/vr/ - Retro Games

>>4461323
it's because the industry was moving ahead

you can't do beat em ups and shoot em ups for 30 years without a break or else the entire medium would stagnate. another reason consoles have such prominence now is because games can hold our attention for longer periods of time now, instead of short bursts of fun like these old arcade style games.

>>4461328
Those aren't the only arcade genres, though. The entire philosophy seems gone outside of some niche titles.

>>4461331
Except Cuphead is one of the best selling PC games this year.

Arcadefags are delusional, most people didn't 1cc back in the day just like most people playing Street Fighter didn't get to compete on EVO.
People get different things out of these games and there's no "wrong" way to enjoy videogames.

>>4461341
Cuphead is not that arcade style. It's more similar to Megadrive era console run and guns but adding more modern stuff like unlocking and shit like that.

The game has a very generous checkpoint system, that's a key difference since arcade style games are designed for short bursts of one sitting, where you need to be consistently good since you can't repeat the same part over and over. It's also pretty easy by arcade standards.

To me it's much closer to modern stuff like Super Meat Boy, bite sized modern games. Just that this game is a run and gun in genre and has bosses.

>>4461351
>It's also pretty easy by arcade standards.
And that's another problem with arcades, they seem to have been designed around quickly extorting quarters from children rather than being fair.

>>4461346
You're wrong, most early arcade games didn't even let you continue, and some later ones kept this tradition like the Gradius series.

Gradius was a popular series and you can only 1cc it, there's no alternative. People played them. Will you say Gradius was a literally who series now or something?

It's because games became more about bloating with dull content for "length" instead of being a disciplined, condensed, brief experience with infinite replayability like arcade games. It's a paradigm shift, in arcades the one progressing is always yourself, not the game as you can always just credit-feed to watch the ending, in modern single player games it's the other way around as people just play them to watch the ending regardless of how shit they play.

>>4461357
Then why do "newer" arcades not only allow continues but reward the player with powerups when they credit feed? If it was such a big deal why didn't the developers prevent players from doing it. At least Cave locked you out of second loops if you used more than one credit, you sum of used up lives and bombs wasn't a prime number or whatever.

>>4461356
Do you actually play arcade games? Arcades served two demands: operators and players. For the former they needed to be hard, but for the later they needed to be fair and fun too. If an arcade was cheap and unfair players would quickly notice and by word of mouth avoid that cabinet. In fact, I'd say home games back then were the ones more akin to be unfair (even if less challenging) since they needed to justify the cost with some length. With some exceptions arcade games are the best challenging but fair at the same time style of games out there. I'm talking from experience here.

>>4461357
Btw Gradius IV lets you continue.

It's because games became more about bloating with dull content for "length" instead of being a disciplined, condensed, brief experience with infinite replayability like arcade games. It's a paradigm shift, in arcades the one progressing is always yourself, not the game as you can always just credit-feed to watch the ending, in modern single player games it's the other way around as people just play them to watch the ending regardless of how shit they play, once they see all the content and ending there is little else to do. In short it's the consequence of console gaming taking over arcade gaming.

>>4461364
>Do you actually play arcade games?
It's always this pathetic circlejerk shit, arcade ports were eveywhere during 3rd 4th and 5th gen yet you guys act like it was something elitist and exclusive. Any retard can download an emulator and some arcade roms, I've been playing MAME since 2003

>>4461328
>>4461361

wrong

It's because people inherently don't like restarting their progress all over again, again and again.

Once save games were invented and games with real adventure and story were created nobody cared about highscores and 3 continues.

>>4461361
This guy gets it

>>4461362
I'd say it was to incentive players to do it since under normal circumstances wasting real coins on a game is bad. Let me explain:

Imagine you play a game for 10 minutes and then you lose all your lives. You now could use this coin to play another 10 minutes by playing from the beginning, maybe even more since you're now more practiced (or play another game as well). If you decided to put another coin to continue you would most probably die very soon since you're bad at the game and need practice on the overall mechanics. That coin would pretty much be wasted, and maybe those measures you mention are to counterbalance this.

>>4461369
No need to "save progress" in 30 minutes games you retard, I sure as hell can tell my progress in an arcade I've played for dozens hours without the need of a shitty save system. Save systems don't really save "progress", they just save where part of the game you are which isn't real progress as a player.

>>4461373

except nobody likes 30 minute long games. Arcade games are overrated. It's why the Saturn and Dreamcast flopped, nobody gave a shit. The industry grew up and lots of people didn't come to years later.

>>4461371
Notice that most if not all high level Japanese players owned a supergun set to free play instead of wasting a million 100 yen coins like a retard on arcade. Yet you have this fantasy in your head that world records were broken on a daily basis in Japanese arcades. That's wrong, the bulk of the profits were from casuals attracted to the flashy visuals. It's the reason why Bullet Hells with moe lolicon characters have always been more popular than WW2 generic spaceship shit.

>>4461369
Saving was ironically one of the worst things that have happened to video games, for every good that has brought to us ten bad things have come out. Fuck progress systems and everything they represent, damn skinner boxes.

And lol story in video games

>>4461367
Yeah, this guy gets it

>>4461365
Only played the first three arcades sorry

>>4461368
I say this not because of elitism but more because you seemed to not get these games saying stuff like that

>>4461379
Oh I'm sorry GAME CENTERs. Japan doesn't have arcades they called it Game Center.

>>4461376
>except nobody likes 30 minute long games.
A lot of people do, you are just a pleb turd.
>Saturn flopped
Because the US support was shit, it was the second best selling console on Japan

>>4461376
Except I prefer that length to bloated piece of shit modern games with their progress systems?

>>4461379
Dude I'm not talking about world records, scoring or anything. Chill

>>4461380
High Scores are skinner boxes too, bra, they condition you to keep playing for higher arbitrary numbers that don't mean or do anything.

>>4461379
>Notice that most if not all high level Japanese players owned a supergun set to free play instead of wasting a million 100 yen coins like a retard on arcade
Source: your ass, tons of jap high level players still play on game centers, which is why Mikado, Hey, or Ebisen still are thing

>>4461387
So you're comparing pressing a button over and over with 0 challenge to see a character level up in stats to or get some random drop to your own true progress over time as a player in a game?

So scoring more points in a basketball match is a skinner box, or maybe that you're more skilled in the game?

And of course, being good at a game means nothing, you need this motivation for real life stuff. But if I decide to dedicate some stuff with a game I prefer it to be truly engaging like this.

>>4461365
Actually it doesn't. I just checked and it rejects you back to title screen. My bad, lol.

>>4461389
This board seems to be WAY too ignorant on arcade stuff. Too many collectorfags, homefags, storyfags and progressfags. And more kinds of fags maybe lol

>>4461395
Shh, buddy, 1cc is a myth, trust this board

>>4461389
>spend thousands of dollars on a smelly crowded smokers game center
vs
>spend a few hundred on a supergun
This sums up what I think about arcade idiots, you are all fucking retards going to insane lengths for fake virtual achievements less than 1% of the population cares about.

>>4461390
>do thing correctly and win 10,000 arbitrary numbers that don't mean anything
It's the very definition of a skinner box.
Quote this post and receive 9,000,000 faggot points, you can't actually do anything with your faggot points but you want to improve your hiscore, right?

>>4461404
Except I don't care about any video game achievement. I just enjoy the highly demanding and tightly designed gameplay of these games even if / when I fail at them. No better feeling than a short but intense session of these games, I don't know how some can even go back to most other games after having experienced that, to me it almost feels like they don't even like gameplay at all

>>4461404
Nobody cares about opinion, the fact is japs still go to game centers.

>>4461408
>I don't know how some can even go back to most other games after having experienced that, to me it almost feels like they don't even like gameplay at all

It's not some amazing thing, dude, I assure you 99% of casual players played a shmup at some point in their lives. It's not as mind blowing as you think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbFYq6ALbbU

>>4461407
There's a key difference, though. You can't save these points, you don't accumulate them over time.

You're only playing a short, intense session trying yo do your best and having fun while doing so.

By your definition wanting to do anything well in any hobby is a skinner box then. If you have fun WHILE you're doing something, that's good. Skinner box games are boring pieces of shit that people only play because they get addicted to their permanent extrinsic rewards.

Compare the popularity of true roguelikes (every run is from scratch) to modern ones (you unlock shit every run so you're making "progress" even if you fail).

>>4461410
>Nobody cares about opinion,
The feeling is mutual, I'll continue credit feeding like a bitch and you'll have to deal with it.

>>4461418
>(you unlock shit every run so you're making "progress" even if you fail).
It depends, even modern shit like Binding of Isaac still have hardcore modes that nullify all upgrades.

>>4461416
Why do you assume I'm only talking about shmups only; again, there are other arcade genres.

You posted a good one tho. Still, those player you mention didn't probaby try at all when playing these and so didn't even scratch the surface. I feel you need to dig a bit deeper to appreciate these games fully, a bit of an acquired taste (not that much tho, it's just that people have increasingly less patience).

>>4461425
You can't deny though that their popularity stems from the fact that they feature that progress system

>>4461419
You see, as much as I defend 1cc and the like, continuing can be fun too if you're mindful about it and try your best instead of just brute forcing the game. Maybe trying to reduce the coins you need to clear each time. It's just that most players don't have this attitude as stated in the OP.

>>4461419
Have fun playing the games in the most superficial way then, not my problem.

>>4461432
Imho (in my humble opinion) limiting lives/credits only makes sense if you're comparing your skills to someone else. If you're playing for personal goals it literally does not matter how many credits you use as long as you're improving a little bit each time.

>>4461440
Yeah as long as you care about progress you are good, the thing is most credit-feeders don't care about progress at all.

>>4461440
You are correct. The problem is that most "casual" people brute force through these games to see the ending and then consider it finished. Then call the games easy and boring.

I would like for the arcade haters ITT to say what games they enjoy and for what reason. And why they feel they are better than the arcade style.

I hate it when people here just bash games without backing up with any arguments, seems like such a trollsfest. Happens to almost every topic here.

>>4461323
Successful bait is successful? There's usually at least five threads in the catalog at any given time extolling the virtues of playing belt scrollers in single player mode in MEME with one quarter, just as the devs intended. We've heard it before.

>>4461467
Why the condescending tone, though? Those games are fun to 1cc for yourself.

Here maybe you see this stuff from time to time since this is a board with slightly more dedicated players on average, but most people that play games not only don't give a shit about this, they can't even grasp the concept for some reason.

>>4461464
Trio the Punch is my favorite game.

