It's funny you mention old school shmups as a cause for the genre's relative obscurity, I've long thought the opposite. It used to be a popular genre, there were tons of them in the 16-bit, Saturn & Dreamcast eras. The moment they became niche was when bullet hell got big. Danmaku are just too intimidating & exclusionary for most people. Games like R-Type, Gradius III & Axelay were visual showcases for their hardware. The various powerups added variety & flash. They gave people who didn't care about playing for score (which I think is most people) something to enjoy. I can't even remember the last shmup that truly pushed the hardware it was on in terms of visual design...was it Gradius V back in 2004? This is important, because the vast majority of players won't have the drive to play the same 10 mins of gameplay over & over until they master it. They need to be getting satisfaction out of it up front just clearing it once or twice.

I like oldschool and bullet hell but they scratch different itches for me. I like the sense of adventure that old shmups give you as you move through the different environments of the different levels and I like the incorporation of levels into the game mechanics. I also find the gameplay more varied and find the enemies and their patterns have more personality. I agree with you that things like losing your powerups on death is a bad mechanic and autofire is necessary. RSI is not a game mechanic.

The 16 bit era is still the best for shooters. Axelay is one of my favourites for sure, there isn't many old shooters i don't have across various platforms.

Games like R Type delta and final or GradiusV tend to have a lot of variety like you have sections where you go underwater or the level walls close in....and that Axelay on screen is a lot of variety....whereas cave games have the best/smoothest gameplay ever but they are mostly shooting and structurally similar...i cant think of a cave game where suddenly the walls close in on you or the screen rotates... I think r type final 2 and having games like that is quite important....new school puts you in a place (bliss) but the older games some at least like Axelay (i need to play it) put you in...many places not just one. I think thats a limitation of cave games/bullet hell even though they do have the best gameplay ever. Variety is the spice of life

I personally love the 16 bit era shooters. They have that simple charm to them. Although I didn't play shooters much till probably when Ikaruga came out for the Cube. I personally love games like the Thunder Force and R-Type series as much as I do the Battle Gareggas and Dodon Pachis of the shooter world. Good topic BTW.

The gameplay of a traditional shooter is counting shots. How many bullets with this gun will it take to kill that type of enemy. You move you shop around, sometimes wearing down enemy hp’s in order to maximise efficiency with say, a wide shot.

As someone who mostly plays older shmups, I think everything you said is totally understandable. As a kid I only had Gradius 3, Super R Type, and Earth Defense Force. They were all pretty brutal. It wasn’t until I started playing video games again around 2012 that I started to discover things I had missed before. Now I’m finally dipping my toe in the water of bullet hell style stuff and I’m loving it. More game > less games

I'm currently in development of my own shump, and I really enjoyed hearing your thoughts! You made a great point about something I didn't think about until now: Power up chasing. I agree with a lot of your points, and it's something I've been trying to figure out in my game for a while. But hearing you kinda helped me realize a power up system may not be even necessary. Danmaku Unlimited 2 and 3 comes to mind and they're still enjoyable games without them. Thanks for the vid!

In our Xona Games’ shmups we addressed some of your criticisms we also shared: Gradius syndrome, powerup chasing. We implemented auto fire, tiny hit boxes, and slowdown button (without affecting fire). We kept the old school style with these advancements - based off Raiden II and Thunder Force II/III. So our games are more of a manic shmup rather than a true bullet hell. Anyways, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I like seeing I’m not the only one with these critiques.

I've been playing a number of old school shmups recently (Thunder Force III, IV, Robo Aleste, Rayforce, Truxton).

In my opinion there is no "vs", there are shoot´em ups that I like and others that I don't like, regardless of whether they are like Galaxian, like Thunder Force or like Dodonpachi.

Very interesting takes! I'm definitely in the camp that prefers old school to danmaku (my favs probably being TFIV, Darius Gaiden) and most people in design circles blame danmaku for the genre's drop in popularity.

I han't gamed for 25 years. Last shooter was R-type which was sooo unforgiving. Now dipping my toes back in and I don't care who laughs but I love Euroschumps, fun, accessible, pretty...keep me happy? Sky Force Reloaded, Natsuki Chronicles been keeping me going. Bullet Hell just seems to intense for me being a practical noob.

The old Hudson, Compile, and Naxat shmups (to me) still hold their own. I actually prefer them to bullet hell. I could play Spriggan, Soldier Blade, Gun Nac, and Super aleste all day and never get bored. Oh and MUSHA too!

If I remember correctly my first shmup was 1942 at the arcades, and gradius and salamander for NES. I didn't start getting into it until I played Raiden DX at the arcades I thought it was 1942 on steroids, what attracted me mostly was the sound of the bomb and enemies explosion. What a perfect game it was to me. And soon as Raiden project came out for ps1 i bought right away, I still have it with the old huge cd case. Playing it on a PVM is awesome. Even though I can barely pass the game.

so glad the youtube algorithm lead me to your channel. Great stuff here. Even watched that shmup agdq speedrun you mentioned, loved his monologue at the end of the run. Had me laughing. cheers!

I'm old and started playing shoot 'em ups with NES Gradius, but I love danmaku as well and had to defend it and its legitimacy as a subgenre to many fellow oldtimers. You're right, there is a divide and they both demand surprisingly different skill sets. I personally love the base appeal of hitting stuff with your rapid projectiles and seeing it blow up and dissipate so much, that I embrace all design schools of thought and subdivisions of the genre (well maybe not your typical Euroshmup since they tend to tinker with that base appeal in annoying ways). It's probably also why the STG I'm developing right now looks very conservative on the surface, with fairly basic, classic patterns (as I feel I need to master these basics from a design p.o.v. first before I can move on to more mind melting stuff), but then adds play and score mechanics you'd expect to see in a modern era danmaku.

I grew up in the arcade era of shooters from the mid 80's onwards. I have always loved the artstyle and fast pace of gameplay. My favourite era for shooters was with the Sega Saturn, games from the saturn era i loved were Batsugun, Rayforce, Dodonpachi, Darius Gaiden, RSG, Kyukyoku Tiger II. The transition from traditional to more contempory shooters is my favouite. Even now though i am massively enjoying pc shooters like Zero Ranger, Blue Revolver, Monolith and Mecha Ritz. The genre is niche but still vibrant with small teams of people creating some fantastic games.

Old school or danmaku, I actually appreciate both. I just like that there are bullet hell games like Trouble Witches where you can skip the bullet hell dodging with that magic barrier that massively slowdowns the bullet.

The scoring system/ discovering in dept mechanics is also a bit different as well. For instance, understanding the deep scoring mechanics of games such as Garegga, Batrider, Bakraid, etc. took multiple playthroughs and experimentation in order to figure out how to score well. Games like Image Fight 1 and 2 allowed for different weapons, and tricks along with those weapons, in order to beat bosses and enemies. I can definitely see the appeal of bullet hells as they are pretty cool and interesting, but seem to focus on surviving pure saturation rather than have ways to explore and exploit levels, enemies, weapon systems, and scoring systems in order to master the game. I also feel like bullet hells essentially took the flashiness of penny slots and the like and integrated that into shmups to give it its new appeal (in terms of the flashiness), but to me the novelty wears off a bit quickly for me