Seeing that this is also the unofficial shmups fans thread, I challenge both of you to 1cc this game.
US Turbo-Grafx 16 SuperCD-ROM² version.
Gate of Thunder as well in any order.
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I’m currently on my second internship. I had to redo it at least 50 times before succeeding.It’s really hard, lol.
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Lords of thunder probably one of the best for pc engine and pc engine has a lot of shooters!
I might sound like a broken record but the ost is just something else! 
I recently finished the (much easier) Mega CD version
You specified US version: are there any differences to the Japanese one (I played that one few years back)?
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I’m not sure off hand but I think the intro might have some Japanese speech. I just specified the US version because that’s the one I have and played so I was just trying to a) be consistent and b) introduce you and @sonkun to partake in the experience in the most definitive way possible if you hadn’t already.
I finished that as well a couple days ago but I died a couple times, wasn’t really taking it seriously but I reached far enough so I just played it through. At times it felt as if luck was on my side especially in the last level but there were certain things that I just did better like collecting hard to reach power ups, which definitely made a difference.
It also took a very long time between mastering it as a teen and revisiting it as an adult and trying to master it again. Back in the day I could beat that game on the hardest difficulty with 1 life.
As a matter of fact, it was common practice for even decades after for me to turn off the game as soon as I died. I’m glad I can still enjoy the game without having to resort to that though.
I kinda still do that sometimes with Street Fighter II Turbo Hyper Fighting but not as much anymore.
I’ve beaten Blazing Lazers as well, I found that one to be awesome but not too difficult.
Super Star Soldier on the other hand, if you haven’t delved into that one, it’s actually just as good as Lords of Thunder and Gate of Thunder, including in the sound and graphics department. It’s length and degree of difficulty is painful.
In my younger years, I had only beaten it a couple times but I’m yet to sitdown and play it through completely as an adult.
It’s really tough restarting some of the later stages with no power ups if you continue so it really takes some mastery to be able to reach far in the game with the amount of fire power you actually need to play it through comfortably.
As for Soldier Blade, the graphics and sound track are second to none but I still prefer playing Blazing Lazers and Super Star Soldier for some strange reason. I’ve never played through Soldier Blade from start to finish. I did use a code though, which allowed me to reach the last boss.
Another tough but great one is Aero Blasters, I know I reached the last level some time ago but I can’t remember if I beat it anytime recently.
I used to beat that with impunity back in the day.
Anyway, don’t want to take over your thread with too much shmup stuff.
In case you didn’t know @bactino, you have to double tap Button II if you want to change the shooting direction of your satellites.
Another tip I would share is to be proactive and aggressive, the less time the enemy has to shoot, the better for you.
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@Cyber
So,I went back to Lords of Thunder to do just a few runs…then the game just hooked me in again with the OST ( 
) so I clear it again (this time USA version, didn’t catch any differences, but I played the japanese version long time ago…)!
Here the replay if interested 
Played with: Beetle PCE (v1.29.0 96a654a)
Such a nice ride!
If anybody want to get into the game in an easier fashion I reccomend the Mega CD version!
@hunterk Sorry to bother you, would it be possible to split this thread into another one dedicated to shoot’em ups?
if possible, starting from this post:
https://forums.libretro.com/t/haris-1080p-shaders-presets-screenshots/43734/58?u=hari-82
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Nice selection of games. I’m not sure how this thread became the unofficial shmup thread but I’m here for it lol.
Here’s a couple uncommon curveballs, first game is Curse for Mega Drive:
By the time you get to the middle of the second stage in this game good luck finding your ship on the screen because the enemies start throwing bullets at you relentlessly. That last pic I took was the beginning of the craziness just getting started. Cool game with nice weapons though.
Next game is Steel Empire also for Mega Drive:
This game has this steam punk/early industrial revolution aesthetic that I like and has amazing parallex scrolling. That pic with the clouds I counted about 8 or 9 layers of clouds moving, looks amazing in motion. Gives you the choice between a plane or blimp with different strengths and weaknesses, you can also shoot forward or backwards.
