Shoot'em ups for people who don't like shootem ups?

Ah fuck
*>Shoot'em ups for people who don't like shootem ups?

After beating th03 through 11 on normal, a keyboard is excellent as long as it's mechanical with "soft" and responsive keys. Whatever you do, not use laptop or "waterproof" noodle keyboards.
Second closest thing would be an SNES/PS styled controller as long as the dpad is tacky and not sticky.
I don't recommend analog sticks unless the game itself supports analog movement for precise input. Some people on my circle don't care and do fine with them anyways, though they do set them to have large deadzones to compensate (something like .15 dz, instead of the usual .5 or .2).

Try Tyrian on MS-DOS. It's a forgiving shooter with western elements and a great entry into the genre. After that i recommend older shooters from the 80's and early 90's like TwinBee - before bullet hell became a thing.

Moedan

Old arcade games. They were made for a larger public, not bulletshit autists like today.

Or Tyrian.

Play the one that's an actual game and not a pattern autism sim.

Good beginner shmups are stuff like Cho Ren Sha 68K (which is free), the ALLTYNEX Trilogy (KAMUI, RefleX, ALLTYNEX Second), Dariusburst Chronicle Saviours, or some of the Touhous.

Cho Ren Sha 68K is fairly forgiving with its frequent power-up carriers which drop a triangle of a shot power-up, a shield which absorbs one hit or one bomb up to a maximum of five. But if you fly in the middle of the triangle long enough, you can grab all three at the time. It has a good difficulty curve with the first stages being beatable by almost anyone with the later stages being reasonably difficult. There's a trick to understanding each stage, but you don't have to memorize entire routes and strategies to survive. The gameplay is straightforward but challenging enough. The music and ship designs are excellent, but the backgrounds are pretty much the same for the entire game. One of the best doujin shmups ever, though.

The ALLTYNEX Trilogy games are all unique in their own right, with Kamui being a spiritual RayForce successor, RefleX has an excellent reflection mechanic and an awesome presentation (with some of the best final bosses out of any shmup), and ALLTYNEX Second is more straightforward balls-to-the-walls aggression with very cool uses of 3D graphics. All games have plenty of unique means to cancel and evade bullets, and are also quite forgiving as they give you plenty of shield power-ups. All three games reference eachother quite a lot in terms of shit happening and music, so you should really start from Kamui and move on to RefleX and ALLTYNEX Second next to get the full experience.

Dariusburst Chronicle Saviours has a massive CS Mode which has around 200 zones. Of course they're not all unique levels, most of them are different arrangements of stages and bosses and different player ships. Though it's arranged that it starts off easily, it slowly gets harder over time, especially once you get to the Great Thing bosses. Dariusburst also gives you a fuckton of ARM which lets you absorb a whole lot more bullets than in any shmup, but then again your hitbox is relatively larger than in any shmup, and bullet patterns revolve more around macrododging than tapdodging like in Touhou. You do often get the means with your shot type and your Fixed Burst (your special ability varies from ship to ship) which lets you deploy a laser wall that absorb most bullets. The game contains a whole lot of references to other Darius games, as it lets you play as each ship from the previous Darius games and even uses the music from previous games. It goes without saying that the music from Darius is phenomenal. CS Mode works like a good training mode for newer players. Also know that you can counter enemy beams with your own.

Tyrian.
Great soundtrack, alright writing, fun gamplay, lots of guns.

OP I had a similar problem until recently. Shoot 'em up/bullet hell games didn't appeal to me. I came over this once I gave one series of games a try when I got a sega saturn earlier last year.

I got into the games just for the sake of cute girls and was heard they were big deal Saturn games, so I gave them a try. My first attempt was a test, and my second try a serious attempt at completing it. The game was Cotton 2 Magical Night Dreams, an arcade port based on the saturn's arcade hardware equivalent. It caught my attention for the cute graphics, kept me interested with the great music, and a refreshing sense of simplicity and purity of design. As I got farther, game overed a few times I started experimenting a bit and got to figure out the secondary mechanic to shooting in the game, the grab function. Upon figuring out how to use it in the games mechanics and work with the games design, it really clicked with me.

Cotton 2 is kind of a "cuhrayzee" shmup, to give you some ideas by comparing it to modern gaming language. It's a game all about pulling off and maintaining absurd combos both for game play reasons (balancing your combo to maintain control over the screen and to succeed in a level is a challenge on its own), optimizing movement, understanding the elemental properties of your attacks, bombs, shots, and knowing when to pop a combo for your own advantage. It's a really engaging game and its built around a fascinatingly enjoyable style of play.

