It's been 10 years already. All your base are belong to us

[MeshGearFox]

My favorite shmup is Darius Gaiden and then nothing else from that series was ever particularly good.

Also the music was amazing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt_Hml9N3w4&feature=related FUCK YES. And now I realize why The Knife is my favorite swedish band.

[SonicDeathMonkey]

lol those synths sound like they could be straight from The Knife. "Heartbeats" is prolly one of my fav songs ever, for the record.
I'd say The Knife is my favorite Swedish band if there wasn't such an irresponsible amount of great music from Sweden. I swear that has to be the most musically talented country per capita. I mean, just fuckin listen to The Tallest Man On Earth and tell me that's not Bob Dylan if Bob Dylan was Swedish and almost as good a lyricist and a way better guitarist than Bob Dylan is/was.

And for the record Under Defeat is lightyears ahead of any other shmup I've ever played (and I've played quite a few).

[MeshGearFox]

The only other Swedish bands I really know are like Dungen and Jens Lekman and I'm not really fond of either :( Especially in terms of Dungen after taking some Swedish classes it's really apparent that their lyrics are dopey as hell.

Oh, crazy story. I got into shmups when I was in like 7th grade (even though I guess zero wing happened when I was in 8th grade so basically time isn't happening linear for me or my memories are shit or whatever but what else is new !!!) and I had gone to chicago the summer after 7th grade and listened to the blue man group's show/got studio Album. Zero Wing presumably happened earlier. Fuck. Let's abort this.

So the whole AYB thing started when I was in 7th grade, basically, Zero Wing ended up getting me into shmups, branched out into Darius Gaiden for Windows and the R-Type DX thing for GBC, and so on. I was really enchanted with the whole technorganic/biomechanical thing. SORT of Gigerish but a lot more artificial and smooth than Giger. If you played R-Type that'll probably make sense. I remember being a bit creeped out by it when I first saw it when Nintendo Power did a spread on R-Type DX, but by that point I found it pretty cool*. I also remember thinking that Blue Man Group's music (saw their show in Chicago that year) would've been really appropriate for something like R-Type, given that it captured the biomechanical feel really well.

Pleasantly surprised, then, when R-Type Final's ending song was a BMG track. Less happy because it was something from the Complex and not, like, one Audio's tracks. Rod's and Cones would've been more appropriate in my eyes. Ears. I definitely mean ears. I AM A HUMAN AND DO NOT SEE MUSIC WITH DIFFERENT FACE ORGANS AT ALL. TOTALLY MADE OF HUMAN FLESHMEAT. YES.

* Fuck time passes different when you're young.

[SonicDeathMonkey]

Kinda sucks that the genre is so dead in the states. The games are fucking fun. Less and less of them get ported here even though they get more and more badass. It's kind of annoying to pay full price for a game that's damn near impossible to get past like the 4th level, though. That's why I think XBLA and PSN are a perfect format for these. I'd love to see the Dreamcast shmup library ported.

Also a bit annoying when it's hard to see stuff on a small TV screen. My roommate got a projector for Christmas, it's been crazy playing these on it. Triggerheart Exelica, Mars Matrix, Shikigami no Shiro 2, Border Down... so much fun especially 2-player.

[MeshGearFox]

Kinda sucks that the genre is so dead in the states.

Dude indie PC devs are in love with shmups. The commercial shmup scene is dead over here but there's TONS of freeware. check tigsource for some.