This game could be a sleeper hit, haven’t gotten too far in it, I still haven’t even beaten Gaiares lol but I’m always looking for new games to play. Maybe you guys can check those out sometime.
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To not be easy is the point and is what gives you that adrenaline rush and satisfaction when you survive!
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Yes! that is correct and that is part of the charm of the genre!
…but difficulty is very relative, depending on many factor, so for someone to get the “feet wet” is not a bad idea to start with something more approachable!
I tried couple of runs at Gates of Thunder, got half way through ( it’s around 30 mins long), the game have a high pace and sometimes feels a little chaotic but seems fun! Also can see some small similarities with LoT just more rough around the edges and less refined.
One question: the music/sfx mix feels way off (played with beetle pce) sound effects cover most of the music, is it normal?
@hunterk thanks!
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That’s something I noticed the first time I used Mednafen eons ago. I never noticed that with real hardware and I played primarily on a Sony Hi Fi Stereo System. In addition to that, I used to spend an inordinate amount of time playing the music in the Options menu and at times I used to play the samples and sound effects over the Music. I never noticed anything strange there.
Years later, I never noticed any issue with audio when I used to use Magic Engine.
So what I do now is simply adjust the audio levels myself in the Core Options.
So far, I haven’t gotten settings that work well for every CD-ROM² game so I save different Game Core Option for different games. So I have different settings for Gate of Thunder, Lords of Thunder and other games, a separate setting for Dracula X and I recently updated my Cores and that seems to reset the audio settings I think so I made a new setting for Ys Book I and II because I felt like the PSG audio was too low using my custom setting for Gate/Lords of Thunder.
So just adjust it so that the CD Music is prominent and you can hear the ADPCM samples clearly above the CD Music. For Gate of Thunder/Lords of Thunder you can probably leave the PSG at 100, set the ADPCM at 180 and set the CDDA at 200. Or you can swap the CDDA and ADPCM levels. I let my ears be the judge and use what’s most pleasant to me.
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Adjusting levels helped a lot without adding distortion! Not sure why I didn’t check core options before 
I also watched some youtube captured footage videos of real hardware and it does sounds a little more balanced than beetle @default!
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Excellent! I’m glad you got it sorted out! It’s just weird that this bug(?) could just remain there for so long without being addressed. There are a number of other show stopping bugs in mednafen/Beetle with a few really great games that makes you wonder how much would it take for them to get accuracy up to par with let’s say BSNES.
For games that use both PSG and CDDA music I try to get the transitions between the two to sound balanced, so I guess that helps a lot.
Games like Ys Book I & II, Ys 4: The Dawn of Ys and Dracula X come to mind. Once PSG and CDDA are matched, you can tweak the ADPCM so that digitized samples can be heard clearly.
On the topic of shmups, after you get your fixes from Gate of Thunder and Lords of Thunder, Aero Blasters is a really wonderful treat, it just takes it slightly down a notch in the audio department in my opinion. Super Darius II is another beautiful shmup that features really beautiful enemy and boss sprites in particular.
I’ve already mentioned the Soldier series, with the exception of Final Soldier (yuck) so you can wet your feet with those and really appreciate what the turbo was capable of in its heyday!
Super Raiden on Super CD-ROM² is also a brilliant Arcade port. There’s a HuCard port but I don’t appreciate the downgrade that the music takes. It’s a bit subdued.
Other great mentions are Spriggan and Spriggan Mark II and NEXZR, which I’ve never gotten into.
Rayxanber II and Rayxanber III are also awesome in the sound, graphics and gameplay department. It’s strange that no one ever talks about those. As usual, difficulty is crazy.
I see you and Sonkun talking about Advanced BusterHawk Gleylancer! That one has a really awesome soundtrack! I need to sit down and get into that, ThunderForce/Lightening Force IV and Gaiares.
The Genesis Port of Aero Blasters/Air Buster is also really good.
One great game that probably deserves to be mentioned along with shmups is GunSmoke on NES. That’s another that I used to beat with 1 life and till this day it still gets the adrenaline pumping. It plays like a shooter but looks like an action game. Put that and NES Gyruss on your radar.