I can partially vouch for how it emulates(decently after you run it the first time), although if you have the original hardware you will enjoy yourself more, it made me realize what makes shmups so fascinating. They're incredibly simple and extremely enjoyable because they test your most basic understanding of mechanics and add in a few simple mechanics that augment your understanding, they give you a pure sense of enjoyment.

It's not like a first person shooter where if the aiming has a weird mouse filter on it it's not right, or if the aiming is solid but the movement feels a little clunky because some objects in the environment awkwardly collide with your movement bounding box, it's a series of games defined by controlling a cursor and understanding the spatial movement of projectile shots and observing simple enemy patterns which can be summed up with basic shapes, cosine/sine, lines, etc. Because of the simplicity it's appealing, but because of how they indulge in the simplicity, somewhat alienating when you see a screen full of bullets and it looks like an impossible joke game.

I'd suggest playing Cotton 2, try the sequel Cotton Boomerang, try the first game on Turbo CD Cotton Fantastic Night Dreams. Very simple but core level STGs. Try Ikaruga as well, it's so simple but the brilliance is in the design.

I'm a visual/audio whore so I went with some of those I had tried downloading last night when I made the thread. Can't play Ghost Blade HD cause some sort of windows error when you try to launch game. Can't ask for help much cause niche and pirated. Blue Revolver works and it's swell, though I got fucked by the second boss even with all the easiest settings. Downloading Dariusburst (steam one?) to try it as suggested. Lots of older niche stuff that I'm too lazy to get emulator and roms for right now but I will have the page saved for future reference to read back on. Watched some Cotton 2 gameplay and I was so sure I heard Flashdance theme… but it might genuinely be a case of starting easy instead of the deep end. I want to be challenged but the nature of the game with 1 hit kills frustrates the fuck out of me, guess I need to build up a tolerance for it by starting simple.

I just love smooth high framerate pretty explosions with good gameplay.

Check out Raiden 2. No bullshit scoring systems, very easy to grasp the basics. The gameplay is based on reflexes and some memorization, very little pattern recognition needed. The big selling point for you is the destructible environment: shot enemies crash into the ground, starting fires and blowing up buildings. It's fun even if you suck.

Is that site that has the archive of all the Touhou games still up?

Do you mean this site?
moriyashrine.org/

they took all of the main series games down because the mods there are lazy niggers

NOOOOOO!
I had downloaded them on an old computer that broke a while back. Oh wells.
Still having an internal debate on whether to try setting it up or not. I imagine getting it to run in WINE is probably a nightmare.

try another cute game about cute witch girls with great music and high skill game play

eXceed 3rd jp bp is pretty fun

I probably suck the most at Shoot Them Downs out of everyone in the thread but I still love playing them since they're no frills, ball busting gameplay with oftentimes great presentation and music. "Winning" is whatever your personal goal for playing is, wether just 1CCing or highscoring.

I have an arcade stick and a Saturn pad with swapped chink USB pad internals but I mostly play with a mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX Blue switches and that seems comfortable and precise enough.

Even if you suck at them, Tittyhime, EspRaDe, the Espgaludas and pretty much every Toaplan shooter is tons of fun in my opinion. But if you have to start forcing yourself to play them after just a few minutes then maybe they're just not your kind of game. Don't forget to bullet herd tho.

Tried DariusBurst, I have tried it before but tried the Easy mode this time. It was an audio visual treat and positioning the laser correctly for more lasering felt satisfying and ridiculous. Had to use 3 continues to finish but everything felt fair. Aspect ratio is a bit fucked since it seems built for ultrawide but what can you do, not that I'm obsessed with 16:9, it's just the first time I can think of having such a problem. Maybe if they had some game stuff around the game area it would look a lot nicer.

But yes starting small seems to be the key. Next one is how to keep playing them. Seem built for short bursts. Which is okay since they're so intense.

I WILL LOOK INTO OTHER GAMES SUGGESTED, but I don't want to get overwhelmed by choice. Any links are helpful because I'm a lazy asshole and I'm trying to recover from injury right now so I'm chronically irritated every couple of seconds.

Can I bring up Cannon Spike? It's games like that, that made me imagine I could like shmup. It's very primitive in that all enemies revolve around the old western hack and slash Diablo style approach of run and attack backwards but still.

Even in my moment of spergy faggotry you goys are all fairly polite, which says something about the genre and the type of fags who play it.

I feel like people just pretend to like Shoot 'Em Ups, they've aged too poorly as of 2017 for anyone to truly enjoy such a repetitive mind-numbing experience.

