16th December 2005, 2:31 AM
I know, it's hard to decide where but it's in my top 10 shooters of all time.
(in no particular order)
Einhander (EVERYTHING is german! awesome art direction and a great rock, paper, scissors type of upgrade system. This game has some of the best bosses ever conceived in video game history)
U.N. Squadron (EVERYTHING gets napalm'd! The number of powerups and types of ships you can have is all based on how much money you've earned by doing missions... which include (and usually limited to) exploding the fuck out of an entire country, a very addicting shooter)
R-Type (series - Abadox cant touch the
organic art of R-Type, to this day its unusual powerup system and strange art is unmatched)
P.N.03 (instead of a plane or ship, you play as a dancing chick, how original can you get? It has RPG elements such as upgrades you can earn but the real meat of the game is playing in the butterfly suit on hard mode and finishing the entire game in one pass, fucking game took me weeks to master but once you get the idea of the dancing/dodging techniques you fly through levels like a swan... with a nice ass)
Starfox 64 (Nintendo's first party shooter. LOOK, LISTEN, KNEEL, PRAY. This game series is soley responsible for introducing the idea of multiplayer dogfights and real-time cinematics so that each level felt like a movie or a ride at Universal Studios, it's also the first 3-D arcade shooter and the first game to introduce real time narratives and coversation with voice actors during gameplay)
Galaga (series - This and...)
Centipede (series - This, with a little help from asteroids forged the entire shooter genre as well as invented the video game)
Xevious (it never ends. It seriously never ends. This is also the first shooter to offer the idea of 3-D gameplay in that your ship can drop bombs to hit targets below you (it's a top-down shooter))
Gradius (series - Probably the best traditional shooter series on earth)
Life Force <--- the one that started it all for me
(honorable mention)
Heavy Barrel
Warhawk (its not in the list because this is more of an action adventure game)
Dragon Spirit (a copy-cat shooter with the idea of playing as a dragon and fighting dinosaurs and mythical creatures, very cool visually but lacks substance)
Time Warriors...? I forget the name... damn... in the arcade version of the game, you got to use the swivel knob (like in Tempest) it's a fun and original shooter
Tempest is its own catagory.
Now Ikaruga is awesome, but she gets put in a seperate catagory, the same with the Contra series which is where Metal Slug also sits - The 'twitch shooter'. No thinking, no technique, just hold down the fire button and dodge anything that might kill you, you also might get a secondary fire button in a twitch shooter which is usually in the form of a large explosion. If you find yourself playing a twitch shooter and thinking about your next move you're probably already dead. And no, Metroid is not a shooter. That would be like calling Mario 64 an action-RPG so she's absent from the list.
And there is one game that has evaded my grasp for my entire life. I played it religiously on NES and I cannot find the damn thing anywhere... you play as this candy-coated looking bug-like ship and everything is strange... as you can imagine, based on this description, it's hard to find. :D If i could find it, I think it would replace Xevious on my top ten.
(in no particular order)
Einhander (EVERYTHING is german! awesome art direction and a great rock, paper, scissors type of upgrade system. This game has some of the best bosses ever conceived in video game history)
U.N. Squadron (EVERYTHING gets napalm'd! The number of powerups and types of ships you can have is all based on how much money you've earned by doing missions... which include (and usually limited to) exploding the fuck out of an entire country, a very addicting shooter)
R-Type (series - Abadox cant touch the
organic art of R-Type, to this day its unusual powerup system and strange art is unmatched)
P.N.03 (instead of a plane or ship, you play as a dancing chick, how original can you get? It has RPG elements such as upgrades you can earn but the real meat of the game is playing in the butterfly suit on hard mode and finishing the entire game in one pass, fucking game took me weeks to master but once you get the idea of the dancing/dodging techniques you fly through levels like a swan... with a nice ass)
Starfox 64 (Nintendo's first party shooter. LOOK, LISTEN, KNEEL, PRAY. This game series is soley responsible for introducing the idea of multiplayer dogfights and real-time cinematics so that each level felt like a movie or a ride at Universal Studios, it's also the first 3-D arcade shooter and the first game to introduce real time narratives and coversation with voice actors during gameplay)
Galaga (series - This and...)
Centipede (series - This, with a little help from asteroids forged the entire shooter genre as well as invented the video game)
Xevious (it never ends. It seriously never ends. This is also the first shooter to offer the idea of 3-D gameplay in that your ship can drop bombs to hit targets below you (it's a top-down shooter))
Gradius (series - Probably the best traditional shooter series on earth)
Life Force <--- the one that started it all for me
(honorable mention)
Heavy Barrel
Warhawk (its not in the list because this is more of an action adventure game)
Dragon Spirit (a copy-cat shooter with the idea of playing as a dragon and fighting dinosaurs and mythical creatures, very cool visually but lacks substance)
Time Warriors...? I forget the name... damn... in the arcade version of the game, you got to use the swivel knob (like in Tempest) it's a fun and original shooter
Tempest is its own catagory.
Now Ikaruga is awesome, but she gets put in a seperate catagory, the same with the Contra series which is where Metal Slug also sits - The 'twitch shooter'. No thinking, no technique, just hold down the fire button and dodge anything that might kill you, you also might get a secondary fire button in a twitch shooter which is usually in the form of a large explosion. If you find yourself playing a twitch shooter and thinking about your next move you're probably already dead. And no, Metroid is not a shooter. That would be like calling Mario 64 an action-RPG so she's absent from the list.
And there is one game that has evaded my grasp for my entire life. I played it religiously on NES and I cannot find the damn thing anywhere... you play as this candy-coated looking bug-like ship and everything is strange... as you can imagine, based on this description, it's hard to find. :D If i could find it, I think it would replace Xevious on my top ten.