>>4461464
Pink Sweets PCB is my favorite shooter ever.

>>4461484
I know you're probably trolling but I still respect that taste much more than storyfags or progressfags.

>>4461489
Haven't had the chance that one since I don't own that nor a 360. I heard it has a nasty rank system even by YGW standards, though.

>>4461497
Trio The Punch has a random roulette at the end of every level and Pink Sweets PCB is impossible to 1cc without using an infinite lives glitch.

>>4461474
>Why the condescending tone, though?
Too many threads of asshole arcadefags. FYI, at least half the people who "hate" arcade games ITT are just people trolling for that very reason. Also even if you hate story and "everybody's a winner" gameplay, you've still got puzzle games, roguelikes, pinball, golden age arcade games, all kinds of racing games, anything competitive, etc.

>>4461369
>Once save games were invented
? I don't know what game "invented" saving, but it predates the likes of Pac-Man. Also note that most of the "console gaming cancer" actually goes back to filthy casualshit like, I dunno, Zork.

>>4461508
>Pink Sweets PCB is impossible to 1cc without using an infinite lives glitch.
It's not, it's indeed ridiculous though.

>>4461514
>It's not, i
I can't find a single 1cc on nicodouga that's not using the lives glitch or the Xbox arrange. IIRC the rank won't ever come down and you need lower rank to destroy green bullets.

Can you point out a legit PCB 1cc for me?

>>4461518
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD9uugKoGQ4

>>4461508
I still stand by what I said about Trio the Punch, that's still more fun than pretty skinner boxes lol Pink Sweets seems quite out there though. Did they "fix" this on console port or some arrange modes?

>>4461513
In fact I mentioned old school true roguelikes as a good example of a game! Comparing them to the more modern style with progress systems. I also like most other games you mention (not that much into racing but still fun), but those are arcade games too, what's your point?

What matters is not when something is created but when it becomes prevalent and popular enough to shift the industry in a bad way btw

>>4461523
Cool, thank you.

>>4461523
lol @ the final boss BOMBAAAA BOMBAAA BOMBAAA BOMBAAA

OP here. A shame people get so defensive here. Too much trolling and trolling back has made'em weary as fuck, almost incapable of a nice, honest discussion here. Oh well, I'm out for now; see ya.

>>4461351
>arcade style games are designed for short bursts of one sitting
This is why the home versions of Crazi Taxy feel kind of hollow.

>>4461323
Market forces. Arcades need to offer attractive and quick gameplay. Once arcades died down, the need for more value became the driving force (bang for buck).

IMO we're seeing a reset of this resulting in a balance in order to satisfy old and new players alike.

>>4461328
And yet that hasn't stopped the industry from making the exact same kinds of games they were making on the PS2 but with HD graphics.

Suggesting the industry can't endlessly rehash the same shit is ignoring the last couple decades of gaming.

>>4461323
Once saving in games became the norm, people thought arcade style games were too short.
That's it.

unlimited continues were a mistake, at least outside of games that brought you back to a checkpoint on death/continue
Neo-Geo port style 4/5 continues is reasonable. I'm not gonna be a hardliner for 1CCs, since the console market is inherently more casual, what with games not being designed to get you off the machine for the next person after three minutes, but with infinite continues, nothing is stopping you from just enabling autofire and taping down the fire button and then just waiting for the game to end, which is what a lot of people might as well be doing, since they just mash in continues and then complain that the game was too short and easy.

For arcade-style games to succeed in the post-save era, they need extra modes and shit that save progress, things to extend play time, that sort of thing. Some fighting games had pretty robust single-player offerings and unlocks and shit, things of that nature are important for the home market.

>>4461829
Very good point, anon

>>4461852
The problem is that I hate that saving progress crap. I hated that on Mars Matrix's port and it's one of my favorite arcade games ever. It almost destroys the experience and gets people to play these games for the wrong reason.

I'd say just giving some limited continues and maybe difficulty levels like in the old console shmups (original or ports) is enough to gather a bigger niche without compromising on the fundamental fun of these games.

(I also hate this shit in every game. In F-Zero GX for example, fuck. Unlocking hard difficulties in general...)

>>4461369
Explain why Pac-man Championship Edition and Geometry Wars made everyone lose their shit during the XBLA days? Losing your progress and starting another new game has nothing to do with it. In fact it's actually fucking great when you exhaust all your lives and your record goes on a local leaderboard as well as an online leaderboard and you get to see all 100,000 players and the dozen nearest scores to yours.

>>4461323
I think not many seem to talk about this because not many people believe your bullshit. But you certainly made up for all that not talking with your shitty blog. If you'd actually played those games you're flapping your cheeto covered sausage fingers with you'd know many had limited continues so there was no infinite credits there. And people your age constantly cry about limited continues so you should be thanking any developer who did that for future proofing their games for your generation.

>>4461376
Nah you're just a butthurt pleb scum cunt who will never be smart or good enough to learn a single arcade game, the majority have always been dumb it's why everything popular is extremely simple to grasp and low on challenge.

>>4461376
modern games have no challenge whatsoever, the industry realized the way to expand consumer base was to dumb everything down to include the low i.q casual normies like you.

>>4461367
this, arcade games have amazing levels of depth and content but it manifests in the form of gameplay level only revealed to those who bother to put the time in where as modern games give a ton of padding through pointless quantity of stuff shit.

>>4461404
wtf is this inane ranting? no one cares what you think, you're completely wrong about japanese arcade culture and if you need other people to "care" about what you do you're a fucking sad loser cunting disgrace of insecurity and bitch genes. Never read something so fucking tragic in my life.


>>4461419
>I'll continue credit feeding like a bitch
But of course you will? you have any other choice because you're to violently unintelligent to do anything otherwise, i love how you make it sound like you have a choice when you're a worthless talentless lazy undisciplined cunt bitch by nature.

>>4461440
credit feeding destroys everything about the game though, strats, routing, execution, risk, resource management non of it matters if you just chuck credits in.

>>4461464
>I would like for the arcade haters ITT to say what games they enjoy and for what reason.
Kek why bother with them? /vr/ is the most clueless, ignorant, low skill bunch of stupid cum eaters in existence, they just collect console shite and wank over RPGs which a carrott could play, they think fucking ninja gaiden is hard ffs.

>>4461323
They never died.
Xbox Live arcade had great games for home console and people still didn't gave two shit.
Thats because people don't really play video games,you can meme all you want but most people stick to one or two franchises for life and that pretty much it for their "gayming".

>>4462075
>/vr/ is the most clueless, ignorant, low skill bunch of stupid cum eaters in existence

Then why don't you just fucking leave, Cee? You contribute absolutely nothing interesting to this board and drag every single fucking shooting game, beat 'em up, pinball, and recently just general arcade games thread into the toilet with your repetitive screaming. You have proven that you are a capable player, but your explosive, childish arrogance overpowers any merit your scores and clears have. There are several players far, far superior to you that don't need to shriek and screech every fucking day to an audience that's universally fucking tired of your vomit. If you can't learn to contain your goddamn autism and actually engage and discuss things with other posters rather than screaming the same stupid shit at them all the time, just fucking leave. I'm being a fucking idiot for responding to you seriously, but I know that since you are actually a skilled player, you should be capable of better discussion. At the very least, please honor the pathetic request of a "cuntpleb low cunt.q shiteplebwankcunt oi mate bangers and mash cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt" like me and put a fucking trip on.

OP is back here (well, I posted here some hours ago one time talking about Mars Matrix but wtvr)

>>4462019
You're mistaken, buddy. If you read carefully I mention that in the 4th generation and before console shmups, either original or based on an arcade, had limited continues. And they did this to avoid what ended up happening later with 1:1 ports: masses of people not understanding the game and thinking there's 0 challenge. This also happened to other genres though to a lesser degree (beat'em ups disappeared, for example).

And I don't dislike limited continues, in fact I think they are the better compromise to introduce these arcade style games to more casual gamers.

And yes, I play the games, it's most of what I play. Chill, buddy.

>>4462075
>/vr/ is the most clueless, ignorant, low skill bunch of stupid cum eaters in existence, they just collect console shite and wank over RPGs which a carrott could play

I wouldn't insult them but, sadly, this seems to be the case. They are extremely aggressive towards people with tastes just a bit different than theirs (by this I mean the typical games they seem to agree to like)

>>4462102
I see a lot of people just playing one F2P game at a time for years where I live like LoL, completely addicted to their progress systems.

>>4462104
I love arcade games but elitism can be tiring too, yeah. I try to open other people's minds to the strengths of arcade games little by little, I think it works best. Being condescending will only make them have a bad image about the games you like.

I know it's frustrating how a lot of people seem oblivious to this and shit on arcade games without having really tried them but you gotta have patience.

>>4461323
>Of course, as we all know this is pretty much cheating
This is top tier autism right there.

>>4462412
Buddy, how is it not cheating to be able to clear the game with absolutely 0 challenge by reappearing right where you were every time you die? It's pretty much God mode. Where's the autism?

>>4462425
>With absolutely 0 challenge
So if I get really good at a game I am cheating? I mean, it's not challenging anymore, right?

Fucking autism.

>>4461697
I had Crazy Taxi for Dreamcast and played the hell of it. I don't think it was that hollow, it added a new city and the Crazy Box games were really fun.

>>4462440
You may be improving but that doesn't change the fact that you're pretty much playing with an invincibility cheat on.

And while you seem to get it and can find enjoyment and some challenge even when credit feeding, the point of the thread is how casuals don't recognize this, don't get the games and so they get worse reviews and sales.

>>4461323
>feeding a console or emulator with fake coins is cheating
>feeding an arcade machine with real money is not
good goy

>b-but paying for each game/continue makes it more exciting
literal gambler mentality. seek help if you think like this.

>>4462465
It's very easy to see the difference, buddy. When you don't have to put real money there are no consequences so you just can't die and will beat the game no matter how badly you play it.

With real coins though you value them and the time of entertainment they provide you, so you're more prone to try to be good at the game and use the fewest coins possible. You gain an appreciation of the game over time if it's good.

Gambling is not skill based (with a few marginal exceptions) and you can't get money from arcade games, it's a whole other story. An arcade is closer to an amusement ride where you get to be more time there if you are more skillful.

>>4462478
arcade games consistently reward players who are ready to feed them with lots of money. if you need more practice, you can only achieve it by putting in more money. if you're just plain shit at a game, you can still win by putting in enough money. in the latter case, it's just as much "cheating" as when you put in infinite coins in ports and emulators, the only difference is that you're giving all your money to some corporation.

