Pleasures of Shmups: Always another Opportunity

One of the pleasures of having shmupping as a hobby is how you often get the second chance to actually enjoy something.

As you move through the genre you try different things. Some will resonate with you and some will not - too aesthetically abrasive, too mechanically obtuse, too much of an acquired taste. It’s just not what you are looking for at that time, in that moment of your player journey. But as you try new things your taste has the chance to shift. You encounter new mechanics implemented in a multiplicity of different ways, and as you do your lexicon of approaches grows.

Looping back around and and trying a game again from your shmupping past, you can experience it in new ways and actually come to appreciate it on its own merits. It’s for this reason that I make the conscious choice to loop back, it might not always bare a missile lock, when it does it’s always exceedingly gratifying - because there’s another part of the shmup world to unpack and appreciate, and two because you can feel the way you have grown and the way that you can see has broadened.

The first time I had a go at Triggerheart the anchor mechanic felt gimmicky and fiddly -a cute system of power inversion that distracted from the core elements of dodging and shooting. What has probably been years later I’ve picked it up again and I can inherently feel how elegantly this mechanic has actually been configured to create risk and reward, while also providing slow down and focus. It’s a lot of fun figuring out the different ways that you can use it and the different gameplay opportunities this provides. And, let’s be honest, it’s awesome to grab something huge, wrench it round and throw it back at a hoard or some other behemoth to see it/them explode into a shower of golden rain.

Addendum: In the above I use the phrase, ’Shmups as a hobby’ and a conceptualization that I’ve gained through looking at a piece by Shmups as a Hobby (@Shmups_Hobby) that we have been discussing. Apparently, these ideas have become so deep-seated in my mind I'm already thinking of them as common knowledge and thus forgot to credit appropriately. My apologies to Shmups as a Hobby. I hope to publish their full original piece soon so you can likewise have your brain seeded.

_DYR