Regarding the lack of fighers on the N64 - N64 didn't need a "Tekken killer" because it had this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K783SDTBKmg
Easily the funnest brawler in it's gen :P
nameless12345
Easily just an opinion.I think its pretty obvious how a game's length ties into quality, if a game is short then you're unlikely to get much play out of itDomino_slayer
Not true; I've put over 100 hours each into Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga. Radiant Silvergun is 45-80 minutes (depending on how much you milk the bosses) and Ikaruga is 25 minutes. As for everything else... You're right about a few things, like Batsugun pioneering the bullet hell subgenre. Hell, even Grind Stormer did this at higher rank. Cave (formerly Toaplan, of Batsugun and Grind Stormer fame, as well as Truxton, Zero Wing, and Out Zone, just to name a few) created DonPachi, which most fans of the genre will tell you was nothing special. As great as Batsugun was, it wasn't until 1997's DoDonPachi that Cave really came into their own. Instead of quick, basic patterns a la Batsugun, you had elaborate mazes of bullets, and with the stages themselves being based around the game's "Chain" scoring system. (The idea was implemented in DonPachi, but was incredibly sparse throughout the stages.)While you're correct about certain series like Thunder Force, R-Type, and Gradius requiring special play-styIe to even survive (let alone attain a decent score), for every one of those, there were about 10 games in which you could literally just hold down the fire button and still get a decent score because elaborate scoring systems didn't really exist at the time. The Darius series was quirky and imaginative, but on the gameplay front, it wasn't anything special until Darius Gaiden. R-Type, while it was one of the all-time kings of "strategic positioning" shmups along with Pulstar, didn't really get a true scoring system until R-Type Delta. Since the mid-90's, we've gotten an undeniable amount of variety in terms of gameplay mechanics and scoring, from the unorthodox scoring systems of games like ESP Ra.De. and Dangun Feveron to "reflect-em-ups" like Giga Wing and Mars Matrix, bullet-grazing games like Psyvariar and Shikigami no Shiro, ESPGaluda's core element of bullet-cancelling, Ketsui's proximity-based scoring (which forces one to play aggressively if they want a decent score), and the recent Akai Katana Shin's seemingly-convoluted but ultimatele satisfying scoring mechanics.
Compare what we have today to, say, the difference between playing Tiger Heli, Twin Cobra, Star Soldier, Truxton, or Raiden 1 and 2. (as fun as they all were, and still are.) IS the genre dying in the mainstream? Yes. This is largely due to the dumbing-down of video games across all platforms. However, they're still made for Japanese arcades, their console ports still sell 30,000 or more copies (which is more than enough incentive to keep it up, considering that it reportedly takes Cave only 4 days of development time to port each of their recent games to the 360), and with the coming of online marketplaces, both renowned and indie developers alike now have a viable market for their wares.
Either way, your post included more than five quote boxes (which is against forum regulations), so I hope that you can truncate it before the mods notice it. Just thought I'd let you know. :)
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