Quote:
Originally Posted by Steril707
* almost every "Euro SHMUP" trope is present here. Shop system, life energy, stupid shit like scrolling backwards through a level, bad hit detection, etc.
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One thing I've always found strange is this insistence that these kind of things are "Euro SHUMP" tropes. Not really Xenon-II related, nor in any way aimed at you specifically, but it's so obvious to me that there's some rather selective blindness in the retro-community when it comes to this stuff. Certain things are mentioned as flaws or poor design choices in European games, but are given a free pass or outright ignored when they happen in Japanese games.
Case in point: just about all the things you mention either originated in Japanese shoot em ups first or happen in Japanese games as well.
Bad collision detection? Happens all the time in all sorts of console and arcade games. Many speedrun tactics even center around abusing these faulty game mechanics.
Shops in games that needlessly break up game play? Try Un-Squadron/Forgotten Worlds/Black Tiger/Fantasy Zone/etc
Life Energy? Un-Squadron (again)/Pretty much all Hudson Soft shoot em ups*/Gaia Seed/The Guardian Legend (by Compile of all people)/1943/etc
*) These don't show you a bar, but each power up you collect increases the number of hit points you have. In many ways this is far worse, as now the player a) still can get hit but b) doesn't know exactly when they will or will not die.
Again, this is 100% not aimed at you, but rather at this idea that Euro-SHMUPS are bad
because of game mechanics like these, when in fact Japanese games often implemented these things first and certainly didn't exclude them later on. Not to mention that quite a few Euro-SHMUPS exist that do not feature any of these problems.
Far more problematic is that the Japanese games that do include these features tend to do so in extremely similar fashions and thus should receive the same criticisms, but don't: shops in Euro-SHUMPS are "loathed" because they break immersion and slow the game down. Japanese games with shops have the exact same problems, but are lauded for including the shops.
Life bars in Euro-SHUMPS are "terrible", because they allow the game to be designed to be too difficult and remove some of the thrill of getting through difficult sections. The same is true in Japanese games that feature life-bars, but no one marks those games down for it. Etc.