let’s talk about 3d rail shooters! we can also include similar genres like tube shooters and linear arcadey light gun games, as well as games in other styles that absorbed their dna. what are your favorites? any interesting connections? something i like about these kinds of games is how they exploit the tension between the screen as a flat 2d target surface and the 3d depth of space “behind” it. it would be fun to write about that someday.
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i liked playing sega’s sprite scrolling ones on 3ds. it was easier to actually tell relative distance to stuff and space harrier has nice easy mode controls with the stylus.
galaxy force 2 was my fav of these and even tho i don’t have that 3ds any longer i still play it in mame sometimes. its aesthetically kind of nonspecific but feels very satisfying in motion and has a length that doesn’t scare me away from working on a 1cc
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My fave is Panorama Cotton
Its weird and cute and slightly inscrutable the first time you play a new area. The presentation really keeps me nailed to it when I’m binging it. I cant really play it casually. I do recommend a stick. Its super scaler cotton what more do you want?
Things I wanna know!
Is Ex Zodiac any good?
How about Yu Sizook’s Air Twister?
I like the idea of Space Harrier but I cant read the game well enough to play it well.
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find space harrier very soothing in the same way as outrun/2. the 32x and 3ds ports are really nice!
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my wife has been playing a bunch of it, the review seems to be “plays okay, extremely ugly, soundtrack is hilarious, it’s crazy that yu suzuki made one of these now and i want to support him”
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space harrier is great. obviously, the best way to play it in 2023 is probably the 3ds port, but i also have it on pc engine and i like that version a lot, too.
a lot of people like to rag on space harrier ii, but i also like that, too! i have a lot of nostalgia for since i had it as a kid, plus it’s a pretty easy 1cc. someday i gotta get ahold of a mega drive mini ii so i can play the enhanced version of it.
something that people forget about starwing is that at the time, it was a source of playground rumours, some of which were actually true. stuff like the secret black hole stage with fox’s dad and so on. i don’t think lylat wars had that same mystique, but it was obviously a much more spectacular game, and one of the ones i would always gravitate towards on the rare times i had access to an n64.
as well as all the ports, the 3ds also had liberation maiden, which wasn’t a great alltime classic or anything, but having a vocal theme playing during some parts was really cool.
the ps4 port of panzer dragoon is beautiful, and i maintain hope that the zweo port isn’t vapourware. (of course, i love the original versions of both games, too)
there’s been a few pc sprite scaling shooters in the 21st century, too! two of them i’ve covered on my blog, and there’s also the touhou-themed master burner (plus its expansion), and the upcoming asura the striker
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i keep chipping away at orta via back compat on series s. up there with ffxiii as a potential end point for the aesthetics of videogames.
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anyone play/have any luck getting Planet Harrier working in emulation?
really wanna try Air Twister, that one trailer with the knockoff ‘Killer Queen’ track…!
an early demo of Ex-Zodiac I played was solid stuff, thinking of jumping on that early access cuz they’ve added loads more but also idk, it’s pretty yes, good colours etc. but also kinda plain? the aesthetic leaves me kinda cold like it’s tasteful but calculated neo-retro without adding much…it’s not weird enough…still gonna play it
wanna give Panzer Dragoon Orta another shot every time shelter speaks highly of it. slogged through just enough of it on XBox to unlock the first game >_>
playing Star Fox on SNES again for the first time in ages early this year, was surprised how much I vibed with it, actually love the sluggish framerate, chunky polys and sprite backdrops (Venom clouds!), soupy martial funk and speech burbles, all comes together as quite a beautiful mess imo
also dipped into Rainbow Cotton briefly around Halloween and…it seemed pretty bad, character covers too much of the centre of the screen, feels slow and dinky to shoot and hit enemies but I’ll play through it eventually because I’m a sucker for cartoon witch in 3D (Panorama Cotton looks sick tho, gotta give that a go)
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I’m a huge Virtua Cop 2 fan.
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I love sin & punishment so much. Lately I study the camera work while I play. There are 5 camera people credited on that game! That’s a lot for a rail shooter. And they’re not all hardcore 3d camera system programmers, among them is concept artist Yasushi Suzuki, bg artist Hiroshi Iuchi, and S&P auteur Hideyuki Suganami. Those 3 must have been acting like cinematographers and guiding the programmers I guess, or maybe they created storyboards for them. It’s interesting that they all felt the need to be credited like that.
Putting aside some of the amazing scripted shots (mostly bc I don’t have an easy way to make high quality gifs), I feel like it’s underrated that during regular gameplay the camera in s&p moves a tiny bit when you aim the crosshairs. This is something that was missing from s&p2 and one of the little things that made that game feel kind of dinky. But I understand it would have looked bad if you could whip the camera around 1:1 with the wii remote.
