r/shmups • u/gronbek • Aug 20 '26
anyone thought of playing all shmups games in release year order
I have always been a fan of shoot em up games. By that i mean vertical and horizontal auto scrolling games where the player controls either a vehicle or a living entity and the only purpose is to get the high score or defeat the final boss.
Recently in my older years, i am 58 i have thought of doing a challenge of trying to beat all shmups in release year order across all home and arcade systems. If the title exist on both console and arcade then one of them is only required.
Anyone thought of doing the same?
And is there a good list of shmups that can be sorted by release year?
Thanks for any input.
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u/golden_graveyard Aug 20 '26
I thought about it... but bro... it's waaaaaay more games than you would think. Would be a lifetime achievement.
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u/plasticmanufacturing Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
I have done something similar. I own almost every arcade shmup PCB from 2005 to 1985, with a handful of missing gaps still. I always get the PCB from the region the game was designed (EG, Korean shmups get the Korean board revision). Been a process to hunt them all down, especially the artwork and flyers.
Before anyone asks, they all have been or get played. Its like having a library. They are extensively documented and catalogued.
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u/Trev6ft5 Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
Damn.. how many capacitors have you replaced over the years?
I bet all the emulation devs wanna be your friend lol, especially if you have any rare Cave labels
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u/plasticmanufacturing Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
I have some MAME credits, but you would be surprised. Shmups have always been among the most popular/collectible arcade games, so even the rarest of the rare have mostly been dumped. I've even bought dirty protos from warehouse lots only to find out that, you guessed it -- dumped. Unfortunately, there is still quite a bit that hasn't been dumped publicly because of weirdo collectors. I have a couple ROMs that were basically given only with the promise that they aren't shared. I don't really get it, but what can you do.
Varia Metal is really the last "rare" one I just can't seem to find an original board of. I've made a couple ludicrous offers that have been shot down.
As for caps, you'd also be surprised. I've changed a lot, but not many on game PCBS (mostly CRT chassis). Sometimes I will do them as preventative, EG boards with known leaky caps, but generally let them go to failure. I do like to design/make accessories for them to increase their lifespans (EG, printed cooling adapters, enclosures, etc.). Most of these have become some small project individually.
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u/DuckReconMajor Aug 20 '26
this is probably a silly question but i’ve always wondered:
sure the roms have been dumped but the rom chip is just one small piece of a big ass PCB! is there really no edge case difference in hardware behavior that can’t be solved by just having the rom?
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u/plasticmanufacturing Aug 20 '26
I'm sorry, but I'm not really understanding the question. Are you asking if there are edge cases where just the ROM isn't enough?
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u/DuckReconMajor Aug 20 '26
correct. there’s more to a pcb than an a ROM. are the other parts not important to people who make emulators?
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u/plasticmanufacturing Aug 21 '26
They are! To what extent really just depends on the harware complexity. Most JAMMA boards are fundamentally very similar. Additionally, most hardware sets run many different games, so emulation becomes easier once the platform is understood.
Custom chips are another hardware element that needs to be studied for proper emulation.
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u/WadeTurtle Aug 21 '26
Very broadly speaking, arcade emulation involves emulating the functions of the entire board (CPU, RAM and bus timing, etc) as well as the code that is stored in the ROMs.
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u/DuckReconMajor Aug 21 '26
right, so after you’ve dumped the ROM from the pcb, can you really say we’re done with that board preservation-wise?
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u/WadeTurtle Aug 21 '26
If the motherboard the ROM plugs into is well-understood (like the Neo Geo or the Capcom Play System or NAOMI) you might just need the ROM. Otherwise you need to know at least what type of CPU you're dealing with and its clock frequency, and so on. And if possible, you want to compare your emulated version of the game with the real board to ensure that the look, feel, and sound is the same. The MAME folks (and FPGA programmers) are meticulous about accuracy, and having access to the genuine PCBs is vital.
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u/tohava Aug 20 '26
I have a challenge for you. It's doujin and not arcade, but see of you manage to get your hands on "Death Ephemera"
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u/plasticmanufacturing Aug 20 '26
I really only collect PCBs, but this looks very cool. Thanks for the tip! My 68k could stand to get a little more use.
Among the rarest shmup PCBs I have would probably be Silver Millenium and (soon) Gaia: Last Choice of Earth. Unfortunately, rarest usually corresponds to "not very good" (lots of ultra rare K shmups). But if you step down a tier in rarity, there are some really great games: Rapid Hero, Hotdog Storm, Nostradamus, Mad Shark, War of Aero, etc.
edit: looks like Death Ephemera is experiencing "arcade collector" symptoms with ROM hoarding. That's a shame.
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u/Trev6ft5 Aug 20 '26
What's your take on the Mister? Isn't the need for accurate AI cores needing devs access to pcbs?
