No, you're supposed to practice and get better.

Good shooters are incredibly difficult, but perfectly fair. You die in one hit, but you have perfect control over your character and perfect knowledge of exactly where the hitbox is at all times. Bad shooters, like Tyrian, have giant hitboxes and imprecise, floaty controls with inertial movement, and then make up for it with a lifebar.

This just reminds me of another discussion I had about a month ago with a guy who thought realistic pinball is too hard and video pinball should be much easier. And I'm like... why? For what purpose? There's no ending or plot, at least not that anyone would ever consider even remotely compelling. The entire point of these games are to be tests of skill. That's why the good ones tend to have involved scoring mechanics and difficult design balanced with perfect player control and information, so they've got an incredibly high skill ceiling and room for personal growth.

Essentially, your argument and his are "I like Tyrian because I can actually complete it." My counter-argument is "plenty of other shmups are far more replayable because they've got much higher skill ceilings, and they can also be completed with practice." I don't want a roguelike that I can beat the day I get it, I don't want a Dark Souls game that I can just saunter through, I don't want a version of Tetris that tops out at speed 3, and I don't want a shmup that lets me go through bullets like a fat guy at a buffet. You're removing the tension, you're removing the challenge, and in the process you're removing the entire thing that makes these games fun. If I'm going to spend an hour drifting through a game, I'm going to do it with a genre that offers more narrative interest than a shmup, and if I'm going to play a shmup, I'm going to play one that actually offers some adrenaline.

TL;DR: a shmup without difficulty is like poker without gambling. You've removed all the personality, tension and drama and left a dry facsimile of its real self.

a) This thread is full of them.

b) None, the company trying to get them released here has full rights to do so. The only roadblock is GOG themselves.

c) Voting on the wishlist, writing to GOG, and participating in threads like these, here and elsewhere, to try and get other people to voice their desire for these games as well, and their concerns over GOG's clear bias toward certain genres over others.

This thread isn't about hypotheticals, we have an actual company (Degica) with actual games (Mushihimesama, XIIZeal, Deltazeal) they've tried to get released here.
Hydorah is a damn masterpiece.

Pretty good summary.

I remember when I 1cced Mushihimesama Futari (the sequel to this game.) It was probably the most satisfaction I've ever felt from a game, and the end of it was so tense that my hands were literally shaking when it all ended. That's something no other genre replicates quite like this, and something you will never experience with schlock like Tyrian or Raptor.

Alright, let me just quiz you this then: Have you played on Lord of Game difficulty? Not everyone on this pale blue dot is an adrenaline junkie, but even that should be sufficient for the people calling the game too easy. Sure, you won't die instantly in the first 3 seconds, but I feel it should still be more than enough for most of you.

Brings back memories of Touhou :)

BTW, I can 1cc Mushi Futari Original eyes closed these days, but I'll be damned if I can beat Tyrian in one go. Clearly the skills don't carry over from the first to the latter, or rather, I suspect there's more than skills involved in beating Tyrian,

Anyway, I sense that this thread is gravitating toward full-on euroshmup bashing, the inevitable fate of all shmup threads :) Back to topic.

I wonder why publishers don't try means of self distribution using simple content providers, or spinning their own services. I mean, they must be getting enough exposure through Steam already. For the minority who actively hunts for DRM-free copies, this shouldn't pose much inconvenience. Look at how Nyu handles it for example (I believe they use bmtmicro), and Fruitbat factory also has its own store. I personally don't get any additional satisfaction from downloading my DRM-free copy on GOG specifically. If they want to stay "boutique" as they say, I'll happily take my business elsewhere.

The thing is, those services are often much cheaper than paying Steam's or GOG's cut. And even better, relatively, running your own service would be dirt cheap. Credit card transactions could be a bit problematic based on the jurisdiction involved, but those issues are again solvable cheaply with olden ways (e.g., paypal) or emerging transaction processors (e.g., Square). I have some professional experience with this, and it is for sure much cheaper than paying a %20-%30 percent commission.

The set up is also super simple, would take a workday at most. Maybe they don't possess the technical know-how?

I think the biggest problem with the genre is portability. With consoles and old computers, you had just one configuration. You could really fine tune the difficulties. These days, with the wide variety of graphics cards, backwards compatibility, Open GL vs DirectX, Mac, vs Limux vs. whatever consoles a game is built for.

Depending on your computer or which platform you are playing it on, it is very easy to encounter performance variations that impact any fine-tuning. There is always talk of bad ports, but the Shoot-em-up genre is even more susceptible.

Yes, I have. It's difficult, but not in a fun or interesting way.

Like I said, the best shmups combine incredibly difficulty with incredibly precise controls and tight, clearly-telegraphed hitboxes. Tyrian is sloppy with both its movement and the hitbox for the main ship, so cranking up the difficulty makes it harder, but not any more satisfying.

Tyrian 2000 is the best Euroshmup, but that's a genre defined by cramming in a lot of stuff and using copious life bars to distract from unpolished game design. It's pretty frosting on a bad cake. Modern Cave shmups might only have a couple ship options total with no upgrades at all and five stages total, but the scoring mechanics are deep and the stages are playtested to within an inch of their lives.
Yeah, shmups and fighting games are definitely impacted by performance variations more than most genres. I know Crimzon Clover won't let you upload a replay if it detects your FPS goes below a certain amount, I think 58 but don't quote me on that.

Yeah, the exceed trilogy would be cool too - I only posted the Alltynex trilogy of the Nyu published ones because I know for sure Nyu wanted to bring them to gog, but I assume they would want to bring the exceed games as well unless the developer disagreed. To be clear I was focusing mainly on games where the publisher has noted already that they want the games on GOG. Let's get that small victory before looking at games where gog would have to do the chasing (and in the case of the Uridium/Xenon franchises possibly some work getting the games working). :)

Wait, Mushi was declined? O_o

Yup. :(

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=55529&sid=8d188932dec3f90533cf09d2a63905e5&start=180

Relatively unknown outside of Japan. >_<
Dammit gog.

............. /facepalming

....I'm putting this thread in my stickied so I know I can dig it out next we cry over the lack of genre variations on GOG (and most particularly, arcade games in general.....).... I bet GOG staff thinks DoDonPachi is a creature in Pokemon... :o)

Meanwhile, Strania (from G.Rev) just released on Steam.

If GOG remains uninterested and making a - seemingly - very stupid decision with these rejections, consider asking for a DRM-free version on Humble Store or another retailer.

I can't necessarily blame you if you don't mind the client or installer files (like GOG's) aren't that important to you.

I wish there was more we could do to get GOG to wake up and pay attention to arcade genres, I wonder if the blues are reading any of this.

Some of them may be, I think we need some more arcade games back specifically DRM free ported to the platforms. I would love to have Pac Man, Asteroids and Marble Madness ported to the PC.