I also used to enjoy U.N. Squadron for SNES. Can’t seem to get around it in recent times though, maybe I might need to tweaky strategy or sit closer to the screen. Forgotten Worlds is also worth a play but it’s not perfect. I would say it’s good enough though. Then there’s Magical Chase on the Turbo which left me extremely impressed!
People also talk about Cotton but I’ve never gotten into that one.
Last one for the night is 1941 for SuperGrafx. From what I’ve seen on YouTube, it gets better and more beautiful every level but I’ve never really been able to get into that or any other game on the SuperGrafx.
I think it has to do with the music department. Music has to be of a certain standard for me to really get hooked on a game. I was disappointed at the SuperGrafx’s offerings when I know what the PCE soundchip could do.
Daimakaimura is awesome though. Aldynes looks really weird and it’s also really hard to get into to due to difficulty.
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Nice thread. Found a lot of games for my ToDo list. Here are 2 excellent horizontal shooters for a system that is been missing here: Commodore Amiga.
Both have fantastic sound tracks and decent graphics for that system.
Apidya
Project X SE
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I hope you don’ t mind me to chime in, but let’s not forget the Aleste and Spriggan series. In particular MUSHA, Robo Aleste and Seirei Senshi Spriggan. These are great shooters, not only for their great production values like graphics and sound but I found them very forgiving and fun if you persist enough to finish them! If you like these kind of games they are a must play! 
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Just cleared Gates of Thunder, it was easier then it felt at the beginning just need to learn just few things and especially when to use weapons (the red one does massive damage to bosses and mid boss!) I didn’t record the replay because it was just a test run but I ended up clearing it!
Yeah a lot of good shooters in the Pc engine and Mega Drive’s libraries! probably the best platforms for the genre in that era!
Welcome! yeah, those are two great pick in the amiga library and they are very (very!) hard!
Apidya’s soundtrack is by Huelsbeck i think! I had (still do ) an Amiga 500 in the 90’s and Project X was fantastic to look at and listen to! but it was too hard for me at that time (still is )! One of my fave was Battle Squadron!
Compile is one of my favorite devs especially like their work for msx: aleste 1 & 2 and Zanac!
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Fun Fact: Project X was so hard that they released the SE Edition shortly afterwards where the difficulty level is reduced.
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I’ve always liked this one better than most PCE shmups besides maybe Soldier Blade. It’s usually the first one I boot up for a quick fix since it’s so easy for me to get into for some reason. It’s not as nice graphically than some of the others, but the music is so good.
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That Project X SE game looks amazing, going to try that today thank you for that one. I’m all about the underdog and lesser known games. I played all the classics a gazillion times already so I like trying games now that I never heard of or were overshadowed by the more popular games of the time. So please keep these titles coming lol.
Edit: Tried this one first.
I was smooth sailing until that grasshopper caught me by surprise, didn’t know it was gonna jump at me the way it did. Cool game, it’s like you’re a bee on the quest for revenge or something. I also like how it’s like Gradius with the weapon choice system.
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This is exactly what I don’t really like much about it. The tracks are highly arranged but a little bit too much for me. I don’t think they’re as hard hitting as the ones in the other 3 “Soldier” games with the exception of the boss or mid boss music.
It’s not surprising though, different composer and developers.
This is all subjective though so it’s cool that you like it.
Awesome man!
I noticed your images are all 1280 x 960 which is 4 x 240. You should be able to get away with using 5x if you set a custom resolution of 1200 in the RetroArch Scaling settings. The portion of the screen that gets cropped off of the top and bottom should fall within the safe zone. For 224p systems you can use 5 x 224 = 1,120.
It’s a little trick which @Nesguy used to do to squeeze out some more resolution which could be used for better scanline dynamics and mask detail.
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Ok, now I’m a little confused, shouldn’t be the same as setting overscale on?
Integer Scaling ON , Overscale OFF (1280x960) 4/3
Integer Scaling ON , Overscale ON (1600x1200) 4/3
Integer Scaling ON , Custom Y 1200 (x5), X 1536 (x6) <-?? Close to 4/3 but not quite
If I set Y=1200 and X=x5 -> 1280x1200 (far from 4/3)
