I played dozens and dozens of shoot’em ups this summer, starting end 80s, when enemy patterns become interesting and fun and when music and sfxs start getting much better and lovely.
Yesterday I went through Radiant Silvergun, 1998. Connoisseurs know. Chant du cygne. One of the most amazing shooter ever.
I love them all for so many reasons.
Nostalgia is obvious. I remember having our bikes stolen in Brittany because we were playing Raiden with my cousin’s cousin and were hooked. The coin-op, the stress of losing money for nothing…
Second and I think it’s something that I’m good at: avoiding, dodging. Analyzing patterns and acting accordingly in real time, staying out of crashes. Keeping calm. Playing music is very close to that, so is being a black dude in a white world. I always loved the possibility of avoiding things, so much more powerful than straight conflict. You know, the all Judo thing.
Shoot’em ups are all about that, so much pleasure being alive after a massive wave of missiles, energy beams or simple bullets. Isn’t it life?
But more pragmatically, I love how those games are crafted. 1990s Japanese game development. In ten years, in a very strict and narrow style of games we go from boring pew pew to holy fuck how did I even make it through that OMG THAT BOSS AND THAT DIVINE MUSIC AM I DEAD.
It’s beautiful how looking at what works and what doesn’t, designers slowly improved those games. Very pragmatically, if an enemy pattern works and is smart, all developers copy it. I love that, I love the fact that they are all more concern about making a game that works than being pricks with over-inflated egos. Remember, Japanese game development is super secretive so these guys were probably analyzing competitor games or maybe reverse-engineer them.
All this for us, guys. Other example with sound effects: early 90s, all developers are trying different ways to make the “add credits” sounds but quickly when they find the good ones, they immediately applied them on every system that runs that audio chip (usually some Yamaha FM synthesizer). Plus, it becomes as important as the logos (Neo-Geo, Capcom intros!).
Keep. It. Simple. And. Invest. Wisely.
It’s all about fun efficiency. Let’s copy and slightly improve! And so forth from controls speed to the number of stages (I did one with 32!!! They all go down to around 7 at some point), the bosses, bullets colors, from how many layers in parallax scrolling before you can’t see anything to designing the lonely tank somewhere who’s going to hit you because you though it wasn’t a threat…
So yeah by 1995 all shoot’em ups kind of feel the same, but they’re all pretty great and feel good. Variation comes from how designers want you to play it: more tactical at the bottom of the screen or more aggressive moving toward the top, more “pure” (classic upgrades + bomb) or more complex (charge mode or lock on). When you start playing one, you know what you will have. You will have some fun, let me tell you.
Today even within genres, even with nice features or more interesting mechanics than these relics, so many games just don’t have a nice feel. And it’s all because we don’t make games this way anymore.
See you in the next episode, I’ll explain…