This is gonna be one very interesting poll. Soooo many votes but no single game that is racing into an unstoppable lead. I seem to always vote for games that never win these things. That's because I rock :agree

That was a THOUGH one between Battle Squadron, Populous and Shadow of the Beast.

I voted Populous, for it invented the godsim genre (didn't it?)! Battle Squadron would be my second pick, as a top shmup, but it's just that, a shmup, nothing new here. And SotB is stonking tech-wise, but then again, it was too hard, and just a platformer.

Come on guys, Silkworm is so nice, there should be someone else to vote for that one. Certainly kicks beast's ass.

That was a tough choice but I eventually decided on Silkworm as it was (and of course still is !) a cracking shoot em up. I lost interest after a while with several of the other games in the list but I still like to have a bash on Silkworm when i'm in the mood.

Aha :)

Why is the interest for the votes so low!????
COME ON PEOPLE! Just 4 lousy votes for the number one game BATTLE SQUADRON ??? :shocked

Come on, Battle Squadron !!???? :nuts It's a Skoda compared to the Ferrari-Blood Money, and speed has nothing to do with it. At least plasmatron you have to agree that vertical shooters are 8-bit, ancient coin-op flavoured, while horizontal... Ahhh... :spin Dont' you agree guys ? Come to think of it, this probably
applies to all types of games. Vertical vs. Horizontal, nice poll this would make :laughing. Only Pinball games should be vertical ! :D

My vote was for Populous. Elite is one of the few all time greats, but to me it is in a different category as it wasn't original - simply a conversion to the Amiga. Others that I could easily have picked would have been It Came From The Desert, Silkworm, Rainbow Islands, Indy, North & South, Sim City, Maniac Mansion, Future Wars, Xenon II etc. Damn it's tough! :crazy

And even Stunt Car Racer. Such a great idea for a game. I'd love to see a modern version of this!

I beg to differ, Blood Money is SO 8-Bit that it hurts. The formula doesn't really work well (changing directions in shmups has never proved to be done well, or worth to be done), and I think the only interesting thing about the game is the intro mod with all those speech samples. The rest is standard. Battle Squadron is much better technically, the game pace is much more fierce, and gameplay is much more enjoyable.

The first shmups might have been vertical scrollers, but so were the first horizontal shmups, this has NOTHING to do with 8 or 16 bits (the 16 bit era brought a great leap for vertical shmups). Horizontal shmups are the FEW if you happen to investigate a little about the subject.,

Don't take my word for it, go to www.shmups.com , check the xenocide files, and compare the number of vertical shooters to the number of horizontal shooters.

Can you say Ikaruga is "8-Bit flavoured" because it's vertical? :P
Rainbow Islands, SimCity and Maniac Mansion were conversions. Maybe some of the others you mentioned were conversions as well (north&south? future wars?)

this one is too hard... too many great games :(

Well I don't give a flying R9 if a game is a conversion or not, I'm voting for the game which I like the best out of the nice big list that FreakyWeakyWoo has taken the care to type up. :spin

R-Type for me because I bloody love it, it doesn't matter that's it's a conversion because it's a damn fine game. And besides, there really was no other way for me to play R-Type in such good form. Although the MS one is a damn fine conversion. :agree

And I gotta agree with Akira, Battle Squadron is a much finer game than Blood Money, even though I'm not a huge fan of BS. It's just Blood Money feels so amateurish. The ships, the bullets, the sound effects all just seem a bit... weak.

GO R-TYPE! The best horizontal shooter ever created. :great

But, if anything it's the multi-direction scrolling (so well done that in those huge levels it seemed random) that gives this shooter some originality, a rare thing in shmups. Also, free multi-direction is one of the components that made Turrican a legend, not quite a shmup but not far from it. And hey I never said there are more horizontals than verts. just that I like 'em more.
Come on Akira, Ikaruga is not retrogaming...
As for verticals, Arkanoid was brilliant ! ;)
Ok, I loved Hybris and Wings of Death.

In defence of Blood Money
 

What's more, the thing I really like about it was it's slow, hypnotizing pace.
The scrolling might have been slow but the gameplay wasn't. (Not 2 mention the 2-player mode) I guess DMA thought that Menace didn't quite cut it for them (not half as bad as www.shmups.com review suggests), and slowed Blood Money down, a touch of genius and a shy prelude to Lemmings! With the hostile collission detection (but never unfair) you had to be extra careful every second. Needless to say, I totally disagree with the www.shmups.com review. (Co-owned by Akira, how Berlusconi is THAT ?? :) ) . The in-game music can go on and on forever, I never get tired of it. Sure, that's just me though.
Anyway, this was a high-profile Psygnosis release, at their peak then. Blood
Money was sth. like S.O.T.Beast with gameplay, I can never defend it enough. :evilgrin

The rewview was not done by ME or MALC, mind you, read who was the reviewer and be happy to disagree with him ;)

I find Blood Money's pace to be extremely tedious and boring, and the multiscrolling has proved not to work in many ocassions, this is no exception.

R-Type IS king of horizontal scrollers.

Nothing personal. But I think I'm gonna make a Blood-Money-spaceship avatar. :cool

So in the case of a quite possible draw I was just having a afew thoughts on what to do. I was thinking of having a a mini poll with the games that were tied. But that dosent feel quite right. We could just have more than one winner but I think in the later years there might be three or more titles tied for first.

Any ideas guys?

More than 1 winner is ok. After all, there is no such thing as a "best" game/film/football team or whatever, it's a matter of taste.

No votes for Beast.

My vote goes to Stunt Car Racer, for its pure magic

And the winner is MEEEEEEE!, err sorry wrong poll.

you have spoken and you have decided that Elite was the best game of 1989, although it only won by a single vote. I can see the next years being just as close. Thanks to everyone for voting and thanks for those who left comments. Do I hear a 'roll on 1990?' or is shall I do KG's idea of best game of the 80's?

I think I'll do best game of the 80's (less typing on that one)

If you're up to the typing, roll on 1990 !