RF Generation Message Board

I'd like to preface this topic by saying a bit thanks to everyone who is participating in the June 2018 Shmup Club inaugural game, R-Type! I know it's a difficult game, and not for everyone, but it seems like a lot of folks have jumped on board, which I'm very pleased to see. As much of a nerd as I've always felt, for clinging to this genre of games, well past its popularity cycle, it's encouraging to know that there are plenty of folks who enjoy these games like I do. Having said that, as both a game player and collector, I know that shoot-em-ups can often become expensive after their initial release has sold out. Case in point: some of the original PlayStation shooters, even those that were less expensive budget titles, have gone up in the last couple years. As such, it should be understood that some of the games chosen for this monthly group will be more expensive. Some of them will be multi-platform, and that's how I'm starting out. I wanted to make the first couple selections more accessible, and give everyone plenty of opportunities to jump into the fray, without having to drop a lot of money for a game they don't own. However, in the future, we will definitely need to balance less expensive games on Steam, or other digital platforms, with older, more expensive games that some of us likely already own, but others who may be interested may not.

With that in mind, I'm wondering if we should develop a system, whereby we can determine a price range of games. Initially, I'm thinking a 3-tiered approach. The low end could be something like $30 or under, mid-range would be $31 to $60 (around original retail prices for most things), and then the high range would be anything that has gone up in price enough to be somewhat prohibitive. As of this post, a game like Thunder Force II can still be had for under $20, and you could expect to pay $30 or $40 for Silpheed on the Sega CD. In contrast, Gun Nac, which is one of Pam's favorites, is going for insane amounts of money now. The store in my state which has a copy has it priced at over $200, currently. Famicom copies are cheaper, but not everyone has the ability to play those. Of course, there are plenty of inexpensive games on Steam, a lot of digital releases on PS4, Xbox One, and Switch, and also some free games out there, such as classics like Stargunner and Tyrian 2000, to doujin titles like Blue Wish Resurrection and Cho Ren Sha 68K. I want to have a balance, but as many of the classics as we can fit into the mix, I would like to do so, without turning people away. Please let me know what you all think, and how you'd like to approach this balance. This 3-tiered system would help potential players identify the cost of participation for any single-platform games, or games that are expensive, no matter where you play it, and help make better purchase and participation decisions.

Secondly, I know I arbitrarily picked the first game, and now the second game, but going forward, I'd like to involve everyone who wants to participate. I thought about doing a poll each month, toward the end of the month, to find out what we want to play the following month. There are times when I may select a game, strictly because it's something I want to cover, but I would like to open up the ability for folks to chime in on what they'd like to play. How does everyone want to approach that? Do we want to have people throw out suggestions and then make a poll based on those games, OR would you want me to make a poll based on the type of game it is, and choose that way? This would be something like the following:

• Horizontal Shmup
• Veritical Shmup
• Hybrid Shmup
• Borderliner (i.e. rail shooter, run 'n gun, etc.)
• Arena shooter
• Twin Stick Shooter

The other option would be that I could just pick from a list of games I already have, or want to cover, make up the poll, and see which one gets the most votes. We can also do a combination of these things, and rotate through the different methods, just to keep things fresh. I'm just trying to get an idea of what everyone wants.

The other thing I want to discuss is the possibility of doing a Shmup Club podcast! I would really like to discuss the game each month, talk about the game mechanics, different versions, etc. but I need someone to cohost with me, because it would be boring if I did so myself. Is there anyone who might want to help me helm a podcast each month, or would anyone be willing to help contribute on an as-needed basis, for months that they participate? I'm open to either or both, but I would like to do something before too long, so we can begin thinking about how to structure it, and come up with a template. If anyone is interested in helping out with a potential podcast, please PM me and let me know. Thanks again for all the participation this month, and I look forward to continued shmup excitement in the months to come!

I'm not sure what the best way is to go about the selection process, but I'm glad this is coming together. If I think of anything, I'll post.

My interest in participating was to force me to play some of the games I've bought but never gotten around to. I've spent a fair bit trying to get the must owns for pretty much all of the popular consoles before I was priced out of the market. So I've got a lot of the higher end titles, but am just as interested in trying out lower cost titles. Maybe there needs to be a ratio of expensive to cheap, say 4-1 or something like that? I don't think I'll specifically seek out and purchase any games just to participate in this, unless they are something really compelling. So if a game were selected that I didn't own, I'd just skip that month.

As far as selecting titles, a mix of well known and hidden gem type of games would keep me interested. I'd want to hear opinions from everybody participating though, to cover all tastes. Perhaps play a game on the top 10 list from shmups followed by something that's not on the list?

