you look at my personal list for the 1990s. I think there are four shmups I absolutely adore. Possibly three. The rest are first-party titles from Nintendo and a couple gems on Playstation. I really don't want to get into the list for the 2000s. There may be one shmup there, but I'm still deciding.
So, if I have any merit in your minds as someone who loves shmups with an undying passion, it should come as some shock to hear how quickly my list of loves diminishes over the decades. Yes, I've played and enjoyed lots of shmups made in the late 90s up until today, including the ingenius indie releases, but I don't think they even combine to equal the level of respect I have for titles like Galaga, R-Type, Gradius, Radiant Silvergun, and Ikaruga. Yes, EspGaluda is fantastic. Yes, Guwange was a thrill. Yes, Galaga Legions is fun. Yes, Touhou games bring me joy. And yes, Thunder Force III is as exhilarating as it gets with 7 layers of parallax scrolling. But none of them capture that aorta of my heart that still beats wildly for the compassion that was both put into and that I get out of the classics.

"They've probably gone to hide in whatever arcades that are still open."
This is probably more of a commentary on arcades in the USA, as they are still quite alive and thriving in Japan (and possibly France, as I hear arcades are still bustling a bit over there). Most of the arcades I've been to recently do have at least one shmup cabinet set up (and 11 times out of 10, it's the Ms. Pac-Man / Galaga 20th Anniversary cabinet, oftentimes with an uncalibrated joystick). And I doubt that the same ratio of shmups in arcades can be found in the ratio of shmups in the home. Perhaps this is because shmups both gave birth to the videogame and also assisted in bringing it back out of the crash from the 80s (referring pretty exclusively to Gradius here).

"Those were just tests for new technologies in the 80s. We've all moved on to more sophisticated games."
This may be in regards to the graphics, the controls, the difficulty, or even the general idea of shmups. As far as graphics go, I can't say that they faithfully reenact a historical event from 1940s-era Normandy, but I can say they do more than enough to slow down even the most powerful home PCs (here's hoping it's more than a matter of inefficient coding on the developers' part).
For controls, I guess that can get tossed out, as shmups still retain some of the most simplistic controls out of any game. I can't think of any shmup that uses every button on current-gen controllers. Pacifism mode in Geometry Wars 2 requires the user to simply manipulate the left analog stick. Excluding the Katamari series, I'd say this genre takes the cake. Perhaps the statement claims that players want to have to press as many buttons as possible. I hope not.
For difficulty, I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that the Devil May Cry series and the Ninja Gaiden series aren't quite as difficult to complete as it is difficult to clear certain shmups on one credit. Yes, they're all hard, but you don't exactly get to keep retrying the same boss battle over and over in shmups, nor are your movements and actions allowed to be as freeform. Sometimes a militant eye and precision movement is the only way to defeat certain waves of enemies / bosses, as well as a healthy dose of 100s of hours of practice at a time.
As for the generality of the shmup against other successful genres, there's probably a reason why World of Warcraft has over 10 million active subscribers and why I can't even think of ten friends of mine that would enjoy playing / watching / hearing about a shmup. It all has to do with the ease of getting into it. World of Warcraft is a glorified chatroom, the pinnacle and epitome of the ideal virtual place to meet and do stuff. It's all a matter of clicks that aren't always necessarily dependent upon pinpoint precision (save for a few 144-man level-7000 teams that try to take down an invincible dragon).
Microsoft did a wonderful job marketing Geometry Wars into the success story it is today, and shmups appear to be some of the most successful casual games across multiple Flash portals on the Internet. Regardless, though, I don't see any of them becoming #1 on any future lists, including the sales report during the week that Project RS3 is released (as much as this opinion saddens me even further).

"They're still pretty hot in Japan. Go check there."
According to Brian Ashcraft in his book Arcade Mania!, that seems pretty accurate. There are arcades over there that specialize in exclusively housing shmups, and across multiple floors at that. The fanbase in the states is a quiet, underground collective of dreamy lovers stuck in a world that has long left us. We peruse the same forums, talk about our newest highscores, brag about recently-acquired PCBs of the latest Japanese releases, and complain everytime that a new shmup is released on Japanese Xbox360s with region-lock protection (which is just about every week).
In our little world, shmups are still very hot. We all dream of living in a place like Japan (or possibly Japan itself), where arcades are found every couple of blocks, and many of them tout the coveted, noble, and ever-popular shmup of the day. Instead of discussing the weather and the latest professional sports player in court, we instead discuss the politics of Cave's latest release, the joy of dog-hunting in Radiant Silvergun, or the ethics of shooting your own base in Space Invaders. Those of us who've travelled to or lived in such lands share our stories in front of digital campfires / forum threads, giving as many details as possible without saturating the experience.

"What's a shmup?"
A "shmup" is something you played when you were younger, but have forgotten about by this point. You had no greater pleasure each day than to play the latest one and learn all of the tricks to get you further. Your friends enjoyed watching you lose and would quietly admire your skills everytime you took down the level 3 boss without using any bombs. One guy in the back never understood why you didn't just pop in a few more quarters and beat the game, knowing you were so close to the end. To his confused countenance, you reply, "Then I wouldn't be beating the game."
The truth here is that the genre is only getting more difficult to appease the pros who have been long-time, money-dishing patrons. They are the reason the genre still exists at all today. However, this just further alienates those who are vaguely interested, but aren't committed to such dedication just to beat a 20 minute game. That's the real double-edged sword here, one that hasn't really been sharpened correctly yet.

"I don't know."
This is probably the most appropriate answer any of us can give. While we can all point fingers (not all at Madden, but a good amount), it's best to just realize that as of this writing, the glory days of the shmup have come and gone. I think it's just about impossible to bring them back to the status they once had (that being 50-100% of the "market" in the 60s), but they certainly aren't dead. That leaves me to simply look forward to the future of them. And not just shmups, but videogames in general. They're kind of hitting that point where the box needs to be broken and we need to move on to the next great movement in gameplay, interactivity, visuals, sound, feedback, connectivity, etc. I doubt the PS9 is right around the corner, but there's got to be something in between.

"Into our hearts, and there's no escaping."
Aw, isn't that sweet? ♥

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

Boss Rush Mode: Boss Yes, Not So Much Rush

2009-05-12T22:50:00.004-04:00

I'm pretty sure that every time I hear that a game has a boss rush mode, I become much more excited than I should be. Granted, learning that any additional mode is included with a game should raise the excitement bar if even by a small amount, but a boss rush is nothing really to be praised. For those of you who find no greater pleasure than to embrace the boss rush in shmups, I'd love to hear what it is that makes it better than any other mode (well, at least arcade and score attack). But first read through my rambles for some good dirt to fling back.

