Remember when we used to play this game on Holla Forums many years ago? Unfortunately I don't have the animated PNG with me.
Anyways, Cho Ren Sha 68K is a homebrew freeware SHMUP developed in an age before Westerners ruined the indie scene, and before SHMUPs were only known for frilly girls with hats and lods of bullets. Great graphics, sweet FM music, and great gameplay await you.
The gameplay is simple, mash Z to shoot and press X to bomb, but the stage design is excellent. You can even take both boss machines out in the first stage if you get their giant ball projectiles to hit eachother at the same time. Even for a SHMUP this game is (comparatively) forgiving, shield and bomb pick-ups are frequent, but the game does take off in difficulty in the later stages.
If you think you are hardcore and want to show the casuals what Holla Forums should really be like, try this game out and post your score. With enough practice you'll conquer Stage 0 and the second loop.
For higher scores, you should not get hit, not bomb, and use the all-at-once pick-up trick. Power-up carriers drop a triangle of a power-up pick-up, a shield pick-up, and a bomb pick-up, which disappears if you touch one of the orbs. However, you can get all three at once if you manage to position yourself in the middle of the triangle long enough. This is important, because once a stock of a certain item is full (max power, max bombs, shield active), you get bonus points for that orb instead. For each orb you gain this way, the bonus score multiplier increases, from 100 pts to 200, 400, 800, and so on, up to 25600. With the all-at-once trick, you can get higher scores much faster. Scoring is important, because for every million points or so the next shield drop will turn into a 1-up.
You can download the game here: www2.tky.3web.ne.jp
You should run the game in Windows98 compatibility mode too in order to avoid choppy music. Check this article out for a more in-depth explanation of CRS68K: rgcd.co.uk
