Physician, heal thyself: then wilt thou also heal thy patient. Let it be his best cure to see with his eyes him who maketh himself whole.
—Zarathustra
Having cleared the game of philosophy,¹ I’ve finally become a philoshmupper. Though I will never be a shmage, I now love STGs. But before I get into that, first some personal history.
My first experiences as a gamer were on a friend’s Commodore 64. It had no controllers or “joypads”, but actual joy-sticks, with a single button. My brother and I started saving for a second-hand C64, but after a while my maternal grandmother showed us an ad for the NES Action Set, and we bought that instead. I was really excited about Duck Hunt, while Super Mario Bros. didn’t interest me much at all. This almost immediately turned around, though. Among many other things, what was so great about the NES and SMB was that they introduced a whole new dimension, featuring a second button which could modify the first. Even today I keep telling my nephews and niece that if they really wish to become any good at the 2D Mario games, they should have the run button pressed down by default.
Our next console was Sega’s 16-bit system, but though it was a step up in many respects, it wasn’t a dimensional leap in that regard. That only arrived with the Super NES—not because it had four face buttons instead of three, but because it introduced the L and R buttons. I’m really only thinking of Star Fox here. To be sure, though, the face buttons could serve as a kind of second D-pad. In this sense, it was Super Smash TV and not PlayStation which introduced yet another dimensional leap: dual directional controls.
For almost five years now, my single favourite game has been DiRT Rally 2.0. A friend who saw me play it when it had just come out, remarked that it seemed to be the next Street Fighter for me. Not only was I using the left analog stick to steer, face buttons to change gears, and L and R buttons to accelerate and brake, but I was even using the right analog stick to kick and thereby override the clutch. Later, I also added the handbrake to the right analog stick. And this year, TT Isle of Man: Ride on the Edge 3 (and RiMS Racing before it) enabled me to assign tuck in and tuck out—of the motorcycle seat—to left analog stick up and down, respectively. This, thus far, is the non plus ultra of controller gaming for me.
Now you may have noticed that I don’t use a steering wheel for racing games. I prefer a controller, just as I’ve always preferred one for fighting games. Or have I?—My newfound love of shmups has finally made me see that, for certain types of game, an arcade stick is really superior to a controller. If a shmup features analog movement, I still prefer a controller; but I prefer shmups that don’t feature analog movement.—The only fighting game I prefer an arcade stick for is Street Fighter II’ Turbo: Hyper Fighting; but that may well be the greatest fighting game ever, anyway.—I now prefer shmups over fighting games, though. In a way I’ve come back full circle to my Commodore days: although shmups often use more than one button, a good shmup may very well use only one.
Now for some examples of awesome shmups. First off, I recommend watching this video for thirteen minutes. Seriously, start here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TalYfTBulcE&t=1660s
Devil Engine²
Or, if you would prefer a vertical shooter (or playing with a friend, for that matter):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYe-zRKxFkY&t=164s
Raiden Fighters Jet
Though the Raiden Fighters series can be enjoyed in Raiden Legacy—which originally is actually an Android app—, I recently bought an Xbox 360 especially for Raiden Fighters Aces, because it has the option to play the games at their original 54 fps frame rate.
I will end with some love for Sega’s 16-bit system, which had multiple arcade ports that not only played well enough, but whose music was arguably better than the arcade versions’ (e.g., Mortal Kombat and Super Hang-On):³
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3SuKur7b_Q[/youtube] Zero Wing
[size=95]¹ That is, having realized the sublation of philosophy as opposed to wisdom.
² The third, forest stage evidently was inspired by this stage from Thunder Force V:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF4iBcNrRwU&t=389s
³ And of course original games with great music and playability as well, like Warriors of the Eternal Sun and Bio-Hazard Battle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21XdbofhOao&t=282s[/size]