>>4462490
If you only credit feed you will probably never have the skills to 1cc the game, or you'll develop these much more slowly. It's a waste of money and time, actually.

>>4462464
>Hurrr normies don't understand the game!
And you say you DON'T have autism? kek

>>4461323
Love playing arcades via MAME (not going to save up for an actual unit) and honestly credit feeding doesn't bother me. What's to stop me from doing the same thing at an actual arcade if i have $100-or-whatever in tokens? If you wanna 1cc a game go right ahead but tired of hearing this butt-hurt purists shitting on those who just wanna play the game their way.

Who has the fucking time to 1cc something like Metal Slug, Die Hard Arcade, or Final Fight? Got other shit to take care of senpai.

>>4462494
Very few people here care about that as far as I've seen, even considering it autism (and we aren't even talking about scoring here, just not credit feeding seems to be autism)

Fortunately this thread seems to have avoided those trolls so far.

>>4462503
This was meant for another thread, sorry. If someone deletes these posts I'd be grateful

>>4462496
You seem like a troll since you avoid confronting any of my arguments and keep coming back with answers like these every time. But whatever, I'll roll with it.

What I mean is that developers made the ports not intuitive in a way for most gamers. They see they can continue and say to themselves "Why not?" without realizing they are ruining the experience for themselves, and then go and complain the games are too easy.

>>4462502
Play Gradius II. It's not that hard but it demands to be 1cc'd (doesn't let you continue, just like the rest of the series). And it's a pretty cool game too, at least to me.

>>4462494
>you will probably never have the skills to 1cc the game
literally who cares about 1cc'ing? if I want the bragging rights, I can just lie about winning the game "correctly", anyway.

>>4462513
>Play Gradius II. It's not that hard but it demands to be 1cc'd (doesn't let you continue, just like the rest of the series). And it's a pretty cool game too, at least to me.
Will look into it, thanks anon.

>>4462518
It's not about the bragging rights, it's about the experience of doing runs with one credit. They feel very satisfying and fun while you play them, the level of excitement is higher.

>>4462521
Hope you enjoy it!

>>4461323
Hi icy. I've always felt that this was the best point you had ever made.

Credit feeding essentially amounts to removing any sort of pushback or competition. If a "game" could reasonably be defined as a good-natured competition between two parties (with the AI or the level design or what have you substituting for the other party in the case of single player games), then remove that competition and it ceases to be a game; it's a video EXERCISE. I distinctly remember going to a barcade with a few friends back before I knew better and midway through runthroughs of Blazing Star and The Simpsons that would have bankrupted us had the machines not been on free play, I realized that none of us seemed to be having much if any fun. What's the point of playing a game if not to feel a sense of satisfaction from a challenge overcome? What's the point, then, if there is no challenge, or if nothing is preventing you from meeting it? It's practically like playing a platformer whose levels all look like pic related.

Fact is, feeding just inevitably leads to brute forcing because it's the most logical and effective course of action when you have theoretically (or actually) infinite retries. There's just absolutely no reason to play the game rather than fulfill the exercise if your goal either way is to win.

>>4462527
I'm not Icy though! I've read his stuff though, and even if I disagree with some of his points he indeed made some good points.

I have a friend that loves the Metal Slug series but had trouble enjoying the games at this point because he credit fed them. After encouraging him to 1cc, he now tries to reduce coin usage and is appreciating the games even more.

>>4461346
>there's no "wrong" way to enjoy videogames
While technically true, most people who complain about arcade games would have their issues assuaged by not feeding.

Maybe some people like hitting themselves in the head with hammers--hey, who am I to judge. But if they start complaining about how useless and painful hammers are, then maybe they should just be hitting the nail instead?

>>4461364
To be fair, that characterizes Japanese games which did comprise most of the market, but plenty of post-golden age Western arcade games were just plain cheap. After all, it's the "arcade" scene that wound up degenerating into actually fucking CHEATING machines like Stacker.

>>4462548
You are right, I've discussed this on another thread that's up right now. There I asked other anons wondering why this happened to western games specifically since I don't fully understand why.

Still, seeing as how arcades lasted longer in Japan (though other circumstances linked to a difference in these societies) their model was not only more fair, but also more actually challenging and with increased lasting appeal.

>>4462502
>Love playing arcades via MAME (not going to save up for an actual unit) and honestly credit feeding doesn't bother me. What's to stop me from doing the same thing at an actual arcade if i have $100-or-whatever in tokens? If you wanna 1cc a game go right ahead but tired of hearing this butt-hurt purists shitting on those who just wanna play the game their way.

People seem to oddly be concentrating on the cost of playing coin-ops, but that's not the point (and as they're essentially a dead medium and the vast majority are in MAME they're basically free for anyone to play anyway). It's about skill and the joy of mastering something. 1CCing the best coin-ops is some of the most fun you can have with videogames. It forces you to learn the language of games and game design and you will appreciate well designed games far better. As an aside this is exactly why modern games journalists are so useless (and are trying to push things like Critical Theory ideas as a benchmark for "good" games) because they don't have the time to learn the language of games and when they come across pure arcade genres like shmups they are functionality illiterate and can't comprehend them.

>Who has the fucking time to 1cc something like Metal Slug, Die Hard Arcade, or Final Fight? Got other shit to take care of senpai.

Metal Slug is actually a pretty easy game to 1CC, I imagine most people could do it within 2 weeks to a month of an hour's play a day if they put their mind to it and studied top players' replays on Youtube. Try it!

>>4462571
After focusing more on arcade games for a few years I pretty much couldn't stand to play some other games.

For example, I suddenly couldn't stand taking unavoidable damage in action games even if it didn't matter since it took like 3 health out of my 200. This seems to happen a lot in FPS games with stuff like hitscan.

When a game has to be designed for you to clear it without taking a single hit it raises the standards of game design. You can't fuck up here as a game designer, you need to design everything very carefully.

What's this Critical Theory stuff you're talking about, buddy?

btw a fun game I recommend for those who want to start to 1cc these games and can refrain themselves from continuing every time is Batsugun Special Version. While I had previous experience with games like this I managed to clear the first loop of this on my first attempt while also having a lot of fun on the latter half of it (always wondering how the fuck I was surviving that much lol)

Well yeah, games were made difficult so they would last longer. Speed runs of castlevania take 15 minutes. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who could beat it in that short of time on first contact though.

Now they can afford to make games really long but without bullshit. The only problem is we largely lost the games that were hard but fun.

>>4462639
Arcade games in particular are not made to last long but I know you mean console games of their time that were similar and you're mostly right I'd say.

The thing I disagree with is the part of "without bullshit". They've mostly made games longer by padding them out with crap, ir of not crap just gameplay not up to arcade standards of quality.

To me it feels like you have games that are like maybe 30-60 minutes of length but now they stretch this same quality but throughout five to ten times that length, and this only applies to the better examples. Other are just devoid of any challenge or excitement and substitute this with other rewards (skinner boxes, story...)

>>4461346
>most people didn't
Fuck me this stupid cunt still thinks this is somehow an argument, you're a meat headed untermensch dumb cunt mate, fuck off and be a clueless noodle armed beta shit somewhere else, fucking loser.

>>4462513
>They see they can continue and say to themselves "Why not?" without realizing they are ruining the experience for themselves
So for you a good gaming experience is one where you can't continue?

Sounds liek autism to me, buddy.

>>4461941
You'd have the original, standard, untarnished arcade mode, but the other stuff would be additional extras. Basically padding, but when most people expect padding, you give them what they want, and the pure experience will still always be there.
>It almost destroys the experience and gets people to play these games for the wrong reason.
the market of people who will play the games for the """right""" reason is way too small and it's an uphill battle to educate people because the reason the arcade design philosophy even exists is because of the setting the games were originally in
take that away, and the vast majority people aren't really likely to just get it

and yeah, difficulty unlocks suck completely
if I want to play the game on fucking max, I don't want to have to waste my time fucking around with easier modes

>>4462453
Crazy Taxi's port does a lot of things right. Extra challenges and a new mode for the home market, time-attack challenges, etc. It's still considered fairly thin on content by home standards, but I'd say it's pretty damn good.
kind of wish the home mode map was better (it's kinda sloppily laid out), but I remember reading somewhere that it was a bit hard to navigate because it was made for the home market, so letting players get a bit more lost was considered acceptable

>>4462589
You're noticing sloppiness in design.
It pisses me off too, but I just shrug it off as being from an entirely different game design culture where getting hit isn't such a big deal.
in particular, in FPSes, you're basically never expected to not take damage at some point, and that's fairly deeply rooted in its design culture

>>4462672
>>4462669
low quality shitposting

>>4462649
This, the problem with a lot of modern single-player is that you are doing essentially the same shit for 20 hours because they are dull and undemanding all the time, while in a good arcade game you are drastically changing and improving your gameplay the more you play it.

>>4462104
As longs as clueless spastics like you exist i'm staying to educate and help those who have an interest in how to actually play wade through the dense mental fog of the average vr donut. You're weak in my presence but you treat me good boy i might let you prep the bull before i beast fuck your mother before i teach her to 1cc.

>>4462518
i bet you're a fucking americunt? what is it with you retards thinking the only reason to ever do anything is the concern of others? do something for your own sake you sad fucks.

>>4462672
>muh autism buzzword
>hurr all effort is autism

Keep detracting from your failures loser.

>>4462649
>ir of not crap just gameplay not up to arcade standards of quality.
What the fuck does this even mean? Lots of console and PC games can't be held up to "arcade standards of quality" because they're completely different fucking genres.

>>4462673
If the original experience is there then I don't have much of a problem. Still, seeing all the people masturbating over achievements on consoles/Steam while ignoring this stuff which is similar but better is annoying

I don't get FPS design culture much then. I suspect stuff like hitscan is there because of muh realizm, bulletz r liek dat, not something that's there in purpose for game design.

>>4462672
You're obviously trolling at this point but whatever. Yes, a good gaming experiencie requieres consequences, you need to at least be able to fail, without this it's not even a game at that point, more like one of those modern "experiences".

What's more fun, trying to score triples in basketball or putting the basket right under your hands, let the ball fall from your hands to it, grabbing it again and rinse and repeat? The last thing may be relaxing to an extent but it's not the same.

>>4462676
lol this edge

>>4462681
4chan in a nutshell, It seems

>>4462697
A lot of games, while not carbon copies of arcade genres, are derivatives in some respects of them.

