Horizonal or Vertical shooters?

[Like the hat?]

I refuse to call them "shmups"

If given the choice, would you rather play a horizontal shooter like R-Type or Gradius, or a vertical shooter like Aero Fighters? Or are you a Zaxxon fan, preferring isometric?

What are some of your favorite (preferably non bullet hell) shooters?

 

[RM8]

Not a fan of wasting 50% of the screen, myself.

 

[Garrison]

Vertical is more my thing but I can play a horizontal one just fine.

 

[John Rabbit]

Por que no los dos?

 

[Deleted member 35987]

Vertizontal

 

[CielYoshi]

Vertical all the way

 

[DECK’ARD]

Favourite shoot em ups:

Horizontal:
R-Type
Gate Of Thunder
Lords Of Thunder
Gradius V
Parodius

Vertical:
Radiant Silvergun
Nexzr
Star Parodier

Horizontal just edges it.

 

[Vitet]

Parodius, R-Type, UN Squadron, Blazing Star...
I guess I'm an horizontal guy

 

[mindsale]

Ikaruga is vertical? