Danmaku Shooter Guide

As a final project for one of my courses, I wrote a guide that explains basic patterns and strategies for danmaku shooters. I picked the subject because I’ve been meaning to put together something like this for a while now, and also because I know a few people online who would be interested in reading something like this. I’ve repackaged a copy of it to be put up here. It’s in PDF format.

Link is here.

It didn’t come out as well as I would’ve liked, but hopefully some people will still find it helpful.

Screw you again, Cave.

The last boss in Mushihimesama Ultra mode (not surprisingly) ridiculous. On top of the patterns themselves, this boss has a shield that not only renders him/her/it immune to bombs, but also fires a huge and fast spread of additional bullets at you if you shoot the boss while this shield is up. And this shield goes up every time you bomb or die, and stays up long enough for whatever bullet pattern is in play to re-fill the screen before fading. So not only are your bombs reduced to minimally effective bullet removal devices, but you also have to stop shooting every time you die or bomb, and keep a loose eye on the top of the screen to know when to start shooting again. And I haven’t found a “slow” button in this game yet so I have to no-focus everything while I wait.

I’ve played shooters for years on and off, and I think I have a pretty good grasp of how to handle most given patterns that aren’t entirely memory-based. Even if something is exceedingly difficult, I at least have an idea of what to do in it – it’s more a matter of execution than understanding. But any trick this last pattern has only seems to last half a second at best. After that, I think you just have to think faster, react faster, and at a much more minute level than anything I’ve done before.

Forcing my brain to come up with a way to navigate it feels like trying to run Crysis on a 486.