shmuptheory.blogspot.com
[SHMUPtheory]: Sin & Punishment: Reading between the dimensions
http://shmuptheory.blogspot.com/2009/02/sin-punishment-reading-between.html
Wednesday, February 25, 2009. Sin and Punishment: Reading between the dimensions. Deviating from my undying love of vertically-scrolling shmups ( Tate mode forever ♥. I'd like to take a moment to observe a peculiar behavior of mine in Sin and Punishment. There's a section of Scene 2-1 (or as I like to think of it, the one after you take part in drowning Tokyo in a fiery sea of magma. Wherein you have to defeat a miniboss that spews out an array of candy corn. It makes me wonder, then, why Treasure. Anoth...
shmuptheory.blogspot.com
[SHMUPtheory]: That Was The Sound Of You Winning
http://shmuptheory.blogspot.com/2011/04/that-was-sound-of-you-winning.html
Friday, April 1, 2011. That Was The Sound Of You Winning. I recently read through this plea to Roger Ebert in defense of videogames being art. What Did I Just Listen To? Then it'll not only enrich the experience, but make you remember it well after having played. How they feel to the recipient. I could go on, but I wanted to address audio in games. Hearing Is Fun Again. So I'd like to take a closer look (listen? Seriously, just go play). This is the only one of my examples that is just a looping samp...
shmuptheory.blogspot.com
[SHMUPtheory]: The Anatomy of a Shmup
http://shmuptheory.blogspot.com/2010/02/anatomy-of-shmup.html
Wednesday, February 17, 2010. The Anatomy of a Shmup. Below I've gathered together a list of what I've observed over the months and years of playing. The ideas are in no particular order and only represent a fraction of my records. I thought I'd share them so you, too, can pinpoint a reason for any given game not being quite what you had hoped. Enemy bullets should always be visible. Off-screen enemies should not be able to shoot. This causes too much confusion, anger, and force quitting. I seemed to mis...
shmuptheory.blogspot.com
[SHMUPtheory]: Project RS3: I'm No Fanboy, I Just Appreciate Art
http://shmuptheory.blogspot.com/2009/04/project-rs3-im-no-fanboy-i-just.html
Tuesday, April 21, 2009. Project RS3: I'm No Fanboy, I Just Appreciate Art. Project RS3 is the codename for quite possibly one of the greatest shmups ever created. It hasn't exactly been released yet. And the last I heard of it, production on the title has come to an indefinite halt. So why am I prematurely crowning the game for all of its achievements in areas of technicality, artistry, and gameplay? This all really amounts to what the company, Treasure ( ♥. Treasure's games taking the latter due to the...
shmuptheory.blogspot.com
[SHMUPtheory]: Inferno Means Hot
http://shmuptheory.blogspot.com/2011/08/inferno-means-hot.html
Monday, August 1, 2011. Part of a monthly series of releases from developer Radiangames. Inferno is the standout title among the herd, designed less as a screen of stuff to shoot at, but as a journey through spaces requiring strategy to survive - an adventure shmup. Geometry Wars Meets. Something Else. Not a Corner In Sight. When all was said and done, the two of us had spent 10 man-hours dredging through an unknown indie shmup, enjoyed ourselves the entire time, and created a night of fond memories....
shmuptheory.blogspot.com
[SHMUPtheory]: Cave + iPhone: Pocket-Sized Anxiety (The Good Kind)
http://shmuptheory.blogspot.com/2011/02/cave-iphone-pocket-sized-anxiety-good.html
Tuesday, February 1, 2011. Cave iPhone: Pocket-Sized Anxiety (The Good Kind). I would imagine the hardest part of porting this mammoth to a handheld device was to maintain the same level of intensity, challenge, and skillset. Without a proper / well-implemented way to control a game, it's just not going to do well because people can't become amazing at it. Luckily for Cave, they've allowed other shmups to come and go (figuratively, since the App store is everlasting), finding out what input methods w...
shmuptheory.blogspot.com
[SHMUPtheory]: [Not Your] Everyday Shooter
http://shmuptheory.blogspot.com/2011/04/not-your-everyday-shooter.html
Saturday, April 30, 2011. Not Your] Everyday Shooter. By Jonathan Mak, a delightful breath of fresh air to come to PS3 and PC. S games immediately come to mind, a marriage of abstract colors, shapes, and sounds combined with an overwhelming array of lights, movement, and good ole fashioned bullet dodgin'. In Everyday Shooter, Mak takes things in a different direction, instead using his visuals and audio to create a narrative that is told in the space between. He Had One Guitar. The ways in which enemies ...
shmuptheory.blogspot.com
[SHMUPtheory]: Dual Play: When Playing With Yourself is a Gameplay Mode
http://shmuptheory.blogspot.com/2009/04/dual-play-when-playing-with-yourself-is.html
Tuesday, April 28, 2009. Dual Play: When Playing With Yourself is a Gameplay Mode. Shmups have, at times, been credited as one of the most challenging genres of games as a whole, if not the most challenging altogether. That at least doubles the difficulty of the genre's challenge, that mode being what is known as "dual play.". This is not to be confused with "double play," in which two chaps sit next to each other. And the corporate owners of things that accept quarters / tokens / yen. It would appear ha...
shmuptheory.blogspot.com
[SHMUPtheory]: June Happenings and the Final Theory
http://shmuptheory.blogspot.com/2011/07/june-happenings-and-final-theory.html
Friday, July 1, 2011. June Happenings and the Final Theory. Things were great (i.e. chains were high), but then I started to run out of ideas. I slowed down to posting every two weeks, then to roughly every month, until I stopped posting for the latter half of 2010. One day, my old friend). Or maybe to get all giddy. About RS3. Or maybe to continue touting my love for Treasure. 9829;). Who knows! A chap by the name of BulletMagnet - a much respected aficionado in the shooting-things-up world - has loving...
shmuptheory.blogspot.com
[SHMUPtheory]: Eschatos: Forcing Perspective
http://shmuptheory.blogspot.com/2011/06/eschatos-forcing-perspective.html
Wednesday, June 1, 2011. It's great to see a team come together and try to push shmups to new limits, allowing us to enjoy the same old formula but with a splash of vanilla to keep it fresh. Many styles and choices in gameplay have worked really well over the decades, making such a game that much more respectable for trying something different. Eschatos is not that game. This may sound a bit familiar to my post about a forced perspective. On XBLA/PSN). However, RayStorm's forced perspective wasn't ex...