The basic idea of a boss rush is that you face all of the bosses in a game, in order, from start to finish, with limited to no breaks for refilling health, upgrades, lives, sanity, etc. At a glance, it's a true test of one's ability to face against the roughest sections of each level - the boss itself.

The term itself is either an oxymoron or a redundancy. A boss rush should be just that - a rush. What constitutes something as a rush? That would be the contrast of a calmer state of being elsewhere in a level / game, in this case that would be each level's travels leading up to each boss. Take all of that build-up away and you're left with just intense action with hardly any contrast (not exactly a complaint... yet). An analogy I always enjoyed is that there can't be a superhero in this world without a super villain to validate the other's existence. Contrast. Now, looking at the term from the other side, the boss is the rush. It's like asking someone to pass the red ketchup (please disregard and burn all memories you have of the purple and green ketchup from the 90s, for the sake of both keeping my point valid and letting you sleep at night).

Yes, there are a bunch of other games out there that have boss rush equivalents. I'm pretty sure every standard issue MegaMan has a mandatory reunion of -Mans during the final level (and -Womans, for those of you enjoying MegaMan 9). Klonoa has one, Rez has one, Metal Gear Solid too, and even Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Let's take Rez for example. How I love Rez. I heard there was a boss rush mode, I went and unlocked it, I played it with much glee (initially), and then I beat it. Something was missing. Oh, that's right - the rest of the game that was designed to build up to the bosses. I guess it's a cheap shot to use Rez as an example, as we all know by now that the entire game was designed to be played in one continuous session to allow Mizuguchi-san's personal message of l♥ve to flow through the bloodstream and cause a euphoric understanding of the inner workings of the universe, the predicting of the future, and knowledge of how to get him to actually make a sequel. My point is that the bosses, at least in shmups, were designed to push you that extra mile at the end of each level, when your supplies are diminished and you have little left to live for. Taking away that whole energy-draining build-up not only lets you perform much more triumphantly (at first), but it gives you less of a reason to be excited that you finally made it to the next boss.

One of my few counterpoints to the boss rush is in WARNING FOREVER. Those of you familiar know all too well why this stands as a combatant to the despised boss rush; it's because the game was designed from the ground-up to be just that - a rush of bosses. The idea is both executed and enjoyed flawlessly here, as the intent of each boss is to serve as a level that you work through. Blow off a wing here, dodge a vulcan blast there, and ultimately shoot the core for a fantastic explosion (abbridged version for post-level-5 scenarios).

And so, the next time you decide not to play the entire game, but only eat the candy at the end of each trail, I invite you to also go watch Luke blow up the Death Star, Lando blow up the other Death Star, and Vader toss the Emperor to his infinite doom all in a matter of minutes. Again, it's fun at first, but you'll begin to understand why you appreciated them in the first place when you rewatch Greedo shooting first or C-3PO piggybacking Chewy or Ackbar yelling something about tarps.

And here's video of a shmup with a boss rush. Raiden Fighters Jet, but who cares? I'd rather see the full game. Better yet, I should go play the full game. And I will :]

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

Dual Play: When Playing With Yourself is a Gameplay Mode

2009-04-28T10:02:00.007-04:00

Shmups have, at times, been credited as one of the most challenging genres of games as a whole, if not the most challenging altogether. The simplicity of controls and visuals allows for a heightened level of challenge on the player's part, requiring all of those awesome coordination skills of mind, body, and willpower. So it comes as a kind of surprise that a certain gameplay mode has been implemented into the community, both implicitly and explicitly, that at least doubles the difficulty of the genre's challenge, that mode being what is known as "dual play."

This is not to be confused with "double play," in which two chaps sit next to each other and discuss why their strategy for only being responsible for half the screen isn't working. "Dual play" is a style of playing wherein a lone player (being either exceedingly brave or blissfully ignorant) will take the reins of both of the ships / warriors / boats / schoolgirls / pig women that would have otherwise been piloted by two mortal humans. The mere sight of this spectacle is always a treat for everyone, including the player himself, the spectators who admire such bravery, and the corporate owners of things that accept quarters / tokens / yen.

It would appear hard enough to handle 8-directional movement, a fire button, a bombing button, and a couple thousand bullets careening towards you, but here we have 16 directions of movement, two fire buttons, and two bombing buttons. And a couple thousand bullets careening towards you. This requires many more fingers than one is used to, as the pinkies become the most reliable assets in arcade setups. I can't even imagine what added stresses the brain goes through. It's already doing its thing at maximum capacity for single play, as the right half controls movement and the left half controls firing (and wiping the sweat of victory from the brow). It's not like selecting "dual play" grants your brain an increase in activity (or even possibly 2 more halves for computations). You're stuck with the same two hemispheres of thought you had before, only this time they both control everything. At least to me, this sounds like quite a conflict of nerves upstairs.

It's not too bad for games on Playstation hardware, as the controller allows for the advantage of symmetry to guide control. The thumbsticks control the ships, the front shoulder buttons control firing, while the back shoulders control bombs. I suppose the same is possible with the Wii's classic controller (more notably the improved one that doesn't let your thumbs bump into each other), and the Xbox360 controller can certainly accommodate similar stylings, though breaking away from symmetry with the sticks. The real crowd-pleaser is in the arcades, where both sets of controls are in the same configuration, but your hands are not. With stick on the left and buttons on the right, this means an entirely different story depending on which hand we're talking about. The left hand's pinky and ring finger take control of the ship, while the index and thumb take responsibility of firing and bombing. The reverse happens for the right hand, which I assume has an easier time as the stick requires much more dexterity than pushing buttons.

None of this dual play hand placement interested me until I saw a particular set of videos on YouTube showcasing a phenomenal player (VTF-INO) tackling dual play in Ikaruga. The intriguing part was the inclusion of video of his hands synced to gameplay (and quite appropriately filling in those black gaps on the sides of the vertical display of the game). Oh, and even better - there's that extra button in the game that lets you switch polarity on the fly, furthering the separation of tasks within the ranks of the fingers.

