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boredtechnologist · 4 months ago

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Ah, the glorious history of SHMUPs (shoot 'em ups)! Buckle up as we take a nostalgic trip through the evolution of this exhilarating genre.

Early Beginnings

The SHMUP genre's roots can be traced back to the late 1970s and early 1980s. The concept was simple yet addictive: control a spaceship or character and shoot waves of enemies while dodging their attacks.

Space Invaders (1978) by Taito was a groundbreaking title that laid the foundation. Its straightforward gameplay—defending the Earth from descending alien invaders—captivated players and became a cultural phenomenon. The success of "Space Invaders" sparked a wave of similar games and established the basic mechanics of SHMUPs.

Galaxian (1979) by Namco took the formula further by introducing more dynamic enemy patterns and colorful graphics. This was followed by Galaga (1981), which added new features like enemy formations and the ability to rescue captured fighters, enhancing both strategy and excitement.

The Golden Age

The early 1980s saw a surge of creativity and innovation in SHMUPs. Games became more complex, with varied enemy behaviors, power-ups, and improved graphics.

Xevious (1982) by Namco introduced a scrolling background and multi-layered gameplay, with enemies attacking from both the air and ground. This was a significant step towards the more complex SHMUPs of later years.

Gradius (1985) by Konami was another landmark title. It introduced the "power-up bar" system, where players could collect power-ups and choose their upgrades strategically. The game's intricate level design and memorable boss battles set a new standard for the genre.

R-Type (1987) by Irem pushed the envelope with its detailed graphics, unique power-up system, and iconic "force" orb that added a layer of tactical depth. Its challenging gameplay and creative enemy designs made it a classic.

The 16-bit Era

The late 1980s and early 1990s were a golden era for SHMUPs, with the arrival of 16-bit consoles like the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). These platforms allowed for more sophisticated graphics and sound, leading to some of the most beloved titles in the genre.

Thunder Force IV (1992) by Technosoft was a standout, featuring stunning visuals, a dynamic soundtrack, and fast-paced gameplay. Its multiple weapon systems and large, sprawling levels were a treat for SHMUP fans.

Axelay (1992) by Konami showcased the SNES's graphical capabilities with its Mode 7 effects, offering both vertical and horizontal scrolling levels. The game's innovative weapon system and detailed graphics made it a standout.

The Bullet Hell Revolution

The mid-90s brought a subgenre of SHMUPs known as "bullet hell" or "danmaku," characterized by overwhelming enemy fire patterns that required precise dodging and memorization.

DonPachi (1995) and DoDonPachi (1997) by Cave were pioneers of this style. They emphasized intricate bullet patterns, high difficulty, and scoring systems that rewarded skillful play. These games pushed players to their limits and became cult classics.

Modern SHMUPs: Nostalgia and Innovation

While SHMUPs have become more niche in the mainstream gaming market, they continue to thrive in arcades and among dedicated fans. Modern titles often blend retro aesthetics with contemporary design sensibilities.

Ikaruga (2001) by Treasure is a prime example. Its unique polarity-switching mechanic, where players can absorb bullets of the same color as their ship, added a strategic layer to the traditional SHMUP gameplay. The game's striking visuals and challenging gameplay earned it widespread acclaim.

Mushihimesama (2004) and other titles by Cave continue to push the boundaries of the bullet hell genre, with increasingly complex patterns and high production values.

The Indie Revival: A New Generation

In recent years, the indie game scene has embraced SHMUPs, bringing fresh ideas and styles to the genre. Games like Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony (2011) combine classic SHMUP mechanics with modern graphics and storytelling.

The accessibility of modern development tools has allowed small teams and solo developers to create innovative SHMUPs, ensuring that the genre remains vibrant and diverse.

A Timeless Genre

The history of SHMUPs is a testament to the genre's enduring appeal. From the simple yet addictive gameplay of "Space Invaders" to the intricate bullet patterns of "DoDonPachi," SHMUPs have continually evolved, challenging and delighting players for decades. The genre's focus on skill, reflexes, and high scores ensures it will always have a place in the hearts of gamers, both old and new.

