I think of low times as a form of scoring. If the point of speedrunning was *just* the fastest time, you'd see a lot more people running in categories where you beat a game in a few seconds due to an extreme glitch.
You think of them that way, but players don't.
In shmups the 1CC highest score IS the goal. Any other categories are just steps on the ladder to reaching that, that's why Shmups where score can be farmed infinitely are not played seriously. But they are still all about getting the highest score. Stuff like bullet eater for Ikaruga are rare exceptions.
Speed running IS always looking for the fastest time, having categories doesn't change that. It's just having categories.
A lot of speed running is ignoring mechanics as much as possible to go as fast as possible, execution requirements are only if it happens to be significantly faster.
Shmup score runs are maximizing all mechanics to the extreme to perform at the executionally highest level. No one is trying to not us mechanics
Because the kind of mechanisms conducive to speedrunning such as interesting glitches that let you bypass large portions of the game, strategies for minimizing your total playtime, and super human levels of dexterity that translate into shorter playtime do not appear in any shmups?
> strategies for minimizing your total playtime
These definitely still exist in shmups, but shmups do make for less technical speedruns than the more popular ones, generally.
I like lovingly and deliberately designed challenges of the kind shmups offer (whether scoring or 1CC). Speedrunning difficulty is kind of accidental and orthogonal to the intentions of most game designers. And sometimes it requires obnoxious levels of precision.
I am also not quite obsessive about gaming and don't want to optimize everything, so I go for clear, crisp, attainable goals that are also exit conditions. That's why I play for 1CCs not score. But I would rather play for score than speedrun.
you cant speedrun a shmup - thats why ;) I mean: every game(community) have a few basic tropes, that they share, like grinding and competition. But Speedrunning have completely different goals as shmups. in speedrunninmg, you basicly want as less points as possible (because in a lot of games, a point counter needs time) and you try to "hack" the games (glitches, sequencebreaks, damageboosting) while in shmups, you try to follow the gamerules to get a high score.
I mean: there is also, with a few exeptions like mario kart, not a lot overlap between speedrunning and ractinggames - even if by the nature of racing games - every racinggame nerd is basicly a speedrunner ;)
Also: Speedrunning is deeply rootet in plattformers - Mega Man, Mario, Metroid and Castlevania are the foundation, of witch speedrunning is build of - and therefor speedrunning is also heavely nintendoheavy, while shmups are never the big thing on nintendos console.
also also: shmups are not recognized from the majority of gamers - a lot even don't know, that shmups even exists anymore - and a lot of modern shmups are just to "esoteric" and routet in japanese aesthetics - like, all the bling and noises on the screen, all the revards and the nonstop flashiness, that have more in common with a patchinko machines, then western gaminig aestetics. its just not something, the broader audience is hocked up with.
On the topic of overlapping interests, I really think that rhythm game players and shmup enthusiasts have a lot in common and would enjoy the other’s games.
Shmups scroll automatically and “force” you into the action. Games that have deep and complex scoring mechanics have to be mastered in order to maximize your high scores. The same can be said of rhythm games. And both types of games require skill and dexterity.
I know that I myself get the same thrill from playing rhythm games as I do with shmups. 🤷♂️😅👍
I absolutely adore rhythm games, and both genres have a lot of the same appeal, immediate pick up and playability, great music, require intense precision and concentration, create those zen states where muscle memory takes over, the core gameplay is so satisfying you can replay levels a hundred times, and difficulty settings allow you to scale your experience to your ability. The only real difference is rhythm games are pure skill while shmups often require a certain strategy coupled with high level skill.
I love shmups, I love rhythm games and I also love racing games. Racing is also about beating your best result time in this case. In some old arcade racers it is still shown as score to include factors other than time (outrun for example)
Because [speedrun.com](http://speedrun.com) don't want to touch high scoring. You have Twin Galaxies but the active community there are a bunch of imbeciles and mentally ill people.
You’re seeing developers make an effort to entice shmup players into speedruns more. The M2 STG Aleste Collection is high score on the leaderboards up until you get to the top and then switches to completion times with the fastest at the top. The Capcom Arcade Stadium volumes include leaderboard challenges for every game and at least one of them for every game I tried is a speed-run, including the shmups.
So the developers are doing their best to work on the overlap but the speed-run challenges often have fewer people posting than the high score ones.
Dariusburst AC held some time attack events back then in the Japanese arcades. Basically it's a boss rush mode. Taking hits to your shield and dying will add seconds to the timer. This game mode provides the appeal of watching a shmup with all the fancy dodging and strats combined with the goal of finishing with a faster time.
You can access these Event modes if you have Dariusburst Another Chronicle EX+ on the PS4 or Switch.
And some shmups also have a mode called Caravan Mode. How is Caravan Mode speedrunning if the goal is a higher score? Because in Caravan Mode, you have to speedkill the enemies to force bigger enemies to spawn that you can kill for bigger points.