What I'm most curious about is why this gameplay method hasn't been addressed directly. Sure, it's in the two latest installments of Raiden, but it doesn't feel like the game's been designed for this gameplay (which I'm pretty sure it hasn't). It's more of a tacked-on mode that's been added to appease the dual players from arcades who want a similar experience at home. Co-op features are just about as bland as dual play, but at least there was some effort made. In gunRoar, your two boats can connect a tether and fire bullets from the midpoint, requiring much coordination of formations. I believe that's also a feature in Battle Garrega, so the idea's been around for quite a while. And shooting behind each other in many games will create hybrid firepower, making for some fun combinations. However, I still don't feel it's been developed and built upon. At all. How sweet would it be if there were a co-op mode that actually required both players to work along with and depend upon each other? I'm thinking along the lines of the experiences found in Gears of War, Little Big Planet, and Four Swords Adventures. You work together to help each other out; not for the sake of just dishing out twice as much firepower (of which is oftentimes halved in strength, but don't worry about that), but for the sake of helping a player out who will soon be helping you out, only to have the two of you working together to fight a greater evil, the two of you with designated tasks that are required for a successful mission.

As much as I'd like that to happen in double play, I'm not as much asking for the same thing with dual play. It may provide you with guidance for where to place each ship at any given time, but that's just one more thing to worry about (or two, if you're still keeping track of all the elements at hand), let alone being in control of so much maneuvering, dodging, firing, bombing, dying, cursing, etc.

And now, an amazing man with amazing hands.

If you understand everything that's going on in the video, both visually and under the hood, then you must be the player himself. Otherwise, it's probably best to go my route and just smile, nod, and appreciate a spectacular performance.

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

Project RS3: I'm No Fanboy, I Just Appreciate Art

2009-04-21T12:38:00.010-04:00

Project RS3 is the codename for quite possibly one of the greatest shmups ever created. It hasn't exactly been released yet, and the last I heard of it, production on the title has come to an indefinite halt. So why am I prematurely crowning the game for all of its achievements in areas of technicality, artistry, and gameplay? Probably because the other two original shmups they produced have also been deemed "quite possibly one of the greatest shmups ever created." I'm just following the pattern.

This all really amounts to what the company, Treasure (♥), did to the genre with each release. Simplicity is the ultimate theme here, as Radiant Silvergun abandoned the collectible powerups in favor of an RPG-like auto-upgrade system (use it more and it becomes more powerful over time), while Ikaruga tossed out the idea of powerups altogether (unless of course you consider your own personal, evolving skills as a powerup). True, Silvergun immediately gives you access to all seven (yes, 7) weapons from the get-go, but they're really just variants of three main ones (and there aren't any bombs, so I think it balances out nicely). Ikaruga went ahead and only gave you one kind of primary fire and a homing shot that you had to earn in order to use. There's a very fine line between gimmick and innovative mechanic, Treasure's games taking the latter due to their ideal application of usage. Though I do find myself enjoying the magnanimous sprays that other games can grant, there's something special about this table-turning back to the days of simplicity.

The layout of the levels - all of them - are beautiful pieces of work I sometimes regret blowing up as soon as possible, but then again, the act of blowing up those beautiful patterns of enemies and scenery was designed to be just as beautiful. And though these types of games generally need limited instruction and backstory, they provide it. This quickly adds a sense of reason, of why you're flying around shooting the things you shoot. It all starts to make sense why your final battle involves shooting (i.e. dodging) a crystal made of pure evil (something R-Type didn't quite nail the first time around). The story helps drive the action. I have no problem calling these two games a work of art. And in setting off that alarm, a new paragraph about art must ensue.

When I say art, I mean art. It's merely something that I find to be appealing. That's really it. We as humans have been discussing what "art" really is for, what, thousands of years? And no one really has a definite answer. I then question why "games as art" is such a heated topic, when "oil paintings as art" is just as unresolved. Oil paintings are just pigments on canvas. They aren't art unless someone thinks they are, at which point they are "art" to that person. This makes the subject a matter of opinion, which is more than likely my attempt to avoid participating in a since-time-began-long discussion about what makes art art. If Duchamp wants to make art, it's art. If I see a pattern of light coming through trees, it's art. Yet no human crafted that view. Who cares? If I find it appealing above other patches of light through trees, it's art. I could even find art in every patch of light ever. It's an art. And nothing more. So, back to Treasure. Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga are works of art.

Of course I've just branded a FANBOY label across my forehead, but that's really what Treasure does; they make people love their games (if only the general public would give them a chance). This post was originally going to be a review from the future for Project RS3. My feelings towards this non-existent game are so strong, I can almost sense the very things that solidify the game as another "greatest shmup ever." The story will enrich gameplay. The visuals will be simple, yet powerful. The music will be compelling. The controls will be spot-on. The driving mechanic, that "not a gimmick" element that they add will be ingenious, never-before-seen, and yet feel familiar. Gameplay will be easy to pick up, hard to master, and have quirks of design that don't start to create a symphony of gameplay until you really get into the depth of it all. It'll be out-of-print rather quickly, only cherished by those few in the world who really appreciate the art of Treasure's work. Did I just review RS3, or was that also congruent with Silvergun and Ikaruga?(Replayability Tip: read again) More importantly, if a boy creates a cardboard colossus in his living room and strikes its weak points with a poster tube, he is recreating the art that is Shadow of the Colossus. If I go and write a from-the-future general review of Project RS3, am I an impatient fanboy who thinks he knows what he's talking about, or am I an appreciator of art just the same as that boy who calls his dog "Agro?"

Knowing Treasure, I'm happy to announce that I can't predict what they will do with this game. Being unpredictable is their staple. They've consistently been pushing innovation against limitations (and accepted limitations) since the days of the Sega Genesis (or Mega Drive, as I aim to please the international readers out there). They themselves probably aren't too sure what it is that will be RS3 - not until countless variations and experiments are carried out to see what works, what doesn't, and what will ultimately be something we've all been waiting for.

It's all very exciting, but in accordance with the mystery of the company (and all three of its interviews with the public in the last 10 years), the timelessness of patience is the real winner here. I believe the team for RS3 is currently finishing up Sin & Punishment 2 for Wii (the only reason for dusting off my white underdog in 2009), so at least we'll have something in which to indulge, other than lamenting the beast that is Longai-O.

For those out of the know, Project RS2 was later to be known as Ikaruga, though it shares no direct sequel status with RS1. The same goes for RS3, which will undoubtedly don a new title and feature something drastically different than what its predecessors offered. However, it was stated that the game would continue in the tradition of being top-down, vertically-scrolling, with 3D backgrounds, etc. Those are pretty much the backbones, while the rest of the game is a delightful mystery. Although I feel it's safe to say that this guy will make another triumphant return. That and the epitome of all crystalized evil there is in the world.

I have no footage to show, no screenshots, no mockups, no anything. All I can add to this post is a deep breath of fresh air (reader participation dependent), exhaled with a slight twinkle of thought that surrounds the fact that one of these days, the world will be graced by the beauty of Project RS3 (I sometimes wonder if Treasure developers read these kinds of things and take into account how much their pocket-sized community of fans adores their work).

