Your favourite (arcade style) shooter?

I'm sorry, but I've always personally disliked using the terms Shoot 'em up and SHMUP. Throughout my entire life I've only ever thought of them as Shooters, which is what they were universally known as in the 80s. 

My favourite Shooter of all time is Einhander from Square, and my favourite Shooter series is the R-Type series from Irem. 

Einhander is one of the very best games ever made. The music, controls, graphics, weapons and thrilling boss fights make it a timeless masterpiece. I've beaten it on hard, but have never managed to unlock the Selene fighter. It's easily the best non-RPG ever developed by Square. Einhander is a beautiful work of art. 

The R-Type series is a fine example of elegant, balanced, and strategic Shooter design. Levels play out like a masterfully well crafted puzzle to be decoded. The games have always had incredible music, graphics, controls, and level design. Its first entry is the best, although R-Type 3 comes reasonably close. R-Type 2 is also great, but has a large drop off in quality from the first entry. Super R-Type is legitimately bad, aside from its quality soundtrack. I don't count it as part of the main series, and really didn't enjoy playing through it. It does have one of the best boss battle tracks of all time. 

Shmup is truly a horrible word. Sounds so nasty, almost like shmuck. My head hurts a little every time I see or especially hear it.

I haven't played many of these games but I've always had a soft spot for Tyrian 2000. Of course I'm extremely biased since it was the first game in the genre for me, and one of the first games I ever played at all. But I really feel that there are many good things about it. The soundtrack by Alexander Brandon is just out of this world (I usually completely disable all SFX because the music is so good), the graphics are extremely colorful and likeable, and the gameplay is very accessible and not hardcore at all while still being rather satisfying. The last two episodes are sometimes criticized for being too goofy and unbalanced (you don't really buy or upgrade much after the third episode) but they are still cool if you see them more as a number of bonus stages to have some fun with and maybe laugh at. There is also a ridiculous plot with tons of data cubes you have to discover to fully understand the story, but I never cared for that.

Okay, I'm going to be vague as hell with this...

I've played this game back in the old Windows 95 / 98 days that was a PC 2D top-down shooter similar to Raptor: Call of Shadows. Except this game was completely futuristic and you control a spaceship shooting at things. You control your ship using the mouse, which may sound odd but it worked perfectly for me. Collecting power-ups was super-satisfying, and I remember the game having at least a hundred or more levels.

I have no idea what the name of this game is, and I'm still looking for it to this day. It was a Windows game, and I remember it being part of one of those old shareware CDs I used to have.

FOUND IT! It's called Galactix!
 

The YouTube video says it's a DOS game, but I could swear I played this as a windowed game. Hmmm...

 I used to play Satan's Hollow the arcade game emulated on some site. Fun game. but I was shit at it.

Contra 3.

Gunstar Heroes if that counts

Contra and Gunstar Heroes are run & gun shooters. 

20 minutes ago, Ajora said:

Contra and Gunstar Heroes are run & gun shooters. 

Correct. Which began in the arcade. No going back. Or did you want space shooters?

Just now, geo said:

Correct. Which began in the arcade. No going back. Or did you want space shooters?

I was thinking exclusively about spaceship shooters. Not all of them actually involve spaceships, however. 

The original Asteroids, on an original machine. 

Gradius 3, Gradius Advance even if it doesn't require quarters.

Wild Guns Reloaded & Metal Slug

The DoDonPachi series, Mushihimesama, Ketsui, Deathsmiles and so forth... Yes, I'm a CAVE fangirl... Dariusburst CS is also pretty sweet though, and Gradius/Parodius are quite enjoyable as well. But I'm more into bullet hell, which is probably why I'm also more into slaughter maps than "straight forward gameplay".

Speaking of space games, I once tried a demo of Intensity XS which came with a disc of demos with a PC Gamer magazine in the early 2000's, it was a pretty fun space shooting sidescroller but it's not a favorite of mine.

3 hours ago, fraggle said:

The original Asteroids, on an original machine. 

Yeah, after all these years, Asteroids still holds a special place in my heart.  I also still play an awful lot of Galaga, Gyruss, and Yar's Revenge.  In fact I'd say that these are all my favorite shooters ever, even with all the newer ones with deeper gameplay.  I guess I just prefer to find depth in simplicity when it comes to shooters.  Plus it's what I grew up playing.

The best thing is that there's an arcade with all of these (minus the 2600 game, but I already have that cartridge) just 20 minutes from my apartment.

Robotron 

Metal Slug games

4 hours ago, geo said:

Gradius 3, Gradius Advance even if it doesn't require quarters.

I love Gradius 3's final boss. 

People say Contra 1 is hard... not compared to Gradius 1. Then again, there's a disconnect between the genres. I'd wager a majority would rather play a run n' gun than a space shooter.

Galaga. Give me like 2-3 beers and I can stay entertained playing Galaga for hours, it's almost like meditation for me at this point. Up to about level 20 I can pretty much remember every attack formation off hand that the little bugs do as they fly in. Every time someone asks about favorite games and such I never remember to mention it, but it's easily one of the 5 games I've spent far, far too many hours on

Gyruss

The only games of this type i ever played were from the Touhou series (more of a bullet hell game than a shoot 'em up ?), to be honest, so i dont know any better. But i got interested in some titles cited here, maybe i'll try playing some others.

Salamander which is also know as Lifeforce depending on version.

9 hours ago, joepallai said:

Robotron 

This is one of the greatest games ever, regardless of genre.

Some other games I forgot to mention are Darius and Darius 2.  Those have also eaten up a lot of my time over the years.

The R-Type series is my favorite and R-Type Delta is my preferred game.

Regarding terminology, "STG" is a a less  retarded acronym for the genre, and is differentiated from "FPS" because... well no one ever referred to first person shooters as "shooting games" aside from maybe CNN beat reporters.

imo the one with the most fun and interesting mechanics is Raiden Fighters Jet, the music is mind blowingly bad though:

It has over a dozen ships to choose from, many have special charge-up attacks, various "option" formations, totally different levels depending on how you play, a difficulty rank system (not sure how well researched/documented it is), various scoring techniques (enemies at a same time, enemies before they get a chance to shoot, hidden bonus caches, boss body parts, "scratching" where you gain points if bullets graze your hitbox, various other special scoring actions).

"Shmup" is fine. It sounds silly? Most words sound silly, who cares.

Dodonpachi Dai-ou-jou is the best imo. The exact sweet spot after Cave had perfected their gameplay and before they started putting creepy fanservice in everything. Ketsui is also cool. I've tried to get into Raiden games, but the slow movement feels wrong. 

I like Crimzon Clover.

1 hour ago, Archi said:

I like Crimzon Clover.

good choice, but we've talked about this already IIRC ;-)

Edit: My mistake. The Touhou Project was already mentioned.