recommendations for good shooters

[eastyy]

i have psyvarier2/espgaluda/ikaruga/radiant silvergun/shigikami 2/gigawing2
can anyone recommend any more?

i should mention i like games with a hook such as psyvarier 2 buzz system ikaruga chain etc they just seem to me to make getting highscores more fun

[nightstalker100]

ah the list goes on. i'll list them according to which platform they appear on of the top of my head

DC
Zero Gunner 2 - No hook just the most graphically sharp and detailed shooter out there if you use a vga box

Border Down - incredbly hard shooter. based on a premise that each time you die the game gets harder. As the game gets harder or you "border down" the opportunity to get higher scores increases.

Chaos field - recent release. I dont have the game but i heard its good so maybe someone on these baords can explain it.

Mars matrix (arcade) - maybe the hardest shooter out there.

Saturn
Battle Garegga (arcade) - awesome "pure" shooter. Lots of ships and varieties of power ups.

Snes
Axelay - check this gem out

PS2

R-Type final - personally rated shooter. over 99 ships to play with

Gradius V - maybe the best shooter out there in my mind. Graphically it has no equal. No hook as such but immensely hard

Psyvariar - you like 2 then try 1. More a "classic" than its successor but don't expect lush graphics.

Xbox

None!

Arcade.
Too many to name but ill mention a few

Guwange - wondefully styalised shooter. 2 weopan modes - one more powerful than the other but causes you to lose manouveraibilty.

Progear arashi - capcom shooter recently made availible through emulation. Read about its system here:
http://www.world-of-arcades.com/Cave/Proge...msAndScores.htm

[Lurch]

If you've got a Saturn, you have to own Layer Section. Amazing graphcs, amazing music and just amazingly fun to play. No hook, but you'll be grinning the whole time. Did I say it was amazing?

[Mad Gear]

If you've got a Saturn, you have to own Layer Section. Amazing graphcs, amazing music and just amazingly fun to play. No hook, but you'll be grinning the whole time. Did I say it was amazing?

Agreed, very cheap too.

[eastyy]

one thing i wondered is why are so many shooters so short?.i can understand arcade conversions being short but even made for console shooters such as rtype-final are short anyone know why that is?

[Tychom]

What length would a shooter have to be before you would consider it no longer to be short?

Zanac Neo, Super Aleste, Gradius V - all take well over an hour to complete (or loop). Any longer and they're rather hard to play, the general intensity means it's kinda hard for a player to keep up without time outs.

To be honest, you're gonna start looking at repetition after some point in time - 15+ hour games (eg. modern FPS or platformers) generally arent 100% action and even then will be reusing scenes, enemies etc and they additionally have the benefit of allowing more advanced environment (eg. free roaming). With a shooter developers are much more limited in what can be thrown in and then thrown at the player.

[nightstalker100]

The difficulty of shooters becomes a moot point when you have unlimited credits. Keeping the game short and sweet with a limited number of creidits is the best ways to go. You can make levels extremely long or make them extremely hard but not both. By all means invite variation into level schemes such as different enemy patterns or doing the level backwards etc. The name of the game in a great shooter in my opinion is the dual aim of high scores and minimum lives lost and doing it in style. In no other game is this better illustrated than in ikaruga: any idiot can complete it by constantly droppping credits and blasting indscriminantly (you see it all the time, some doofus completes it and turns around and says "is that it?") but it takes a real pro to do it in style, without getting hit and achieving a whopping high total at the same time.

[Kotatsu Neko]

i have psyvarier2/espgaluda/ikaruga/radiant silvergun/shigikami 2/gigawing2
can anyone recommend any more?

Well, you've already got many of the best ones. I would only really recommend Border Down (DC), Sokyugrentai (Saturn), Thunderforce 5 (Saturn), Layer Section 1 & 2 (Saturn), and Thunderforce 4 (Saturn or MegaDrive).

Oh and Gradius 5 (PS2) of course.

[E. Randy Dupre]

one thing i wondered is why are so many shooters so short?.i can understand arcade conversions being short but even made for console shooters such as rtype-final are short anyone know why that is?

My 43hr, unfinished Final save would disagree with you.

[msm13579]

DoDonPachi on saturn/MAME is one of my favorite games ever

there is a combo system but i have not really grasped it, just dodging bullets is so much fun. i prefer it to ikaruga, radiant silvergun, and the arcade/PS2 dodonpachi.

[babs]

Esp Ra De

[Kotatsu Neko]

Guwange on MAME is also an excellent shooter. Well worth checking out!

[Geezer]

My two personal favourites are Guwange and Battle Garegga. Unfortunately for Guwange you'll have to emulate it or find a PCB(the last one i had set me back about ?110-120), Garegga is fairly easy to find on the Saturn and its a great package with Superplays on the disc and a lot of options

If you have a PS2, try Dodonpachi Dai Ou Jou but it's a bloody hard game

[Tom Salter]

Check out Cutey Fatty in the arcades.

You play as a really fat girl who has to shoot Doughnuts and cream pies. Chain so many and you have to go on a skipping exercise to lose weight (a la Track and Field).

I so hope this game gets a home conversion :/

[dataDave]

I'm really looking forward to Raiden III, I don't know how I'm going to play it like.