Oh, and Gradius V is art, too.

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

Sinistar: Things I just can't do.

2009-04-14T15:59:00.007-04:00

Just before the end of the first videogame boom, right before everyone thought that "fad" of going to arcades and hooking up interactive video machines to your TVs was just about dead, along came Sinistar, a game designed to instill fear in the minds of children, young adults, and grown-ups alike (or designed to allow you to destroy the greatest entity of evil so-far discovered in the universe; whichever). The game has certainly been ringing in my ears ever since. And I hadn't even been born at the time.

Now, when speaking of "things I just can't do," I'm referring to two very important senses of the human body: sound and touch (thank goodness technology prohibited the scent of Sinistar's eager appetite for U.S. quarters). Let's get touch out of the way, as we all know what sound(s) play an important role in the world of entertainment (even more so than that Wilhelm scream found in every Star Wars movie / videogame / television show / comicbook / cardgame).

Sinistar was the first game to use the 49-way joystick. Holy cow. Fourty-nine ways. I tried really hard to think of any more directions than the standard 8-way joystick already provided that could benefit the player's maneuvering through a starfield. A little Googling and it turns out it's just a 7x7 grid that's more accurate in reading the standard 8 directions. Still nifty. Anyway, the only upright cabinet experience I have available at the moment is in one of those 5billion-in-one machines that seem to think splotching together marquee art from every game into one hectic collage of action is a great marketing strategy to get people to come over and play. Regardless, it uses one kind of joystick to allow control for a wide array of different games. I think it's only a four-way stick, as I can't seem to move diagonally in any game that should allow it (thank you, Galaga, for restricting me to one dimension of movement). For those keeping track, that's 45 ways of direction I'm being deprived of when playing Sinistar. Needless to say, for a game designed around precision movement, being able to move in only four directions makes for some challenging play. I doubt it's just me that's causing almost every sinibomb to collide with a planetoid instead of that glass-jawed mechanical life vaccuum.

And now onto sound.

There's really only one other scream in my life I can't get out of my head that makes me just feel bad on the inside whenever I hear it, that being the howl of becoming a wolf in Altered Beast. It might have been the sudden drop of music for the audio clip, or how the transition animation was just a flickering bird-in-cage setup to make me think the human and wolf were one-in-the-same. Regardless, the event was a positive one, as it meant the player had maxed out his or her powerups and was ready to go beat the life out of Fester Addams.

So, there may be seven very notable quotables to come out of Sinistar's planetoid hole, but the one I speak of is the yell he emits upon eating your ship. It's offensive; it's evil; it's blood-curdling; it's perfect. It makes me want to blow his face up (I love how grammatically incorrect that sounds, yet veterans may have trouble putting it any more accurately). His death call is even in stereo, another feature first seen in Sinistar. There's some dandy fansites out there, as well as an ingenius article titled "The Philosophical Revelations of Sinistar," referring to the character itself, though I must give credit to Noah Falstein for the work he did overseeing the game's completion.

And speaking of Noah Falstein, this here videoclip from ages past refers to an easter-egg hidden in the game. Deep in the game. So deep, in fact, that it isn't really documented anywhere that I can find. Well, anywhere except for an informal interview with Noah from sometime in the (I presume) 90s where he says, "There's an easter egg hidden in the attract mode, triggered by an odd combination of button presses that we've all forgotten, but soon I may have the chance to rediscover it..." I'm sure he's been bugged about this time and time again, but I feel the need to ask once more (because I have a good feeling he's reading this right now) - What is the easter-egg hidden within Sinistar?

There's a good chance this one will never be surfaced, much like the quest to find out what the common thread was between all of those Half-Life 2 teaser videos from 2003-04. It wasn't "the presence of broken toilets," and Gabe Newell's certainly not spilling the beans, so if anyone finds out, please do me a favor and fill me in.

Instead of just showing gameplay to the video, I'll link to a bunch of things - all surrounding Sinistar culture (yes, it's out there).
- Some gameplay (love those explosion sounds)
- The Seven Phrases of Sinistar
- Drum n Bass mix
- and another mix
- Sheena Easton music video where her boyfriend plays Sinistar?

And Noah, if you're reading this:
On the contrary; It was you who made my day.

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

Battle Garegga: More pink flamingos, please

2009-04-01T13:20:00.009-04:00

I don't know about you, but when I play shmups, I hold the fire button down until I either get a Game Over or beat the game. I capitalized "Game Over" because it is most definitely a proper noun. It's the last thing you see upon every play, and all-too likely, the most visible memory you have when thinking back to certain experiences (I shake my fist at thee, Andross). In the case of Ikaruga, the way the game is frozen while you enter your initials (or "AAA" in a fit of rage from missing that 4 mil mark on Chapter 1) and then reanimates back into motion with a mechanical buzzing sound of defeat is all it takes to make me want to come back and prove the game wrong. At least in Ikaruga, I know it's possible to come back and do better and get a little farther. At least the game is beatable when I do my best. I wish I could say the same for Battle Garegga.

Developed by Raizing, the game is one of those pivotal entries in the genre that helped define all of that manic craziness that we know and love. It apparently was a heavy inspiration for DoDonPachi's golden joyride, so why not love it, too? Probably because it hates you. I speak of course of the rank system in the game, an invisible collection of algorithms designed to slowly deteriorate you from the inside-out. Sure, rank systems are in all kinds of games, not just shmups. GTA IV has a dynamic system that changes the difficulty of missions based on how many tries it takes you to complete them. Left 4 Dead heavily uses a ranking system that fluctuates difficulty in real-time based on how well your party knows how to avoid being vomitted on. So why point out Battle Garegga's rank? Because if you just hold down the fire button, dodge every bullet, and collect every power-up, the game will become literally impossible to beat. It simply cannot be done. And it's all thanks to the omni-present rank which oversees your every move.

Unfortunately, the dedicated community over at the shmups.com forums have collected a compendium of knowledge around this one aspect of the game. Unfortunate, in how I now know just what goes into deciding the rank (quick summary: everything). Let's start with collectibles. If you touch a power-up, rank goes up. That goes for weapons upgrades, options (helper pods at your side), bombs, medals, and auto-fire upgrades (big no-no on touching those). If you shoot a bullet, rank goes up. If you use special bullets, rank goes up. Using a bomb, gaining a life, beating a boss, simply existing; it doesn't matter. Rank goes up (Yes, simply existing without dying makes rank go up). The list goes on. Rank is even so evil that it will sneak its way into your next play session, requiring a reset of the ROM or PCB or whatever you may be using to play it in order to get it back to default. The only true way, in fact, that lowers your rank is to die (what a wonderful lesson this game teaches us about life and its hardships). The less lives you have when you die, the further the rank is reduced (excluding having 1 life left, at which point dying will inevitably give the game another chunk of your soul).

