I apologize if this is obvious or stated somewhere but how do we vote?
Ah, got it.
re: Ikaruga, I think itâs also worth mentioning just how tightly designed that 22-chain intro to the first stage is, and how much more player-intelligible this is compared to any contemporaries.
The fact that players will likely perfect that 22-chain some time goes a long way towards giving the impression that the game is âsolvable.â
Around the same time Cave (just one example), had sort of abandoned these small intro stages which demonstrate the mechanisms of play in favor of just dropping you straight in which leads to this general impression of arcane STG knowledge and is maybe a blockade to broader genre appeal.
The closest Cave equivalent to this section in Ikaruga is maybe 1-1 in DDP (1997) which is relatively short (maybe 1:30?) and features these 45 degree angled paths filled with enemies, essentially teaching you how to chain. However itâs nowhere near as successful as Ikarugaâs implementation.
So maybe part of the appeal is also that the game does more than others in itâs genre to ingratiate itâs mechanicâs in an easily discernible way?
Itâs hard for me to be objective about this because I didnât play Ikaruga until maybe 2006 and had already cut my teeth on older examples of the genre. But replaying it recently, the early stage design really caught my eye.
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canât believe im considering voting against sonic 2 now
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this is such a better encapsulation of what I was trying to say, yeah. I was stumbling over myself because I was feeling attacked. And like, I love Treasure stuff (like too much. like own three soundtracks on vinyl too much). But even in Treasure STGs, I like Radiant Silvergun (with Ikarugaâs chaining system, love you 360 port) more because it feels like there is more to mess around with there and figure my own thing out.
I think this is a big part of Ikarugaâs appeal to people, but it is why it doesnât work as well for me (and some other shooter fans) as a shooter. Part of the fun in STGs is figuring out that other stuff, whereas Ikaruga basically presents you with everything you will need to figure out like right away. That is cool, but it leads to that âsolveableâ feeling a lot as well. And maybe STG fans (self included) are kinda gate-keepery about this stuff, but I think part of that comes from how good it feels to get past that gate. Like the first time I managed to hit the extra life score in the first stage of Deathsmiles felt amazing, even if there was nothing in the game to teach me how.
This does make me miss the battlegareg.ga site, because that had a great breakdown of how stage 1 of that game does so much of this really well.
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As I recall, I think he only hated the âeasyâ option for this reason. I think he liked the rest of the game.
You totally should play AC4A, but yeah, the OST is great. If there were any justice in the world, we would get an AC4a remaster that just makes the framerate solid, or at least a PC port so we could try to fix it ourselves.
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Do you have the rare HD CRT? Because they definitely suffer from the âoh god, you will never read this text on a non-HD setâ problem. That being said, I think I have most of them around here still, so I can shuffle them your way as needed. Sadly, you wonât be able to experience a lot of the 5 series, because they were heavily online adn the online component never went anywhere, but they are still neat-o games. 4A is easily the best, though.
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I love you and I respect everything in this post
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Since I saw this come up again off-site:
Ikaruga received nine nominations. Eight of them were from people who nominated at least one other shooter.
Here are some of those shooters: Armed Police Batrider, Ketsui, Mushihimesama Futari, Radiant Silvergun, Galaga, Dodonpachi, Sinistar, Magical Chase, Recca, Soldier Blade, Cho Ren Sha 68k, R-Type Final, Touhou 8, Zero Ranger, rrootage, noiz2sa, Crimzon Clover, Sky Force, Parsec47, Warning Forever, Under Defeat, and Space Invaders Extreme.
Wow crazy canât believe it, maybe there are some spots on the internet where Ikaruga is The Only Shooter People Like but that seems like a very 2005 thing. I donât think thatâs the case anymore. Itâs definitely not the case on Select Button. Or shmups, for that matter. Seems like itâs beloved by people who actually love the genre.
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Itâs funny because like Alien Soldierâs âsupereasy,â after watching the run on the Appreciate DVD Ikarugaâs easy mode doesnât look easy to me at all and was probably named as some kind of Treasure in-joke. Maybe bullet patterns are a bit thinned out.
The easy mode in Ikaruga gets rid of the suicide bullets that come after you when an enemy is killed. In Normal, these only spawn when you kill enemies of the same color as you (allowing you to fill your meter quicker). In hard, they spawn for every enemy death. In Easy, they donât spawn at all, which makes switching between colors much more trivial in terms of timing, but also kinda ruins some of the flow of the game.
These arenât mutually contradictory. Also, I literally met one of these people three weeks ago, so nope, still a thing in 2020. Not here, thankfully.
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Ikaruga is the Halo of shmups
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NiGHTS into Dreams vs Sonic the Hedgehog 2
This match up is cruel, like pitting two infant siblings against each other for a candy bar. My oldest memories with games are with the Genesis. Sonic captures my 5-year-old attention more than any other game. The way that the music, sound effects and animation play off each other is mesmerizing like an old cartoon. 2 is my favorite of the old era. The music and zone design are in perfect harmony and tying bonus stages to checkpoint poles encourages just the right amount of exploration.
But NiGHTS into Dreams is something new for me. I experienced it for the first time this year and I was amazed that it was able to evoke the same feelings of wonder that I had before. Certainly, itâs even more of a rollercoaster that plays itself than Sonic. But thereâs so much energy in its low-poly, gritty textured worlds.The Soft Museum is an amazing stage and one that I will replay many times in the years to come.
Decision: NiGHTS into DreamsâŚ
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I also nominated Fantasy Zone, and three Treasure titles Banga-O Spirits and both S&P games, which I personally qualify as STG hybrids.
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God I left so many things off my nominations lost because I am bad at making lists.
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i listened to lower norfair and thought about speedrunning and my childhood and powerful women and i think im going super metroid over yakuza 0. i might change my mind if it was ps2 yakuza 1 because of mark hammil and experiencing the game series of Yakuza for the first time was SO EXCITING
but like i want to play super metroid RIGHT NOW. ive never had a sense of immediacy for playing yakuza. itâll always be there
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already prepping my arguments for Resident Evil 2002 vs Metal Gear Solid 2 because I can already see the hesitation in you all to make the hard call and do what needs to be done
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I WILL ALWAYS VOTE AGAINST KOJIMA SLIME
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