I've been a long-time fan of the genre since my days as a wee lad playing Gradius III on my SNES a couple of decades ago, and even earlier when I've played my grandmother's copy of 1943 - The Battle For Midway on her NES. Nothing's more thrilling than dodging bullets and shooting things down, I tell ya what! Just this morning, a friend of mine gifted me a copy of eXceed 3rd on Steam and needless to say, it's been VERY hard putting this one down!

But enough about me, what about you guys? Do you like shmups? What are your favorites and recommendations? Let's go, and be attitude for gains!

Prepare for the comment storm...incoming in 3...2...1...

Well, the time for Shmups is gone since the early 90s. I played games like Uridium, Silkworm and Xenon Megablast back then and had great fun, but these times are gone!

Says you, bub! >:3

Shmups are alive and kicking, just check out Darius Burst Chronicles on Steam! There's plenty more to choose from as well!

I had a girlfriend that wanted me to get into shmups with her. I was uncomfortable with the idea and we had to talk it out. Jesus told me not to do those things with my tongue. And I was also very nervous about having to wear the horse costume.

Whoop, there it is. They've arrived, folks. Brace yourselves.
*finds corner to hide in*

Yay! Another opportunity for me to promote The Reap!

Since I never was much exposed to early consoles, my favorite shmups are mostly from arcades and homecomputers like Galaxian, Phoenix, Time Pilot, Zaxxon, a couple of games on the Apple ][ which I don't remember the name from, Tyrian 2000 and my all time favorite Raptor: Call of the Shadows.

As of now I'm mostly out of touch with the shmup genre, so I'm not familiar what's out there and the bullethell+one hit and your dead isn't really my thing. :^/

Not massively no, but sometimes I find myself losing a couple of hours to one. The regular raptor-esque and gradius-esque ones are fine, but I'd love for there to be more mecha based ones from a side perspective where you go on a rampage through a massive enemy ship/base, which you can explore freely.

By the way, If you are at all a fan of the genre, then check out this incredible free game:
Hydorah.
It's phenomenal, and clearly inspired by the gradius series. It is completely free, but you can make a donation to the developer if you feel like it, which I'm ashamed to say I haven't done yet, even though I've somehow managed to beat the game. I'm going to post a reminder on my make-things-cold-box right now.
And if you're reading this grimwerk, I'm still waiting for you to finish the game ;)

not really
the only title i really really really like though is layer section on the saturn
for some reason that one clicks with me
its probably because of the gorgeous graphics and layer animation and scrolling

Ive been abandoning shmups for a long time ever since the arcade died.

My first is Xenon Megablast, a classic.

Plenty of classics, 1943, Virtua Cops, Time Crisis, Smash TV, Twinbee..and on and on.. xD

but if you wanted to try something new.. i would suggest Crimzon Clover : World Ignition

Its pretty awesome man.

I've mainly played shmups on arcades, where it usually meant you had three ships, and if you lost them, you either inserted more coins to get more ships, or had to start from the very beginning.

How are the modern schmups for home consoles and such? Do you save the game between levels, or do you have to restart from the very start if you die?

I believe it's quite common for them to be like the arcade ones except that, instead of inserting coins to continue, you get a certain number (sometimes infinite) of continues, but you need to beat the game without using any to get the best ending.

You do get multiple lives, however, and there are ways to gain extra lives.

Not really.

Shoot Em' Ups. I don't really like them, unless you're gonna hook me in with the setting (Afterburner Climax, 1942) or you suddenly throw it in the middle of a great game (Freedom Planet), or, I dunno, when I get bored? (Raiden Legacy on Desura, R-Type I and II on Amazon Appstore).