I'm just going to reply with nothing of substance until you rewrite that post into something less embarrassing and something worth seriously replying to.

Also, I think it would help if you tried to look for rewards. For example, try thinking of listening to the music for the next stage as an incentive for getting good and to keep playing.
When I would play a game like Etrian Odyssey and I keep getting my ass kicked or get stuck, I would imagine how awesome the music for the next stratum will sound.
If you give up, then there will be nothing waiting for you.

Tried Caladrius Blaze, the perfect example of what not to play. Easy became unplayable by the 3rd or 4th level when everything is designed to fuck you but perhaps I'm not using the abilities as effectively as possible. Reverting to Very Easy just seemd to be the same exact bosses die quicker. It's a shame because I liked the Devil Survivor artist stuff.

Touhou works very well in Wine now, I didn't even have to configure anything.

If I try to sum up my grievances with shmups it would fall down to;

-Games with unfair bullet patterns, where the purpose is more to fuck you as much as possible
-Lack of a traditional health bar, so 1 hit = 1 death and 3 hits = game over? Instead of small doing small damage, large doing large damage and health recovery options. That's just something I have to accept I suppose
-Using continues feels like you need to start over from the beginning because you're brute forcing the game, instead of possibly moving you to the start of the level or the current fight, with something to encourage you to not fail on top of that perhaps.

I just like to blog and figure out what makes a game good, ignore me.

Forgot to mention I was very quickly impressed with DariusBurst simple game design mechanic of limited bullets on screen at one time meaning getting closer to enemies and shots on target means more damage output

American Hard Corps>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Japanese version.

Too bad that wasn't what the designers intended and was a bullshit anti-rental gimmick.

THREAD THEME

This is the song that plays when the race war starts, and you are selected as the pilot of the first nuclear stealth bomber from Area 51.

Bravo, Cave

memorization isn't really a bigger factor than it is in any other game unless you're playing for score

keyboard or hitbox

something like gunstar heroes or metal slug might be more enjoyable for you although everything you complained about still applies to those games

shmups would be very boring if you had a traditional health system. once you understand how to read the screen and use bombs correctly, anything less punishing than instant death is very trivial.
a big part of what makes bullethell fun is the feeling of being completely overwhelmed and learning to exploit the systems of the game to overcome that.

I bet you own several CRTs. Yuck… you're beyond saving, don't reply.

Health bars are less traditional than 1 hit = death. Pacman didn't have a health bar. A health bar interferes with having clarity of what is going on in a fast-paced game. Some unremarkable euro-developed shmups on Amiga and PC have health bars. How are you supposed to make a decision whether to grab a bonus item if it means getting hit by some bullets which you may survive, try to count the pixels in your health bar correctly? A health bar can only work here it is made of a few big chunks and which projectile deals what amount of damage can be told at a glance.

I understand that it's frustrating to play memorizing-heavy shmups where everything insta-kill you and then it's back to the last checkpoint AND on top of that your ship loses power-ups. But there are also games where you can instantly continue from where you died (fucks up your score, of course), so it's not an issue (e.g. Blazing Star, Giga Wing). So, it gives you what you want from a health bar and you also have instant clarity about damage.

ONE DAY

Tyrian 2000 is a great choice because of its unusually complex campaign, plus it's freeware at this point.

I'll leave the final call to you, but one way to go about things is to get something like MAME or something similar so that you can try one with infinite credits. Of course you could make a very strong argument that this ruins the whole point of playing these games, but if you really need a "safe" way to try shmups it might not hurt terribly much. Doing them legit is much more satisfying, of course, but this option still exists.

Bad Suggestions: The Post

Like seriously. I can't do easy path in DB, and I can't survive 10 seconds in Batrider. Fucking hell.

Gunstar Heroes is Easy surprisingly balanced even on higher difficulties, if only because you can make -some- mistakes. It's a lovely game..but I'm not sure if it's a SHMUP for people who hate SHMUPS.

What?

Play Tyrian 2000, it's great, you don't die in one hit, and it's freeware now. Actual freeware, not some abandonware shit. It's also open source.

If you don't want to fiddle with DOSBox you can also get it for free from GOG.com, there is really no excuse not to play Tyrian.
gog.com/game/tyrian_2000

Ikaruga

It isn't an easy game but unlike most other shmups actually does something interesting. There is no garbage weapons upgrade system for example, you start with all weapons and level design is based around this. Same with Radiant Silvergun

A lot of STGs do intersting things with their mrchanics. The fun is in how simple and solid the core is, so any expansion on to higher levels of play is something that can be achieved by anyone.

see if you can emulate gradius 5. or you could try undertale

How did Tyrian come back, anyway? We thought it was a mediocre shooter at the time and people forgot about it. Did some e-celeb faggot tell you it was good and that's what caused it to come back? Most of you probably weren't even alive back then.

