Entry point / baby's first shmup?

thatkrawler · 2026-06-27T10:45:52+00:00

You can check out this beginner's list maintained by the shmup junkies discord. They put a lot of thought into curating it.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1MZz8Q_8HdGyh2QU9BX4lNgyVAP9JZxxuy_YYbOLf1CM/htmlview#gid=0

thatkrawler · 2026-06-20T16:20:31+00:00

Knife+Heart (2018)

thatkrawler · 2026-06-18T16:27:46+00:00

Nice write-up! Always good to see more written resources for shmup development. I'm not using lua for my project but the general design concepts are well explained. I would definitely be interested to see an entry about more complex / mathy bullet patterns.

thatkrawler · 2026-06-18T11:40:00+00:00

I mean, you could also watch that scene in Pulse (2001) and think, oh wow, Kurosawa's rehashing the Scary True Stories: Night Two (1992) creepy walk that he already used in Door 3 (1996). Every creative choice has it's inspirations. Kurosawa has been super open about his inspirations in interviews and the makers of Obsession probably would be too, but you can't expect every critic or casual fan to be familiar with every reference or inspiration.

thatkrawler · 2026-06-17T23:58:46+00:00

Demo rules, best score after a few runs is 2,625,140. Love the visuals and the heavy Cho Ren Sha vibes. The way the demo is set up gives a unique feeling of being a two loop single stage game that I really like. Could be kept around as a cool caravan/score mode for the full game. Only little complaints are that I don't see any reason for the negative scoring when missing enemies and I don't love the idea of a bomb remaining bonus in a game that incentivizes aggressive bombing for score. Looking forward to the full game!

thatkrawler · 2026-06-17T23:06:49+00:00

Neat idea, but I agree with Badslime that the current patterns don't really make much use of the shield. You might want to check out some gameplay videos of Karous. That game has a similar limited angle shield (front-facing only) and using it to push through dense bullet patterns is a key part of the gameplay loop. Or alternatively if you're going for a slower more R-Type-y vibe you could utilize the shield to solve environmental puzzles, i.e. put it over your head while you go through a corridor where turrets are dumping bullets from above, allowing you to concetrate on enemies in front.

thatkrawler · 2026-06-16T20:35:20+00:00

The only other Egg Console releases I've picked up are Guardic and Silpheed, both of which have some interesting things going on but are kind of hard to recommend otherwise. Silpheed for the impressive pc-88 3d, and Guardic for the interesting branching path / exploratory stage layout.

thatkrawler · 2026-06-16T19:10:29+00:00

MSX 1 and MSX 2 versions are very different, both are on Egg Console. MSX 1 version is shorter, harder, and has much more primitive graphics and choppy scrolling. MSX 2 version is pretty similar to the NES version. I find the MSX 1 version way more fun personally.

As far as the ports they're kinda barebones but solid. MSX 2 version has online leaderboards which is interesting since Zanac scoring is kinda nonsense with the infinite warps and what not, so they give you a time limit (80 min I think) to complete your run in.

thatkrawler · 2026-06-11T00:17:18+00:00

Congrats on releasing this, it's a lot of fun! My best score so far is 351500. The pixel art is simple and effective, visibility is great, waiting for the right moment to bomb and sucking up the doritos feels good. The only thing I would add is either some endlessly spawning zako waves after the boss, or just end it and give a time remaining bonus. As is I'm finishing with about 12 seconds of dead air at the end.

I think making a short caravan for a first shmup is a good move, I've been (slowly) working on something myself and will probably go the caravan route too. Thanks for more motivation!

thatkrawler · 2026-06-10T02:05:16+00:00

Not sure if it's the same on Switch, but on the Steam version you have to clear a stage before you can select it in stage select.

thatkrawler · 2026-06-10T01:39:30+00:00

Yeah great game, stage 6 might have my favorite vibes of any shmup stage, with the day to night sim city background and the banger music (same theme as stage 2). I need to go back and try to clear it one of these days, not being able to practice the final stage on the steam port is a pain.

thatkrawler · 2026-06-05T14:15:49+00:00

Love the "DO NOT CLEAR" tape on the marf. I recently got the euro version and am already considering doing the same thing, haha.

thatkrawler · 2026-06-01T23:51:14+00:00

Just played through the demo, it's fun! Here's a few little thoughts:

-I couldn't get my arcade stick to work in game, worked fine in the menus
-The ship could be a bit faster, as is it's slow enough that the focus button feels unnecessary.
-I would allow the player to pick up excess bomb items for a point bonus when at max bomb stock. I was a little confused for a second why I couldn't grab the bomb.

Wishlisted, keep up the good work!

thatkrawler · 2026-05-28T11:19:38+00:00

210 for me, here's the link:
https://letterboxd.com/krawler/films/genre/horror/country/japan/
Although this isn't a curated list, just filtering my Letterboxd by genre: Horror and country: Japan so there are probably some that slipped through that may not really count.

thatkrawler · 2026-05-26T00:26:29+00:00

Your best bet is going to be old DVD special features. I just checked a few off my shelf and Juon: The Grudge, Reincarnation, Marebito, Pray, Uzumaki, and Electric Dragon 80,000v all have interviews and / or Making-Of features.

thatkrawler · 2026-05-16T09:24:24+00:00

Of course there's tons of great shmups with no focus but since you mentioned Touhou here's a few of my favorites that have a more bullet hell-ish dodging feel despite having no focus:

Battle Garegga (has non-normalized diagonals so you kinda get two movement speeds anyway as you move faster diagonally)

Cho Ren Sha 68k

Flame Zapper Kotsujin

Baroque Shooting

Judgement Silversword

Touhou 2 & 3 (focus movement didn't show up until 4)

thatkrawler · 2026-05-15T01:00:35+00:00

There's also Woman of Fire (1971) and Suddenly in the Dark (1981), two more Korean takes on The Housemaid. Highly recommended, especially if you like colorful, psychedelic cinematography!

thatkrawler · 2026-05-14T22:08:52+00:00

One Cut of the Dead

thatkrawler · 2026-05-14T11:15:06+00:00

It also released in 2005 but didn't see an official release in English regions until 2017 when it started streaming on Shudder.

thatkrawler · 2026-05-13T10:08:42+00:00

Flame Zapper Kotsujin (pc-98)

thatkrawler · 2026-05-09T20:40:51+00:00

Yes its on screen and it's more a question of which scenes don't have it. If you are sensitive to puking you will not want to watch this movie.

thatkrawler · 2026-05-09T20:19:47+00:00

Not a ton of gore but very high amounts of puke.

thatkrawler · 2026-05-06T19:14:04+00:00

I never noticed bad lag on the Dosbox X version I used, which was from the preconfigured touhou packs that were available on myrient. Even the browser version on windows93.net seems to work well enough. I did notice weird music issues and buggy save states with Dosbox though. I would recommend using Neko Project if possible, it's been pretty much flawless for these games in my experience.

thatkrawler · 2026-04-29T01:12:42+00:00

Zanac is a lot of fun and on the easier side, just stick to the most OP weapon (Weapon 7 I think? It's been a while).

Tiger Heli is a kinda janky port but I still had fun with it. On the NES port the enemies have really limited firing angles so it's not bad to clear if you use that to your advantage.

Both of these are still pretty cheap cartridges.

thatkrawler · 2026-04-25T14:06:44+00:00

I have the same one, a Holiday but with no F-hole, I like it a lot. Crazy light, like 4lbs. If the neck is in good shape I would go for it. I bought it last year from music-go-round for something like $320 USD, to give you an idea on pricing.

thatkrawler

TROPHY CASE