to any guests that come here i guess (Read 3,286 times)

[Deleted]

Shmups are mediocre?! Get outta here, there are ton of great shmups out there!

[lazulum]

It's not that shmups are mediocre but the genre is quite oversaturated, especially during its prime the number of foddered out shumps are difficult to even attach a number to. Good shumps are difficult to make, but unfortunately the format is also easy to crank games out of at most passable quality. That's not to say there isn't a library of fair to great shmups, but that library is eclipsed in size is all. Think of the Wii library, were there great games in it? Absolutely, but it is also notorious for shovel ware (and the library is undoubtedly dominated by it too)

[spongelevator]

lol I remember I bought four psp games a few years ago because I thought I was gonna play them that summer
and I still have not played any of them
it's like that steam library joke except it's more like a steam shelf
lol mgs is especially good because of how much replayability is has
there's difficulty in harder modes and stuff like european extreme but then you can also go rambo mode with infinite ammo and invisibility camo and stuff
definitely one of my favorites because the only limit is how much you're willing to play
yeah wikipedia has a lot of information though it's like reading on hard mode lol
history seems to have an especially large amount of information so it's almost all new to me
lots of stuff there I would probably need to read book to be able to understand
yeah I like biology stuff because there's a lot of it where I can easily understand the top layer but then also delve deeper
I can find anything from weird amoebas to giant sea animals and it'll go from just physical appearance to stuff like habitats and whatever they do there
and then you'll find anatomy and possibly even genetics for all those guys
did you know there is 200 pages book about shrimps and their anatomy and how to tell them apart and all sorts of stuff
some guy out there spent years of their life studying shrimps and it sounds like a punchline but it actually exists and when I hear that I just have to check it out lol
also yeah freshwater eels are very good though also expensive
sadly is endangered though it's not like I could afford to eat it anyway so one eel out there is gonna live on because I can't pay twenty bucks
I have no idea how to tell apart most of those fishes but they all taste good as long as they aren't a handful of weird ones
I would probably be better off studying humans or microorganisms because though I enjoy learning about animals I do not like to actually see anything outside other than bird
I can watch a cat jump off the fence outside the window but when it's in front of me that aint good man
lol muntjack looks like a deer but also a mouse
very nice stuff out there
man pepsi for vodka being one of few connections with russia also sounds like an onion joke
is pretty cool to see how much technology has changed the world in the past 50-60 years though
we went from only pepsi<->vodka to uuh you know
well internet has made world more connected is good probably lol
otherwise people will eat the chernobyl fish without knowing anything happened
I've really only played touhou and then watched a video on a few other schmups and most of them definitely do have that ship boss that takes up half the screen and everything moves at lightspeed and I can never tell what's even going on
the handful of times I saw schmup fans speaking they seemed to enjoy all different types of schmups like those fast ones vs bullet hell and 2d vs 3d and others
sturgeon's law seems true at most times especially with wii example because lol icarly and monopoly wii
shovelware is pretty funny though and usually if all the game's discs weren't thrown into the garbage within 20 minutes of opening you can find them for like $3 and play some of the lowest quality things you will ever see

also lol the internet here is absolutely terrible it took me twenty minutes to be able to post this
I tried to run the diagnostics thing and it failed

[Deleted]

Wii had some good gems... Like Castle of Shikigami III and Sin and Punishment: Star Successor, to name a few...

[Aeon]

@ebbxxx
yeah man wii is great, has my fav nintendo game super paper mario, but it's known for having lots of shovelware. i've heard the same talk about things like gamejolt and steam but obviously those have a solid amount of good stuff too.

spongelevator
backlogs are popular but also suck. i figure the time i get a game doesn't need to line up at all when i play it so instead of a backlog i just have a bunch of games i can access for free at any time but have no commitment to yet

i've never checked out biology on wikipedia beyond learning about "turritopsis dohrnii", this crazy immortal jellyfish that can simply keep going. favorite obscure organism has to be the tardigrade with the opposite type of immortality where nothing except natural causes can kill it