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I'm 38. I was doing demoscene shit back then and knew people involved in Epic/Apogee games. So yeah, we. Fuck you and your whole generation.

my dad worked at Epic and warned me of you, you awkward orbiter

moriyashrine.org/modern-era-1-th10th125.html
are_you_retarded.mp4

Tyrian is a western shmup specifically created to appease the greatest shitters in the shmup fanbase. Other than that it introduces many novelties, this is important because most modern gamers don't have an attention-span longer than 10 seconds.

Tyrian is a mediocre shooter, but in the current age, that's actually a good thing. It gives all the mediocre players a chance to feel good about themselves.

Just play Gradius/Parodius and R-Type and work your way up.

I was going to say Tyrian isn't worth playing, but you are right.

I think it's a crutch game, however. Like you said its something everyone can play to feel good about themselves, it misses that baseline that makes shooters a genre to fall in love with. Tyrian has no highs, only flatlined lows in its game play. I think the kind of person who clings to it has the skewed perception that all shooters are bullet hell games. The genre outside of bullet hell type shooters is hard too. It wants you to understand the core game play and won't let you see everything until you do. That's why pretty much every arcade port starts you with 9 credits and 3 lives per credit. That's 27 chances to "get it" before you're kicked out.

I would tell people to just avoid it and play something else instead, like Ikaruga. Ikaruga has a sense of ingenuity to it and it's easy to understand, but it will still gate your success to be skill dependent.

If you are new to shmups and continue to want to get into them I would always keep in mind that you do have to do repetition to reach the end of the game, It is inherent of the arcade mentality, and taking that out (or not rewarding that) would defeat the purpose of a shmup game. Shmups are meant to be MASTERED, you won't get called #1 for just beating the game after dying repeatidly. I would go with these shmups because they are on the easier side

Satazius is a Gradius lite where you have to master the stage. I would recommend astroport games if you want ease into games made back in the arcade days. You get 9 tries to beat their games.

Fire Arrow Plus is an additional game added on to an old game. The goal is to survive. The bosses have a challenge to them and you have plenty of bombs to use against them. It is easy to make it to the end of the game but the Mastery to it is making the high score, You have to survive without dying. Because of the timer the game is short, It is self described as a coffee break shmup

Mecharitz Steel Rondo Is another game that is good for beginners because it is more forgiving with hitboxes. It is also a game of endurance because the stages are long. It also can ramp up in difficulty because it has a rank system and additional stages that are harder than the normal stages. Also a shit ton of unlocks and secrets as well

OP, I'm garbage at shmups and I absolutely loved Shoot the Bullet, also known as Touhou 9.5. If you like that game, there's a sequel called Double Spoiler.
Instead of levels, you try to clear individual bullet patterns that start off easy then ramp up in difficulty as the fight progresses.

Bump

JETS'N'GUNS
YEEEAAAAAAAHHHH
Some tips: the more expensive a weapon is at base form, the better, even if you've got an upgraded weapon with a higher damage rating. Also, running into objects and other ships hurts more than most enemy attacks.

Suguri / Sora

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I don't really like shmups myself, but kinda enjoyed Jamestown. So much so that I replayed it with my young nephew to get him into some less cancerous games.

these

OP, ignore the haters and try Touhou sometime. You can't trust detractors to describe the series fairly. Here's some bullet points to offer balance: The games have excellent visual and audio flair. The challenge of the game is focused a little more on bosses, and a little less on having nasty enemy spawns during the stages. The boss design is about more numerous and longer lasting boss patterns, with more frequent use of slower bullets (especially: far less frequent use of fast aimed bullets that come out of nowhere/come from a boss that floats an inch ahead of you). The "all memorization" insult you will hear is just utter nonsense. The challenge is fair and learnable, and personally I see a clear preference for this kind of design. You should judge for yourself, because that's the only prefrence that matters.

Most of all, these bullet points should be understood as simply being different from the slew of Cave/Arcade-alike games you are hearing. The differentiation between Touhou-alikes and Cave-alikes is a much larger gulf than the variations within those two groups! If you are experimenting to find what you like then you would be stupid to ignore a popular set of games that represent a totally different cluster of shmup-styles.