A brief consideration of tells in shoot-em-ups

I was considering the application of "show &" tells to shoot-em-ups the past few days while playing Raiden IV, Mushi-F, and Lightening* Force; the idea that enemies should visually indicate when an attack is about to happen (e.g. Bowser sucking in air before breathing fire). It should be taken into consideration that I have not cleared any of the three games I'm about to discuss, although I'm on the final stages of Raiden IV and Mushi-F. Lightening Force I've played for like 3 hours so take that with a grain of salt.

As I said before, Raiden is so positionally-oriented that precise shot timing doesn't really matter. If there's a group of enemies above me that I know fire single tracking bullets, I also know that I will be safe sweeping left until I clear the bullets. I can start the sweep any time before the first bullet reaches me and end it any time after the last one fires. If there's also an enemy left of me, then I should probably sweep up-right to get away or down-left to get under it and fire. These scenarios are pretty static across runs. Timing doesn't really matter that much - what matters is doing these movements in such a way as to sync up with targets while also setting up the next dodge. Which is quite enough to make it more complicated than "sweep left". I did think it would be helpful on a few enemies who shoot starburst or static patterns - and I also noticed these enemies do have animated tells (e.g. a mine blinking faster before it explodes).

Mushihimesama Futari yeah nah. It's all sight-dodging. I'm looking at the bullets for paths through them, or for enemies under them to shoot and consume them. Also, everything pretty much shoots immediately as it comes on screen and doesn't stop til it's destroyed. Herding is a pretty big deal in situations where aggression fails - essentially, you can treat enemies as though they are firing at all times and this would not significantly change the strategy.

Lightening Force I can definitely see the applicability. Not for bullets so much, but the game is plagued with enemies that blast on screen and smash into you so fast there's barely a second to react. Some of them do have foreshadowing, swooping across the background or burrowing through the desert sand, but not nearly enough. Blazing Star solves this in the simplest way possible, with "incoming" arrows where enemies are about to emerge. Crude, but effective. The bosses desperately need tells for everything they do, because they move around jerkily without pattern and again fire extremely fast bullets without warning. Maybe need is too strong - they'd be altered, for sure. As is, playing it safe and staying completely out of their targeting zone is pretty much the only road to success. The anxious fidgeting makes sure that even that isn't particularly easy.

So yeah, I'm inclined to think something is wrong with Gradius if it would really benefit from visual tells, and I'm starting to question if it actually would. The most troubling factors seem to be malingering enemies like the footbots who hang around for 10 or 20 seconds and can mostly be ignored except for those three random times they shoot, and the crowded spacing that means sustained motions like I described re:Raiden lead to constant collisions (I've said in the past I don't care for walls in shmups). It's like the series carves out a weird space between Thunderforce, where you always have to play it safe, and Mushihimesama, where you always have to wait and see, but without having the elegant level design of Raiden IV which realizes that it's in that space.

*light·en·ing

/ˈlītniNG/

noun

noun: lightening; plural noun: lightenings

1. a drop in the level of the uterus during the last weeks of pregnancy as the head of the fetus engages in the pelvis.

Baby clears: Prehistoric Isle 2

Well that didn't take long. Still, it's nice to get a quick clear here and there, especially after weeks toiling away on arduously boring Raiden V or vengefully punishing Psikyo "games". Nicer still to land at #4 on the Switch leaderboards, though that's a meager accomplishment if ever there was one (only about 15 players appear to have hit the 1CC so far. Judging from their score, the 100th ranked player hasn't even cleared Stage 2!). Prehistoric Isle 2 was never going to amount to much anyway, being a plainly stripped down, late-period aesthetic showcase. The reward on offer is clear: fluidly animated prerendered prehistoric creatures inhabiting dreamy ruins, jungles, and volcanoes. After struggling under the bitter tyranny of hellrank stoking the fires of Strikers 1945, the opportunity to memorize a couple patterns, learn a handful of scoring techniques, take a couple risks and finish the ride is just nice, like a blowjob for fifty bucks. Notes:

• I've said it a thousand times before, I'll say it a thousand more times before I die, I don't like rank (PI2 has none). If I want to increase the difficulty of the game, I'll go into the settings and increase the difficulty. I did exactly that with Preshistoric Isle 2 after my first attempt was a startling 3CC, then realized that I'd rather play at the default difficulty and strive to increase score, interacting with more of the game's systems without having to worry about an ever-fluctuating survival threat. Build dynamism into your design (chains, score items, whatever) and you can allow the player interesting choices, rather than railroading them onto the hardest path.
• The difficulty curve is just right - Stage 1 is pretty easy, leaving most of the challenge first to learning mechanics and later to maximizing score; Stage 2 gets the enemies more active, making sure there are always bullets onscreen; Stage 3 is almost like a bonus level, a really simple straight shot that also has the prettiest backdrop - the calm before the storm; Stage 4 is where the difficulty peaks, introducing lots of new enemies and constant pressure; Stage 5 is the gauntlet, revisiting all the previous challenges and providing very few opportunities for recovery; and Stage 6 is the denouement, a protracted boss battle of the R-Type battleship form.
• The Japanese version has a 5-HP health bar versus Worldwide's 3-life stock; this doesn't change the effect of getting hit (main weapon and subweapon single-level power-down, one rescue lost), but it does change the appearance of restoratives. In the Japanese version, delivering a certain number of rescues (more than three?) to a pre-boss evac chopper generates a +1HP item. At the beginning of Stage 4, defending a certain number of evacuees (all 30?) grants another. (That's at least +5HP total over the course of the game, and I may have missed some). There is a 1UP that appears somewhere in Worldwide, but I haven't been able to find it. This was a clear of the Japanese version, which is obviously somewhat easier, although I also chose that route because....
• The health bar makes the game more interesting. Delivering rescues to the evacuation chopper can be used to get back health, but it means sacrificing the pretty hefty stage-end bonus you get for carrying them through the boss fight (500k per rescue + another 500k for all five). This is a neat twist on the traditional score-extend - you have to pull off the rescue to get either benefit, but at stage-end you get to decide whether it'll be a score bonus or recovery - and whether you want to risk losing the bonus entirely if you make a mistake on the boss. The North American version of the game trades this for... nothing. Delivering rescues still grants some power-ups, but that isn't nearly as meaningful as health/1UPs. The game is simply boringer without that element of risk/reward.
• The design of bosses is a clear highlight. They last for minutes, moving around the screen, attacking from different directions, almost never repeating attack patterns. Having a fully powered up weapon or using bombs to shave off a few seconds can make a huge difference if it means skipping the last phase or two. Particularly vicious is the Hornetpede who snakes unpredictably across the screen while firing two-phase bullets.
• The bomb doesn't seem to offer any invulnerability, or if it does, it's so short as not to matter. No panic-bombing. This is a pretty fair trade-off in a game that offers at least one health restorative per stage. 
• I played with the green chopper (spread shot) using the red (chain gun) weapon. Subweapons I swapped a lot, it's hard to hang onto them for long, but super missile seemed to be the best. Napalm was invaluable in the final boss confrontation. 

Anyway, that's a solid recommend for $8. Now I guess it's Blazing Star, unless I want to scream some more at Strikers.

People hate Raiden V, right?

Picked up Raiden V: DX for a pretty good sale price at $13, gave it a spin just to see how it would run on my new PC. Lightning fast, you might say, although I've never played nor imagined a game so dedicated to the furiously denounced flaws of the widely derided Sine Mora. Can you say BLOOM LIGHTING EFFECTS? And while Sine Mora was able to light the shmup world on fire with just optional screen shake and two bullet colors (orange and blue), Sine Mora 2: Raiden V has individual enemy volleys that can mix as many as five colors (red, blue, green, yellow, pink!), not to mention any other enemies on screen and the player's two hues of their own (blue and your choice of red, blue, or purple). It even has a camera that will zoom in and out mid-combat! Boy there's nothing I love more than watching the playing area shrink to half scale (and double size) while an approaching bullet pattern become so small and orange that it's completely obscured by the sun glare blooming off the orange buildings in the orange desert and the whole game becomes a gleaming white blob.

Seriously it's a nightmare. It's also baffling that anyone called this game "burdensomely latched to hoary conventions of shmups yore", when it's in fact so modern that it barely feels like a Raiden game at all (unless this is what the Fighters subseries is like). It has a long-form story mode with incessant voiceover during gameplay (you may say - hey, isn't that a Star Fox thing? but only Sine Mora and Raiden V are smart enough to pair it with subtitles covering part of the gameplay area), save points, branching paths, three ships with different stats and fully customizable weapons loadouts (three choices each for red, blue, and purple, for a total of 81 different profiles!), achievements, and a goofy-ass networked parallel-play power-up system. Like, Raiden III and IV are 90% the same game, IV is a loose remake of II, and the original Raiden has like eight variations and ports. This is a series about on par with Mega Man for variation, so continuing from IV to V feels like going from Mega Man 4 straight to ZX Advent without the 15 years of connective tissue explaining how you got there.

Did I mention the lifebar!!!

Okay I just hit up YT and WP and yeah looks like most of the new weapons and the branching paths are just carryover from Fighters. Why not now, nearly 20 years after the final entry?

