PS1 Exclusive 3D Shmups

[Ace Whatever]

I'm a casual fan of shmups in the skill sense, but I always enjoy their visual spectacle. One of my best summers with the PS1 was when I found a copy of Einhander, but for some reason I never got around to stuff like G-Darius and R-Type Delta back in the day. I'm aiming to correct this gap, but in my search I discovered that this subgenre of shmups (fully 3D) is kind of poorly cataloged (same problem with 2D fighting games using 3D graphics I guess) which kind of sucks because the 3D allows for some cool cinematic stuff you don't get with 2D sprites.

Anyway, rambling aside, I'm hoping to make a comprehensive list of PS1 3D shmups (did a quick search on google and on the forums and didn't find a similar topic). Unless I'm wrong there shouldn't be THAT many of them and I probably already found about 95% of them unless Gamefaqs really messed up the categorization on a lot of them (Vanark being listed as a flight sim for example). I'd appreciate help in additions and corrections as my current list is made mostly from looking at screenshots and quick glances of gameplay vids (I realize of course that there will be some hairsplitting over what counts and what doesn't so please bear with me).

Ground rules for the list:

- Must be PS1 or at least contemporary console exclusive and not be a port of an arcade game or previous gen console
- Fully 3D polygonal graphics on the ships, enemies and foregrounds (some exceptions may apply)
- Games with mostly free-roaming sections not allowed
- Rail shooters with only first person perspective not allowed

The current list:

3D Shooting Tsukuru
Cowboy Bebop
Einhander
EOS: Edge of Skyhigh
Extra Bright
Galaga: Destination Earth
Gamera 2000
GunBare! Game Tengoku 2
iS: Internal Section
Jupiter Strike
N2O: Nitrous Oxide
Night Raid (pre-rendered ship)
Omega Boost (How much free roaming does his game have?)
R-Type Delta
Retro Force
Shooter: Starfighter Sanvein (?)
Shooter: Space Shot
Thunder Force V: Perfect System (pre-rendered foregrounds)
Vanark

Rule Breakers:
Airgrave (Only bosses are 3D)
G Darius (port)
Galaxian^3 (port, First Person Only, pre-rendered backgrounds)
RayCrisis (port)
RayStorm (port)
Starblade Alpha (First Person Only)
StarBorders (First Person Only)

Arcade ports with 3D & other enhancements added:
Asteroids
Space Invaders X
Tempest X3
Xevious 3D/G+ (?)


Stuff I'm on the fence about:

Philosoma
Super Robot Shooting (Most enemies seem to be pre-rendered)

[Maciej Miszczyk]

weren't backgrounds in Einhander pre-rednered?

[Ace Whatever]

Hmm...I guess I should change the description to say the foreground instead, because I'm pretty sure that's polygonal in Einhander. On the other hand I just took another look at Thunder Force V at it looks like the foreground is pre-rendered on that one.

Also, which of these actually has 3D backgrounds for that matter?

Thanks for pointing that out!

[retr0gamer]

Einhander definitely has polygonal backgrounds.

As for G Darius. It's not really a rule breaker as it ran on ps1 hardware in the arcades just with a bit more RAM.

[Ace Whatever]

The point is less about the hardware and more about where the game originated.

This is also reminds me that I forgot to take into account if a game was later ported to PC or to a compilation, both of which happened for G Darius.

[Discoalucard]

Apr 3, 2018 4:30:29 GMT -5 Ace Whatever said:

Stuff I'm on the fence about:
Night Raid (Polygons or pre-rendered sprites? I'm not quote sure...)
Philosoma
Super Robot Shooting (Most enemies seem to be pre-rendered)

Night Raid uses polygonal graphics for sure.

[Ace Whatever]

Apr 3, 2018 8:52:37 GMT -5 Discoalucard said:

Night Raid uses polygonal graphics for sure.

From what I'm seeing, it seems the enemies, foreground and orange power up are polygonal while the ship and the gold/blue power up are pre-rendered. So I guess we can say it counts more or less.

[Bumpyroad]

Here's a nice list, what covers loads of shmups released for the system, you just have to pick out the 3D ones.

[akumajobelmont]

RayStorm came out on the Saturn too. The title of the thread says PS1 Exclusive, but you mention just making a list of 3D PS1 Shmups, so not too sure if you want to keep it on the list or not. If so, then yeah, it's out on the Saturn too

[retr0gamer]

It's in the rulebreakers section and the Saturn port is kind of garbage. Raystorm also got a PC port.

[Ace Whatever]

Apr 3, 2018 10:13:42 GMT -5 Bumpyroad said:

you just have to pick out the 3D ones.

Yes, the purpose of this thread is more or less that.

Apr 3, 2018 10:17:31 GMT -5 akumajobelmont said:

RayStorm came out on the Saturn too. The title of the thread says PS1 Exclusive, but you mention just making a list of 3D PS1 Shmups, so not too sure if you want to keep it on the list or not.

That's why I added the "or contemporary console" clause to the rules because I didn't want to leave Thunder Force V out of the list. The Ray games already didn't count because they came out on Arcade first.

[klausien]

IS: Internal Section

Edit: Doh! Already there.

Extra Bright

[Ace Whatever]

Forgot about that one. In it goes!


EDIT: Added another one I forgot. Anyone care to argue against Retro Force?

[edmonddantes]

Is Galaxian^3 even a shmup? I recall reading somewhere that it was an FMV rail shooter, unless I'm getting it mixed up with something else.

[Ace Whatever]

It was originally some kind of theme park ride which then became an arcade game. I don't know how the original ride played, but for the purpose of this thread rail shooters count as shmups. Galaxian^3 doesn't fulfill all the conditions because it has a triple offense of being a port, first person only and only having 3D for the enemies.