Whoa, it’s been a while. After a rather busy month and a half of travel (went to Ohio and California over the holidays, then back to Ohio this week), lots of writing and work, I’ve finally calmed down a little bit. Throughout this time, however, I’ve been diving back into gaming, trying out a few new games, playing some that I hadn’t looked at in quite a while, and finally exploring Xbox Live Arcade a little.

One game genre I’ve been enjoying a lot lately has been the shooter — I frankly had never played many of these beyond the old classic standbys of my youth (Space Invaders, Galaga) and had, with the exception of Treasure’s amazingly hard Ikaruga, basically tried none of them. Recently, I’ve become interested in them again, and am slowly poking my way through a number of different games in this genre.

First, with the Xbox, I downloaded Galaga (yes, the original; easy achievements and I still love the game after 28 years). I also got Galaga Legions, the modern shmup style shooter version of the original. Here’s a beginning of a walkthrough:

Now, some of you know that I’m always going to be a sucker for anything Galaga-related, but I think I love Galaga Legions for a few of the specific ways it brings an old game player like myself into what can be a very disconcerting, alienating game genre.

Legions maintains the same general visual style, including the multiple-turret/multiple-ship mechanic of the original game, but flipping it — instead of having to pick up multiple ships (and sacrifice a ship in the process), here the main ship drops off turrets temporarily at any point on the screen (and aiming in any direction). Similarly, the game reverses another aspect of the original Galaga — instead of the Galagas capturing one of your ships, you can shoot this swirly ball thing to capture a number of their ships, and create a crazy swarm. It’s recognizably Galaga, but the simple tweaking of a few of the game’s core mechanics yields a ton of new possibilities.

Also, if you haven’t already figured it out, I’m a sucker for fun, modernized remakes of classic games. I’ve recently been poking around with Space Invaders Extreme which is absolutely phenomenal:

Again, taking a (the?) basic shooter and updating it so it works in 2008, tropes from a number of games over the years are incorporated into the basic Space Invaders iconography. Check out the video above, it’s quite fun, fast-paced and available for the DS and the PSP.

The heavy emphasis on music in Space Invaders Extreme in particular reminds me how much these kinds of games really feel like rhythm games (which, I suppose, Rez is the ultimate expression of, at least so far). I’ve long heard that expert Ikaruga players think in terms of rhythm of button presses (changing from Black to White, I suppose) and motion on the screen — what’s the best metaphor for expert play in a game like this, something like dance? Anyone know of any academic literatures which rely on dance metaphors to understand gameplay? In terms of games like World of Warcraft — and raiding in particular — it seems that these metaphors might have some kind of traction in terms of developing methods for understanding how expert play works in these spaces.

Speaking of Ikaruga, look what I found at the thrift for $2.50 last week!

The plastic in the frame is all scuffed and bent, but I’ll replace it with a sheet of real glass. Note that this is for the Naomi GD-ROM, a SEGA (I think) arcade version of the game. How in the world would this poster end up in a thrift store in Madison, Wisconsin? I wonder if it’s a remnant of the last arcade on UW’s campus? Regardless, it’s now mine and is going to look pretty in my office.

Finally, speaking of retro shooters and Ikaruga, I’ve been forced to download a ROM (gasp) for Radiant Silvergun, Treasure’s earlier shooter — Ikaruga is, in some ways, a sequel to RS. However, I can’t seem to find a good Sega Saturn emulator that will play it in OSX. Anyone have any suggestions? I’m dying to try it out, but am so far barred by the old abandonware problem of not having an emulator that will run it.

In other, happier news, it looks like a group in the UK is working on a general solution to this problem. But, until then, any suggestions? Are there good Saturn emulators that I can burn for the Dreamcast (formerly my favorite emulating machine)?