[spongelevator]

wii's got a lot of good but also there is so much crusty stuff on there
though honestly being able to play garbage shovelware on the same system as actually good stuff means one less console in the house so it's a plus
also wii u allows me to have all three pikmin games on one system so it will remain the best even though it sold like virtual boy

lol that is good way to think about it though I just think of it as a backlog so I don't end up buying a new game when I still have like 12 I didn't even touch
rip patapon 1-3 I don't even know if the psp still works

oh yeah I heard of those jellyfish once though I have no idea where
and then my dad told me that humans would become immortal because the jellyfish exists lol
oh yeah I remember the water bears as well
I think they had a lifespan of only a year or something though but there's this thing I heard of with microorganisms where they need moisture but if they don't have it they can just uuh
kinda become dehydrated except once they reach water they can rehydrate and keep going like it's nobody's business
if water bear can do that then it's got quite the something going on for it lol

[lazulum]

spongelevator
That's the feeling haha

Replayability is great, that's part of why I play so few new games anymore. Still reply older games on off occasions.

Shrimp guy is right up there with the underwater hamster guy haha
Good on them for finding their niche and pursuing it with all of their energies though

Yeah eel is quite expensive, there's a particular time of the year where you eat eels in Japan too

Birds are quite beautiful too. A bit a patience and a good camera will get you far. Japan is nice for birds, but I think Hawaii has the largest number of endemic bird species.

Cats are everywhere haha
There's a neighborhood cat around here, much too fat to be jumping from windowsills though

The internet does keep the world connected now for the most part. My great fear has been something of a balkanization of the internet, sounds farfetched but I would not take it off the table. China really too the first step towards that with the Great Fire Wall, still I know Chinese who access the rest through VPN at least. There's a nice girl I know in Ningbo, she does that, although a little anxious to message at the moment given the tensions between the West and China. She's quite the patriot.

First I've heard of Sturgeon's Law haha
A better example and I'm surprised I didn't think of it at the time is the DS. Fantastic games, but a mountain of shovelware, and a Pets game for just about anything you can think of haha. Not everything could be the crowning achievement of Corey in the House (9.5 on Meta critic)

Yeah shovelware can be fun sometimes, long long ago I would get together with some friends and intentionally take turns playing a bad game. It can be fun, worth a lot of laughs

With shmups if you're not already interested in the genre then there is a lot less that would interest you. For shmup enthusiasts the selection is much larger but I would still maintain most are not worth playing if you don't have a lot of spare time. I've read a lot of recommendation lists and dug around a bunch of archives back in the day too and was uninterested in the greater bulk, ran into some gems too though. I suppose that's that Sturgeon's Law at play.
But to say something good to balance out the bad, some other fair to great shumps: ∀kashicverse, Eschatos, Battle Garegga (old but still fun), Astebreed, to name some more

Wow that's bad internet. Forums I imagine take almost not bandwidth to use. I suppose in better times I would recommend using public wifi at Starbucks or something, but not ideal to do now I think

I have different issues with internet, limited to hotspot while at home so I have about 15gigs a month. Means I never stream or watch videos (save for those I download when outside).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
@everyone
Yeah I remember an infamous case of the Ninjabread Man, the exact same game was re-skinned and released as a new game on the Wii four or so times.

Other gems on the Wii system I would say were Silent Hill Shattered Memories and Fragile Dreams.

Aeon
That's a great way to look at a backlog

Read about the Tardigrade, I'm just happy they aren't dangerous to humans haha

[spongelevator]

replaying games is real good lol
remember george salonikh who has probably played each game streamed on youtube at least ten times