This may be bleak news, to find that anything you do in the game in order to survive and get ahead only pushes you further back. If I recall correctly, the final boss to Final Fantasy VII had a similar fate if you maxed out your characters' stats, rendering the battle impossible to win (making it even more ironic that the very final battle with Sephiroth is impossible to lose). I suppose on the bright side with Garegga, you don't have to invest dozens of hours into one game with no backup saves only to find that you can't beat it; that realization takes only a few minutes. The best way to play (i.e. complete) the game is to take your time collecting power-ups, avoiding certain power-ups altogether, only shooting when necessary, etc. Players going for score use this same recipe, though they incessantly dangle their fragile progress in front of the rank system, pushing it as far as it can go without causing an implosion of the game and its local universe.

Fortunately, as with almost all games in existence, there are a few tricks to getting an upper hand. There's a few sneaky ways to exploit massive point gain with some later bosses. My personal favorite is by hassling a flock of pink flamingos that found refuge in a castle, shrouded by a small forest, in the first half of level 2. Your fire disrupts their peace, forcing them to migrate north, at which point spraying them with more bullets / fire can cause your score to become an overnight millionaire. None of them seem to be harmed, so it's okay that I mention finding extreme joy in sending a flamethrowing special move into their haven.

I originally thought this game would be an ideal place to go for a good ole 1CC. Further reading made me not back off, but rather take my time with pacing if I ever wanted a shot at seeing some sort of credits roll. That rank system is just about as in-your-face as Sinistar's ego-centric taunts. At least Sinistar eventually shows his ugly grin.

Because showing a skillful run of this game is a slow and flavor-filled art, even under my respectful gaze, I'll just show you those awesome flamingos instead. They may be hard to see, but they're all flapping away from 0:28 to 0:38.

And finally, I wish the best of luck to Zakk from Hey Poor Player! in his endeavors to get a 1CC in Battle Garegga.

Squares 2: Is [not] a shmup.

2009-03-24T16:01:00.008-04:00

It really shouldn't be a matter of opinion whether a game is a shmup or not. It either falls into the defined characteristics, or it doesn't. However, just like the many anomalies of the English language, so too do the rules of defining shmups (or any video game genre for that matter) delve into the realm of uncertainty.

First off, a "shoot 'em up" is more of what you do in the game, not what type of game it is. The same goes for "first-person shooter," which is simply a point of view and what you do. Calling Resident Evil a "survival horror game" is halfway there, though the survival part is just a tacked-on noun (and honestly, there are hundreds of other games that require you to survive, but don't mention it in the genre). I'm not even a fan of calling games "role-playing games," as I naturally enjoy playing the role of whatever character I'm playing, even Dr. Mario. I understand these genres put extra emphasis and dedicated TLC into their respective areas, but those same characteristics can be found in many other games. In these examples, it becomes clear that we can't simply use the literal meaning of a genre without getting into fisticuffs with ourselves.

That's why I find it interesting that there are games credited as - without a doubt - shmups, yet I can't help but disagree. And then there's shmups that shouldn't be deemed so, but have me welcoming them into the genre with open arms. Take for example Rez, which most definitely has you shooting things up. In fact, it's the only action you can do in the game other than moving across an X-Y plane. Yet I can't bring myself to call it a shmup. Something doesn't feel right about letting it into the genre, knowing all of the other fantastic characteristics that require mentioning. Calling it a shmup removes all of that effort made to hook up the soundtrack to your heartbeat; it makes us not wonder why there's so many different visual styles in which to play the game in one continuous sitting; it makes us not question the purpose of the hard-earned Trance Mission mode. To put Rez in a genre already occupied by so many dissimilar games would be inappropriate. I wouldn't dare place it somewhere it doesn't belong and I won't even mention the "s" word (but I'll gladly link to it). Also of note is how Space Harrier is near-identical in what you do, but I have no problem calling it a shmup.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have Geometry Wars 2. How can this game not be a shmup? You play the role of an abstract ship that flies around, can shoot out what look like bullets, can detonate bombs that clear the screen, and have various enemies to shoot until you run out of lives. That passes my test. Now let's take a look at one of the six gameplay modes, Pacifism, in which you have no bombs, cannot shoot, and must simply dodge the never-ending swarm of quadrilateral foes while collecting multipliers for a high score. This cannot be a shmup, for you physically can't shoot anything, and yet it still feels like a shmup. Granted, it helps that you can shoot things up in the other five modes, but this example brings me finally to a look at Squares 2, by Gavin Shapiro, in which you play the role of an abstract shape that cannot shoot, has no bombs, and must simply dodge the never-ending swarm of quadrilateral foes while collecting black squares (and sometimes circles) for a high score. Sound familiar?

There have been games like this before, including the popular GBA homebrew game bulletgba, which is credited by the author as a "Bullet-Hell Simulator." However, those are bullet patterns right out of famous shmups, so it's too easy to associate the two. I'm focusing on Squares 2 because of how distant it is from the genre, yet it feels right at home. The game itself is not just my favorite addicting Flash game on the Internet (a simple search for "squares" in Google yields the game as the first result, showing a global popularity).

I find shmup charm in Squares 2 in how you have very limited time to react to on-the-fly patterns of things to dodge, all the while trying to collect as many black squares and circles as possible (thus giving you a reason to move and a motivation to survive, other than that shiny high score). And who cares if you have mouse-precision control over the shmup-traditional arrow keys / d-pad / joystick? Who cares if there's no end to the game? It's an endurance test (unless of course you're a cheater). The design of the game also helps out in its success: eye-catching red objects must be dodged, circular powerups / powerdowns stick out like sore thumbs, an annoying and undesirable buzzer sounds upon your failure, and the addictive audio crack that is Daft Punk plays on loop forever as you struggle to outdo yourself.

It's a beautiful formula that works to improve both your reaction time and how quickly you can interpret rapidly-changing patterns for the purpose of survival (a skill most definitely transferable to a traditional shmup and even reality). Keep in mind that the game is not perfect. The two biggest factors that take away from its appeal are how red squares sometimes spawn under black ones (quick fix: always have red squares at a higher depth than black ones) and how there are red circle powerdowns at all. If I had the choice to either touch a red square (knowing it ends the game immediately) or touch a red circle (knowing I'll continue with the game but suffer a minor penalty), I'll always choose the red circle. Why, then, are the red circles treated as these special-case "watch out for us!" entities, when it's the everyday red squares that are the real threats? I suppose only Gavin himself can fill us in.