Thank you for the ideas and input. I think a 4-1 ratio might be good. And in that group of 4, I'd probably put both low and medium cost games, because $60 is still a standard for a full price, retail AAA game, of which, most shmups would have been considered until somewhere around the PlayStation/Saturn era. So that would be 4 games at $60 or less, to every $65-$150 title in the bunch. Some concessions could be made, like Radiant Silvergun, for example, since it's available on Xbox 360 for a good price, or games that are on multiple platforms, and an available release is less than the threshold. Another example would be Gradius V - CIB copies go for around the threshold, but it's still available digitally as a PS2 Classic, so it can still be downloaded for a decent price to play through. But I want to balance newer indie titles as well, since there are a lot of well reviewed shooters on Steam and digital platforms that are very inexpensive. Those who don't want to put forth any additional money to join in would be in the same boat as you, 98PaceCar, and simply skip a month. And that's okay - just like the regular monthly play through, not everyone will be able to participate every month. The idea is to make it as accessible as possible, while still aware of the underlying barrier to entry for some games, simply because of cost and lack of availability.

I sticky-ed this one FRO

Many thanks! Is there a way to insert a poll on this topic, or would I have to make a new one for that?

EDIT: Never mind - I made a poll in its own topic  ;D

Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions for what shooter we should play in November 2018? We haven't decided on anything definitive yet, and I would like a few community suggestions, since some of you will have games in your library that you either haven't touched, or would like to go back to. I have a pretty wide range of shmups in my collection, ranging from Atari 2600 to Switch & PS4, and most everything in between. I'm missing a couple heavy hitters here or there, but at this point, I have enough games to last a while. There are also a ton of great shooters on Steam, some of which are viable alternatives to the physical copies which have spiked in price, such as some of the Japan-only Xbox 360 games. No suggestion is a bad suggestion, either. I just want to make sure we're not just arbitrarily picking games, but that we're also catering to those of you who want to participate, so that we make sure to cover some of the games you want to play. Thanks, in advance, for any suggestions!

Always love to play something from Compile.

Good thought! Anything in particular tickle your fancy?

If you want something cheap and accessible, Zanac is an easy way to go. I'd like to play Zanac X Zanac though, and it is available for $6 for PS3. I've never given it a shot, but always mean to.

Both great suggestions! I didn’t know that Zanac x Zanac was on PSN, so I will have to go have a look!

Think this is the current thread for this. Just wanted to Formally post in here.

This is the suggestion thread, so in case there are any shooters you want us to play, and you can feel free to make suggestions as to what games we should consider going forward. If you want to sign up for the October play through, there’s a specific thread for that. We’ll be playing 1942, any conversion.

Didn't know where to post a question like this, but here seemed to at least kind of fit. Starting to expand my collection, specifically Genesis shoot-em ups, and wondered which people would more highly recommend, Lightning Force or Gaiares? If there is a better forum to post a question like this please let me know. Thanks

If I hadn’t already mentioned to you, Lightening Force is my favorite shooter of all time, and I would highly recommend it. Some of the best graphics and music on the Genesis, and the gameplay is top notch. Gaiares is a tougher one to recommend, but mostly because it’s become expensive. It’s a good game, with nice graphics, decent music, and a cool weapon stealing mechanic, but it’s quite difficult, and some of the weapons you can steal from enemies are pretty useless, so at first there’s a lot of trial and error. I like it for what it is, but I recognize that it’s flawed. If you can find it cheap, I would say go for it, but it falls under the “try before you buy” category, I would say.

Figured I would post this here as someone might find it useful.

The amazing Battle Garegga got a physical release in Korea and while you don't really need to be able to read Korean to understand how to play the game, there are a fair amount of settings / menus in Korean.  Fortunately, M2 provided an English manual on their website...  (http://m2stg.com/en/battle-garegga/ps4/manual/) but it's not really printer friendly... Until now!

I took the online manual and created a printable, English manual for Battle Graegga.  This should fit just fine in a PS4 case also.  When you print it, make sure to select double sided printing and to flip on the short side.  This should print out fine on standard letter sized paper.

This is my first time trying to do a manual so hopefully it turned out ok.

Download (PDF):  https://app.box.com/s/m6izzp7no0eq1om6due72cayjlrs1031

[img width=700 height=680]https://www.tradergames.fr/49482/battle-garegga-rev2016-edition-coreenne-ps4-korea-new.jpg[/img]

Thank you so much for the awesome work, Bear78!  I just printed this off, and aside from the text being a bit small, it looks great! I'll have to cut the pages out, and see if I can bind it up to place in my Korean copy to have for reference. And we do plan on getting to Battle Garegga at some point in a future play-through, so this will be quite helpful when we do.

cool, no problem man!  Yeah, I was afraid the text might suffer a bit but glad it still looks good!

A Podcast would be great! I like to listen to all those game-by-game podcasts on the bus to work.

