Anthony Flack wrote:BONUS! BONUS! BO-BONUS!Do you play many shmups? I still have a fondness.No I don't but if you know a good one let me know.PS BO-B0-Bonus!

I dunno about the PS4 but I could talk about 80s and 90s shmups all day. Here's a few arcade games contemporaneous to Blazing Star that I really dig:Dodonpachi - guy, it's so hard. But it's so good. Beautiful art, meticulous design, relentlessly punishing. I think it's a masterpiece but it's not for the faint-hearted. 100% intense.Progear - it's not as good as Dodonpachi, but it is by the same developer (Cave) and it is all of the above but in a steampunky sideways form if that's more your thing.Giga Wing - Capcom's take on the manic shooter lets you reflect bullets back at the enemies, producing showers of medals to collect and scores that go up to eleventy trillion gazillion. You spend as much time collecting points as you do dodging bullets, you don't have to think too hard and it is big, stupid fun.Radiant Silvergun - the turtleneck sweater-wearing shmup. Large, impressive, ambitious, operatic, complex, full of references and allusions, this game was clearly intended as the Greatest Shmup Of All Time. It's difficult, but relatively slow-moving and not frantic. It is very big, very dense and intimidating, possibly a little too clever for its own good at times but still much more fun than its minimalist follow-up Ikaruga.Gunbird 2 - nothing particularly clever going on here, it's just a well-made example of Psikyo's brand of shmup which looks nice and plays well, and sometimes that's all you need.Soukyugurentai - another difficult bastard manic shooter, this one is built around a nifty lock-on missile mechanic. And if you like that sort of thing, you might also check out another game called Layer Section (aka Rayforce/Gunlock)In The Hunt - a much slower and easier, decidedly non-manic submarine shooter from Irem which is graphically similar to Metal Slug, which is to say it looks beautiful, and won't make you feel like you are bad at video games.Ok, enough!Uhh, you can play them on MAME, or on a Sega Saturn or Playstation 1 in most cases, emulated or otherwise. Or they may be available on current systems like Blazing Star is for all I know. Classic games should be treated like classic albums really.

Anthony Flack wrote:I dunno about the PS4 but I could talk about 80s and 90s shmups all day. Here's a few arcade games contemporaneous to Blazing Star that I really dig:Dodonpachi - guy, it's so hard. But it's so good. Beautiful art, meticulous design, relentlessly punishing. I think it's a masterpiece but it's not for the faint-hearted. 100% intense.Progear - it's not as good as Dodonpachi, but it is by the same developer (Cave) and it is all of the above but in a steampunky sideways form if that's more your thing.Giga Wing - Capcom's take on the manic shooter lets you reflect bullets back at the enemies, producing showers of medals to collect and scores that go up to eleventy trillion gazillion. You spend as much time collecting points as you do dodging bullets, you don't have to think too hard and it is big, stupid fun.Radiant Silvergun - the turtleneck sweater-wearing shmup. Large, impressive, ambitious, operatic, complex, full of references and allusions, this game was clearly intended as the Greatest Shmup Of All Time. It's difficult, but relatively slow-moving and not frantic. It is very big, very dense and intimidating, possibly a little too clever for its own good at times but still much more fun than its minimalist follow-up Ikaruga.Gunbird 2 - nothing particularly clever going on here, it's just a well-made example of Psikyo's brand of shmup which looks nice and plays well, and sometimes that's all you need.Soukyugurentai - another difficult bastard manic shooter, this one is built around a nifty lock-on missile mechanic. And if you like that sort of thing, you might also check out another game called Layer Section (aka Rayforce/Gunlock)In The Hunt - a much slower and easier, decidedly non-manic submarine shooter from Irem which is graphically similar to Metal Slug, which is to say it looks beautiful, and won't make you feel like you are bad at video games.Ok, enough!Uhh, you can play them on MAME, or on a Sega Saturn or Playstation 1 in most cases, emulated or otherwise. Or they may be available on current systems like Blazing Star is for all I know. Classic games should be treated like classic albums really.Wow thanks man! I will check some of these out.

I had to check if DoDonPachi was still so good, and it found its way back into daily rotation. It's still SO GOOD.The other ones are good too, but it's like the difference between a good rock song and the greatest rock song ever written. DoDonPachi might just be the greatest shmup ever made. (Some people say Battle Garegga but that one just has never clicked for me.)Incidentally, I don't play games like this by shovelling credits in until I get to the end. Instead I will play from the start with one credit, and do it every day, and gradually get better. This is the way arcade games are meant to be played! For DoDonPachi it means I just play the first three levels mostly, which is fine as there's no point going on to the harder parts until you're good enough to cope with them, or it will just make you cry. And the intensity is such that even stage 1 is never boring, and always possible to improve.Later sequels were not as good! 22 years and never bettered, DO-DO-DO-DO-DO...DoDonPachi!

I just got through playing Celeste on Switch (which has incidentally become by go to "get high and have something to do with my hands while I watch tv" system). Very gorgeous and enjoyable. Ditto for The Messenger. Both great, pretty, pleasant 2d platformers.

how can anyone play anything other than overwatch when they pick up those controllers?

<3janeway wrote:how can anyone play anything other than overwatch when they pick up those controllers?I've been clean of Overwatch for about 6 months now.I just take each day at a time

My lunchtime Slay the Spire game is slowly pulling together. Hell of a lot of depth to manage, and makes a change from my Into the Breach breaktimes.Outside of that, finally modded the OG Vita full of 16-bit goodness.

Still coming back for more DoDonPachi.My game is improving; I can get to the god damn level 4 boss on credit 1 now, which means level five is potentially within reach, which is kind of unbelievable. There are six levels in the game's first loop and it won't let you into the second loop unless you beat them all in one credit and meet some other conditions as well. So the bar is set pretty high, and I've never reached the second loop, but if I can get this far then maybe anything is possible... just the fact that I'm routinely getting to level 4 on one coin feels pretty good.Then I have to stop because my fire button hand is cramping up and I'm on the verge of a heart attack. If you hear that I'm dead you'll know I reached level 5.

The release of Borderlands 2 and the Pre-Sequel on PS4 is having the desired effect and making me excited for Borderlands 3. If only Randy Pitchford wasn't such a cock.