I did not know about underwater hamster guy until now lol
hopefully these guys are able to still have a job that pays money or else shrimp people are gonna be eating shells and tails for dinner and we may never hear more about shrimp anatomy
if I ever come across the book in a store I will buy it to be one of the 200 sales ever

lol birds are pretty neat but cats are better
whenever I have less than 7 hours of sleep and I hear a bird rustle in a bush I suddenly become quite frigten
I have no idea why but I probably should only watch from afar because apparently my caveman mammoth-hunting genes are nonexistent
one day I will be able to pet cat and find out why the tongue has spikes

internet hopefully won't become separated like what china does because I enjoy random search results in languages I cannot read
also hostility between countries but ehhhhhhhhh whatever
yeah ds is like wii portable
I remember there was all those movie-based games like brave on ds and moshi monsters and all types of junk
though it also has some of the best stuff out there like best pokemon games DPP and also flash carts nowadays means you won't need to pay a scalper $200 for a used copy of soulsilver
with one of those you can download classics such as corey in the house, bee movie game, and gummy bears minigolf
yeah schmups look like they'd take a long time to be able to complete
many games can just be picked up and beaten without much worry but unless easy modo?!??!? then schmups will probably take a while longer
though once I am able to play imperishable night again maybe if I can beat kaguya then I will be able to get farther in hard
and then eventually schmup won't be as difficult though still harder than cooking mama
yeah forums works fine though the internet just randomly cuts out every 30-120 minutes for up to half an hour
15gb/month phone wifi at home sounds much worse lol my issues are temporary at least
hopefully you will be able to acquire internet box so you can watch good stuff like mr beast eats cactus while in ice bath
that was a good one lol it's been a while though
lol ninjabread man already sounds like one of those 2012 iphone games that would cost $1.99 and every 6th grader would have it on their iphone 4 or whatever
wii probably had the best mario games because virtual console+ gamecube compatibility as well as having galaxy 1+2 and super paper mario yeah
competing with ps2 for best stuff on there though I will always remember that one water fish mouth level of mario galaxy with the penguin guy

[lazulum]

Underwater hamster guy is great, if I had more disposable income I would be a proud patron of his endeavors surrounding underwater hamster objectivism haha

Yeah if you think the work is worth supporting I'd recommend it. I try to purchase books when I can, have a nice little library, backlog of books and mangas in dire need to be read.

If you want to get close to a cat, my recommendation is keeping an eye out for the fatter cats. They have learned that friendliness to humans scores them a lot of food haha.

Yeah I like seeing what people in other parts of the world are up to. Have friends across the globe, in Serbia, Belgium, US, Canada, SK, China, NZ, etc., and I quite like hearing what they have to say. That was how I got along so well with that Chinese girl from Xian back in the day (used to be in Japan, now in Ningbo), she was surprised that someone just wanted to hear a Chinese person's views of the world, no shouting down or gainsaying of what she said. Even if I disagree with points I can stay my tongue and appreciate the different view of the world.

Geeze, those are some high prices. If you don't mind the Japanese, you would be surprised at how cheap you can find all of those titles that you mentioned. Heck, the old GBC Pokemon are about $2.

Difficulty in shmups is a strange thing compared to other genres actually, most are reminiscent of the genres main roots in arcade cabinets. Consequently, a lot of shmups allow you to die as much as possible, you will instead be locked out of the good end, and ura run, and get a low score of course. Score is the main competitive dimension in shmups, but it is largely inaccessible and unappealing to anyone who is not already quite into shumps. It is not unlike speedrunning, but imagine if that was the main point of a genre, it would be a largely inaccessible genre that also doesn't do much to innovate outside of different intricacies for speedrunning.

Consequently, you will see discussions about how scoring in DDP: Daioujou is very love-it-or-hate-it (it's too high stakes if you ask me), or how scoring in Battle Garrega is obtuse, or which ship is better for scoring (and sub groups for ships and scores with ship/shot type). It's great for the hardcore community, but for people just getting into it there's little to keep interest.

Touhou manages to achieve that in part through easy-mode, hard-game over states, inclusion of narrative, distinct and appealing aesthetic, among other things. Blue Revolver is another recent shmup that managed to penetrate into a broader appeal for similar reasons, but also adding a very broad variability in gameplay; quite a good game, keep forgetting to recommend that one.

If you're paying for internet it's quite unacceptable for it to cut out in that manner. Especially for up to two hours. Hope you get that fixed in any case.

