Why is Super Marisa World my favorite platformer? Because I'm charmed by its design's stupidity. The game even does its best to scare new players away...
Oh, I tried some Cave shmups on MAME. Here's my opinions...
Donpachi: Funny Engrish, otherwise boring
Dodonpachi: Best shmup ever? Only average imo.
Guwange: Crap.
Dangun Feveron: Fun for few stages...then got annoying.
ESP Ra.De.: Best of the five, but nothing outstanding.
Touhou is better.
The best shmup ever is Radiant Silvergun. It's...unique.
Donpachi: haven't played it enough
DDP: if you don't count DOJ, DFK and the Labels (I have played none of these), DDP has a lot of stage design effort for scoreplay. Plus, it has an interesting (though very punishing) score mechanic based on your max chain hits and surplus bombs (for the Max Bombs bonus), and its chaining system. While the boss fights are rather short in comparison with Touhou (or rather, Touhou bosses must show as much patterns as they can), the difficulty while actually playing (if you want to keep your Max Bombs bonus) makes the boss fights feel longer. Though the patterns may not look pretty, they're no less fun to dodge through, and the stages are more fun than in Touhou as well.
Guwange: I want to play it when I have the time, I've played Feveron before and game-long chains supposedly shouldn't drive me away (unless the game in question is MoF, which may have more sandbox than design effort for scoreplay)
Feveron: funny, I've reached the third boss once ( when playing it for a week ) and I really enjoyed the stages and bosses, even when playing for speedkills ( or rather, because of the speed kills, which allow the game to be as intense as you can make it be ). Also, even though the chaining is unforgiving, depending on how late you lose it in the stages, the way the chaining works is a nice mental exercise in foresight of bullets, enemy movement and discomen.
ESP Ra.De: that's because you didn't get the scoring system well enough. When initiating multiplier sessions, if you have reached the maximum capacity for point item boxes, destroying more resilient enemies with your primary shot will yield point item boxes as well, which extend your current multiplier session. If you played with JB-5th and selected Yusuke's stage as the third stage, you can "sometimes" see that after you've destroyed the big tank near the end of the stage, there will be lots of point item boxes falling and your multiplier session becomes longer than you would normally expect. That's due to the maximum capacity, if you can maintain it through that part. (plus, your bomb has effects on your multiplier timer, delaying it, halting it or even extending it)
>> Touhou is better:
already said what I think about it before; try to play Touhou for score, then please tell us how it's better.
Touhou at least has deathbomb times...Cave doesn't. That is kinda enfuriating.
some Cave games do have counterbomb times (Mushihimesama Arrange, for example). A fun fact.. Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu had auto-bomb (afaik. I can't play it unless I buy a PCB), which extended one's playtime, even though the auto-bomb has shorter effect (invincibility time and damage). Apparently, people waiting in line were bothered by the extended wait time, and DFK Black Label made the Autobomb optional.
(ESP Galuda has autobomb if you're hit while using the slowdown -- which can be used either for survival or for scoring, but if you sacrifice gems for survival, you'll score less -- and don't have an empty bomb gauge)
Also, a lot of shmups don't include counterbomb, either (even Shuusou Gyoku). Like Banana said, Garegga (or RFJ) won't even give invulnerability time. But then Garegga allows you to manage the game, and that's part of what makes it fun (plus, bombing for score is nice. From bombing small ships and sceneries for more points/medals/points, to bombing the flamingoes/Mad Balls/Black Heart mkII's grenade attacks. Seriously, I want to do the latter someday, after raising the rank to make Black Heart mkII angrier. The path will be long and difficult, but I'll enjoy it a lot.)
I mean, not every shmup has to give invulnerability times and counter bombs to be fun.
Well, I'm not interested in Garegga anyways. I have heard enough of its funny rank system.
I, on the other hand, like this fun rank system..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sotli-6cheIhttp://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm7072222as you (and everyone else) can see above, the game's beatable even in such high ranks (demonstrated in the second video only; the first video is what you can do if you score well enough: just see Enhasa's comment on it.), as long as you're good enough and can control it well enough.
If there's something the rhythm gaming world taught me, one of the reasons fangames/simulators exist is to create more of a challenge than the original game offered.
when an experienced enough company makes a shmup which is well-designed enough, you know that you can 1cc it (and again, even 1lc it. Can't remember an exception.), and that it may have an interesting scoring mechanic (though the game can be fun even without such depth). Games which reward intelligent play (either for survival or score, or both) tend to be more respected than games which are meant to have unintelligent difficulty, by people who value gameplay. That may explain arcade shmups having usually more competition than doujin. Because they're (normally) deeper in gameplay and it takes much more time for someone to finally exhaust that depth ( or give up on the way, at least for a while ) and then get bored.
Kaizo Mario, or variations which are meant to be cheap (while usually demanding inhumanly precise movements and exploiting SMW's gameplay with prohibitively inhuman execution), aren't meant for competition. Sure, you could make a custom GH track which would be impossible to beat, and no one would see the point of trying to win in a game (track) which is meant to be unwinnable by design. However if your custom GH track or doujin shmup is good enough, more people will compete on it. (I can think about Defense of the Ancients and Counter Strike tournaments as examples)
Raiden Fighters series doesn't either. The exception is the Miclus and Fairy ships which are invincible(to bullets during a bomb).
you don't use bombs for countering projectiles/enemies in RFJ, you use them for creating a no-bullet field if you need it :V (besides scoring)
Sometimes, said bomb can also be used to make sure you have enough time to reveal a miclus ( NER's JudgeSpear slave
run has it on Simulation 15 ).. or was it a fairy?