GeekNights 070731 - Shmups

Rym

Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about the shoot-em-up games we all know and love. In the news, Checkers is solved, and new videogames are coming out.
Scott's Thing - Battletoads Speedrun

Rym's Thing - N64 Prison Tattoo Gun

TheWhaleShark

The jetbike level can die in a goddamn fire.

Corbin

Agreed, that's where I died... every... single.... time. -_-

MitchyD

Battletoads... Fuck that game.

Vesh

Maybe you already know about it, Sinistar was remade but I kinda remember it blowing. I hope for a more faithful update one day.

MitchyD

Aegis Wing is a good one. Free too on X-Box live!

Dave

Aegis Wing blows. Good for fifteen minutes, quickly stops being fun. Thank god it was free, it's definitely not worth real monies.

GigaWing was my game back in the day, and the formation of many good stories between a friend of mine and I (most expensive game ever: $50.50, fifty cents for the game, fifty dollars for the parking ticket incurred because we were gonna beat it without continuing and wouldn't leave). To date, the internet still doesn't seem to know about the secret boss we discovered after the final one.

MitchyD

It's good for multiplayer. Having 4 friends makes it last a bit longer, but agreed, overall it's lackluster and free for a reason.
 
I have never played GigaWing. Arcades died in my childhood. :'(

Dave

Arcades were pretty well dead when GigaWing came out.

Erwin

The Macross: Do You Remember Love? from ps One was a good Shmup game :P

Neito

I'm somewhat surprised you guys didn't mention any of the Touhou shooters. Granted, you're a girl shooting at other girls and angels and shit instead of something manly like a tank shooting at planes and dropping bombs, but they're still fun, and pretty tough.

Rochelle

I know you guys said something along the lines of how you can't attend, but at the end of the podcast both of you talked about trying to go to more gaming conventions. Hopefully one year you guys will be able to attend PAX. That would be awesome.

MitchyD

I'll be seeing you in 08 Island :D

Rym

We're thinking about just going next year no matter what.  It would be weird to be at a con and not be staff/entertainment/press, but I have a feeling PAX would actually be fun as just an attendee. ^_~

Rochelle

We're thinking about just going next year no matter what.  It would be weird to be at a con and not be staff/entertainment/press, but I have a feeling PAX would actually be fun as just an attendee. ^_~

Yes that would be great! ^_^ I am going a 2nd time as a regular attendee. I might go next year as a staffer. I'll see if I can muster up a PAX report at the end of the month with pictures. I'm just really excited for what I've seen and heard is going to happen there, especially at the new and bigger location.

And Mitchy, I'll hold you to that. ^_~

cosmicenema

OK . . . so any good online Shmups? Like flash or java? Like ones that could hypothetically be played discreetly during work hours?

MitchyD

And Mitchy, I'll hold you to that. ^_~Count on it. You let me know the dates when they announce it, and the nearest hotel and I'm booking it.
 
Rym/Scott, you fools better come.
 
I'll fly out/ ugh, drive all the way across the country for Otakon in '09 I think.

raquor

And Mitchy, I'll hold you to that. ^_~

Count on it. You let me know the dates when they announce it, and the nearest hotel and I'm booking it.

Rym/Scott, you fools better come.

I'll fly out/ ugh, drive all the way across the country for Otakon in '09 I think.

Otakon '09? what happened to Otakon '08? Man...I gotta find some other fool to join me in my quest for Otakon '08?!?!

As for shmups...I'm all about Solar Striker on GameBoy. Never beat it but I sure do love that game...as I love most of the games on my Gameboy...because it was the first system I bought with my own money and they were likewise the first games. Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Land, and Donkey Kong Country are about the only games I ever beat that I have distinct memories about where I was and how excited I was to have beaten them...but now I'm getting off topic...

MitchyD

Guh, I don't know yet. I need to figure it out, but got-damn... Seattle is SO CLOSE I CAN TASTE IT.

Sail

I own Nanostray, it's a good shmup, buy it if you can find it.

[Edit] And yes, it does have co-op.

GreatTeacherMacRoss

Einhander was a good one. Hard as balls to beat though.

Bromley

For the record, it was a late Sunday morning after church one day where we perused the endless aisles of the Ekkerd drugstore. As my mother was buying whatever items we were there for, my brother and I looked at the toy aisle, most naturally the Micro Machines brand by Galoob which used to glorify that store.

Suffice to say, at the checkout something amazing caught my eye. Raptor Call of Shadows. And it was with singles borrowed from my brother, a few weeks of indebtedness and some tinkering with DOS compatibility that I played my first and favorite Shmup. I still have the original CD, complete with its little card inlay with the in-game screen shots, right here to my left as it has been for the past decade.

If thats not nostalgia, I do not know what is.

T045T

There are 3D-shmups, like Rez (DC and PS2). It's an awesome game imho.
When you shoot enemies, they don't go "BOOM", but rather play a sample, so you create the soundtrack to the game yourself. Also, you could buy a "Trance Vibrator" for the PS2 in Japan, which was just a little box that had a really powerful rumble motor (i think it was 10x the power of the dual shock controller). It was all about "synaesthesia", blending the senses.

Another rather unusual shmup was Bangai-Oh (DC).
There, you have this tiny, tiny ship that can move pretty freely in 2D (no autoscrolling, you kinda explore the levels). You can switch between two weapons, one being homing missiles and the other a bouncing beam, plus you have a button that releases a varying number of the selected projectile, depending on how many enemy bullets are on the screen (and there can be a lot). So, in the end, it's a matter of how much you want to risk, and if you risk a lot, you get amazing amounts of projectiles (and I mean amazing... it's relatively simple 2D graphics and it makes the DC stutter).

HungryJoe

I remember one from around 1989 called Midnight Resistance. I loved that game. I have the MAME ROM for it, but it had one of those spinny disc controllers, so it's hard to play on my computer. Unless someone knows where to buy one of those spinny disc controllers?

T045T

you can build one yourself with not too much effort out of an old mouse and something that spins (at least this is possible if you're running windoze with GlovePIE, don't know if there's anything similar out there for linux/mac OS)
PM me if you need any help... I don't want to get too far off topic here (;