For example, you have Devil May Cry which is pretty much a modernized beat'em up. Not a 1:1 copy but you can feel the influence. And notice how this game, while not JRPG length, is much longer than arcade beat'em ups... but the game does this by repeating boss fights, adding gimmicky underwater sections, some backtracking... It's still a good game, but you can't deny that not every part of the game is up to standard, some feel a bit like filler, less exciting.

>>4462712
>What's more fun, trying to score triples in basketball or putting the basket right under your hands, let the ball fall from your hands to it, grabbing it again and rinse and repeat?
That's subjective, just like gaming.

it's not cheating just because you don't like it.

>>4462725
Except said length can also remove some of the repetition inherent in shorter games. Not only that but genres like first person shooters, and RPGs have never be prevalent in arcades but have still fostered some of the best games of all time.

>>4462731
While it is subjective it seems strange to consider the latter more exciting than scoring triples, don't you think?

My problem is not "not liking" credit feeding, just how the fact that since these games feature this on console their death has accelerated really fast due to people understandably finding the boring since they don't realize the game is not designed to just brute force ad nauseum

>>4462739
I don't understand how making a make longer improves repetition issues, in any case what would be the reverse, right? I think I'm missing something here, sorry.

I'm not much of a fan of those two genres you mention and I find that gaming communities overvalue RPGs in particular a lot due to reasons not related to gameplay (muh story / aesthetics, etc.)

>>4462748
>it seems strange to consider the latter more exciting
Again. Subjective.

If a game's only good feature is that you have to keep dying over and over and starting from the start over and over, then it's a shit game.
The are basically tricking you into enjoying it by making it so that you get a rush of adrenaline each time you succeed.

>>4462748
>I don't understand how making a make longer improves repetition issues, in any case what would be the reverse, right?
It goes both ways, a game can be long while still having enough variety to keep things interesting throughout the game.
>I find that gaming communities overvalue RPGs in particular a lot due to reasons not related to gameplay (muh story / aesthetics, etc.)
Story and aesthetics can be just as important as gameplay. No one would give a shit about most arcade games if it weren't for the music, and art alongside the solid gameplay. That, and games can work extremely well as a storytelling medium due to the interactivity. Games like Planescape: Torment are living proof of this regardless of whether or not you like it.

>>4462757
>you have to keep dying over and over and starting from the start over and over

This only happens if you're a really bad player not paying attention at all and/or not developing any strategies or focusing on learning the general mechanics. You sound like someone who wants the game to be beaten by itself with 0 effort from the player's part.

>>4462769
I'm one of those that don't give a shit about aesthetics and I'm only into the gameplay, so not sure about "no one".

Planet Escape Tournament is pretty much a visual novel. You may like it as a book with different paths to read but there's not much of a game there.

>>4462772
>This only happens if you're a really bad player not paying attention at all and/or not developing any strategies or focusing on learning the general mechanics
Right, so you just start a new game, and can play it perfectly...

>>4462798
Trial and error is good game design you dumb casual cumstain Americunt.

>>4462802
>I enjoy repeating the same things over and over again and each time I die having to repeat every single level again
enjoying repetitive tasks is literally a sign of autism.

>>4462798
I cleared Batsugun Special Version's first loop on my first time playing the game. Granted, this is easy by arcade standards, but just an example.

>>4462802
What do you mean exactly by trial and error, buddy? I'd like to hear more about this, since usually this is said as a pejorative term.

>>4462808
You are just being tricked into becoming addicted to a game so that you will spend more money.

You aren't truly enjoying the game.

Arcade designers love sheep like you.

>>4462757
>If a game's only good feature is that you have to keep dying over and over and starting from the start over and over, then it's a shit game.
You would have never made it in the eighties. You'd have been laughed off the VAX we all used to play Rogue on instead of doing useful shit with our time.

>>4462830
I played arcade games in the 80s. That doesn't stop me realising how inherently shit they were

>>4462843
Given your many years of experience in the hobby, what are some games that you would consider NOT to be inherently shit?

>>4462849
Nice try. Whatever I post you will claim is invalid, so I won't even bother.

>>4462856
Yeah, didn't think so.

Man, these trolls sure are boring.
So I was tricked by arcade developers by 1cc'ing a game on an emulator 20+ years after its company declared bankrupcy lol
Why not be confident enough with your taste, though? You seem to be afraid of criticism. Share the games you like and the reasons why, you may be surprised since I like stuff other than arcade games even if to a lesser degree.

>>4462876
>So I was tricked by arcade developers by 1cc'ing a game on an emulator 20+ years after its company declared bankrupcy lol
Way to make them rich. You didn't even realize you were doing it until some random bitter kid on 4chan let you in on the master plan.

>>4462879
Checks out, only kids would enjoy this very weak trolling

>>4462757
Do you apply the same logic to learning anything? Is an instrument shit because you have to start over and over again to get it right? Just come to terms with yourself and accept you don't have what it takes and prefer easier more hedonistic entertainment to accommodate your average i.q.

>>4462916
Learning an instrument is not the same as playing a game... How can you be this retarded?

>>4462806
No it isn't, you're using the buzzword autism to describe standard learning practices, christ i can't begin to imagine how little you have ever learned or done in your life to fel you need to protect your ego by negatively casting nonsense onto others, i'm sorry you're worthless.

>>4462921
what a surprise, the pea brain with no experience in either doesn't know the correlation.. imagine my shock.

>>4462921
Memorization of the sheets and the games help a lot but also practice to improve your technical abilities with the instrument or game mechanics

>>4462921
>>4462921
Not him but learning a game would be kinda similar to learning a composition, of course the skillset between them varies the same way playing Moonlight Sonata mov 3 isn't the same as playing guitar in some random punk song.

>>4462916
an instrument doesn't force me to insert shekels before I can try again everytime I make a mistake

>>4462981
You need to buy and maintain the instruments lol

>>4462981
ya right it only costs you 100000 to even play it, retard

>>4462987
>what are used goods

>>4462981
sorry mate you have to stop posting here, this is a retro only board and you are clearly a 256-bit retard.

>>4462996
>still digging this hole
even second hand costs a lot more than playing an arcade lmao.

>>4462948
>Learning a game is the same as composing music
Holy shit, that's fucking hilarious.

>>4462939
>I don't play games to enjoy them
>I play to memorise everything and get the best score
I guess, that's one way to play them...

>>4462986
That's completely different from having to pay each time you make a mistake

>>4463004
>composing music
Can't you read retard? LEARNING A COMPOSITION

>>4463004
Fuck me you can't even read either lmfao, he said LEARNING a composition not composing music you absolute special ed mouth breather.

>>4463004
>>I play to memorise everything and get the best score
This is what i find the most fun way, what now?

Guys, we need to stop feeding this troll.

What do you guys think about "golden age" era arcades? You know late 70's-early 80's stuff. Even though I prefer Japanese games from the mid 80's onward I still enjoy quite a few of those such as Tempest or Robotron. I don't see much discussion about these kinds of games here.

>>4463019
not really played many but i appreciate the addictive as fuck quality they had, donkey kongs the only real classic i played to any real extent.

>>4463019
>everyone who isn't an edgy elitist is trolling

>>4463024
Since they were before my time one thing that got me interested in games of that style were the Game & Watch compilations on Game Boy. I had the second one. G&W's games feel quite like arcade games of that era, particularly the remakes on that game that feel less like "Tiger Games but instead of shitty, good"

>>4463070
>everytime people let the obvious bait die on the vine, the samefag troll shows up and throws some more in the water
It's really obvious what's happening.

>>4463101
That wasn't me. but it's obvious you have 0 arguments left so you are trying the "don't feed the troll" tactic and changing topics.

>>4463120
>but it's obvious you have 0 arguments left
I didn't have any to begin with, and it's fairly obvious I'm not the poster you think I am. I'm just agreeing with him. You've had your fun, leave it alone and let the thread do whatever it's going to do.

I find it interesting when dedicated gamers / collectors here complain a lot about casual gamers but then call elitist to those who enjoy hard games lol

>>4463019
>Robotron
I wasn't a Robotron fan, but I played the shit out of a Robotron conversion kit called "Cloak & Dagger" as a kid. I saw the movie, and then the local mall arcade got a kit. Many quarters wasted.

If you've ever seen the movie, you might think there was a 5200 version, as a 5200 Cloak & Dagger cart served as the plot wagon for the entire movie. Apparently this version was supposed to happen at some point, and then didn't. Same with the Atari 8-bit port. All the footage in the film was of the actual arcade machine which, as far as I know, is the only version of the game that was ever released. I waited for a home release that never came.

Also, on a slightly ironic note, I still to this very day can't stand twin stick shooters.

>>4463164
Interesting story, buddy. But why can't you stand twin stick shooters? I just hope there were more like that but structured more like an autoscrolling shmup.

>>4463170
>But why can't you stand twin stick shooters?
Don't know. Just never could get into them as a type of game. Tried as a little kid with Robotron. Wouldn't have tried again with C&D except that I saw the movie at an impressionable age, and had to love the game by default. Years later Smash T.V. happened and everyone (except me, apparently) loved it. And what was the Smash T.V. knockoff/clone/sequel/whatever it was? Fuck, I don't remember anymore. Didn't like it, either.

>I just hope there were more like that but structured more like an autoscrolling shmup.
More like Robotron? TSS type games? Sure, but not like an autoscrolling shmup. Or at least if there is I've never heard of them.

>>4463101
this is the first time I've ever commented on arcades on this board. stop being paranoid.

>>4463181
The closest games I know are Zero Gunner 2 and Border Down

>>4463240
>Border Down
For a second I thought I knew this one, until I Googled it and realized I was thinking of Under Defeat.

>>4463181
>And what was the Smash T.V. knockoff/clone/sequel/whatever it was?
Total Carnage

>>4463241
I get those two names confused in my head too sometimes lol

The reason is casuals that quarter fed. The Japanese arcade scene lasted for much much longer and is still technically alive with new games coming out.

Now here's an interesting question. Why is that the West had a history of making respectable arcade games but it eventually decayed. Past 1983 In every genre that was in the arcade the Japanese made the best games, they were also responsible for nearly all innovations and certainly the best aestetics for their game.

The Americans has their hand in the single-screen shmup bussiness by eventually it became a genre were basically 100% of good games came from the Japs. Likewise the West made great strides in the over-head shooter genre with Berzerk and Robotron but after around 1983 or all the great games were from Japan: Ikari Warriors, Commando, and than eventually Shock Troopers and Outzone.

