Is there such a thing as a "casual shoot 'em up"?

[jcrankin]

RType Final has a whole slew of problems beyond raw difficulty anyway.

[mainpatr]

Verytex for Megadrive is very easy until the final boss.
Final Soldier was the only Soldier series game I have beat.

Try most of the Aleste games(both Game Gear games,all of the MSX titles and Space Megaforce)

A good introduction to bullet hell games would be the PC doujin game Engage to Jabberwock. It's like if Zelda turned into bullet hell.

[dsparil]

R-Type Final isn't too bad if you're not focused on finishing the game. You can unlock about 2/3 ships without beating the final level; most of them are based on gameplay time although some need time with a specific ship. It's basically the Gran Turismo of shooters. It isn't exactly something to start with, but you're always making some kind of progress

[Vokkan]

I second Jamestown as a modern, beginner frendly yet reasonably hardcore shmup due to selectable difficulty levels.

But really, try not to get hung up on "beating" shmups. Most of the genre is pure score chasing, and that pursuit is what makes impossible seeming games very fulfilling to keep playing.

[Snake]

Fantastic Night Dreams Cotton.

Macross: Do You Remember Love, for Sega Saturn, is pretty easy to manage too.

[jorpho]

Oct 23, 2017 4:05:08 GMT -5 mainpatr said:

A good introduction to bullet hell games would be the PC doujin game Engage to Jabberwock. It's like if Zelda turned into bullet hell.

Great fun, that one! Turning up the difficulty practically changes it into a different game. Too bad it never got an official freeware release, to my knowledge. (There's a demo version that lasts for quite a while, but it ends shortly after the first boss.)

Reportedly Dicing Knight for the Wonderswan further refines the gameplay. There are English translation patches for both games.

[llj]

Arrow Flash and Trouble Shooter are two I've finished without too much trouble on the Genesis. Therefore they must be easy.

[JoeQ]

I'll second Arrow Flash. It was one of those rare Mega Drive games I actually finished as a kid. Nothing special though as a game, though.

[dsparil]

Zero Wing is actually pretty easy. Worth it for the dancing raisin ending. Then it loops with an additional 2 more. The Japanese version has 32 more and they're weird! People pay too much attention to the poorly translated intro and not enough on the raisins and other odd elements.

[Exhuminator]

Oct 23, 2017 20:23:17 GMT -5 Snake said:

Fantastic Night Dreams Cotton.

This is exactly what I thought of first. Specifically the SFC version. That cute 'em up is a piece of cake. Well, except for the last boss, but she's not too bad.

Also Harmful Park is easy.

[novicola]

Tails' Skypatrol is essentially baby's first shmup. There's also the recently dumped SegaSonic Cosmo Fighter Galaxy Patrol, which is functionally impossible to /not/ complete.

There's also the Platypus series, remarkable for its claymation graphics.

And I recall the shmups included with Retro Game Challenge were relatively breezy.

[Purple Moss]

Wasn't there a similar-themed thread before? Anyway, I'm here to third Jamestown; Bobinator and Feynman already said it: plenty of difficulty levels, simple mechanics, and a gentle learning curve (except perhaps for the last level, but even then it's not so bad). There's also an obscure shmup for the PC-98 called Rude Breaker, which is relatively easy on the standard difficulty.

Edit: Oh, yeah, I wanted to say, I totally agree with alphex's first post here. Shmups have such a unique and genuine feeling, and throughout the ages they have managed to keep their raw gameplay intact.

[edmonddantes]

Well, there's the Gradius games for the original Gameboy. The second one at least is so easy I managed to 1cc it on my second attempt.

Dragon Spirit: New Legend on the NES isn't exactly hard either.

[zilliont]

Most of Compile's games: tons of long-ass stages (I think MUSHA is their shortest, with 8~10 stages) and super frantic, but you get so many extra lives and your weapons and powerups are usually so goddamn overpowered and fun to use that 1CCing the game is a breeze - and they all have infinite credits, by the way!

Thunder Force III: I've seen people recommend TFIV in here, but while it IS the best in the series, it's also definitely the hardest, so start with TFIII first. The game is a breeze to go through since it's short (seven average-sized stages) and super lenient on extra lives. Plus, bosses go down so quickly on Easy and Normal modes it's almost silly

Tyrian/Tyrian 2000: This is probably the #1 "casual shmup". The developers probably knew that playing a shmup on a keyboard is pretty weird (although it does support gamepad and mouse controls), so they made a game that takes after Compile's shmups, except even more lenient due to the health and shield meters, the bazillion ship upgrades and alternate weapons and the bigger focus on storytelling (although you can ignore it completely or even play on Arcade Mode, which plays more like a regular console/arcade shmup, two-player mode included). Plus, the original DOS version is completely free and ported to basically everything under the sun!

[silentstorm]

Kinda sad that nobody mentioned Shumps Skill Test, then again, it's not a very known game but i think it fits.

It's basically a shmup where each playthrough you have to play through a variety of minigames each set on testing your skill on a certain aspect of shmups like dodging, killing enemies, using bombs at the right time, collecting medals for points and etc.

And while the minigames get harder as they go along, or start a bit hard, you can lose and keep playing until you die or beat the last minigame on which you receive a score based on your perfomance.

It's all a bunch of quick minigames that are meant to serve as a way for newbies to practice yet still be fun to more experienced gamers in the genre where dying just leads you to another minigame and not a game over.

And you can practice a specific minigame over and over again as well, so if you want to practice the dodging minigames to later get a better score, you can do so.

It's pratically the closest thing to Shmup Wario Ware there is and it's like 5 bucks on Steam.