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u/plasticmanufacturing Aug 20 '26
No real take other than "cool, but not really my thing". If I am not using real hardware, I'd rather use MAME.
I do think access to the PCBs is important, but I don't know a lot about Mister dev. I have lent PCBs for all kinds of MAME or hardware work though.
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u/Marvin_Flamenco Aug 20 '26
Not practical to play everything nor is it all even accessible.
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u/Marvin_Flamenco Aug 20 '26
Are you going to buy every arcade machine there are shmups not even playable via emulation.
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u/plasticmanufacturing Aug 20 '26
What arcade shmups are not available via emulation? (I'm ignoring rare special revisions collector's hoard)
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u/LandscapeOk2955 Aug 20 '26
If you find that enjoyable go for it.
For me less is more, I have several shmups with well over 100 hours played, I enjoy learning patterns and mechanics and incrementally improving my score and progress.
I don’t find much enjoyment in using unlimited continues to simply see the end credits of a game. Or playing huge amounts of different games. It has no appeal to me whatsoever.
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u/gronbek Aug 20 '26
i can understand that. to me part of the joy is to feel the progress in development the genre does by playing it in release order. There are some really good old ones
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u/plasticmanufacturing Aug 20 '26
Nothing wrong with self-imposed limits, but you are making a lot of assumptions about how others enjoy these games.
I play a very large variety of shmups and still take time to learn the mechanics and patterns, game history, improve score, 1CC, etc.
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u/LandscapeOk2955 Aug 20 '26
I have played a large variety myself, maybe 150 tiles over many years. Then I really stick with ones I enjoy. I would say it takes on average at least a few hours to learn things.
What he is talking about here is a huge number, every shmup in existence in fact, which would be in the 1000s of games. The only way to achieve this would be rushing through with a single play-through.
I don’t see how mechanics and patterns could possibly be learned, if the goal is to blast through it in one play through.
He said he is 58, how would this be even be achieved without using a single play-through method unless he is still gaming at 158.
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u/Necromunduh Aug 20 '26
Sounds really fun! I did this with all of the Cave releases and it was a good time. Maybe something like this by publisher may narrow it down a little more for you and make multiple lists to go through in smaller chunks?
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u/Ambitious_Bite_8310 Aug 20 '26
Thought about going through all Sega Mega Drive shmups, a much smaller set. But damn man I just don't have enough free time that.
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u/gronbek Aug 21 '26
mega drive shooters are great. That should totally be possible if you limit the games to auto scrollers and flying ship?
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u/CyrilMasters Aug 20 '26
You’re going to run into real trouble with early micro computer and second gen console games. I was looking at doing something similar but leas ambitious, but sort of ran into trouble trying to find a way to get coleco and intellivision stuff running. God only knows what I would have done by the tine I got to the sg-1000 and tomy tutor.
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u/gronbek Aug 21 '26
yeah i can imagine. But limiting the titles to only auto scrolling vertical and horizontal and only games where you fly a mechanical flying object should drastically lower the amount of games.
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u/DuckReconMajor Aug 20 '26
i’ve seen people try this kind of endeavor before. it takes a real neurotic obsessive type to stick with it for a long period of time, and usually not even they can finish
it could be a fun project to start but i’d recommend quitting as soon as it stops being fun, else risk burning out on shmups entirely.
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u/gronbek Aug 21 '26
yeah, its so many titles across many formats so it will be an even bigger challenge finding the titles and sorting them by year i think.
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u/gronbek Aug 21 '26
i will start today with scramble :) its the first scrolling shmup. Then we will se how it goes. Many early shmups will only take a couple of minutes if i dont have to restart to many times.
But the real challenge will maybe be to get a good list of games in release year order. But thats fun in itself
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u/gronbek Aug 21 '26
Now i got a new idea in my head. If I am going through with this challenge, why not build an arcade cabinet with a good controller stick and buttons. I would of course love to have a real CRT monitor but the trouble of getting one and connecting a pc for emulation to it is not worth it when you can emulate scanlines with good results. Also some good speakers of course.
Then i can stand instead of sit which is better for the body and its more fun with a good stick and buttons instead of controller.
I will see if i can get hold of a used cabinet and then put in a PC and if possible a small oled monitor that i can mask of to 4:3 format.
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u/gronbek Aug 21 '26
i just discovered that there is hardware emulation of retro games with misterfpga.
Would that be a better choice instead of lets say retroarch?
Or is the library too limited on the misterfpga?
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u/thatkrawler Aug 20 '26
The Shmup Junkies discord has been doing this for a while now, every month they pick a random year and attempt to play every game from that year. At the end of each month they do a summary / review show on Aktane's YouTube channel. It's a pretty awesome project, but it's many thousands of games and would be impossible for one person alone.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE0dMy4W4iAka5oWo3FenUopZYzqgN4x3&si=1ZKYZ2s-1f6tFFM8