NES Shmups

[JamesRobot | 5,882]

5 hours ago, Tulpa said:

But scrolling shooter is a defined subgenre in the overall shooter category for some...

 

2 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Which is a different genre from shooters.  When I say "shooter," I think "shoot-em-up."  And when I think "shoot-em-up" I absolutely do NOT think of fixed-screen arcade shooters like Galaga or Space Invaders.  Fixed screen shooters are a subgenre of arcade games, not shooters.

 

2 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

What I would say is games like Galaga, Centipede, or Space Invaders were proto-shooters, as they lack enough to not fit in the genre, but their influence on it is undeniable.

 

Gotta agree with Tulpa that shmup is the overall category.  Space Invaders is widely regarded as the first shmup.  Galaxian and Galaga are certainly shmups and though it is merely the background which scrolls, these are the prototypes of the scrolling shmup subgenre at least on a rudimentary level.  Later more complex games introduce the player to backround interaction via bombing enemies (Xevious) and scrolling forground enemies and obstacles, of course. 

And speaking of prototypical shmups, I'd say that honor goes to Spacewar!  Which is more a precursor to the Asteroids style multi-directional shmup.  Another sub-genre pioneered by the original.

   

 

 

Now moving on to my personal favorite shmup, Tempest.  Which introduces us to yet another subgenre, the tube shooters. Really it's just Tempest and Gyruss but they pave the way to the 3D rail shmup genre including Space Harrier and Star Fox.  And yes, Gyruss should be on the list of NES shmups.

Edited December 17, 2021 by JamesRobot

[peg | 381]

7 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Back to the Future - This has the auto-scrolling of the SHMUP genre, but no actual shooting.  This fits better in the "action" category than as a shooter.

 

Have you ever played the game?

[the_wizard_666 | 1,329]

24 minutes ago, peg said:

Have you ever played the game?

Yes I have.  The main game had no shooting.  If you wanna count the minigame sections, go ahead, but I wouldn't call the entire game a shooter based on those.  That'd be like calling Kid Icarus a shooter because of the final stage, or calling SMB a shooter because you can shoot when you get the flower.

[peg | 381]

I guess you didn't get very far if you actually think there is no shooting in the game.  I'm not even sure the game can be beaten without the skateboard, which requires the bowling ball, which let's you kill the damn bees. Maybe thr game can be beaten without that but I'm really not sure if it's possible.

 

If mario had the majority of its levels auto scrolling and required you to use the fireball in order to actually beat the game then yes it would be a shmup.

Edited December 17, 2021 by peg

[Tanooki | 4,994]

5 hours ago, Tulpa said:

The thing about DK3, though, only some of the enemies are destroyed. The caterpillars aren't, they're just incapacitated, and DK is only shoved up the rails. Galaga, every enemy can be blown to bits.

The caterpillars are in a way like the barriers found in other shooters you have to strategize around as I see it.  As far as DK I guess, I don't know I kind of view that one more like one of those endless targets that just get shoved back to move a stage along which some shooters (obviously not Galaga) does.  I just was using that game because it was part of the page 1 list.

[Sumez | 3,076]

18 hours ago, Tulpa said:

If this is building on his RPG thread, he is after North American licensed NES games.

That sounds like a dumb arbitrary distinction to make, especially for a genre like shooters.  

[WhyNotZoidberg | 590]

15 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Is Contra a shooter?  Or Rambo? 

They certainly contain shooting. I would never argue that they aren't shooters. They're "Run and gun", mostly.

Wikipedia defines "Shoot em ups" as the main genre encompassing all types of shooting games, and Run and Gun type is classified under the "Scrolling shooters" category.

Run 'n' gun or run and gun games have protagonists that fight on foot, often with the ability to jump. Examples include Commando, Ikari Warriors, Contra, Metal Slug and Cuphead. Run-and-gun games may use side scrolling, vertical scrolling or isometric viewpoints and may feature multidirectional movement.^[26][27][28]

 

[Tulpa | 3,594]

3 hours ago, Sumez said:

That sounds like a dumb arbitrary distinction to make, especially for a genre like shooters.  

He's building off of his recent complete playthrough of the North American library, probably to do a write up. He didn't do the Famicom or European library.

You're free to playthrough those games, along with any others. Perhaps he can combine your notes with his to do a truly complete report.

 

Edited December 17, 2021 by Tulpa

[docile tapeworm | 4,221]

4 hours ago, Sumez said:

That sounds like a dumb arbitrary distinction to make, especially for a genre like shooters.  