Level knowledge in Soldier Blade

I was practicing a bit of Soldier Blade over the weekend, trying to focus on just one level at a time and learn the layouts. It's hard to compare shmups over a long span of time, as even minor skill improvements can reframe an entire game. But looking at just the few I've played recently (Axelay, Cho Aniki, R-Type, S&P if you want to count that), two things stand out about Soldier Blade.

First is that it's really fast - not an original or particularly interesting revelation. But compounded with the 45-minute length (longish, compared to the 30-min norm), it means tons of content spewing from just a single loop. Not that I've taken the time to count waves, but it at least feels like three of R-Type's levels could fit in one of Soldier Blade's.

That said, the excess is packed with a hefty supply of popcorn*. Admittedly, Axelay and R-Type are self-consciously stripped down games, and Cho Aniki is... something else in terms of level design (not good), so Soldier Blade's ratio feels closer to average. It's not even bad popcorn - most of it comes at weird angles that make your weapon level relevant (always a bad time to have Blue 1) - it's just that at the rate the game moves, it adds up quickly. It isn't afforded the same level of variation as the primary waves (nor should it be if it needs to remain low-engagement), so you see the same couple waves in every level.

A third note that I knew already, but contributes to the same conclusion: the x-axis orientation of some enemy patterns is determined reactively by the player ship's position. That is, if Soldier Ship is on the left half of the screen, a string of popcorn may stream in from the top right corner, but if positioned on the right the same wave would come in from the top left. Since this behavior is specific only to certain waves, the stage doesn't just flip-flop - relative enemy positions will actually change.

What this adds up to is a game resistant to idle memorization. I don't consciously commit shooters to memory (I don't know that I could), but after a degree of practice it becomes instinctual. With high speeds requiring high response time, enemy spawn points derived from player position, and a relatively limited weapon swap, Soldier Blade places value beyond the obvious on knowing what's next. Yet it readily defies the patterns that make this knowledge a subconscious product. The layout density creates an excess of information to store. The uniform popcorn puts just enough space between distinct encounters that the concatenation of "Wave A, then Wave B, then Wave A, then Wave AB" requires an investment of active memorization (while fighting popcorn: "Wave C came last, Wave C came last, Wave C came last"). And the reactive spawning does more than mix things up - it adds pre-wave activity to the necessary data set for layout prediction.

It's an effect well-coordinated with Soldier Blade's presentation and balancing to make the game feel especially lively and engaging through repeated plays, moreso than just being "fast". Particularly satisfying is seeing this kind of spontaneity evinced through techniques not reliant on randomly generated elements or structural flattening.

*"Popcorn" is a term used by shooting game enthusiasts to denote waves of one-hit-point enemies that typically don't fire projectiles. For example, the first few waves of any given stage of Gradius. Popcorn isn't meant to defeat the player, instead it keeps them lightly engaged while creating some breathing room. Think of it like the foam packing peanuts in a shipping container - not what you're after, but necessary to fill out a stable, symmetrical structure. I came up with that metaphor because I thought the packing material was called popcorn, then as I wrote it out I was like, wait.

Terminology aside: "shmup"

Y'know, there was a day and age when I refused to use the, ahem, word "shmup". I insisted on calling them "scrolling shooters", which I still find to be the more appropriate and descriptive term. "Shoot-'em-up" is vague, incredibly broad (it's used liberally for everything from Space Invaders to first-person shooters to Jason Statham movies), and has an almost condescending connotation. The shortened form, "shmup", has the added bonus of sounding moronic and being indecipherable to newcomers - describe a game as a shooter or an adventure and most people will be able to do the mental gymnastics to get at least a foothold on the concept (hey, that mixed metaphor kinda worked), but drop a term like "shmup" and you're talking a different language. But eventually I got tired of typing "scrolling shooter", and "shooter" alone is obviously insufficient, so I Caved and started using "shmup". 

I'm still conflicted though. I want you to know that every time I type "shmup", a little part of me cries out in anguish, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. On one hand, we could conclude that anyone unaware of or unable to decode the meaning of the term probably wouldn't get anything out of my commentary anyway. On the other hand, perpetuating stupid terms heaps even more dirt onto the perceived wall between "gamers" and "non-gamers". Our community is insular enough as it is; it certainly isn't the right attitude (or my attitude at least) to say "if outsiders don't understand, then they don't deserve to understand". It still grates on me every time I hear someone say "I don't play video games", as if the medium could be summarily assessed. How often do you hear "I don't watch movies" or "I don't listen to music". Then again, "I don't read" is pretty much the calling card of the 21st century. Still, video games don't suck like books. Don't say that.