The point I'm trying to make is that putting a game into one genre can be tricky and oftentimes unjust (a point also made by Mike Lopez from Gamasutra in relation to the racing genre). I like my shmups top-down, vertically scrolling, with lots of explosions, and a memorable experience that makes me wish I had more time in my life to perfect a playthrough... but that's just me.

Normally, I'd link to a video of the game at hand for those unaware of how it looks in motion. This time around, it's much more appropriate to just post a link to the game and have you play it yourself.

Speakers up, mouse area clear, and eyes alert: Here's Squares 2.

[cross-posted to Gamasutra]

Raiden III: That poor, hapless driver

2009-03-17T09:44:00.016-04:00

Having much more to do with the morals and decisions of warfare than those of shmup mechanics and the did-you-ever-notice spiels I usually blurt out (although this entire post is about something I'm wondering if you've ever noticed), I'm interested in just what was going through the heads of the developers at Moss when they decided to allow you to kill an innocent bystander (actually a driver, but keep reading) in Raiden III for a rather uneven compensation.

The whole scenario unfolds within only a minute of starting your first mission. You begin soaring over what looks like a desolate and war-torn city, already in the midst of destruction and chaos. The only movement on the ground comes from tanks that are quite aggressively firing at you. All of a sudden, atop one of the highways, a red compact car blindly roars by from left field, entering the crossfire. Naturally, you'd just want to blow up everything in front of you, but on this specific occasion, you're blowing up much more than an enemy; this driver was trying to save his own life.

You may be wondering why I even care about that car. For all I know, it could have been driven by one of the generals of the opposing force, or even be a pilot running late to the hanger bays that morning. However, since it fires no bullets at you and simply wants to use the highway as it was originally designed, I can't help but feel guilty whenever I destroy it. The payoff is certainly not worth it, a measly 1000 points in exchange for his death. I eventually played through with the intent not to blow him up, and guess what? The car swerves out of the way of an oncoming tank before exiting the screen. He clearly was in a rushed, panicked confusion during this battle. And you just went and blew him up.

This begins to make me wonder why I don't care about blowing up other by-standing things. In DoDonPachi, entire warehouses of who-knows-what are destroyed, simply for the pleasures of watching explosions and collecting stars (and possibly uncovering a fragile skeletal bee). In Guwange, the player sometimes blows up entire wooden watchtowers in 14th Century Japanese villages (while at a casual strolling pace, mind you). However, in none of these situations do the presumably destroyed individuals bare a soul, a will to live, or even a rather dashing vehicle.

I couldn't help but compare this fascination with the destruction of life to the 1996 movie Independence Day. Though destruction of innocent life goes on throughout the whole film, I feel quite differently when those immature alien-inviting New Yorkers are decimated as compared to how compassionate I am for the survival of Jasmine's dog Boomer when escaping a flame-engulfed tunnel (yes, I know - I'm just as shocked as you are that someone actually uploaded a screenshot of the very moment to which I'm referring). The point here is, we as an audience were swayed into having little-to-no emotion for the New Yorkers (though still just as innocent as those who weren't inviting the aliens) and had much love for a dog trying to escape fire alongside co-star Vivica A. Fox. Why did we feel this way? Because the dog wasn't a bad guy at all. He wasn't twisted or evil or filled with even the slightest hint of bad intentions. And neither was that red car.

For the sake of tying things back to shmups, here's actual footage of someone blowing up the unfortunate vehicle (@ 0:53). Note how an entire condo is blown up immediately afterwards and how little I care about it.

Know what's even worse? In Dual and Double modes, there are two cars careening to their doom atop that highway. A moment of silence for the blue car, too.

[cross-posted to Gamasutra]

Warning Forever: Your own personalized Frankenstein

2009-03-09T15:08:00.015-04:00

There's no questioning that you are solely responsible for the personal Hell that you put yourself through when playing Warning Forever, my favorite entry from Hikoza Ohkubo's glorious (yet still in its infancy) library of experimental shmups. And rather than pay hundreds of dollars to legitimately play the games I've covered earlier (Radiant Silvergun being worth more eBay dollars than the number of max chains I can ever get in Chapter 2 of Ikaruga), this baby is free of charge and worth every second of your time. To get back on topic, Warning Forever (or in homage to Mr. Ohkubo's lust for the caps lock, WARNING FOREVER) is really the masochist's shmup, as it equally gives back what is put into it (and unfortunately for us all, there's no "give hug" button).

The real charm of this give-and-receive relationship with the boss (which happens to be the only enemy you fight in the game) is how your direct actions influence how it decides to evolve for the proceeding stage. Shooting its legs out makes it come back next time with fancy shin guards; demolishing its arms finds its return with a mighty thorax; and should you happen to be killed by a certain type of weapon, you can be sure it'll beef those bad boys up next come-around. There's always a fearful joy that comes about when the next boss presents itself, slightly upgraded, with just a little bit more mascara around the edges (a continuously-despised-yet-you-still-admit-to-enjoying it presentation paralleled only by the timeless Madonna). It's interesting, then, to note that it's never quite known how the boss will evolve its form, yet you just witnessed yourself perform every dodge, shot, and hit that influenced how it would go shopping for new body parts in between the last level and the current.

In this regard, you're essentially creating your own personalized Frankenstein that has no other pleasure in life than to destroy its maker (and for you bookworms, I realize I should be referring to the boss as a "personalized Frankenstein's monster," but for the sake of what Hollywood did to the name and how much more pleasing my version slips off the tongue, you'll just have to make the best with what you've got). Irony sets the tone with the coming of each stage, as the boss continually becomes better and better at pinpointing your strategies and weaknesses, all while your ship is never upgraded, save for your fingers' abilities in dodging and shooting the core.

And on the topic of finger precision, there's more to the innovations list than the player-driven boss evolutions, that being the alternate firing method. Falling into the category of an arena shmup (wherein full 360-degree movement of player and enemies are integral to gameplay), it would have been ideal (and comfortably cliche) to have a set of four keys controlling cardinal direction of movement and an additional four designated for direction of fire. This has been simplified to four keys controlling all of the above via simple, intuitive gestures of the ship; moving forward and back widens and narrows the cone of fire, respectively, while strafing left and right rotates the cone. Firing locks it in place so you can keep your configuration while maneuvering through what inevitably becomes a dance around some heel-lickin' bullets. The design is simple, quick when needed, and long-lasting when working perfectly (though it does take a few run-throughs to get the gist of it. I suppose simplifying something more complex that's already accepted has that associated nature).