>>4461341
And what does that have to do with whether or not it's an arcade game?

>>4464919
This is something I've asked before here and I don't fully understand why.
After the so-called "golden arcade years" of the late 70's o early 80's western arcade games became pretty much shit in comparison, even western editions of Japanese games were usually worse (bad changes).
Also, as you mention, after this era continuing started to happen and western players were much more into credit feeding while Japan had more 1cc and/or scoring players.
Why did this happen exactly? It seems pretty weird to me.

>>4464993
I'm not sure why it happened. Maybe it had to with demographics. There were more teens and adults in arcades in Japan. Maybe that's why? It kind of became a negative feed-back loop. Customers thought of arcade games as skilless quarter munchers, very few people tried developing their skill so you ended up with a population that sucked at arcade games. This meant that they could only handle easy arcade games (for instance Golden Axe has legendary status in the West but not in Japan, probably because Golden Axe is the easiest beat em up ever made). Which in turn made them worst.

It also polluted the design philosophy of Western arcade developers who thought that they were presciously supposed to make skilless quarter munchers: hence the later arcade Western games were poorly balanced in both level design, controls, and ai or had stuff like your health constantly draining. These games than solidified the public's opinion that arcade games were just cheap gimmicks.

Gaming magazines and reviewers also reflected this culture and were filled with reviews trashing classic games because the reviewer never treated as a game of skill (and thus teaching all the readers to do this).
You still see the effect of these magazines and reviewers to do this in this very thread....

>>4465046
>There were more teens and adults in arcades in Japan.
This is weird to me since I imagine adults are the ones that have a higher chance of being able to put lots of quarters in a machine since they are spending their own cash.

Those journalists you mention piss me off way too much: https://gamecritics.com/brad-gallaway/3231/
This guy seems like a /vr/ shitposter lol

>>4465198
I don't know if it's the age difference just a guess. As for money

You get the most time/per money when going with the one credit rule. Let's say you're stuck on the third level and you die. If you continue from there how long do you think you'll last? Probably not more than a minute. But if you start over you can play for 10 minutes just on the first 2 levels. An adult is more likely to understand this. In addition since one credit is cheap it's not going to bother him if he spends 500 credits over a year.

Hardcore gamers created regular customers. You drop by the arcade every day and spend a credit or 3, get a little better. Maybe he eventually beats it maybe he doesn't. Point is he has fun with it being ultra tough. The game is fair though so he always feels like the lose was his fault and so he keeps coming back to improve. There's always more losers than winners in an arcade game. For every 1 guy that is good enough to spend a single credit and play for an hour straight there's a thousand guys that are stuck on the 2nd level.


The guy who quarter feeds will eventually get sick of what he perceives as cheap deaths and go play a home console or PC game. Once you have a population that refuses to treat the game as a game of skill it's over. If they make the games piss easy the operator goes broke because no one ever dies. If they make the game tough the players whine and sotp playing.

>>4461323
I agree with most of what you said but its a lot easier to just say that people simply wanted easier and easier games over the years. Home consoles showed people that there are easier alternatives for their gaming entertainment so eventually people just started to prefer the easier video games. People also wanted more story focused games. Just look at what kind of games started to become really popular in the 5th gen getting a lot of attention. Games like MGS. Pretty much THE founding father of the cinematic movie game that so many games now have emulated. It doesn't matter if arcade type games stayed difficult with limited continues. Eventually the easier games would have become the new norm since that is what the normal people wanted as more of them started to get into gaming with later generations. Gaming for the most part has only kept increasing in size. There are far more people playing games now and for a much longer time on average than ever before in history.

>>4461328
The industry is now selling FPS, racing simulators and 3D soccer games for more than 20 years. The exact same games again and again. So what?

>>4465270
Arcade games existed at the same time as Point n Click Adventures which were basically 'cinematic games', visual novels also existed, so did RPGs in both western and japanese flavor with long stories.

The public as a whole can like both story heavy games and games of skill. In an interview with one of the top Shmup players in the world he said his other favorite type of game is JRPG...

What we got in the 5th generation of gaming was a casualized verison of arcade games. Devil May Cry is what happens when the beat em up genre got casualized: infinite continues, a dodge button, less aggressive enemies, and an emphasis on looking cool rather than being tough. Platformers went from stuff like GnG, Contra, Mega Man to skilless games like Banjo Kazooie and Klonoa. Shmups never found a way to make themself casual so they just died off.

>>4465256
I agree with your second paragraph, in fact I told the same stuff to another anon here before to argue why playing games with one coin is the best way in a real arcade. This seems reasonable related as to why adult Japanese businessmen would be more inclined to play like this.

Yeah, arcades were (are in Japan still I guess) pretty much the only environment for video games where hard games not only flourished but also the trend was to cater more and more over time to hardcore demands (you can see this in the shmup genre and how scoring systems got so extremely deep after some time). No surprise games stopped being hard once their influenced declined. My only gripe with the arcade environment would be preservation, other than emulation it's a hassle to play and collect the PCBs at home.

>>4465270
You have a good point. I think it's still a shame, though.
I'd still say it's less that they wanted easier games and more about the fact that more people enjoy stories or extrinsic rewards than pure game mechanics, so once games could deliver this at home (arcades can't) then devs had a new, bigger costumer base to cater to. They realized this slowly, though.

>>4465301
>Shmups never found a way to make themself casual so they just died off.

Have you heard of euroshmups like Tyrian? They didn't work in the long run but it's what some people suggest the shmup genre needs to become more appealing to the masses.

You bring an interesting point: in the past hard and casual games coexisted better. Nowadays hard games have become a niche and people call every remotely challenging game a "Dark Souls" lol

>>4465281
FIFA 18 best selling game so far this year in Europe AFAIK

>>4465301
Then you are claiming a conspiracy here by developers and publishers to dumb games down to a wider audience? Because if so I agree they have done that. However I also think the people would have naturally wanted easier games with more of a story focus regardless of being conditioned to want it or not. All what it would have taken was just a few developers to make good story focused games with easier to play gameplay and these people would have went to games like that. So developers and publishers just decided to cash in by appealing to these types. These types started to get more and more into gaming. Its really a symbiotic relationship here is how I see it. Those other genres you mentioned isn't really a solid point at all. Especially considering point n click is way too niche in present day.

>>4465345
Not him, but as I said, I'd still say it's less that they wanted easier games and more about the fact that more people enjoy stories or extrinsic rewards than pure game mechanics, so once games could deliver this at home (arcades can't) then devs had a new, bigger costumer base to cater to. They realized this slowly, though.

What I'll add is that the easy factor is necessary when making these story "games" since their base doesn't give a shit about gameplay and so it has to be non-intrusive.

>>4465313
I think the trouble with making shmups appeal to the masses has always been an aestetic thing. Beat em ups look cool. God of War appealed to the masses because they liked the idea of a big barbarian swinging giant swords at monsters.

You'd need to pick a theme the public would like: maybe controlling a character rather than a ship (that's part of why Touhou is the most well known shmup).


>Nowadays hard games have become a niche and people call every remotely challenging game a "Dark Souls" lol
I sort of blame the reviewers for this. Ugly, casual, poorly made, platformers get showered with praise (do you remember how Braid was unironically called the 'citzen kane of video games' and was talked about in practically religious terms) while genuine advancements in the genre such as Hard Corps Uprising are treated as though they don't exist. Same with the Twin Stick Shooter genre. Think of all the attention Hot Line Miami gets while Nex Machina is barely mentioned.

Not only did both these games succeed in being approachable by casuals but they are incredible games.

The effect is the public doesn't even know the hardcore games exist and the game devs are not given proper guidance. No one is going to copy the Rising Mode from Hard Corps: an optional casual mode which made you slowly unlock bonus lives and upgrade if they don't know it exists.

>>4465345
How about JRPGs than? Not in the West but certainly in Japan JRPGs were always at the top of the sales charts. This happened at the same time that arcades were having a huge boom and they were making games like Contra.

Alien Wars and Chrono Trigger were both part of the same generation.

>>4465391
You're right about the aesthetic stuff, I know casual gamers (that think themselves as core gamers) dismiss these games, calling them "those games with ships" (more concretely one person told me "You sure like these ship games a lot").
Still, I think the gameplay still plays a big part as of why they don't like them now. I don't like the Touhou games (and this is weird since I enjoy almost every shmup), but I've come across people that like the characters but they think hey come from an anime or something, oblivious to their games. Or even think the games are based on "the anime".

Nex Machina is the only new game I've seen this year that piqued my interest haven't played it since I'm a bit broke lol And I didn't want to pirate it. Too bad about what happened to the devs afterwards.

Doesn't that Rising Mode resemble Ikaruga and Mars Matrix's Dreamcast (and later in the case of Ikaruga) ports? Ikaruga seemed to be popular, though it's a weird case; it feels like a game people like to praise when they haven't played nor plan to (like some of these "literature classics"), maybe because it's prettier than other shmups and the black/white stuff seems obviously unique to non-shmup gamers (remember that they usually dismiss the entire genre as being too samey, and Ikaruga looks immediately different).

>>4465396
I'd say that in most cases people that liked JRPGs weren't that much into hard action games and viceversa. One of my friends is very bad at video games but still can't stand RPGs and will happily play something hard even if he doesn't get far at all.

>>4465431
>Too bad about what happened to the devs afterward

Oh God this is going to depress. I'm still sad Hard Corps Uprising was the last contra. What happened?


>I'd say that in most cases people that liked JRPGs weren't that much into hard action games and viceversa

Well the market at least has room for both hardcore action games and casual story-heavy games. Or at least it did in the past. The fact that some people bought Chrono Trigger didn't mean Contra 3 had no sales. I really think the problem is the corrupt reviews. The public loves twin-stick shooters but it is always the ones that have the most mechanics, the ugliest graphics, and no knowledge of true arcade design that get promoted. This affects not only the public but game devs. The producers who approve budgets, decide what to promote, etc. are trained to think Hot Line Miami is the model of excellence.

>Doesn't that Rising Mode resemble Ikaruga and Mars Matrix's Dreamcast (
Rising
Regular mode=have all abilities, 3 lives, must collect guns and you lose them on death.

