The Origin Of The 'shmup' Genre
No, that is not a typo; in the year that Marilyn Monroe died and The Beatles recorded ‘Love Me Do’, some boffins at MIT were busy inventing video games. Of course, it wasn’t quite Space Invaders – that wouldn’t appear until 1978 – but the point is that the concept of using a little ship to blast enemies has been with us virtually as long as video games themselves. There are far too many shmups to count and depending on how hardcore you are it’s difficult to decide which $60-$120 import you want to take a shot at. Yes, you saw that right, most shmup fans need to adapt their classic consoles to play imports and then drop large wads of cash for a game that will kick their ass and that they may never see the later levels of. Fortunately there are plenty of shmups that beginners can enjoy for low prices and domestic releases, not to mention theemulation scene can open doors previously locked shut. This month we at Gaming History 101 celebrate Shmuppreciation 2012 with the shmup of the day that covers some of the most common and most rare series on the market.
The next technological innovation came with the introduction of using many on-screen sprites. This was an important hallmark of Zero Hour as during the start of the first level the player encountered asteroids that he or she could blast into smaller pieces in the same way as Asteroids . The creation of a new genre of shooter also prompted existing game franchises to adapt to the new style of game play that Defender and HeliFire had created. One such game franchise was Universal’s Cosmic Guerrilla otherwise known as the ‘Cosmic Series’ entailing four sequels, Cosmic Alien , Devil Zone , Zero Hour and Cosmic Avenger . The player was given the task of breaking though the enemy’s “scramble system” .
For those of us in the retro gaming world, shooter fans or basically anyone who listens to Drunken Gamers Radioit also means Shmuppreciation month. It is all for the love of the shoot ’em up, these days called “shmups” for short. What’s distinct about the shmup is that aside from most other genres, it has been around as long as video games themselves – yes, the first video game was a shmup – and has remained relatively unchanged for more than 30 years. As an avid fan with probably more than $1,000 in shmups alone among almost every system – did I mention the shmup has some of the most expensive games in existence? 1985 saw the release of Konami's Gradius, which gave the player greater control over the choice of weaponry, thus introducing another element of strategy.
Many developers based their designs on the successful model of Space Invaders and then began to experiment with game play ideas. The period between 1978 and 1983 established the ground rules and principles for the Shmup genre. While Phoenix II’s gameplay may be old-school, its visuals definitely are not.
It is great to see many people around the world taking an active interest in preserving this history but unfortunatly for many of these games they are already lost. Proto-Shmups created the Shmup genre as we know it today by copying the success of Space Invaders. Apart from Sky Raider, no Proto Shmup is truly original, and all owe their existence to Space Invaders. Game play development of the Shmup genre during this period was slow as developers were unwilling to entirely ditch the Space Invaders formula for fear of losing money in the Space Invader hungry market place. Figure 10, although illustrated in a linear fashion, is the product of the back tracing of the Shmup genre to identify games that established key genre elements before others. This brief overview of the genre provides essential context for the future analysis.
I had more fun with it than any of the other highly regarded Shmups on the list. However, despite the genre's continued appeal to an enthusiastic niche of players, shoot 'em up developers are increasingly embattled financially by the power of home consoles and their attendant genres. Multidirectional shooters feature 360 degree movement where the protagonist may rotate and move in any direction. Multidirectional shooters with one joystick for movement and one joystick for firing in any direction independent of movement are called "twin-stick shooters."
For the time Defender used a record of five buttons and a directional pad for its control. Bousiges, states that “Due to the intimidating controls, no one played the game and there were even rumours saying Pac Man and Defender would bomb and Rally-X would be the next hit ”. It has since become the most successful coin-operated game ever sold in America. From 1978 to 1981, Midway, Atari, Taito, Data East and Nintendo created some of their Dragon very first arcade games, and with the rapid growth of the arcade industry came public awareness.