Zen-Ichi

http://mna.net/equinox/
 

Zen-Ichi is a manic shooter. Think about Battle Garegga for the rank control and Dodonpachi for the colorful bullets. Here's an overview of the game system by Iaspis and shoe-sama. It's quoted from the shmup forum.

"It's a decent looking shmup, focusing mainly on gameplay.
In the beginning, you have 3 types of craft to choose from, each with its own main weapon that can be powered up a bit by collecting certain pick ups. The game starts on the easy side but evenyually gets pretty manic, which is fine by me.
The main trick of the game is to harvest as many blue crystals as you can, filling the upper crystal meter, so that you may either replenish your one-hit shield (in case you lost it), or have the chance to enter super harvest mode, where you can collect purple crystals (instead of blue) that fill up your bomb meter, thus gain more bombs. Bullet scratching also fills your bomb meter but at a very slow rate.
The weak point of the game is sprite design. The ships look blury and a bit choppy, which can't be good. The backgrounds are a bit monotonous too, The weak point of the game is sprite design. The ships look blury and a bit choppy, which can't be good. The backgrounds are a bit monotonous too, but hey, that was the case in ChoRenSha (which still rocks) wasn't it? Still, the gameplay makes up for these drawbacks in my oppinion. What do you think of it?"

"1) quickshots to increase rate for end of stage bonus, bomb and fever distribution for items, special requirements for spawning certain enemies 
2) lol uh you need to take hits (during fever lowers rank most iirc) for rank control to make stage 4 and 5 scoring (and survival, having max lives is also good for scoring lol) a lot more manageable of course expert mode gets rid of rank control entirely, since hits = death"

It's available for free during a limited time as a 10 year anniversary gift. If you got a 503 error wait a bit and retry.

Life Fortress Volcabamba

When playing Volcabamba for the first time you may think this is another oldschool shooter made to look like a MSX 1 Gradius game. You may be right but not entirely ...

This game is an hybrid between The classic Konami game, Hellfire by Toaplan and W Double Ring by Naxat Soft.

TranscendPang

A hardcore Pang style shooting game !

Many characters to choose, each one with his own special skill.

Lots of game modes and a weird but cool setting.

Moreover it's a bilingual english/japanese game with a full english tutorial !

There's an italian review on http://www.idealsoftblog.it.

Seicro-X-Cross

An april fool joke game : a sequel to Seicross !

Home Page

Download

Endless Alice Crysys

Formerly a paid doujin game, it's now freeware !

Home Page

Download : click one of the square below "alicry_v100.zip (14.0MB)"

EX -extra-

If you like Ketsui, you'll probably like this shmup too, enough said.

Developers' Blog

Download

Bullet Hell !

Bullet Hell ! is a very polished danmaku shmup.

There are the 2 classics shot types : wide and focused.
When you power up with the P item you get either fixed modules shooting straight ahead for the first one or auto aiming for the second one.
There's the slow button with concentrated shot and visible hitbox on the player.
The 3rd button shoot an Ikaruga style auto aiming laser (MP).

Lethal Application

You're a girl who needs to go up. The only

way to do it is shooting down. If you want to go left you need to shoot right and vice versa. If you go to the right part of the screen you're transfering to the left. If you're too slow you will be electrocuted by some horizontal electric wire, which is slowly going up, and loose some life. That's it ! Great gameplay, great level design and fast paced, you will be addicted !

Red Killer 2nd Age

Red Killer 2nd Age is a shmup clearly based on the Siter Kain ones. It looks like a Reflex clone but there's no reflection system. There's a front beam, which gauge depletes when used and slowly resplenishes when not used, but that's all. The standard shot is a 7 ways shot: it aims at every angle minus the back. There are no power ups at all.

Monolith

Monolith is quite an interesting platformer.

Game play has nothing different from many platformers : a jump button, a shoot button/run button and some weapons items too. But there's 3D.

Chibi Shooting

Chibi Shooting is a nice oldschool shmup, just slightly updated with some manic shootings and a ship with a small hitbox. Apart from the normal shot there's a boost button to escape tricky situations. The latter is charged by destroying enemies. When boosting you're invincible and destroy any enemy in contact with the ship.

There are 20 zones and each one is divided in 3 parts (A, B, C). Depending which enemy you destroyed last in zone A and B change the enemies in the zone C named "Counter Attack".
When a shooting star appear on screen it means you have been too slow to kill all the enemies and they shoot more aggressively. The faster you clear the waves, the more bonus points you get. Finally there are extends each 50000 points.

To sum it up it's a cross between Nomltest and Cosmo Gang the Video !

If you want to play with a joypad or a joystick you can use a program like joytokey.

Download
Home Page

3 Days Shooting

3 Days Shooting is an horizontal shmup scrolling from right to left !


You've got a life gauge (3), so there's no instant death but there's only one life.
There's an overheat gauge (4), so sometimes you need to stop shooting for a second or two.
There are only 3 buttons used : shoot, anchor shot and select skill to level up.
There are 2 characters to choose, each one with a different set of weapons.

Chokotto DiaRunba

Chokotto DiaRunba is an original action puzzle game. You character is always walking to the right of the screen. You must move the platforms in order to avoid the enemies and to destroy them by combining two, like the blobs in Puyo Puyo and many puzzlers. Of course any contact with them is fatal.

Download
Home Page

Progressive Front

Progressive Front is a 2d overhead vs shmup fighting game.

Download
Promotional Video

Silver Knights

Silver Knights is a mech 3d fighting game. There are many modes availables and network play too ! Most people consider it much better than Bootfighter Windom XP SP-2.

Download
Japanese manual
English forum

Gigantic Gear

Gigantic Gear is another fine 3d graphics/2d play field mech action game.

Download

Varia

Varia is a vertical shmup with gradius style power ups.

Home Page

Bootfighter Windom XP SP-2

Bootfighter Windom XP SP-2 is a Virtual On mech versus fighting game with net play.

English Version
Japanese Home Page

Nezumiman

Nezumiman is a classic Rockman/Megaman platformer where you play a rat !

Home Page and download

Inyou Douji Monogatari

Inyou Douji Monogatari is a puzzle platformer game.

You control a warrior with 3 main abilities : fly, slash a sword, and push objects. The gameplay is very similar to Gargoyle's Quest, except you have a sword. The goal of each stage is to pass the exit door. Between stages, when a there's a new enemy, a new type of block or a new condition to open the door, some nice animations play.
The difficulty is well adjusted. If you hit an enemy you lose a life and return to the map where you can practice stages already beaten. The save feature is really useful. There you can collect items previously missed such as extra life and experience. Each stage needs a different strategy to reach the door but, as it is timed, you need to think quickly while slashing the enemy, avoiding them and jumping tightly. The stage design could have been made by Treasure (of bangaio and Radiant Silvergun fame).