Rising mode=every ability other than jump and shoot is locked away. Playing earns you points which you spend to permantly unlock them. You can also buy extra lives, up to 30. Can also get OP upgrades such as starting with a gun that never goes away when you die. Once something is unlocked its there for every playthrough. So you will eventually win if you just play enough because you get stronger every new play through

>>4465478
Sorry, buddy: https://www.housemarque.com/arcade-is-dead/

>>4465391
>Ugly, casual, poorly made, platformers get showered with praise (do you remember how Braid was unironically called the 'citzen kane of video games' and was talked about in practically religious terms)

This was because Braid was a post modern deconstruction of platform games. I posted earlier about games journalists trying to shoe horn Critical Theory into the analysis of videogames, this is a great example of it. Hard Corps is exactly the kind of game journos hate because it's difficult, punishes the player for failure, and is pitched at a small market of people who understand the language of gameplay and will get what it is trying to do (and the inevitable anime lover casual). If you haven't bothered learning this language you're certainly not going to put in the hours for some niche budget game when there's the new COD waiting for review. It's also very hard to express on paper why pure game mechanics are fun in an accessible way. You don't get it but it looks nice so it gets 6 or maybe7/10 and you quickly move on.
Braid on the other hand is full of shit like quotes from Robert Oppenheimer and - OMG get this - it subverts the damsel in distress trope!
This shit is like crack to a group of people who have often have English degrees and don't get to apply that knowledge to the day job they're openly embarrassed by. This is the kind of shit you can write a pseudy thinkpiece on as if it were a film or a book, normies will read it, hell even women might read it and like it! You don't have to be ashamed anymore - gaming has grown up!
Ikaruga is similarly a novelty - this horrible shmup genre that you don't understand or like at all is being subverted in that you DON'T have to just dodge all the bullets! You've only got a few hours to review this similarly low importance game and you're completely ignorant of the massive leaps made in the genre in the mid 90s, so fuck it - it's the best shmup ever! A meme is born.

>>4465498
Braid was probably well received purely based on knowing the right people. There are hundreds of prentious games, it wasn't the first.

Game reviewing is completly and totally corrupt. So it's about shaking hands with the right slimey people and being in good favor. Your statement about how it is difficult to describe why Hard Corps is fun is not the answer: it's very easy to describe it. And besides no one actually READS reviews. They just look at the score and maybe skim the first 3 lines.

>>4465498
Yes, I see the "games used to be for kids due to having excuse plots (like SMB) but now they have evolved and matured thanks to deeper stories" argument way too often, and by people that consider themselves as core gamers at that. And everything with a very pretentious and even elitist tone.

>>4465510
Marketing is THE #1 factor of video game success right now, much more than before

How to make a casual Shmup that will succeed

Rather than ships you have characters with colorful personalities and voiced lines. Dota, LoL, Overwatch, TF2, etc.

Characters are divided into roles. Rather than bombs they have ultimates on cooldowns.

'Tank' characters can cancel bullets and make barriers. They have the most defense. Homing or auto-targeting attacks so they can concentrate on dodging. They stand upfront and reduce the amount of bullets everyone else has to dodge. Their ultimate destroys all bullets on screen but does weak damage.

'Melee DPS' characters have only short and medium range weapons but do the most damage. Most movement speed. They specialize in killing bosses or high health mobs. Their ultimate is a reflect barrier

'Ranged DPS' characters have the best spread but weak damage. Specialize in killing the popcorn enemies. Their bomb just attacks everything but has no bullet canceling properities

'Support characters' have assortment of buffs on cooldown. Their ultimate gives a shield to each team mate that protects from 1 hit. They have the weakest weapons.

You collect randomly generated equipment and loot at the end of every stage. This makes it a rogue-like. They also level up. The stats need not actually give much power, what's importaint is numbers go up. There is huge amount of gimmick power ups; think Gauntlet Dark Legacy.

It's the first co-op, rpg, rogue-like, team-based, character shmup.

>>4465553
>Melee DPS
This reminded me of Brave Blade LMFAO

Sou you're suggesting an online co-op team based euroshmup? I hope to God no game company ever reads this thread.

(You missed lootboxes, skins and dailies though. Maybe they are just implied on the modern pack lol)

For real, though, doubt this would become popular since it's not competitive, as in you're not playing against other people. They'll get tired of playing the same levels again and again even with a huge progress system

>>4465498
>was a post modern deconstruction
Stopped reading right here. I thought we'd finally moved past the "everything is a deconstruction" phase of bullshit.

>>4465578
Dude, keep reading, the guy doesn't seem to like Braid.
And Braid IS a deconstruction, or at least tries to be.

>>4465585
Then either you or him can explain exactly what a "post modern deconstruction" of a video game is. Feel free to talk to me like I'm a retarded child with broccoli where my brain should be. For bonus points, you can even use the other poster's example and explain how Braid is a "post modern deconstruction" of anything.

>>4465592
The game tries to be meta and criticize or at least try to give a twist to the old excuse plots of 80's platformers with their damsels in distress.
It tries to make you think it has one of those classic plots at first but little by little shows its true face.
The deconstruction is a bit like "What if you weren't really the hero?"

>>4465585
A platformer is about jumping from one thing to another. So it cannot be said to deconstruct platforming. You're buying into a historical revionism that all platformers were about saving a princess. Many had no princess at all, and even if they did that's not what the game is about. It's about jumping.

You have said something profoundly stupid. That you don't even know what platformer is. This is the effect that corrupt reviews have had on the feeble-minded. You genuinely depress me.

>>4465609
Of course, it's not a GAME deconstruction, it tries to deconstruct the typical damsel in distress plots of popular games like SMB or GnG.

I think this is the point of the other poster, they try to bring plot desconstruction into this medium, and this is more popular than games that focus on improving or innovating mechanics

>>4465606
There's two famous platformering series that have a damsel distress retard. And as I said a platformer is not a story line it's about jumping.

>"What if you weren't really the hero?"
YOU are not the hero. You are not a video game character. You are yourself and the video game character is an avatar. And he is presciously the 'hero' seeing as he's the on that you control.

God you're fucking retarded. Fucking children in Africa that have never seen a video game could probably talk about them more intelligently than you.

>>4465613
There's like 5 seconds worth of damsel in distress cutscenes in SMB or GNG. And the big project is to 'decosntruct' that? LOL

Any attempt to make Braid sound like anything other than a farce makes the poster sound like they have some form of retardation. And they actually think they are clever for spouting this nonsense.

>>4465617
Dude, you're misunderstanding me, I'm not trying to defend Braid, I'm on your side. I'm just stating what the devs tried to do with the game to that other poster, doesn't mean I agree or like it

ITT: Icycalm gets mad

>>4465631
Is he really Icycalm? LMAO he really does seem to. If that's true I'm glad I've got to talk with him, even if he got confused and thought I was the guy defending Braid while I was answering to him lol

>>4465637
Wow that post was poor, sorry for the shitty writing guys lol

>>4465624
The entire premise of what the devs say they are trying to do is based on this stupid shit that I'm hammered at you for. It's not just to be against it but to realize even accepting their starting terms is to do a disservice to gaming.

You say they tried to deconstruct the story of 1980s platforming. I'm telling you that's empty words that mean nothing. It's not something you agree or disagree with but something you don't even give the dignity of saying is a valid sentence. If you do think it's a valid sentence it leads to all sorts of stupid concepts such as the ones I was railing against you. For instance that a platformer is about princesses or that the 1980s platformers were defined by them.

Whether you realize it or not you're playing them game, bringing video game discussion into the realm of buzz words and pushing away the signficance of aestetics, mechanics, and level design (aka video games). You're making the discussion of video games less about video games if you even consider their speech valid english. Even if that's not your intent it's what happens.

>>4465639
Ok, buddy, sorry. I agree with you and I dislike that piece of shit too anyway and you seem more educated on the subject as well, I won't derail this thread any further.

Though I disagree with you on aesthetics, I only care for them when they serve a gameplay objective (making everything visually clear and having good sound effect design since that helps you react even faster)

>>4465637
I am not Icycalm but I believe I have digest a lot his spirit. You did get to talk to someone that talked to him though.

>>4465637
I am not Icycalm but I believe I have digest a lot his spirit.

>>4465659
Again, even if I don't fully agree with everything he's said before, I sure wish most game journalists (or people playing video games in general) had his perspective.

>>4465665
The journalists that are closest to his thoughts are going to be the people that have a high level of expertise in one area of gaming and only review games in that zone. Some guy that is very talented at genre X, has played many games from it across many systems and time periods including all of the classics. Those types of people have informative thoughts and their tastes are pretty close to his; I think that's actually he developed a lot his own taste. He's never directly said that but I'm pretty sure it's true.

Any journalist that gets money based on quantity (say number of clicks on their website, hits on their youtube channel) is going to priotize quantity over quality. And as such you can safely disregard basically 100% of journalists that use those formats.

Non-monetary reviews also tend to be good. Someone writing a review on steam or amazon has no reason to be scummy. At worst they would be stupid but never deceptive.

>>4465746
Yeah, we need actually educated people reviewing... what a shock, right? But it's true, things are this bad lol

>>4465498
Great post anon you have made solid points here. I can see what you are describing and it is probably why I eventually grew to be disgusted with these review sites. I've also been playing long enough that I know what I would like and not like so its not like I ever need some schmuck or even worst, some female, to tell me if a game is good or not. I did like Braid though. It had great gameplay and fun levels.

>>4465383
>I'd still say it's less that they wanted easier games
Well you're wrong, the reason the wii did so well was precisely because for the first time a major console marketed directly towards the untapped consumer of retard normies and along came the dumbest easiest games of all time. Back when i was a kid gaming was a niche only seen as for the nerds and weirdo, almost a social outcasting activity to admit to, this was solely because most retards simply couldn't do any of the games and didn't have the intelligence or patience to try so they turned to a negative defence, now every fucker think they are a "gamer" it's all marketing and consumer bases man. Our culture never promotes effort or learning as fun so don't expect most to want anything remotely challenging, they want dumb flashing lights and goofy characters delivering bad lines whilst they collect e-loot and are given a sense of achievement without achieving anything.

>>4465639
>Whether you realize it or not you're playing them game, bringing video game discussion into the realm of buzz words and pushing away the signficance of aestetics, mechanics, and level design (aka video games). You're making the discussion of video games less about video games if you even consider their speech valid english. Even if that's not your intent it's what happens.

>If you attempt to talk about your enemy's argument so you can effectively counter it, they win!

This is silly, anon. The horse has already bolted and if you think being unreasonable on a slow part of an Indonesian basket weaving site is going to change that, you're deluded.

Oldskool skills based gaming is squarely in the gunsights of a vocal sector of the press. See the furor over Cuphead, which resulted in a hilarious attempt at branding it *morally wrong* to enjoy a particularly harmless videogame.
If you don't play, you can't win. And you're right, it doesn't have to be their game.

