Whats The Craziest Shooter Under Emulation?

[Rayek]

Has anyone mentioned Contra? Not a space or plane shooter, but still should be mentioned.

All of those games are incredibly hard to beat, there's an NES, SNES, and Genesis/Megadrive version of the game. Crazy powerups, and just damn good.

 

[Willei]

I'd like to give a special mention to Armed Police Batrider, for having an incredible amount of hidden stuff and depth, along with being a brilliantly balanced shmup as well. It's also one of the few arcade boards I own, primarily because I love it, but also because the driver in MAME for all the Raizing games (Battle Garegga and Battle Bakraid being the more well known games from Raizing) has a small amount of input lag which totally messes me up.

Like all the awesome games in MAME, it's emulated in version 0.36 so it won't be on a handheld any time soon! Do yourself a favour and check it out some time!

Also, you can't really go wrong with any of Cave's games. Esp.RaDe (another one I own ), Do Don Pachi, Dangun Feveron are all brilliant. Guwange has it's fans, but I've never really gotten on with it sadly. Just as well, since it goes for big big dollar when it's on sale since it's so rare. While we're on the topic of Cave, make sure you avoid Do Don Pachi 2: Bee Storm - it's very much the black sheep of the series since Cave licensed it out to some Chinese company called IGS, who've yet to make a good game. Progear is another GREAT game, it's on Capcom CPS2 hardware since it was published by them, and sadly there are loads of bootlegs kicking around at the moment. It's also a horizontal shmup, very unusual for Cave.

Unfortunately, a lot of the Cave stuff is still unemulated. Do Don Pachi: Dai Ou Jou is brilliant (there's a PS2 version), Espgaluda is pretty good (PS2 again), Mushihimesama is also brilliant (far too new for MAME, but there's a PS2 version), Ibara - which I love but it widely disliked since it's more or less a Raizing game (PS2 version out soon apparently), and last but by no means least, Ketsui. I think it's one of their best games yet, but there's no home versions and it's not emulated.


And bringing me back on topic, here are some shooting games that are just great:

Twin Cobra (avoid Kyukyoku Tiger, the same game but unfairly hard later on)
Fire Shark (Toaplan pretty much formed the modern shooter)
Gradius series (although it kinda lost it's way a bit at 4 IMO)
R-Type (they're all good, R-Type Leo is a bit of a step backwards though)
Radient Silvergun (probably in MAME soon)
Raiden (the whole series is pretty good, 1st is a bit bland IMO)
Salamander (Lifeforce is the game with rubbish speech added, god knows why)
Parodius (I've not put any real time into these just yet, they seem pretty good though)


That'll do for now before I get into all the console games!


Edit: I spelled "Kyukyoku Tiger" as "Kyokyuku Tiger"

 

[Jegriva]

THUNDER FORCE IV!!!

 

[Segata Sanshiro]

Radient Silvergun (probably in MAME soon)

Amazing shooter, but why not mention Ikaruga too? Unfortunately the MAME version needs a 3 GHz processor to run fullspeed, using hacks... The Saturn "conversion" is easier to emulate.

I love Thunderforce IV too, great music, great graphics, and great difficulty too. Really fun to play.

 

[Willei]

Radient Silvergun (probably in MAME soon)

Amazing shooter, but why not mention Ikaruga too? Unfortunately the MAME version needs a 3 GHz processor to run fullspeed, using hacks... The Saturn "conversion" is easier to emulate.

​

Heh, by that point I was back on the subject of emulated shooters. Ikaruga probably isn't a million miles away from emulation since there are shots of the Dreamcast emulator Chankast running Naomi based games. The Dreamcast version of Ikaruga does run on Chankast with some graphical issues IIRC, probably worth a bash if anyone with a decent computer hasn't played is since the ISO is only 17Mb. h34r:

Shame there's been no progress on Chankast for a while then!

Actually, I don't even like Ikaruga that much. You can probably guess from a lot of my other choices that I'm more of a hot-dogging bullet dodger rather than a calm and considered shooter. For me, Ikaruga is like a puzzle game mixed with a shooting game, simply playing it as a shooter leaves you with a rather dry experience. For Dreamcast/Naomi shooters, I'd much rather have the likes of G.Rev's Border Down, Psikyo's Zero Gunner 2 or Skonec's Psyvariar 2. Other games of note are Psikyo's Gunbird series, Takumi's Mars Matrix and Gigawing games and Treasure's Bangaio - although unfortunately a lot of that stuff leaves me cold.

 

[Eolair]

Salamander
R-Type
Katakis
Cybernoid II
Silkworm
SWIV
Battle Squadron
Xenon II

 

[Series-8]

What about TYRIAN.

A.K.A. BEST PC SHOOTER EVAR!

The author is still around... perhaps he could be convinced to do a port.

 

[Jegriva]

Ikaruga for gamecube run with 20-30fpson my 1.8Ghz Athlon with Dolwin.

 

[diablo2]

Sonic Wings for SNES
There is probably a Genesis version, though.
Enjoy.
Edit: And dispite what most think. Ikuraga is not the best shooter. It is Zero Gunner 2 for Dreamcast. BTW you can probably play Ikuraga better on Chanka.

 

[Eolair]

1. Warhawk. OK i'm biased as I designed it but give it a go. I believe it was the first ever home vertical shooter with a powerup. Shoot the little ships with black wing markings and collide with the dropped satelite being careful not to shoot it. You then can hold the fire button for 2x auto fire and 2x movement. essential on later levels.

​

Warhawk! How could I forget. That was one amazing game and now it's nostalgia at it's best. Thanks for one of the best shooters on the C64

 

[lizard808uk]

Suprised noone mentioned Pop n Twinbee 1 & 2 for SNES yet??

Also the Sega Fantasy Zone games should go down on the list for being odd, not sure if they crazy though...

 

[bast525]

Recca for NES is possibly the CRAZIEST shooter emulated on the GP32!

It plays very much like many of the current arcade shooters where bullets are just spraying all over the damn place... it's VERY impressive graphically considering the hardware it was programmed for.

While it's not my favorite shooter by any means (though definately one of the tops) and it is really f'in difficult, I definately suggest everyone check this game out so that a) you can be amazed by what the NES really could do and B) you can play one of the craziest overhead shooters ever created. This thing has the flavor of some of the best shooters that came out during the Saturn and Dreamcasts' lives.


Anyways... BEST shooters on GP for me would be Gunstar Heroes GEN, Alien Soldier GEN, Contra Hard Corps GEN, Soldier Blade PCE, Gaires GEN (probably not spelling that right), Rtype 1 & 2 (PCE), hell the list goes on and on, but I actually think a lot of the better ones are on Genesis. Having played just about every genesis and PCE shooter out there, I would say that shooters were definately the PCE's strongpoint relative to it's own library, but many of them were pretty basic as shooters go, and many of the shooters on the Genesis are much better.

 

[BentlyTCow]

how about robotron 2064? and i seem to remember space megaforce for snes as being pretty good too..


bently.

 

[darkman]

There is another shooter that is really weird, that is good on the GP32. It is Paranoia on the GP engine. I think it is called by more than one name. I know it by this one.

 

[sausage dog]

VULCAN VENTURE for MAME. I'm sure hope they get it working on the GP2X.

I remember playing it years ago on holiday and thought that the planets of fire and the fire dragons were awesome.

Zerowing for genesis is also a cracking shooter.