![]() ![]() ![]() But that was sadly short lived, probably due in part to the Wii install base’s annoying habit of not really buying Wii games that aren’t either made by Nintendo or called Just Dance. And things were promising for awhile, with both solid new entries– Resident Evil Chronicles, Dead Space Extraction, House of the Dead: Overkill–and ports of arcade classics– House of the Dead 2+3, Mad Dog McCree, L.A. When the Wii was first announced, one of the things that excited me most was the prospect of its ability to handle light gun games without the need for an expensive peripheral. I would love to see shmups have another such spike and return to the mainstream consciousness so that we could see more of that variety again, not just the ones created for the super-hardcore fan that look indistinguishable from each other to the untrained–and more casual–eye. Darius to the brilliant color-swapping mechanic of Ikaruga, and of course the ridiculously awesome shmup parody series Parodius. But I do it enjoy it when the genre experiences spikes of popularity that result in a wider variety of experiences, from the 2.5D experimentation of Einhander and G. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of shmups, especially the so-called “bullet hell” ones that are more about navigating your ship through curtains of gunfire with minuscule safe zones than they are about actually shooting things up. That needs to change, and here are the genres that I feel would create the most interesting diversity if they were to make a major comeback in the modern gaming landscape. It is my belief that the game industry is at its best when every genre is not only represented, but is well-stocked, and that is something that unfortunately hasn’t happened since probably the late 90’s in the PlayStation/Saturn/N64 era (not coincidentally, my favorite gaming era). I am certainly not implying that these are all “dead” genres–though some are certainly on life support–but they have all definitely become more niche than they deserve to be and need to be more prolific. ![]()
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