Another way to think of this game is that it's really just a "shmup boss designer" with a very interactive interface, that being your ship getting blown up more than you'd like to mention. The countdown timer, incessantly ticking in the corner, is certainly no aid in calming your nerves upon witnessing each grandiose rebirth of your recently-defeated foe, though it does add to how many beats per minute your heart reads when watching the title screen fade back into its mesmerizing flight across an abstract grid (Easter Egg Alert: The grid in the background can be controlled with the arrow keys, giving you a third entity to control with the same four keys. Nifty.).

Here's a run that shows the meaty mid-section of the game (bypassing the slower beginning stages and not spoiling how vastly large that sucker really gets). And if you look closely, you'll see that cone of fire I was talking about. It eventually blends in seamlessly.

[cross-posted to Gamasutra]

Ikaruga: Eating dots for a healthier life

2009-03-02T14:30:00.007-05:00

For a game like Ikaruga, the concepts of meticulous memorization of movements, skillful execution of polarity-switching, and perfected timing are but a few of the many necessary ingredients for a successful playthrough. I don't know about you, but doing all of this is as stressful to my body as it is thrilling to succeed in (I can't be the only one with shaky wrists and a few beads of sweat on my brow after completing Chapter 4 on one credit). It then comes as a sort of shock to find that there's a hidden method of implicit play that comes from not firing a single bullet. For those familiar (I can sense a few heads nodding with a grin), feel free to relive your experiences in this post; for those new to the idea, I invite you to learn about one of the most calming and soothing times you'll ever have in a shmup. This is all about becoming a Dot Eater.

In similar fashion to collecting dogs in Radiant Silvergun, there's a secret ranking that is achieved upon fulfilling the requirements of never firing, but rather absorbing enemy bullets of your current polarity, appropriately named Dot Eater!. Because your score would be so pitiful compared to your score if you had gone for max chains, it's nice that the Dot Eater! ranking takes the place of the standard grading system (of C through the makes-you-look-good S++).

The way in which one plays as a dot eater is entirely up to that person. You could try and collect as many dots as possible, or see how seldom you need to move in order to survive. The first (of multiple) times my jaw dropped into self-discovered realization was in finding that the entire intro to Chapter 1 can be played without moving, or even changing polarity for that matter. The true beauty of enemy patterns and bullet fire comes out in full choreography, blossoming across the screen and exiting with as much grace as your involuntary arcs and passive dodges throughout each wave. Boss battles must be played out for the entire time limit, allowing you to appreciate the balance and harmony of bullet patterns (minding the oscillating swiftness of the bosses as they dance above you). Though you're still required to pay attention and act accordingly when needed, the fact that you only have to press one button to play greatly simplifies each chapter, effectively allowing your brain's extra processing power to see what you've actually been dodging all these years.

I've even noticed that my breathing patterns are rhythmically tied to the ballet of maneuvers, a detail only apparent during the scoring screen following each chapter. The constant portrayal of the yin and yang throughout the game (can't forget that sweet tattoo on Buppousou's main body) shows its true form when everything from the game is kept intact, as if you were a passive entity moving through a balanced world, which is pretty much what it boils down to anyway. It feels as if there are equal parts of black enemies, black bullets, white enemies, and white bullets.

And speaking of passively moving through the world, there comes a point in Chapter 2 wherein there is a wall of impenetrable and polarized blocks, none of which can be destroyed following the way of the dot eater. The solution is ingenious, involving the precise positioning of your Ikaruga in between the cracks of any two blocks - a feat with a grace window of only a few pixels. The result? You effectively grant yourself a joyride through wall after wall of obstacles, as if you're behind the scenes, watching the play unfold from backstage. Demonstration here. I still wonder what it would feel like to dot-eat through Chapter 5, but something seems to continue stopping me every time.

Below is a complete DotEater run through Chapter 1, executed pretty nicely. Keep in mind that the experience I described above won't be seen in this video - you really have to go play for yourself. Not to worry, as the game is available on Dreamcast and Gamecube as a collector's item, as well as on Xbox Live Arcade for the why-don't-you-own-this-already price of $10.

We'll meet again someday soon :)

[cross-posted to Gamasutra]

Sin & Punishment: Reading between the dimensions

2009-02-25T13:36:00.001-05:00

Deviating from my undying love of vertically-scrolling shmups (Tate mode forever ♥), I'd like to take a moment to observe a peculiar behavior of mine in Sin & Punishment. There's a section of Scene 2-1 (or as I like to think of it, the one after you take part in drowning Tokyo in a fiery sea of magma) wherein you have to defeat a miniboss that spews out an array of candy corn bullets. For whatever reason, I always find myself reorienting the camera, in my head, to be a top-down perspective, allowing me to dodge all bullets with ease. It seems way more difficult to view the bullets as is - a barrage of near-overlapping oranges that grow larger.

It makes me wonder, then, why Treasure (♥) decided to add this section of the game (to which I can't seem to find a similar one elsewhere). Level variety and their clever use of space aside, this seems apart from all of the other bullets-coming-at-you / creatures-crawling-towards-you stylings of seemingly everything else in the game. It could be that they originally tried out this bullet pattern and found that a closer camera made it too hard to see what's coming, or even the inverse - that their 3rd-quarter camera perspective allowed them to make more complicated patterns. And so they did.

The rhythmic pulsing of the bullet waves remind me heavily of a section in Chapter 2 of Ikaruga, shown here in a near-flawless run. The player must daftly maneuver through various symmetrical waves of bullets that need to be dealt with in one way or another. Although, in Ikaruga's case, the challenge here is in maneuvering through the unstoppable waves, while you were expected to obliterate the entire miniboss in S&P (to put things in very general terms, you dot-eating max-chainers out there).

Another way to think of this situation is to think of your character as a ship that has the added ability to "jump" (pun definitely intended) through different Z-depths, effectively dodging a particularly pesky array of life-stealing orange cones. True, this has been done before as far back as 1942 (the game, not the year) and Zaxxon (the video game, not the board game), but in this case you get to do it with a complicated control scheme.

Below, that very section of 2-1. I suppose this player wasn't thinking in the top-down fashion, hence the numerous errors. On the other hand, he seems to ace the subsequent sections, so I'm at a loss.

