Classic shooter question/poll

[tachi]

All the Shumps I like are Horizontal, R-Type, Turrican 2, Zybex, Forgotten Worlds...can't think of any Verticals I really liked at all?

[Antiriad2097]

I'll go with horizontal for the poll as I do have a soft spot for those (Scramble on the Vectrex, anyone?) but one of my faves, Salamander, turns vertical every couple of levels.

[TMR]

i said horizontal for similar reasons, most of my favourites are games like the Gradius series or 8-bit blasters like Io and Chronos but i'm perfectly happy with a good vertical scroller if the screen ratio and game are right. =-)

[DreamcastRIP]

Voted, "Who cares? As long as I get to shoot sh1t up, I'm happy!"

Fifteen plus years ago I'd definitely have voted for side scrolling horizontal shmups but since then I've come to experience so many more great vert shmups (mostly for retro systems plus iOS) that I probably now don't have an outright favoured style of shmup.

[Mero]

Tons of great games in of both screen orientations, forget about on-rails though

[NorthWay]

I prefer them following the length of the screen. Makes for good arcade verticals, but not many home ones.

[joefish]

As a preference I'd have to go with horizontal. I do love some vertical ones (Raiden series mainly, also Gunbird and Trigon) but R-Type, Chronos, Thundercross II, Progear are so much more fun.

In the overhead view used in vertical scrollers you typically don't have scenery to work around (Xenon II is the only one that springs to mind that does that well in the vertical). Instead they just go overboard and add stupid amounts of bullets. Where there are obstructions, like in Varth, they can be very hard to pick out from the other scenic details. With the side-on view of the horizontal scroller, solid scenery makes things much more interesting. Though it's really about that overhead view. A horizontal scroller with an overhead view (like Uridium) suffers from the same irritations as those vertical scrollers.

One thing I really don't like is vertical shooters with a horizontally-oriented screen. A lot of vertical-oriented screen shooters do scroll a little left and right, but enemies that are off the screen don't tend to shoot at you. With a wider screen, there are lots of lazy ways for the developer to throw in enemies from both sides at once or the top corners of the screen where you can't get them all before they hit you. Lightforce, the vertical stages of Salamander, and when the Aero Fighters series switched platforms and any other vertical shooters for the Neo Geo hardware all suffer badly.

[the_hawk]

A good Shoot 'em up is like a good woman....

Horizontal, easy & nice to look at.