I used to never be home so I never needed internet. I would always be using public wifi, bus, trains, even cities all offer public wifi. That is, I was almost never home until all of this Corona business; was always out in town somewhere.

The Wii did have a number of fantastic Mario games, no doubt. Nintendo themselves are always known for putting out quality, it's the third party stuff you have to look out for, on any system really.

I'll get to your other post later, have to get back to work and studies.

[Deleted]

You should really try Sin & Punishment: Star Successor, though. It's a classic.

[spongelevator]

lol one day underwater hamster guy's gonna make a breakthrough in deep sea travel and get government funding
I wonder what is actually going on down there though all I know is anglerfish has the street light on its head and there are weird tube animal guys
only book I have purchased in the past 8 months was yotsuba 1 because everything else I would buy is either released in 1995 or $120
probably would be easier to just toss a few bucks in underwater hamster guy's pool at that point
eh if I somehow encounter cat it'd probably be a while
I only have seen two in the past year and neither was garfield level
though I will remember that lol one will show up eventually

internet makes international communication real good yeah
used to be writing a letter and then waiting 3 weeks for it to arrive at another country and then 3 weeks to get one back
almost everyone I have spoken to lives within two hours of me but I am able to read forum conversations from 5 years ago where people from like 6 countries talk about bidets lol
definitely nice seeing different people's points of views especially so that current beliefs can be challenged
well $200 was exaggeration though if you're trying to buy it new with pokewalker that'd probably be the price
I just remember it'd be like $60-70 for just the game cart and if you wanted both games then it'd cost you at least $100 and with a case and pokewalker well rip wallet
japanese games were always a lot cheaper for some reason
I remember persona 3 portable was around that price in english but then I was able to find the japanese version for $15
definitely for when I buy my one game a year I should get a used copy in japanese so I don't have to spend the money for next year's game lol
oh yeah the only types of speedrunning that I ever found very interesting were any% runs because you can see mario fall up the stairs backwards in a 10 minute playthrough of mario 64 and those weird types where it only applies to specific games
like people who'll beat punch out blindfolded and stuff lol
in rhythm games I'll usually play until I can get a good enough score that I don't feel I suck at the song anymore so I would probably only play a schmup until I can finish without dying multiple times on every stage
touhou kinda seemed to me like an entry point into schmups more than anything
because they're not as difficult as many others as well as having a ton of other appealing stuff that ended up bigger than the games themselves
if it wasn't for touhou probably the only schmup I'd have tried was that one weird homebrew 2ds game with the spaceships lol
eh I'll probably only be here for a few more days so when I return home I will have the working internet again
what even the trains have wifi over there? only places here are cafes and some stores
that sounds pretty good lol I would always have to use one of those apple devices with the get wifi everywhere you go if I wanted to use internet
wii was peak nintendo lol all the best stuff was during that time
these days I think wiis are like $50 so it's accessible too
even wii sports is worth playing for hours at a time with miis such as obama, peter griffin, hamburger, and john cena
real life sports aint bad but wii sports slightly unresponsive nunchuck boxing where it aint punch out wii but it's got all your favorite NPC miis is quite the game

[lazulum]

@ebbxxx
I'll take your word for it.
Don't have the means to try it though unfortunately
Would have to get a TV first, then a Wii, and then Star Successor haha

spongelevator
He was contacted once for consultation from some company or European institution once, can't remember the details. His name does get around it seems haha

Yeah internet communication is quite nice, if use right at least.
In Japan people are pretty open to viewpoints generally, maybe due to the general political apathy that's quite pervasive especially among the young. I try to be as well, my views are always quite aberrant so I know the feeling.

Old Japanese games are cheap, new ones will cost you some $110 or so haha. DVDs are also on a whole different level; just got a nice box set for one show recently, got a great deal on it and that ran me up $80 still heh. You can find some decent deals on Rakuten though.

Speed running has produced some funny videos definitely haha. I still remember the video where the player beats the entire game of Morrowind in about five minutes, one of the funnier watches I can remember.