Anyway. Capcom. Arcade games. Some good. Some bad. Most unremarkable. Tomorrow.

Sunfish Gets Shmupped, is Mistranslated

You know what space shooters need? Smooth scrolling and twitch gameplay. Coincidentally, do you know what computers couldn't provide in the 80s?

But, for reasons I haven't looked up on Wikipedia yet, Konami loved the MSX (itself an 80s gaming computer). Two of their classics, Metal Gear and Snatcher, debuted and each received a sequel on the machine. And heck, Nemesis (Konami's knockoff of their own Gradius series) showed up on MSX, so they weren't unfamiliar with putting space shooters on the machine.

So, it's not entirely bad news that Konami developed Space Manbow for MSX and decided to never remake it ever. It runs remarkably well, competing with the NES; it runs at a speed the NES could've handled, but with less flicker and only slightly less fluidity.

The game's name is explained in a comic provided with the manual, which you can read in English here. Er, here. The enemy's mother ship is a giant sunfish-shaped ship. Basically, Konami wanted "mambo", but ended up with "manbow." Incidentally, Mambo from the Parodius series is a throwback to this very game.

Powerups mark the most noteworthy element of Space Manbow, straddling the line between Gradius and something normal. On one hand, Gradius' red capsule system grants stability. You'll never miss a laser upgrade or an option because you missed a particular enemy; there's only one kind of pickup, and it predictably moves your powerup selector forward on a clearly defined list. Also, you'll never accidentally pick up a powerup you don't want, since you'll only gain a powerup once you hit the A button. If you don't want the tail shot, it's as simple as not hitting A when your powerup selector is on the tail shot.

On the other hand, Gradius loses convenience. Upon starting a new game, half of your attention is devoted to making sure you collect enough red capsules to earn the laser you want. In other shooters, getting a powerup is as simple as crashing into the appropriate icon.

In Space Manbow, powerups appear in a predetermined sequence. First comes the weapon upgrade, then the speed up, then the option, so on and so forth. Each time you spawn a pickup, it will be the next in the line. If you miss the chance to spawn a pickup, no big deal; the sequence of pickups won't advance until you get one to appear. Unlike Gradius, though, you won't have to save up a whole bunch to get what you want. The option is always going to be the third one in the line, no matter what.

Observe:

This video also demonstrates that Space Manbow is open to squirrely gameplay.

I die over and over, and yet the challenge is never unsurmountable. Ric Viper never tarries too long on a single continue point, almost always making decent headway before slamming nose-first into something or other. I've only cleared the first four stages of eight, but from what I've played, a little thought and a good thumb go a long way.  Throw in infinite continues, and you can feel free to ram your head against an obstacle all day with the confidence that you will eventually get somewhere.

But it probably won't take you all day. You can see in the video that my deaths are pretty dumb. There's no need for planning anything in this level. It's obvious what enemies are going to do, and so long as you stay in the middle of the screen, you'll have the time you need to react to anything. Come to think of it, it's even generally safe to hug the back of the screen.

Take, for instance, the elevator portion at 2:21. This looks like a good time for some memorization, but the sequence has enough predictability to avoid that need. Platforms move down at a constant rate, and openings appear on the sides at a regular interval.

Another notable instance of predictability comes in the digging level. Background objects appear and show you where dirt will shortly spawn. The cue gives you plenty of time to put your ship right where you want it.

Anyway, the elevator sequence also avoids the need for any particular equipment. You might think that space is so tight that you'd need options planted backwards to handle bogeys behind you. However, if you corral the enemies properly, you'll have plenty of space to maneuver without shooting a one down. I haven't yet seen a portion of Space Manbow that will always destroy you if you come in with nothing but the shirt on your back.

On that note, Space Manbow is one of the few old school shooters I've played where stages have distinct character but don't require analysis. Enemies aren't mindblowing--there's the guy that spawns cronies, the guy that shoots three ways, and so on--but levels are paced slow enough and designed to emphasize one or two enemies over the rest, granting each its own feel. Stage 2 is the level for guys that shoot three ways but stick to the floor or ceiling. It doesn't hurt that levels generally have a unique asset like level 2's elevators or level 1's docked fighter planes.

Space Manbow may have a bloated reputation, but it's definitely a cool guy. It makes the MSX (MSX2 to be precise) look better than it is, and more than that, it finds a unique place among old school shooters for its powerup system and stage design. While nothing innovative, Space Manbow shows what can be done with smart use of familiar elements.

Wait I didn't notice this was animated when I linked to it

In conclusion, I really like Space Manbow, but there's kind of several different reasons why, so this writeup doesn't have a ton of focus, but I want the Wii Virtual Console version to come out here (although it's doubtful, being four years old as of this writing).