In the 1980s and ‘90s, Japanese developer Toaplan was an indisputable juggernaut of the shoot ‘em up. After the release of their first shmup (and third game overall), Tiger-Heli, the developer went on to unleash no small amount of shooting games across arcade floors. Some time later, they would also make their foray into console
For a while there, it really looked like we were done with side-scrolling shoot-em-ups for good. I say that without any particular joy at that fact, obviously, because I really like this genre. But it seemed like the spark had gone out, the genre had been pushed as far as it could go, and without
I always love to see a genre I’ve not experienced in years make a comeback. With a bit of polish and love, an old experience can be just as fun as it was back in the day, and when I saw the trailer for Habroxia 2 I was instantly transported back to my childhood playing games like Graedius and Earth Defense Force.
Shoot-em-ups and bullet hells are really one of the most basic kinds of games one can make. Give the player something that shoots bullets, throw a bunch of enemies on screen that attack back, bing bang boom, you have yourself a shoot-em-up. Hell, one of the first programming classes I took back in college had
Some game concepts do not weather a format shift very well. Enter the Gungeon was something of a darling with reviewers when it arrived; it was a top-down dungeon bullet-hell roguelike, a potent blend of different ideas that sounds like it should have been a shambling, mismatched mess but wound up being a clean and
When people ask me what my go-to kind of games are, my answer is usually the same: “story-heavy and rhythm games.” I like a game that weaves a good tale, and I love music. On the opposite end, I tend to avoid fighting games and arcade-y score-chasing titles, as they tend to be the opposite
Let’s take a look at a fresh entry to a classic genre with Pawarumi by Manufacture 43, out now for Nintendo Switch.