#SHMUPs #Shoot 'em ups #Space Invaders #Galaxian #Xevious #Gradius #R-Type #Thunder Force IV #Axelay #bullet hell #danmaku #DonPachi #DoDonPachi #Ikaruga #Mushihimesama #Legend of the Lost Colony #Retro #Gaming #Pixel Crisis

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smbhax · 5 months ago

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Pooyan - in Konami Arcade Classics (PS1)

Session: https://youtu.be/z88j9vPsZ4Y

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hardcore-gaming-101 · 3 months ago

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Top 47K - Pepsiman + Devil World

Join the HG101 gang as they discuss and rank the cult classic PS1 advert-game about the man who spreads awareness of Pepsi. Then stick around, because our SUMMER ARCADE FEATURE continues with Konami’s otherworldly Gauntlet clone!

#pepsiman #pepsi #KID #playstation #action games #devil world #konami #arcade #action adventure #hardcore gaming 101 #podcast #top 47858 games of all time #video games #retro games

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alln64games · 10 months ago

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Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon

JP release: 7st August 1997

NA release: 16th April 1998

PAL release: 18th April 1998

Developer: Konami

Publisher: Konami

N64 Magazine Score: 90%

I remember seeing the scores for Mystical Ninja in N64 magazine, but it didn’t seem like my kind of game. I was very wrong about that – Goemon’s first N64 game is kind of a hybrid of Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, mixed with edo era Japan and a gloriously absurd plot of musical performers trying to turn Japan into their stage.

The game starts out in a Zelda-style town, but what’s impressive is that this is from before Ocarina of Time. You can swap between Goemon and Ebisumaru (plus more you meet along the way) at any time, each with their own set of weapons and abilities. These are uses sparingly throughout the game, so for the most part you can play as who you prefer.

Connecting each town is a large overworld with some nice locations. The first one I encountered brought back strong childhood memories as I recognised the music from Krazy Konami Racers, but the rest of the music in the game is also great, with lots of great tracks throughout the game. I was bopping my head to quite a lot of the music which mixes classical and modern instrument sounds.

Dungeons also play a big part in the game. While there are map/compass items to collect and keys to find, they’re a lot more platform-oriented than Zelda dungeons. One downside is the game’s camera (which can be turned holding R and using the c-buttons), but it’s something you get used to. While there are some bottomless pits, other areas just have you fall to a section where you work your way back – although one handy thing is that there’s no fall damage.

There’s also a variety of other sections, including multiple giant robot boss fights, which treat you to a song each time you use your giant robot, Impact. Each starts off with an arcade-style section to build up your health and ammo before taking a first person perspective as you shoot and punch your opponent. It’s a lot of fun, although they do become more frustrating the longer they go on.

Goemon is an incredibly charming game that’s still a ton of fun to play. Some of the puzzles do have a sign flat out telling you what to do, although these mainly relate to Ebisumaru’s camera item, which reveals hidden things, so I would probably get stuck without being reminded that the object exists. Even with that, the main story is amusingly silly and the game likes throwing new things at you. It’s a great game.

It’s a clever game, not only because there’s simply so much to do, but because you’re never quite sure what’s going to come next. Mini boss? End-of-level boss? Ludicrous sub-game involving a big yellow man and some falling shrinking pills? Erm, yes, quite. Mystical Ninja is a supreme example of game invention.

- Tim Weaver, N64 Magazine #14

Remake or remaster?

An updated version of Mystical Ninja would be great, with a better camera and fine tuned controls. A bit of extra side content would also be welcome. And perhaps a quest log as instructions are a but unclear at times.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon.

#goemon #mystical ninja #n64 #n64 games #nintendo 64 #retro games #gaming

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acquired-stardust · 1 year ago

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Game Spotlight #7: Snatcher (1994)

Acquired Stardust's next game spotlight is here! This time Ash takes a look back at the first title in Hideo Kojima's portfolio that one would probably call a 'Kojima game' in the Sega CD port of Konami's Snatcher, a traditional Japanese-style adventure game, with an examination of some of the history and culture around its American release!

Popular wisdom recalls that the ESRB was founded in 1994 in response to the moral panic surrounding the earlier 1992 release of Mortal Kombat, but this collective memory is missing a few details - namely that it wasn't Mortal Kombat alone that created the panic. It was a trio of games, all released in 1992, that caused the mainstream American culture to pay attention to the medium, which had begun to enter its edgy teenage phase, and it did not like what it saw.