I never had the opportunity to post this before, but panzer dragoon 1 is one of those games I always pigeonholed as being kind overrated and outdone by its sequels. And there’s a certain kind of nerd that is super into sega of america as a company and talks about the game more like a product like how it could have saved the saturn and they never shut up. But I have relented because playing pd1 with the saturn mission stick is a lordly experience. Seriously it feels perfectly tuned with that game. and the stick doesn’t feel tuned at all with zwei! There’s a huge dead zone in that one, if I remember. Also the dragon is a better color than in zwei.
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gunblade ny is cool as a game where youre in a copter that has no physical presence and spends half its time in wall or the pavement
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i love the sequel to gunblade ny, la machineguns, because @daphaknee had me play it once and the entire machine shakes so fucking hard when youre shooting and you are CONSTANTLY SHOOTING so its super fun to play
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haha you step off that machine and your feet are numb for like half an hour
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I really liked the genesis mini ii port of space harrier 2 but the flickering can make it really hard to read and distracting. There is an alterate flicker setting hidden in the options that i imagine would make it easier on the eyes for some but it didn’t help me. It’s also frustrating it’s on another hunk of plastic taking up your space and not easily emulatable being on a hypothetical beefed up version of genesis hardware.
I enjoyed what I played of Air Twister and glad they ported it off of iOS so you could play it on big screens…have to agree it’s ugly but charmingly ugly and I like that some of the enemies are taken straight from the earlier harrier games just so the freaks know it’s set in the same harrierverse/fantasy zone.
Am counting myself in team #preferPDzwei but I really liked the look of the remake and as said above do hope zwei does come out one day.
Was poking around for jp-only PS1 games playable for those with no language knowledge and aside from Internal Section being one that never made it overseas Lattice 200EC7 seems to fit into this genre? It looks too impenetrable for me but just wanted to post this awesome…dark ambient drone/noise?? that’s in the main menu and I’ve accumulated probably a couple hrs worth playing as work background music.
I guess haroumi hosono did the music so i’m obligated to poke my head into this
Does the Area X level of rez infinite count as rail shooting since you get 6 degrees of freedom? Huh…
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Star Fox 64 (N64, 1997) is so ridiculously good. shocking that nintendo refuses to make a straightforward follow-up to this, it’s so simple and obvious and perfect. anyone here ever get a medal on every stage (deceptively difficult task) to get the on-foot multiplayer mode? i could never make it happen…
i wrote about Knife Edge: Nose Gunner (N64, 1998) in the GYPT thread recently:
Knife Edge: Nose Gunner - this game was supposed to launch with a light gun for the N64, but the gun never came out. the game did, though, and it kinda sucks? it’s not unplayable, and the whole ridiculous number of paths through each level idea is interesting for replayability, but things simply move too fast and the analog stick control is insufficient to get the job done. the bosses can also be interminable bullet sponges. dodging using the C buttons is unreliable at best. almost interesting, but ultimately just kind of shit
it’s probably the worst rail shooter i’ve ever played, but it does have a certain jank-ass charm to it. the speed is bonkers at times.
Pokemon Snap (N64, 1999) is a rail shooter in my mind. pretty decent one, even, and the conceit really helps with replay value. i find it easier to vibe with trying to get a higher score per-pokemon than having the entire stage being a singular score canvas. the light puzzle elements work surprisingly well
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I <3 silent scope
If you haven’t played it the rifle scope has a little screen in it showing a zoomed in image of where the gun is pointing. You spot a target on the main screen, aim generally, then look through the scope to zero in and make the shot. YOU SAVED THE PRESIDENT’S DAUGHTER BUT THEY CAUGHT THE PRESIDENT!
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Silent Scope 2 is great, too.
I feel like I’m always surprised there aren’t more Star Fox clones from the indie crowd. I can only think of a few, really.
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The town arcade when I was a teen had one of these BIG Time Crisis 2 machine and we had a score rivalry between friends. This game has hidden score mechanics based on getting streaks of matching enemy clothing colors, hitting enemies multiple times as they fall and of course, head shots.
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Ooh to add to the *-crisis talk I wish I could have this sick projector CRT-replacement podium setup for crisis zone
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i used to play this game religiously as a teenager, and yeah I was able to do this. my best total score in the campaign was somewhere in the 1700-1800 range (pretty sure on expert) — it’s still wild to me that the WR for that is like 1000 points higher
related to this, but Star Fox 1 kinda annoys me because I’m pretty sure my copy is the early revision where getting a full score on Fortuna is impossible — granted, it’s not really a score attack game, especially in comparison to the N64 one
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