Gaiares rocks, but it's IMO offputtingly hard. If you love R-Type style games and you like that feeling of being on a razor's edge, where you must perfect the levels and a wrong move means you're sent back to a checkpoint, get it. I don't remember it having a lot of cheap death, just a high difficulty. Otherwise, I might recommend something else for you. I love the stages in Gaiares, but find most of the time that I'd rather play a Thunderforce game just because they're so much less punishing. But Gaiares has good stage designs, beautiful art, great music... it's just brutal. I don't think I ever made it past that Stage 3 mermaid boss. FWIW, I enjoy it more than R-Type and Gradius, but then I enjoy Apidya more than those too so take my opinion with a grain of salt :D

Thanks for the input, louisG! Gaiares is definitely on our radar. In fact, I have a replica of the "Can You Say Guy-Are-Us?" shirts coming in the mail shortly. Not sure when/if we'll slot that in, but we have already discussed it as a possibility in the future. As for the podcast, it's already happening! It's called Shoot the Core-cast, and the page here on the site for it is as follows:

http://www.rfgeneration.com/podcasts/shmupclub/

We're also on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher, so if you use one of those services already, just search for the name of the podcast, or even search for 'shoot the core' and you'll find us. We'd sure appreciate some feedback on it, and a review would be most excellent ;)

Hi MetalFRO and Shmup fans, ive been active in the ketsui playthrough this year and really enjoyed trying to better my score and intend to jump in again and get to work. I didnt know where to post this message so i thought this was the best place. I have recently made a horizontal shmup in Dreams for the ps4 and would really appreciate some feedback from people that appreciate and have experience in the genre (not a request for a community playthrough). The game is called Shape Shooter 2 and my Dreams id is talc33. If your curious and dont have Dreams it will appear on media molecules community creations #48 stream on youtube. I would like to make a suggestion for the playthrough while im banging on. FLYING SHARK by Toaplan, it was my first shooter i played in my local arcade and a classic in imo, its getting released on ps4 by M2 sooner or later.

I'll have to check out Dreams, and have a look at your game! As for Flying Shark, that's definitely on our radar, and I do think it would be fun to compare the arcade game to the NES/Famicom version, among others. I do think it would be wise for us to wait for the M2 port, however, so it's more accessible to everyone.

Thanks, any feedback would be appreciated. Nearly jumped out of my skin when Flying Shark was announced, i used to have a bootleg pcb and a supergun so i could play it on my crt tv but the board had issues and i got fed up with  trying to get it working. It would be incredible if they released a Toaplan collection on disc for the PS4.

Oh by the way, there is a great Darius game someone has made in Dreams and a geometry wars clone, worth a look.

Hello everyone! We'd like to get suggestions from the community to see what you might want to play in the Shmup Club during 2021. We have a handful of games we're already planning to cover, but we want to find out what everyone might want to play. Since this is a collector community, keep that in mind - not everyone will have access to the more expensive games, and for myself specifically, I like to have the game in some legit/legal form if possible, even if I end up playing it on an emulator, via the MiSTer, or via flashcart for convenience. But not everyone playing has access to those capabilities, so many will be playing on original hardware. What would you all like to see use include next year?

Put a bunch of ideas on twitter for you.

I was really surprised when I started going through my collection, how many shmups (or related shooters) I had that haven't been covered yet. R-Type III would be my top vote though, really want an excuse to attempt to get good at it.

For those who don't play on Steam, can we get a few more console release titles in 2021?

Thanks for the Twitter suggestions! As for console releases, yes, we try to do a mix, and ideally, try to play at least some games that are available in multiple formats, or on multiple platforms. There will always be games locked to a particular console or PC, but in general, I want to make sure that participation is possible for most on at least a semi-frequent basis.

Bear78 - your wish has come true! Battle Garegga will be the January 2021 game, and our scoring competition focus for next year!

http://www.rfgeneration.com/forum/index.php?topic=19456.0 (http://www.rfgeneration.com/forum/index.php?topic=19456.0)

I'll throw in some suggestions. Sorry if you did some of these already.

Darius Gaiden - there's the Saturn and Switch ports plus the Taito Legends 2 version

Crisis Wing - a great Truxton inspired indie game on Steam

Blue Revolver - indie game on Steam that people seem to like

Esprade - there's a PS4 and Switch port out there now

Fire Shark, Truxton, Hellfire - regular Genesis and the Genesis remake carts should be in people's hands by next year

Those are some great suggestions  :)

You might see some of those next year.  ;)

Just wanted to throw this back out there again, to see what games folks want to look at playing for next year? We have a few selections already pinned down, but want to make sure we're listening to all of you, as well. Keep in mind, we like a variety, and want to make sure we cater to multiplatform whenever possible, as well as games that aren't ridiculously expensive, or never received any kind of port, forcing folks to use MAME, or something like that. What games haven't we covered yet that you really want to play?

 Don't count my vote twice since I replied on Twitter also. But, I say G Darius (including HD), Layer Section (Rayforce, Galactic Attack, etc), Game Paradise, DDP Resurrection (DFK), Cotton (including Reboot) since those are ones I've been meaning to play more in depth.  I can always go for any Toaplan game that was on the Genesis.

I'm not really that picky so I'll be happy with whatever is chosen.