 

[Brickman | 4,117]

2 hours ago, Tulpa said:

He's building off of his recent complete playthrough of the North American library, probably to do a write up. He didn't do the Famicom or European library.

You're free to playthrough those games, along with any others. Perhaps he can combine your notes with his to do a truly complete report.

 

It doesn’t say that in the post he just says a definitive list of shmups which isn’t really definitive if it doesn’t include Famicom. It will be missing some of the best games the library has to offer and with so many options these days to play them it doesn’t make much sense not to include them.

This has to be one of the few sites that doesn’t acknowledge any games exist outside of NA. 

[Tulpa | 3,594]

47 minutes ago, Shmup said:

It doesn’t say that in the post he just says a definitive list of shmups which isn’t really definitive if it doesn’t include Famicom.

 

I'm inferring it from his recent playthrough thread (which was North American licensed) where he stated he's going to eventually do a write up, and the acknowledgement smiley he put on my first post about it in this thread. Same thing with the RPG thread, NA licensed there, too.*

Like I said, anyone is free to do their own evaluation of the non-NA games, but it's pretty clear he's looking at the NA licensed library.

 

*there he actually did say licensed, and maybe he should have specified it here, too (although he did say "also" to start the post, meaning it's paired with the RPG thread), but it's clear he wants to classify the licensed games he played through.

Edited December 17, 2021 by Tulpa

[the_wizard_666 | 1,329]

6 hours ago, WhyNotZoidberg said:

They certainly contain shooting. I would never argue that they aren't shooters. They're "Run and gun", mostly.

Wikipedia defines "Shoot em ups" as the main genre encompassing all types of shooting games, and Run and Gun type is classified under the "Scrolling shooters" category.

Run 'n' gun or run and gun games have protagonists that fight on foot, often with the ability to jump. Examples include Commando, Ikari Warriors, Contra, Metal Slug and Cuphead. Run-and-gun games may use side scrolling, vertical scrolling or isometric viewpoints and may feature multidirectional movement.^[26][27][28]

 

Wikipedia isn't exactly a viable source...and I can 100% say that nobody called run and gun games "shooters" back in the day.  They were action games, plain and simple.  As were platform games - that wasn't even considered a genre of their own until MUCH later.

[Tulpa | 3,594]

I'm reluctant to call run-and-guns shooters. Maybe shooter-adjacent.

They're not all platformers, either. Some are overhead, like Commando.

[the_wizard_666 | 1,329]

24 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

I'm reluctant to call run-and-guns shooters. Maybe shooter-adjacent.

They're not all platformers, either. Some are overhead, like Commando.

Like I said, they're ACTION games.  Platformers are a sub-genre of action, as is run-and-gun.  Hell, scrolling shooters are also techincally from the action genre (single-screen shooters are technically under arcade, hence the distinction by so many old farts that seems lost on all you youngins ).

[Tulpa | 3,594]

1 minute ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Like I said, they're ACTION games.  Platformers are a sub-genre of action, as is run-and-gun.  Hell, scrolling shooters are also techincally from the action genre (single-screen shooters are technically under arcade, hence the distinction by so many old farts that seems lost on all you youngins ).

So arcade games have no action?

[the_wizard_666 | 1,329]

15 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

So arcade games have no action?

Arcade as a genre was literally games that were found in arcades at the time (late 70s/early 80s).  The vast majority were single screen games a la Donkey Kong, Mario Bros, Galaga, Pac-Man, etc.  That is why a game like Galaga is an arcade game and Gradius is a shooter, despite both involving shooting.  Single screen games were literally the definition of the arcade genre.

[Tulpa | 3,594]

16 minutes ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Arcade as a genre was literally games that were found in arcades at the time (late 70s/early 80s).  The vast majority were single screen games a la Donkey Kong, Mario Bros, Galaga, Pac-Man, etc.  That is why a game like Galaga is an arcade game and Gradius is a shooter, despite both involving shooting.  Single screen games were literally the definition of the arcade genre.

That's way too strict and limiting, though, because you can have games that blur the lines.

You said platformers are action games. But Mario Bros arcade is also a platformer. It's a platformer arcade game.

Trying to pigeonhole games into these single word categories doesn't give the whole picture. Better to go the other direction and describe the games by their attributes.

Gradius is a scrolling shooter, or scrolling shoot-em-up. Galaga is a fixed-screen or arcade style shooter.

Much more descriptive.

42 minutes ago, the_wizard_666 said:

hence the distinction by so many old farts that seems lost on all you youngins

Or maybe us "youngins" have found a better way to classify them. BTW, I think I might be at least as old as you are.