Yeah I was the same, never tried to get on a shmups.system11 scoreboard. Far too much time investment, was always happy with a humble score and a smooth run.

Touhou was an entry for most these days I think. Difficult to think of a another shmup series that is even remotely as well known. Earliest shmup I can remember playing is one called Layer Section.

Depends on the rail but yeah a lot of lines have wifi these days. Many buses have them too, all conbinis have wifi. It's very easy to find free wifi in Tokyo.

I've actually only ever owned Nintendo handhelds. GBC through to the DS really, didn't have money for a 3DS. Have a Vita now and it's all I really need, didn't buy it though wound up with it through unexpected circumstances.

I do have memories of playing other people's Wii though. Always was a fun console for local multiplayer. Wii boxing and tennis of course, those were always a lot of fun.

Aeon
I'll get to your post before long
A little exhausted, have to prepare for tomorrow too

[Aeon]

spongelevator
YOOO 2ds homebrew danmaku game gang. by the point i got that i already had touhou but it is a fun little thing

wii is super cheap and super functional. nintendo makes durable stuff, man. my 10 year old dsi works just as well as it did on purchase, with the exception of a slightly funky sd card reader. i've never used dolphin for a wii game because the it simply works. homebrew can be done in a day, too.

lazulum
i've never been interested in scoring in most games, just speedrunning a few platformers and fc in rhythm games. touhou's difficulty system where it takes all my ability just to survive is great, no time or need to worry about points.

nintendo handhelds are good stuff, i wish they kept making them instead of just having the switch be half-console half-portable system. is the vita good? i've heard that it was a success in japan, but whenever someone talks about it around here it seems to be about the fact that it's dead

also no problem, i took too long to get back to you anyway

[spongelevator]

underwater hamster guy'll make it big someday
eventully he's gonna be sending hamsters to the moon so they can form their own society and create bodies of water to live within
politics always felt kinda nasty to me because for a long time I didn't know I was always being influenced by that stuff
though luckily I can still accept other viewpoints unlike some of the more politically extreme people I met so I am not full american mode
yeah I remember bluerays and games from japan always cost a ton new
like $80 for a six anime episodes on dvd or $70-80 for any new playstation games
I paid like $70+shipping I think for persona 3 dancing when it came out and two months later it was $20 used on ebay lol
speedrunners always seemed more impressive to me because of how good they were at the game than their speed
like people who can beat an entire kirby game without getting hit or getting a counter parry every time on revengeance mode in mgr despite that nasty camera
I never really played much wii after the switch came out because the tv was always in use though I still remember playing wii sports resort dogfight as obama and it was very nice experience
lol I don't know what happened with my 2ds but the danmaku spaceship game was nice
one day the homebrew just stopped working so I dunno maybe I updated it or something
I only play mario kart 7 and picross 3d round 2 on there these days though
yeah nintendo stuff is usually easy to homebrew and as long as nobody throws the wii down the stairs it'll keep going at it
I never got around to homebrewing the wii but the channel theme is nice lol
I don't really like the idea of the switch so the vita is probably the best handheld I have right now because 2ds isn't as powerful
it has a pretty mediocre battery life and in my experience it's not the easiest finding many games on there and other than a few certain things like the mgs collection and persona 4 golden it seems most people don't like the selection
if you can read the japanese stuff though then the vita has a ton of good stuff even though lol I can't read that stuff
I have two vitas because the first one I got had control stick drift or whatever it's called after like three months
that drifting issue people have with the switch sounds similar
I heard it's pretty easy to fix but I didn't want to risk anything so I just got a new one after a while lol
I think most people who have a vita in the west just homebrew it because otherwise you have to pay like $80 to import a VN and then another $100+ to get a ps vita 64gb memory card
I just use sd2vita with a 128gb micro sd and then buy whatever games I downloaded that I actually played more than once
I dunno if any of that was even coherent so basically if you either have a ton of money to import or are okay with using the ol freeshop when they won't bring those games over here then yeah vita is quite good

[carpet]

hello?