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Some of my favourite SHMUPs of all time, and definitely the ones I'd consider absolutely essential are: Heartily recommended for both beginners and shmup veterans. I think it's currently on sale on the eShop and it's probably bugger all on other formats these days. It's outside my usual preference (for verts) but after a couple of brief and confusing attempts, I finally gave it time to seep into my consciousness and muscle memory and I've had a blast with it.
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And despite the challenge of all the buttons, it's also a very beginner friendly game with generous checkpoints and health bars so there's no pressure to play perfectly. As ever, once you start playing for score, the game shows its true depths.
![gradius gaiden 1cc gradius gaiden 1cc](http://r.mprd.se/media/images/53045-Gradius_Gaiden_(J)_(v1.1)-3.jpg)
The challenge is definitely still there, though, and you'll need to be very thorough and efficient to dispatch a high percentage of enemies to rack up the scores. Give it half a chance and you'll be dashing, slashing, locking and blasting through the waves like the proverbial hot knife. Outside of Cave games, I've played very little that's made me feel so powerful and so capable of turning the tables on what appear to be comically insurmountable odds. Now, while that sounds absolutely absurd and a recipe for arthritic claws, once it becomes natural, it gives you an amazing array of options to take down and frankly overwhelm the avalanche of enemies. The face buttons do nothing because you don't have enough fingers left! The disadvantage is that it locks on a little slower. For an easier lock on, click the right stick and hold and you will lock onto anything in a large circle around your ship. Release the right stick (yep) and you will launch your homing missiles. When it turns red, you know you will destroy them. Track an enemy or group of enemies and your cone-shaped locking mechanism will start to tick upwards in a circle around them. Left stick moves you around and the right stick is used to aim your missile lock on. L2 is a kind of bomb/super melee attack which you charge up. L1 is a dash which you can also use as a weapon if you pass through enemies. R1 is a melee slashing attack which you can also use to protect yourself from certain bullets. To give you an idea of the control scheme, R2 fires your bullets. It actually reminded me of when I used to play the sax and clarinet, all my fingers involved and functioning independently. Once you get into its rhythms, though, it's tremendously satisfying and it's almost like playing a rhythm game. I bounced off it a few times initially because it's quite complex and mechanically challenging to simply press all the buttons. For an indie title, it's absolutely spectacular. It's a 2.5D thing, kind of reminiscent of the shmup sections in Nier: Automata (a topical reference, forum folk from the future) and it's got a very Dreamcasty polygon aesthetic, reminiscent of Zero Gunner 2 mixed with Rez, but with more mechs and a shitload more bullets. I've just completed Astebreed which was ported to the Switch towards the end of last year, and once it clicked I really had fun with it. What are your favourite shmups and what have you been playing recently? Anyway, I searched and couldn't find a thread - and I think this forum could do with one! So here we go. I can't say that for many of the other SP games I've played over the last couple of years. I even enjoy the crap ones, to be honest, because they're so immediate, I can figure out what they're attempting and bin them (or complete them) without a significant time investment. That might well be why the genre is effectively dead as a major studio interest but there are plenty of doujin devs keeping the genre alive. They're video games in concentrate, very few aspirations beyond the medium and its own heritage. There's a 'purity' to the genre which really appeals to me. Little holds my attention or gives me as much enjoyment as a well-designed and well-balanced shmup. Another 20% are probably fighting games, and the remainder is spread across many many many games which I usually abandon after a few hours or sometimes a few minutes. Spoiler: show Having only really started with the genre in earnest about eighteen months ago, these games probably make up about 75% of what I play these days.