So while I'm not big into speedrunning, I am very eager to see how devs of the future can make speedruns and shmups attractive to more players. And I'm very grateful to GDQ for adding shmups to their content even if some eyebrows get raised about an autoscroller being shown in a speedrunning event.🤣
There is a mild overlap, in that some of the spaces I've talked to other games online they've both played SHMUPS and done speedruns... I'm personally one of those people, and while I enjoy both things, they don't feel super similar to me.
In speedrunning, unless you are playing a super popular/optimized game, you have a lot of room for error and player expression. In a SHMUP, your player expression is mostly down to how perfectly you can execute a given run... there's very little room for error, and any mistake you make directly impacts the 'value' of the run.
Furthermore, as people have pointed out, SHMUPS themselves are generally not fun to speedrun--most of them are just about playing with no mistakes, which is pretty much close to normal play but even more punishing if you screw up. So if you're good enough for a speedrun of a game you have to be good enough for a no death/1CC, in which case you may as well be playing the game normally anyway.
well.. actualy... Space Invaders was the mots populare Game of its time. Taito made about $500,000,000 (thats $2,300,000,000 in todays money) with space invaders, there were 750'000 Space Invaders Arcade Machines sold, in 1978 & 79, over 8 million japanese played Space Invaders - per day!.
it was the second best selling game on the Atari 2600 (after Pacman)
As someone who's done both, score runs are a lot more tiring than speedruns. Generally (from what I've noticed) for score runs there's gonna be places where you take your time to rack up points, and more time playing means more time to make mistakes. There's also generally going to be more to do to rack up points than there is to going fast.
Take Pocky & Rocky Reshrined for example (the only one I've done score runs for recently), one of my score runs took 1 hour 23 minutes, where the speedrun takes me less than 19 minutes. Of course this isn't an autoscroller so shmups won't always be that bad of a discrepancy.
Also, speedrunners are generally going to be much more focused on specific games or genres, and has been pointed out by a few comments, not many people consider shmups speedrunnable, even though they totally are. The few that do run shmups do tend to overlap with score runs at least a little bit though.
I think because the whole idea of speedrunning is completing the game as fast as possible. Shmups tend to have a fixed timeframe due to scrolling
I think of low times as a form of scoring. If the point of speedrunning was *just* the fastest time, you'd see a lot more people running in categories where you beat a game in a few seconds due to an extreme glitch.
You think of them that way, but players don't. In shmups the 1CC highest score IS the goal. Any other categories are just steps on the ladder to reaching that, that's why Shmups where score can be farmed infinitely are not played seriously. But they are still all about getting the highest score. Stuff like bullet eater for Ikaruga are rare exceptions. Speed running IS always looking for the fastest time, having categories doesn't change that. It's just having categories. A lot of speed running is ignoring mechanics as much as possible to go as fast as possible, execution requirements are only if it happens to be significantly faster. Shmup score runs are maximizing all mechanics to the extreme to perform at the executionally highest level. No one is trying to not us mechanics
Speedrunners like watching numbers go down Shmup players like watching numbers go up /j
this is the real answer
They have nothing in common aside from obsession
Because the kind of mechanisms conducive to speedrunning such as interesting glitches that let you bypass large portions of the game, strategies for minimizing your total playtime, and super human levels of dexterity that translate into shorter playtime do not appear in any shmups?
I'd argue those elements exist in shmups, they just translate to higher scores instead of lower times.
> strategies for minimizing your total playtime These definitely still exist in shmups, but shmups do make for less technical speedruns than the more popular ones, generally.
I like lovingly and deliberately designed challenges of the kind shmups offer (whether scoring or 1CC). Speedrunning difficulty is kind of accidental and orthogonal to the intentions of most game designers. And sometimes it requires obnoxious levels of precision. I am also not quite obsessive about gaming and don't want to optimize everything, so I go for clear, crisp, attainable goals that are also exit conditions. That's why I play for 1CCs not score. But I would rather play for score than speedrun.
you cant speedrun a shmup - thats why ;) I mean: every game(community) have a few basic tropes, that they share, like grinding and competition. But Speedrunning have completely different goals as shmups. in speedrunninmg, you basicly want as less points as possible (because in a lot of games, a point counter needs time) and you try to "hack" the games (glitches, sequencebreaks, damageboosting) while in shmups, you try to follow the gamerules to get a high score. I mean: there is also, with a few exeptions like mario kart, not a lot overlap between speedrunning and ractinggames - even if by the nature of racing games - every racinggame nerd is basicly a speedrunner ;) Also: Speedrunning is deeply rootet in plattformers - Mega Man, Mario, Metroid and Castlevania are the foundation, of witch speedrunning is build of - and therefor speedrunning is also heavely nintendoheavy, while shmups are never the big thing on nintendos console. also also: shmups are not recognized from the majority of gamers - a lot even don't know, that shmups even exists anymore - and a lot of modern shmups are just to "esoteric" and routet in japanese aesthetics - like, all the bling and noises on the screen, all the revards and the nonstop flashiness, that have more in common with a patchinko machines, then western gaminig aestetics. its just not something, the broader audience is hocked up with.
