I'm not refering to FPS games nobody remembers, I'm refering to an entire genre of games that are still called shooters by only the few people whoe recognize them. The 2d shooter is still alive outside of things like geometry wars and other things you might find on download services, but very few people know about that. I've come up with a few reasons as to why:
1.Difficulty. Unlike most games, 2d shooters appear to have become harder rather than easier over time. That doesn't mean the older ones were easy either. R-type, while generally well liked, is far harder than any modern game, demanding that the player memorize the entire game to have a chance. Gradius lacked memorization, but made every life after the first one meaningless, and was still harder the Demon's Souls. More modern shooters tend be bullet hell, such as Mushihime-Sama Futari, which, on its highest difficulty, makes Battletoads look easy. Even easier bullet hell games, such as the Touhou series, are still much more than most modern games, even on easy. The few games that are easy enough for the average gamer tend be terrible games in a subgenre known as "euroshmups", which tend to leave people with bad impressions. More recently, a few not insane games have appeared, most notably Genetos, which is a great introduction, as well as freeware.
2.Perception. The above mentioned euroshmups are all most people hear about. They're told the genre as a whole is generic, derivative garbage that you can clear while blindfolded. Some of them have their only experience from videos like this one, probably having seen only this one, and think that 2d shooters are completely impossible and that only a lunatic would play them. The reviews often don't help, and always have the same complaints: too short, can credit feed to the end, too easy because of infinite continues, or alternatively, way too hard and infinite continues are the only thing that make it bearable. Also, the majority of these games have not seen a release outside of Japan, although DeathSmiles is going to be coming out some time this year.
3.Length. A 2d shooter lasting more than an hour per playthrough is rare. The majority of people are unused to score hunting, and instead only play to see the ending. This leads to people simply continueing every time they die, often using several hundred continues in one stage, and calling the game "done". This is normally a bad idea, and will get you laughed at if you claim to have beaten a game this way. These games are often ports of arcade games, and as such were intended for people to try to clear the whole game on just one credit, or for people to try get a high score. If you attempt either, you will notice the game suddenly becomes much longer.
I'm not talking about any specific games, I'm talking about the entire genre. Several people I spoke to had not even heard of any games in it other than raiden, and could not even tell what genre I was talking about until I mentioned Raiden. The 2d shooter genre has seen recent releases, but they have not recieved any praise, and so among the people who do know about this genre, everyone thinks the whole genre is dead, and has been ever since 3d graphics came around. It isn't.
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