[docile tapeworm | 4,221]

I’m with tulpa some of them you can’t lump into “shooters”

like dk3. Id call that game “a guy with a can of bug spray, spraying bugs”. C’mon don’t lie to yourself and say that’s a “shooter”

[the_wizard_666 | 1,329]

2 hours ago, Tulpa said:

That's way too strict and limiting, though, because you can have games that blur the lines.

You said platformers are action games. But Mario Bros arcade is also a platformer. It's a platformer arcade game.

Trying to pigeonhole games into these single word categories doesn't give the whole picture. Better to go the other direction and describe the games by their attributes.

Gradius is a scrolling shooter, or scrolling shoot-em-up. Galaga is a fixed-screen or arcade style shooter.

Much more descriptive.

Or maybe us "youngins" have found a better way to classify them. BTW, I think I might be at least as old as you are.

Mario Bros. arcade predates the platform genre.  It falls squarely into the arcade genre.  It influenced the platform genre, but it isn't a platform game.  To give you an idea, that would be like arguing that Arthur Brown is heavy metal because he influence Iron Maiden.

[Tulpa | 3,594]

24 minutes ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Mario Bros. arcade predates the platform genre.  It falls squarely into the arcade genre.  It influenced the platform genre, but it isn't a platform game.  To give you an idea, that would be like arguing that Arthur Brown is heavy metal because he influence Iron Maiden.

I think "arcade" as a genre is misleading. I mean, Gradius was an arcade game, but it was also a scrolling shoot-em-up. Dragon's Lair was an arcade game, but definitely not falling into your definition of "arcade game."

Fixed screen or single screen would be a better choice of words for that particular style (Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Mario Bros), and leave the "arcade" appellation for the actual arcade versions.

Edited December 18, 2021 by Tulpa

[the_wizard_666 | 1,329]

42 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

I think "arcade" as a genre is misleading. I mean, Gradius was an arcade game, but it was also a scrolling shoot-em-up. Dragon's Lair was an arcade game, but definitely not falling into your definition of "arcade game."

Fixed screen or single screen would be a better choice of words for that particular style (Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Mario Bros), and leave the "arcade" appellation for the actual arcade versions.

Dragon's Lair is an adventure game.  Gradius is a shooter.  Arcade games as a genre are single screen games.  How is that so difficult to process?

[Tulpa | 3,594]

9 minutes ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Dragon's Lair is an adventure game.  Gradius is a shooter.  Arcade games as a genre are single screen games.  How is that so difficult to process?

Because "arcade" doesn't always mean single screen. It's misleading, and it's not universally accepted. When you say Gradius Arcade, it isn't a single screen game.

When you say "arcade", you have to specify the "genre" or the coin-op machine, and even then you have to explain what the "arcade genre" is most of the time. "Arcade genre, you know, the single screen games like Pac-Man."

Fixed screen or single screen says exactly what it means, and there's no need to clarify.

Edited December 18, 2021 by Tulpa

[the_wizard_666 | 1,329]

27 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

Because "arcade" doesn't always mean single screen. It's misleading, and it's not universally accepted. When you say Gradius Arcade, it isn't a single screen game.

When you say "arcade", you have to specify the "genre" or the coin-op machine, and even then you have to explain what the "arcade genre" is most of the time. "Arcade genre, you know, the single screen games like Pac-Man."

Fixed screen or single screen says exactly what it means, and there's no need to clarify.

Single-screen = Arcade (genre)

Scrolling screen =/= Arcade (genre)

Or how about this definition: Arcade genre is typified by simplicity: in presentation, gameplay environments and rules. Arcade games generally evolve through difficulty rather than the introduction of complexity through new characters, new controls, or new mechanics.

 

[Tulpa | 3,594]

5 minutes ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Single-screen = Arcade (genre)

Scrolling screen =/= Arcade (genre)

Or how about this definition: Arcade genre is typified by simplicity: in presentation, gameplay environments and rules. Arcade games generally evolve through difficulty rather than the introduction of complexity through new characters, new controls, or new mechanics.

 

No, it still seems like you have to over-explain to specify you're talking about a genre and not the machines themselves, when "single screen" or "fixed screen" dispenses with all of that unnecessary verbiage.

[the_wizard_666 | 1,329]

57 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

No, it still seems like you have to over-explain to specify you're talking about a genre and not the machines themselves, when "single screen" or "fixed screen" dispenses with all of that unnecessary verbiage.

THIS ENTIRE DISCUSSION IS ABOUT GENRES!

Jesus fuck man!