>>4466054
The Wii audience wasn't the same as the "normie gamer" audience of PS3/360 that plays The Last of Us, League of Legends and the like, though. These latter ones think of themselves as core gamers (even if they aren't really, they crave stories and progress systems, not gameplay) while the Wii ones only didn't.

I'm talking about the TLOU guys and not Wii grandmas that played that thing for a while when it was a fad and now probably only play mobile crap. And the former not necessarily demand easier games, or at least won't admit to since they think of themselves as hardcore, but when yo emphasize story and the like (and cater to their actual, not conscious demands) the games get easier of course as a consequence.

>>4466285
Yeah, I agree, we gotta do something if we ever want to get even a glimpse of a better industry more akin to /vr/ days. If not it's going to get worse, shit won't solve itself.

>>4466285
It's a matter of where you want the energy for game discussion and evaluation. Whether it's in the realm of discussing a game's mechanics, aesthetics, etc. Or in the realm of buzzwords and pretentious quagmires.

Awhile ago we had some thread were Metroid 2 was apparently a great game because it was 'about feeling bad for killing the metroids'. If it was permitted you could easily go back through the entire history of gaming and re-evaluate them based on such standards.

It's matter of controlling what the standards are. You can only discuss the 'morality' of a game if you think games exist within the realm of morality at all.

>>4467269
Why are aesthetics that important other than for getting normies/casuals to try the games?
And I insist, I speak for strictly aesthetic stuff, not graphical or aural stuff that helps the gameplay. Why is the flavor important.

>>4467290
Because looking at pretty things gives pleasure and that's why we play games.

The other answer is that games are a whole package. You don't experience the "gameplay" separately from the aesthetics. Both mechanics and aesthetics are important and the particular significance of each varies by genre. that's something that guy who thought icycalm "changed his mind" about games didn't get.

>>4467319
I disagree, even regular people that haven't played games since then enjoyed Pong and it's as barebones aesthetically as you can get, it's pretty much game only with 0 fluff. I know they didn't have anything else "better" but that doesn't change the fact it was a success.

And yes, again I insist: I'm one of those that couldn't give less of a shit about aesthetics in a game. Though, indeed, I hate them much less than stuff that compromises the game itself such as interruptions, story, progress systems, etc. but you still get some people that play some games just because of the aesthetic side of things, further diluting the medium's true form (the GAME aspect) with the market distortion they cause.

Aesthetics compromise games in some ways, though: they rise the production cost unnecessarily, and even sometimes get in the way of the game mechanics (this happens when the game creators think of aesthetics first and then then accommodate the game later for them, such as hitscan weapons in FPS).

>>4467336
No one cared about the aestetics of pong or super early games because you are dealing with such a limited canvas that there is very little potential for making anything beautiful. They couldn't have made the environment of Unreal, Super Metroid, or Half Life 2 even if they wanted. As raw graphics power goes up the potential to create aestetics that are enjoyable also goes up.

You're focusing in one arcade games where yes: mechanics are critical and interruptions from action should only exist for you to momentarily catch your breath. Aesthetics still exist though and they can hurt or help a game. There's more modes of game design than arcade games though.


>Aesthetics compromise games in some ways, though: they rise the production cost unnecessarily, a

Your making a mistake I see a lot of people where they think that budget is somehow split between the 'gameplay' and the 'graphics'. If you were to fire several graphics artists from a game you would not suddenly be able to improve the mechanics. You could however re-direct the graphical artists for instance take people that are doing animation assets, make them stop making animations for the cutscenes and make more animations for attacks (provided you can think of new attacks and that the new attacks are actually functional: ie not just a rifle or special kick that is basically the same thing as all the other rifles and kicks)

As for the production cost. That's greatly influenced by art style. Creating the graphics for Super Mario 3D Land take a hell of a lot less time than Dark Souls.

>>4467401
I still don't see how aesthetics can help a game (by game I'm talking purely about "gameplay" here), this is my entire point. Video games are multi-medium, sure, but I don't think those mediums help each other in any way other than for enjoying them individually. Liking a game's soundtrack for instance has nothing to do about the quality of the game, or "gameplay" as people like to call that.

>>4467410
>Liking a game's soundtrack for instance has nothing to do about the quality of the game

Soundtrack is pretty importaint. It helps set the mood. In an action game it can make it feel more fast paced and intense. It can communicate urgency, danger, triumph, etc. It can make an enviroment feel like a real place. Music is HUGE. Especially in older arcade games. Because the graphical quality is so weak the aestetic aspect depends a greater part on the music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRvz-69HcDQ&index=2&list=PLFd0cOtWTWTModEsJOdD06U7gN9tI4uo8

This really made Golden Axe feel more heroic.

From a purely economical standpoint soundtracks are also important. People remember music, it sticks with you, and makes you remember the franchise/series. You make a trailer fro the sequal, play a few notes from the game's main theme and all the happy memories come back, than you pre-order the game.

>>4467449
>Especially in older arcade games
But those don't even have music, buddy.

And what you're talking about is pretty cheap, elevating a game's mechanics with non-mechanical aesthetic stuff... Seems like the typical stuff that happens when games that are style over substance become popular (like Mortal Kombat).

Whatever, it's ok, I get your point, it's just that I personally disagree. I'll admit I'm pretty radical about this stuff so bear with me. Just consider you're dealing with a person that gets absolutely 0 enjoyment out of video games that doesn't come from its pure mechanics and is tired of seeing people praise all the other non-mechanical aspects such as visuals soundtrack, story, whatever else.

My main gripe is that I feel all this focusing on these aesthetics aspects are making games worse in the long run, I see developers caring less and less about the mechanics as their audience does too.

>>4467459
>My main gripe is that I feel all this focusing on these aesthetics aspects are making games worse in the long run, I see developers caring less and less about the mechanics as their audience does too.

They are caring more about aestetics because the tech is getting better so it's potential to make something cool goes up. The early arcade stuff, say Robotron 2084 or Space Wars! didn't have much potential for good aesthetics so it really wasn't pursued. It's basically just coming up with good mechanics and trying to find a decent color pallet. There was no focus on aesthetics because it was impossible to do so (Dragon's Lair being the only exception).

Aesthetics and mechanics, in an ideal situation, do not compete with each other but harmonize each other. Ikarua is a good example of that sort of harmony. Come to think of that's probably why it was so popular with casuals.

>>4467496
It was popular in a "wow look that game looks cool but I won't play it since I suck haha" way, I'd say. I see many know it by name and the basic premise but haven't played it nor plan to.

>>4461328
Games that hold your attention for long periods of time are for the unemployed, childless and bitchless

>>4467612
Which is a lot of the population in the West lol (figure sales also support this)

I still prefer arcade-length games but I wanted to add this

>>4467534
Looking at steam spy you are right

$10, only 135k copies. For a game with a high development cost.

http://steamspy.com/app/253750

Touhou http://steamspy.com/app/745880

$15 and only 20k copies

Even just confining sales to shmups its' getting beat by no name stuff like Asterbreed.
http://steamspy.com/app/283680
135,981 copies @ $20 And Astreed definitly had a way lower budget which makes it an even bigger success. Smaller staff also means each person involved gets a bigger cut of the sales.

Guess Ikaruga it really just something people talk about but don't buy. Posers. No one buys this stuff.

This is interesting though.
http://steamspy.com/app/94200
James Town
654,598 copies $20 each

Why the hell is the most successful shmup on steam?

>>4465637

Icycalm is now a AAA gamerfag

>>4467626
Absolutely no surprise here but thanks for the research anyway, appreciated buddy.

One of my friends isn't much into shmups, has pretty much never played the genre but has Jamestown bought and played. I seem to recall it was due to aesthetic stuff (you see why I'm complaining a lot about this aesthetic stuff...)

>>4467652
What a weird change lol

>>4467626
Also, I seem to recall it had some unlocking crap. This was not my friend's case, at least not explicitly, but this may be a reason for the general population.

You also need to remember Ikaruga and the Touhou games were available before Steam.

>>4467662
>>4467671


It's not reasonable to wish that the public would have no strong feelings towards aesetetics. That's not how people think.

It's also not how sales work either. Someone searches for something on steam and than they scan their eyes for a title or cover picture that catches their eye. Than they click on it and scan maybe 2-3 screen shots and maybe watch 15 seconds of the video. They've already formed their impression and if they arn't interested changes are they will just move onto the next game on the 200+ title list. Maybe they didn't even click on the page, they just read the name and looked at the cover picture.

I think the lesson here is that devs for arcade games need to come with more interesting aestetics. That's probably why Nex Machina tanked: it's some sort of generic dude with a blaster fighting robots. It also had no real unlockables other than achievements. Maybe it should have the relics from a Hat in Time: find hidden crap and it unlocks some sort of object that literally does nothing but let you look at it.

So catchy memorable aesthetics+unlockables=sales.

The statement about icycalm is kind of confused. His policy is this: some games value is heavily derived from their aesthetics. Other games, like arcade games, aestetics play a less significant role.

>>4467719
I'm not debating whether aesthetics are important for sales, of course they are, most people don't even have good taste for game mechanics and become addicted to F2P shit with progress systems, of course aesthetic sell.

I'm just saying that I think that on a pure game perspective aesthetics are useless and only something to attract people not that much into games, or maybe not that particular game they're looking at (see: Jamestown and my friend who doesn't care for shmups who still bougth and played it. This same friend recently only tried another one of these under my recommendation and it was, again, only due to aesthetics: Parodius Da. While he didn't bother with the Gradius ones, even if that's almost the same gameplay-wise).

Or just that in my personal case I don't give a shit about them and see them for what they truly are. Again, imagine being a person like myself who only enjoys game mechanics on video games and seeing people praising video games but never mention mechanics and only aesthetic stuff. You can't even discuss games with them, at most they'd say "this game has good gameplay". Yeah, and this book I read yesterday had good bookread, lol. They have a really hard time saying why because... they really just don't care that much.

>So catchy memorable aesthetics+unlockables=sales.
See how game mechanics are absent in that equation? Nice to see you also admit the gaming population doesn't actually like games after all lol

>>4468201

>See how game mechanics are absent in that equation? Nice to see you also admit the gaming population doesn't actually like games after all lol

If you want mechanically sound games, you need the games to sell. Nex Machina and Hard Corps Uprising prove to me that top class level design, mechanics, won't move sales.