[cross-posted to Gamasutra]

Radiant Silvergun: Takin the dog for a walk

2009-02-16T21:16:00.014-05:00

Going on side quests has always been something fun in videogames, from their gratuitous presence in MMORPGs, to their hidden subtleties in other games. They're usually carried out for the sake of gaining something of value, something that makes the trip worthwhile that makes the rest of the game even more fun. Surely there wouldn't be a quest in a game that gives you nothing other than bragging rights... right? Although I'm speaking specifically of the TopBreeder ranking in Radiant Silvergun, collecting dogs technically gives you points as you collect them (some worth even 1000 pts!!!), so there's at least something to be had whilst trying to collect them all.

For those not in the know, the TopBreeder ranking is acquired by collecting all 30 dogs hidden throughout the game, in one play-through. Dogs are always hidden, needing to be uncovered by your lock-on weapon. They give off a charming little "woof" that I suppose is a reward unto itself, if you happen to like dogs - the kind of dogs that require you to go out of your way amidst hundreds of oncoming enemy obstacles with the risk of losing that 1CC you've been numbing your rump over since you finished dinner the night before.

Nevertheless, this is something I can only assume is an extension of the director's personal life, possibly a life of training and breeding dogs. It's only natural for a game designer to want to take these "slices of life" and implement them into the game for a richer experience. In this case? I'm not so certain that collecting a score and a half of dogs adds to the experience of trying to destroy the root of all evil in the world (an abridged backstory of Radiant Silvergun), though the quest in itself gives you one more thing in the game to become obsessed about perfecting. At least it's not a feature that was supposed to be an inside joke, but ended up becoming frustrating to the rest of the world.

There are so many different bonus quests that could have been added to this game. At this point, I could either go in the direction of listing more relevant quests or of listing even more oddball quests. Choosing the latter, I'm wondering why they didn't also include "porcelain ornament collecting", "replicas of the Wonders of the Ancient World collecting", and "prime factorizations of odd Fibonacci sequence numbers... collecting". Whatever. It's an added feature that was clearly odd enough to gain attention, optional yet functional, and popular enough to be talked about over 10 years after its initial release. Maybe I'm just looking forward to the equivalent feature to come with the arrival of project RS3. That's actually the primary reason I bought an XBox 360. One day, it shall be ours. Until then, go get 30 leashes and prepare to scour the depths of time and space for those adorable woofs, once again.

The magic happens when Lassie is captured at the 0:33 mark. Bottom right. Look closely.

And as always, be attitude for gains.

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

Galaga: When going left isn't always right

2009-02-10T21:26:00.005-05:00

There comes a time in every gameplay type's lifespan (usually occurring in its days of infancy, namely during the golden age of gaming) wherein key choices by the developers - oftentimes "happy accidents" - result in a gameplay mechanic that forever becomes a staple of every proceeding offering in that category. Since these types of behaviors are taken for granted and are as much a part of our lives as the stale taste of mushrooms is to Mario's mustache - especially in our seventh generation of games - I'm having trouble giving examples other than the one I'm about to discuss, that being the "fake out" in Galaga.

First, allow me to define the "fake out." This is a simple maneuver involving you, the player, to position yourself strategically on the screen such that the enemies' AI will think that's your chosen destination in which to chill for a while. Suddenly, you move in the opposite direction of your false dwelling, making for advantageous odds in your favor, whether they be for points, a power-up, having less to deal with, or simply to survive.

I speak of the "fake out" so fondly because it's a very important ingredient of our shmup lives. I've found that the very first implementation of its usage (and necessity) was in Galaga, released in 1981. Space Invaders may have come first, but all shots fired by the aliens were random (or at least unrelated to how awkwardly you hid behind your own bases in fear of losing too early in front of your friends). Galaxian may have come earlier, but its attack formations were too cosiney, allowing for easy escape. And for those toting the Xevious love, that didn't come along until the following year, so credit goes to Galaga. That was the first shmup that required you to perform the coveted "fake out" in order to survive.

The setup is rather simple: A legion of enemies on the left side of the formation are just itching to dive in succession after your precious, quarter-starved bounty. You start to move towards the left, making it seem as if you're playing the safe route, surfing inside their tunnel of pain. They immediately change course, aiming right for your cockpit, both bullets and enemy ships glaring towards you. Suddenly, and without much reasoning, you dart towards the right - the very place they used to be going, but simply can't go to anymore (not because they spent time, money, and energy making on-the-spot changes in ship formations and coordination, but because they were programmed to stop following you once they've already plotted their course) - thusly rendering you safe, without worry of bullets, enemies, or even the dreaded forced-abduction with no lives left.

Here's a little taste of the subtlety that is the fake out. Note the subliminal one at 0:36. Just beautiful.

Oh, and on a side note: Awesome a bit?

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]

Imperishable Night: Easier challenge means more adrenaline?

2009-02-04T12:59:00.014-05:00

In Imperishable Night's second level boss battle against Mystia Lorelei, there is one phase of the battle wherein most of the playable area of the screen is shrouded in darkness, despite an already hectic array of bullets dancing about in all directions (which also can be considered a clouded area of bullets, giving me even less content to speak about). All you have to work with is a small circular area surrounding you, forcing you to focus moreso on bullet dodging rather than shooting the boss as a top priority. I've commonly found myself leaning to the edge of my seat, sitting perfectly upright, licking my lips in anticipation, and giving off a wry smile that invites the game to "bring it on."

However, I sometimes stop to think why I get so excited over something like this. At first impression, it feels as if this phase requires exceptional reaction time and swift maneuvering in order to survive (both of which are certainly true), but for a few reasons, this phase is far easier than the rest of the battle.

First off, you have only a small area of the screen to worry about paying attention to, as opposed to the entire screen otherwise (but in my eyes, the player need only worry about this immediate surrounding area to successfully survive in any situation, sans unscheduled evacuations to other locations).

Second, in viewing the entire screen of bullets, the eye will quickly locate the bullets that are an obstacle and that pose an immediate threat, negating all others. Players of this game specifically know that early patterns of bullets will be in entirely different configurations by the time they get to you below.

This brings me to question: Why does this portion of the boss battle bring the most tension, excitement, exhilaration, etc., despite it simplifying the game and bringing me to the most primitive of mechanics (the process of movement )? I suppose it's in the presentation. You're forced to watch this ominous, dark clouded area swallow up your battlefield, leaving you with little to hold onto by the time you gain back control. And then once you complete that phase, the viewable area becomes even smaller, making you feel as if there's no room to even breathe, let alone dodge seemingly hundreds of bullets.

Keep in mind that this phase would have failed design-wise if it weren't for a set-rhythm of bullets that are repeatable and not tied to player position. Thankfully, the barrage of sudden pain spikes is known to be escapable, a feature that makes the entire experience worthwhile and memorable.

And now, a section of the Level 2 boss battle of Imperishable Night:

[cross-posted on Gamasutra]