Sega CD classic Night Trap was one of the most prominent releases in the then-popular Full Motion Video field, essentially an interactive campy d-tier horror movie that tasked players with protecting the residents of a house besieged by bumbling, uncoordinated creepers with the timely use of trap doors via security camera operation. It was vaguely sort of voyeuristic in the way that likely titillated the senses of teenagers in 1994 before widespread access to the internet, but otherwise mostly unremarkable and had little redeeming qualities. Konami's own Lethal Enforcers was the third game in the trio, a fairly standard arcade shooter featuring a realistic revolver-type handgun for players to use as a controller along with Mortal Kombat style digitized actors for its visuals.

Long before Columbine at the end of the decade, these three games were singled out as essentially the harbinger of the doom of a generation of American youths, allegedly promoting violence and sexual assault against women, prompting a series of US senate hearings the following year best summed up by Democratic senator from Wisconsin Herb Kohl's stern warning on the industry needing to reign itself in: "If you don't do something about it, we will".

It's certainly true that the video game industry had begun to experiment with new, different and edgier games that would increase in their edginess in the years to come (Duke Nukem for example was released a mere 3 years after the senate hearings), but it was abundantly clear to anyone who was paying attention (and indeed anyone with a brain) that this was largely a shallow echo of the ongoing satanic panic which had the country collectively clutching its pearls since the 1980s. Night Trap was certainly not endorsing sexual violence against women (and its content was far more tame than was asserted even by the standards of 1993), and Lethal Enforcers was simply a very standard arcade shooter following the digitized graphical trend with a realistic (though brightly-colored) peripheral. However, the industry responded to the hearings in relatively short order with the creation of the ESRB (that's the Entertainment Software Ratings Board) in September of 1994, meant to advise consumers on the content of the video games they were buying in an effort to help police the perceived wild moral decay corrupting America's youth. It was somehow in this climate that Konami decided that it was time to bring Hideo Kojima's PC-88 adventure game Snatcher (originally released in Japan in 1988) to the west for the first time with an upgraded port.

While the video game scene in America had begun to show signs of maturing into its teenage years, Japan had at this point a well known pop culture machine churning out plenty of violent and sexual content (not without its own local controversy I might add), and was no stranger to content not meant for children. Typically when an American thinks of Japanese adventure games they think of Capcom's popular later Ace Attorney series, and might consider Snatcher the direct predecessor of it, but the genre has a very long history on Japanese PCs with a large number of games, often of a pornographic nature, released. It's a chapter of gaming history that is poorly preserved, particularly in the west (where it is often unknown that Enix, famous for its Dragon Quest series, started with releases of erotic adventure games in 1983), but is an important link between the two games.

Particularly foundational for the Japanese adventure game genre was 1983's Portopia Serial Murders, a game by future Dragon Quest creator Yuuji Horii, responsible for popularizing the interface and style of virtually every game in the genre to follow. Of particular note it was a young Hideo Kojima, future creator of the Metal Gear franchise, who took heavy inspiration from Portopia, seeing the adventure game genre and their cinematic nature as his pathway into doing the next best thing to what he'd always wanted to do: creating movies. And so Snatcher was born.

Snatcher is set in the fictional Neo Kobe city, a cyberpunk dystopia heavily inspired by Blade Runner, and while the video game industry may have been maturing into its teenage years, it is incredibly striking how adult Snatcher immediately comes across. Opening with a fully-voiced narration about a catastrophic Russian biohazard that killed 80% of the populace preceding the appearance of what are essentially Blade Runner's replicants (the titular snatchers), main character Gillian Seed bids farewell to the wife he recently underwent a separation with and sets off to join Neo Kobe's JUNKERs, a special police force tasked with hunting down and eliminating snatchers.

