Other criticisms? The game is exactly the same each time you play it power ups and enemies appear in the exact same places so it can turn into a memory game. If it wasnt for the Mach 1+ I would now have a stump where my left thumb should be.Īs I said, the game is very difficult and to get anywhere near completing Xenon 2 you will need either a bionic trigger finger or a (working) autofire joystick. It had weak microswitches so I had to buy a second stick and used the first one as spares when they failed. I had mainly used it as a second stick for two player games and was the only one I could find where autofire worked in Xenon 2. Little did they count on my cheap but fragile Cheetah Mach 1+ joystick. The Bitmap Brothers used some kind of programming trickery which disabled these and even went as far as creating a less effective autofire as a power up. A common feature on many joysticks in the 80s was an autofire switch which took the pain out of a lot of shooters. The Bitmap Brothers purposely did not want to make an easy game and in fact went out of their way to make it more difficult. Xenon 2 Megablast has been criticised for being too hard. (all of the examples of "western shmups" the OP mentions are twin-stick sooters, though, which makes me think this isn't about euroshmups per say) Personally I don't have much of an opinion beside that Project X-2 is ballsssssss Which is not to say mechanic like shops, lifebars or inertia dont exits in Japanese-made games, but they're far more standard in western-made shmups (and more like to appear together).į you want an objective attempt to discuss "euroshmups", there's this. Inertia or other attempts to interject realism (fuel management, etc) If we ignore the subjective statements about those games being "boring" or "badly designed", shmups released for the C64 and Amiga and games inspired by them do have certain differentiating aspects from their Japanese counterparts, "Euroshmup" is a derisive term among shmup fans to refer to European-originated shmups released for home computers as a well as the handful of american example, (think stuff like Tyrian, Project-X, Raptor, etc.). I'd love to hear some more input on this, so that I can refine this theory. Still, like how people enjoy discussing the design differences between Western and Eastern RPGs, or even Eastern European strategy games versus UK-created strategy games, I think it's a valuable, reflective discussion. There are many games that don't fall within the criteria I delineated above. There have been plenty of recent Western shmups that are very Eastern-inspired. These two regions aren't mutually exclusive, of course. In short, Western shmups are typically focused on finesse within a small gameplay loop where you play as long as possible until you die or get sick of it, and Japanese games are about mastering the gameplay loop within the hour or so it takes to get through a shmup's main stages. I figure that a lot of these design tendencies come from the genre's arcade roots, which continue with new arcade releases in Japan. By mastering these mechanics and systems, you are more likely to be able to clear a game in one sitting without losing a life, in true "tatsujin" style. In turn, you typically die in a single hit. Ikaruga has the polarity system, Guwange has the shinigami system, and the Touhou games have the graze and spellcard systems. Meanwhile, Eastern shmups are much more focused on perfection and mastery of a smaller number of mechanics and systems in linear, atomic stages. Games like Geometry Wars are modern examples of this. And in several Western shmups, the gameplay loop is often focused less on clearing "stages" than just playing for as long as possible to attain a high score. I've also noticed that Western shmups tend to gravitate towards shooting in all directions, accompanied by freeform movement within an arena. Bullet patterns also tend to be slower and of similar patterns. I would say that Western shmups are focused on systems such as health bars and mechanics such as bullets that aren't easily dodged once noticed. But, as I was discussing it, several users noted that NM is inspired by many different CAVE shooters, such as Deathsmiles. Obviously, it's a shmup by a Finnish developer, Housemarque. I was discussing this in the Nex Machina Discord.
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