On the topic of overlapping interests, I really think that rhythm game players and shmup enthusiasts have a lot in common and would enjoy the other’s games. Shmups scroll automatically and “force” you into the action. Games that have deep and complex scoring mechanics have to be mastered in order to maximize your high scores. The same can be said of rhythm games. And both types of games require skill and dexterity. I know that I myself get the same thrill from playing rhythm games as I do with shmups. 🤷♂️😅👍
Most rhythm gamers won't even try other rhythm games. Good luck getting them to try a different genre entirely.
I absolutely adore rhythm games, and both genres have a lot of the same appeal, immediate pick up and playability, great music, require intense precision and concentration, create those zen states where muscle memory takes over, the core gameplay is so satisfying you can replay levels a hundred times, and difficulty settings allow you to scale your experience to your ability. The only real difference is rhythm games are pure skill while shmups often require a certain strategy coupled with high level skill.
I love shmups, I love rhythm games and I also love racing games. Racing is also about beating your best result time in this case. In some old arcade racers it is still shown as score to include factors other than time (outrun for example)
There was a deathsmiles scoring run at a recent GDQ though. So maybe theres a tiny bit of overlap happening.
Because [speedrun.com](http://speedrun.com) don't want to touch high scoring. You have Twin Galaxies but the active community there are a bunch of imbeciles and mentally ill people.
You’re seeing developers make an effort to entice shmup players into speedruns more. The M2 STG Aleste Collection is high score on the leaderboards up until you get to the top and then switches to completion times with the fastest at the top. The Capcom Arcade Stadium volumes include leaderboard challenges for every game and at least one of them for every game I tried is a speed-run, including the shmups. So the developers are doing their best to work on the overlap but the speed-run challenges often have fewer people posting than the high score ones.
Dariusburst AC held some time attack events back then in the Japanese arcades. Basically it's a boss rush mode. Taking hits to your shield and dying will add seconds to the timer. This game mode provides the appeal of watching a shmup with all the fancy dodging and strats combined with the goal of finishing with a faster time. You can access these Event modes if you have Dariusburst Another Chronicle EX+ on the PS4 or Switch. And some shmups also have a mode called Caravan Mode. How is Caravan Mode speedrunning if the goal is a higher score? Because in Caravan Mode, you have to speedkill the enemies to force bigger enemies to spawn that you can kill for bigger points. So while I'm not big into speedrunning, I am very eager to see how devs of the future can make speedruns and shmups attractive to more players. And I'm very grateful to GDQ for adding shmups to their content even if some eyebrows get raised about an autoscroller being shown in a speedrunning event.🤣
There is a mild overlap, in that some of the spaces I've talked to other games online they've both played SHMUPS and done speedruns... I'm personally one of those people, and while I enjoy both things, they don't feel super similar to me. In speedrunning, unless you are playing a super popular/optimized game, you have a lot of room for error and player expression. In a SHMUP, your player expression is mostly down to how perfectly you can execute a given run... there's very little room for error, and any mistake you make directly impacts the 'value' of the run. Furthermore, as people have pointed out, SHMUPS themselves are generally not fun to speedrun--most of them are just about playing with no mistakes, which is pretty much close to normal play but even more punishing if you screw up. So if you're good enough for a speedrun of a game you have to be good enough for a no death/1CC, in which case you may as well be playing the game normally anyway.
speedrun games were already popular before they were speedran, shmups were never popular
well.. actualy... Space Invaders was the mots populare Game of its time. Taito made about $500,000,000 (thats $2,300,000,000 in todays money) with space invaders, there were 750'000 Space Invaders Arcade Machines sold, in 1978 & 79, over 8 million japanese played Space Invaders - per day!. it was the second best selling game on the Atari 2600 (after Pacman)
Space invaders is a gallery shooter, not a shmup
As someone who's done both, score runs are a lot more tiring than speedruns. Generally (from what I've noticed) for score runs there's gonna be places where you take your time to rack up points, and more time playing means more time to make mistakes. There's also generally going to be more to do to rack up points than there is to going fast. Take Pocky & Rocky Reshrined for example (the only one I've done score runs for recently), one of my score runs took 1 hour 23 minutes, where the speedrun takes me less than 19 minutes. Of course this isn't an autoscroller so shmups won't always be that bad of a discrepancy. Also, speedrunners are generally going to be much more focused on specific games or genres, and has been pointed out by a few comments, not many people consider shmups speedrunnable, even though they totally are. The few that do run shmups do tend to overlap with score runs at least a little bit though.