Snatcher stands head and shoulders above its contemporaries in not just the content of its story but the sophistication with which it is told. It boggles the mind that Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Donkey Kong Country, incredible games in their own right, are some of the big mainstream releases of 1994 while this was also on store shelves. Immediately obvious through its incredible opening cinematic is a hallmark of creator/writer/director Hideo Kojima's titles all the way to the present day: they are incredibly dense and feature an almost overwhelming level of worldbuilding. Arriving at JUNKER headquarters only hammers the point home, with the player able to research a number of in-world historical topics that play out across multiple lengthy encyclopedia entries. While it is not necessary to fully explore these (the player does receive a few answers to later characters' questions in two entries), it goes a very long way to making the world feel very real which is an effect that the game achieves very well out of the gate with its flawed protagonist picking up the pieces and attempting to rebuild his life after a failed marriage with or without his former wife, itself a very realistic struggle that many can relate to. Another hallmark of Hideo Kojima titles is present in the form of abundant easter eggs and meta humor, with just one example of such easter eggs being that the player can use a phone obtained early in the game to call one Taeko Hayasaka (then a spokeswoman for Konami) as well as the localization director Jeremy Blaustein and receive some special dialogue.

Playing out across three acts, the player follows Gillian's investigation into the snatcher crisis gripping Neo Kobe city which threatens to spill over into the world at large all while grappling with his own amnesia stemming from a mysterious incident before the start of the game. It's worth noting that another hallmark of Kojima video games was present in the original 1988 release of Snatcher in the form of deadlines cutting his project into dramatically shorter form, where a planned six acts was cut to a mere two. Ending on a severe cliffhanger up until this generation of ports where the final third act was added in an attempt to wrap up the ongoing storyline as best as possible, the third act was somewhat controversial at the time due to its linearity in comparison with the rest of the game which is rather open in its accommodation of player sidetracking.

Though toned down in its Sega CD port to the west, Snatcher features a very surprising level of gore and sexuality (all while somehow only achieving a rating of T for teen from the ESRB) that can catch people even today unprepared for it. A clearly defiant Konami takes several shots in-game at the then-current moral panic around video games and the senate hearings that resulted in the creation of the ESRB, and it's hard to deny that had the game received more contemporary attention that it probably would've been hugely controversial in the mainstream for its violence and sexual content (much of which is based around the absurdity of being able to investigate people you meet, leading to everyone from JUNKER chief Cunningham to daughter of fellow JUNKER Katrina thinking you're an unhinged lunatic). The game does have a reputation for allowing the player to behave in a creepy manner towards female characters, itself an oft-criticized element of Hideo Kojima's works, and while that is true in some respects I found it of particular note that Gillian is able to 'investigate' every single character in the game regardless of gender (much to their dismay) and that not only is this never actually required to progress in the game, there are instances where being creepy towards female characters can result in the player being actively punished. Just because Gillian can doesn't mean that he should - a good lesson to all you people struggling with self-control out there.

All the things one typically associates with a Hideo Kojima title are present in Snatcher, including heavy inspiration from cinema, self-referential elements such as Gillian partnering with a very familiar robot sidekick appropriately named Metal Gear, to dense narratives told with an astounding level of worldbuilding and flavor, all through the style of using familiar concepts such as a setting very inspired by Blade Runner to get its foot in the door before making a hard left turn into original wonderful sci-fi insanity that culminates in what can only be described as 'a very Hideo Kojima' third act, and if you're familiar with his work you likely know exactly what that means.

The graphics and storytelling are excellent, featuring some incredible writing and localization for the time. Thanks to the Sega CD's disc-based nature the game boasts very good quality music and even a shocking level of voice work which is also similarly surprisingly high quality for a release from 1994 (though there are a few lines which fall flat), as many wouldn't consider the golden age of English voiceover dubs to start for another several years. Extremely ahead of its time in a year when we were still playing as giant gorillas jumping on crocodiles, the incredibly intricate story of Gillian Seed won't be something I forget and has held up remarkably well, serving as a great early example of the depth of experiences that gaming would come to host, particularly in the indie game scene which produces experiences often very relatable and impactful to players with a similar 'art from the artist' vibe.

In a time where the industry was beginning to reflect the sensibilities of a teenager, Snatcher largely feels very adult and manages to impress with its content and sophistication even to the present day. Hideo Kojima's freshman effort laid the groundwork for an incredible portfolio of titles and is worth experiencing for anyone who are fans of Japanese-style adventure games, visual novels, cyberpunk, or just plain good stuff.

A gem hidden among the stones, Snatcher is undoubtedly stardust.

--Ash

#video games #acquired stardust #game spotlights #gaming #retro gaming #sega #sega cd #konami #hideo kojima #snatcher #1994 #1988 #cyberpunk #blade runner #ash #visual novel #adventure games #retro games #Metal Gear

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