>most people don't even have good taste for game mechanics

I would say they don't have much preference period. Casuals never get deeply invested in mechanics so they evaluate them based on superficial and surface reasons. As a result if you designed mechanics for casuals you would end up with superficial mechanics. So the trick is to pull in the casual bucks by appealing to them aesthetically or with mechanics that cost very little budget and do not deteriment the hardcore experience. For instance if you had experience points you would make it impossible to grind.

>>4468316
So this is more a question of you either make a good game to sell to a niche audience or spend more for production values and add some fluff to sell to a bigger audience.

Why does this have to happen know when it wasn't as bad in /vr/ times, particularly before PlayStation?

>looks up wtf a Skinner box is.
>Rats are trained to press a lever or get shocked
>Somehow this relates to modern games

You guys are fucking stupid

>>4468893
>behavioural psychology has nothing to do with making people put as many coins as possible into your machines
next you'll say that arcades are just there for our amusement, not for profit

>>4468893
You buy a lootbox, pack of digital cards or whatever. You may get rewarded with good stuff or penalized by something useless you don't want, all at random like the skinner boxes (if it's static it isn't as addicting).
Same logic applies to random rare drops in MMORPGs and the like.

>>4468925
Of course, EVERY market has studied behavioral psychology to improve their profits.

The difference, though, is that the typical addicting modern game is a straight up skinner box with shiny graphics. Arcade games don't work this way since they're skill based and mostly static, the result of putting a coin is predictable and the length of enjoyment determined more by you. Again, if you study skinner boxes you see they discovered that the difference in addiction when the results are randomized makes comparing skinner boxes to other non-drug conditioning pretty much a moot point, it's a whole other story.

>>4468724
Shit graphical potential meant the scale was tilted heavily towards mechanics. You simply could not make aestetics powerful enough to be held up by their own weight so you had to make games where aestetics play a supporting role. The only exception would be Dragon's Lair which cost an absurd amount of money and required getting world class talent (Don Bleuth had a background in Disney and so did much of the staff).

By about 1991 you started getting to the point where you could make aesthetics that could half-way make an interesting game. You could make very pretty graphics if they were just static images for instance the backgrounds in point n click adventure games or the sprites in JRPGs. People played Monkey Island and Chrono Trigger for the aesthetics. But they still needed to be supported by at least somewhat engaging mechanics: puzzle solving or some sort of combat system and gear proggression. Space was also limited so there was only so much pixel art you could put on the cartridge.

The potential for aesthetics continued marching on till we could make walking simulators which could be engaging with no mechanical depth or skill what so ever.

>So this is more a question of you either make a good game to sell to a niche audience or spend more for production values and add some fluff to sell to a bigger audience.

In order to succeed financially you either need the casual bucks or you need to just get production cost so low that you still succeed with low sales numbers. There's no reason why a game that appeals to casuals cannot also have good mechanics. It's really a question of design I think.

With graphics It's not so much what you spend but what you do with it. For instance creating characters instead of space ships. Doing colorful graphics or memorable themes. You either get the casual audience

>>4469089
There's been plenty of character-based shmups already, though (much more after /vr/ times). They tried, but that alone hasn't worked

This seems a bit sad to me: the increase of graphical capacity is one of the key reasons games are less and less mechanically interesting every year on average after a certain point

>>4469123
I think it's really a matter of fractured talent.

Let's say you got some of the people that made old school beat em ups. Than you had them make Neptunia Action Unleashed 2. Have multiple difficulty settings from casual to Final Fight.

You have people that are very good at making mechanics and people that are very good at making fluff and visual designs that have mass appeal. You rarely have them under the same roof. Even if you did would the management be able to assign each to their proper position?

>>4461328
>because games can hold our attention for longer periods of time now,
I wish that was the case but I still play about the same amount of time I'd play if it were an arcade game which sucks since so many games now just assume I'm gonna be spending the next four hours getting through the boring tutorial section before it really starts to do anything interesting with the mechanics it offers.

>>4465391
While I agree with you on Braid I think Nex Machina's issue the team behind it not doing a fucking thing to get the word out about the game. I was kinda aware of it for awhile but it wasn't until someone here back in October told me they got one of the developers behind Robotron to work on it that really sparked my interest and made me buy it in nearly a heartbeat. If I didn't know of that I would've just assumed it was one of the millions of other ok twin stick shooters up on Steam that I gloss over forever.

>>4465510
I think one of the major factors to Braid's success was that it was one of the first games sold on the Xbox live market place that wasn't a port of an 80s arcade game, a port of a pop cap game, or total shovelware. It's easy to not think about it now but a game of Braid's scope was a big deal when it first came out on there. Hell for awhile you couldn't even release anything that was above 100MB the release of SotN actually had to compress a bunch of stuff and remove all the cutscenes for it to just barely make the cut.

>>4469147
What about stuff like later Cave games?

>>4469158
This is one of the many reasons I don't bother with these and stick to arcade stuff

>>4469181
Yeah, decent marketing is important these games with such an over-saturated industry and player base (what I mean by this is that people are numb to new games since SO many of them are coming constantly.)

>>4469226
meant "these days"

>>4468893
There's way more to the Skinner box than that.

>>4461323
>Of course, as we all know this is pretty much cheating.
>arcade lover here
if you loved arcades, you'd 100% know, it's not cheating. it is no different than if i rocked up to a local arcade joint with a bag of tokens/coins or freeplay session.

anyway, faggot.. arcade games have never translated well over to console world without a lot of work.

>>4469258
Well, you pay more to make sure you can't lose instead of actually trying to be good at the game, learn its ins and out and then truly appreciating it. But ok, I'm a faggot, sure.

>>4461369
I don't mind losing all my progress so long as the game changes between new games, IE roguelikes, etc. I absolutely hate it for SCHMUPs where I'm running through the exact same enemy patterns every time so much that the game becomes a test of memory where each will spawn from.

I think other anons have touched on it, but these kinds of games were fine in the arcade where you'd play a few short bursts and move on, but if you're looking to spend more than an hour on the same game, you're going to get tired of repeating the same actions again and again. Home consoles were terrible for that setup since you could now play continuously without stuffing the system full of quarters, and unlike an arcade where you had a couple dozen other games to play when you got bored of your first, you were stuck with your $50 purchase and felt like you had to get your money's worth from it.

>>4469181
>>4469214
Nex Machina had no presence, you are correct. You can just look at the number of youtube videos related to it to see this. They made a game about a generic dude fighting robots. That doesn't grab anyone's attention. It had nothing to get people talking about it that havn't played it other than 'meh the lightning looks cool'. It fails the first impression test. Look at Ruiner though, that has real feel to it. Just look at the protagonist and the high res character portraits plastered on the steam store.

Braid has a distinctive look which sets it apart as well.

>>4469226
Shmups seem to be the hardest arcade game to sell. The public actually wants twin stick shooters, platformers, and beat em ups. Steam is flooded with garbage games like that, which actually produce decent sales numbers. It's kind of low on the beat em up side and that's probably because beat em ups have a higher production cost (more attack animations, higher resolution sprites). From skimming steam spy I've concluded these genres have much better sales numbers than shmups.

I'd probably look into James Town. James Town=654,598 copies $20 each
Here's the second best selling shmup on steam
Luftrausers=391,378 owners $10 each
Almost half as many sales for being second place. For some reason people REALLY like James Town. Find out why.

Here's Cave's sales data for comparasion. http://steamspy.com/dev/CAVE+Interactive+CO.%2CLTD

I have a theory that casuals do not like shmups for two reasons. First they have a reputation that makes them intimidating. Even that people that never played them think so. It's not like platformers where they think some are hard and some are easy. Second no shmup seems to really have memorable characters. They didn't make them into something people really latch onto. MOBA's do that very well there's cults built around many Moba characters. The only shmup character I know that has a cult is Alysia from Guardian Legend.

>>4469429
People that enjoy shmups enjoy playing through them on the 200th time provided that it's well crafted.

I'd rather play Graidus for the 201nd time than play a dozen lesser games for "a couple of hours". All you are telling is that you have no pallet for depth. You'd rather have a sampling of many low depth things than a long time with a single high depth thing.

>>4469429
As someone who enjoys arcade shmups as his #1 genre I say that, for me, it's less about the progress (I don't mind even not clearing a lot of the games, just getting to wherever I can) and more just how enjoyable the mechanical experience is to the point of not craving variety (most other stuff feels watered down in comparison), even if I do only play on short bursts (I feel this is the best way to enjoy games and these as well as other arcade games offer the best bang for the least amount of time) and usually don't stick to just one at a time. When I finish a shmup and/or other arcades session (usually less than one hour) I feel completely satisfied, even tired in a good way, had fun every second of it and then I want to proceed to do other productive stuff or maybe enjoy other hobbies. No urge to want to keep grinding or wasting my time.

>>4469486
I told you some stuff about Jamestown before in the thread, if you haven't read it just control+f it. You seem to forget about the 2hu fanmasses when talking about the shmups with characters, but again, quite a few of them don't even bother with the games or even know they are games to begin with.

>>4469530
I agree, and even if I love me some Gradius (1cc'd it again earlier this year) that isn't remotely the deepest shmup experience, but still manages to engage much more on a gameplay basis than a lot of other stuff. Also, you reminded me of those collectathons full of minigames like Spyro 2/3 which feel like the opposite of these arcade games in a way (variety for variety's sake without depth). Not hating that much on them since you can do MUCH worse in video games, particularly in the post-/vr/ world.

>>4469486
I love Jamestown because of per stage leaderboards. Game is simple enough. Different stage cut off per difficulty so a shitter like me can get a single run high score without ever touching stage 4 and on. The only real issue with Jamestown is that it's a widescreen shooter and your ship feels even slower than Raiden which is fucking outrageous. This isn't as bad if you have friends filling up the widescreen.

>>4469880
>your ship feels even slower than Raiden

What the fuck, so Jamestown is Vic Viper without speedups?

>>4469941
The score mechanic to shoot down every ship and chain everything requires you to go side to side and it's really annoying considering how fucking slow it is. There are faster ships but the best balanced ship is really slow.

>>4470078
A shmup balanced around being sluggish... Sounds a bit interesting but I prefer faster paced ones (Mars Matrix)

>>4469880
Hasn't there been shmups that cutt off stages based on difficulty or loop? What makes this one so attractive?

>This isn't as bad if you have friends filling up the widescreen

Could you tell us about the multiplayer and it's signfiance? That might be a factor.

>>4470128
That's interesting since I've always hated co-op multiplayer in these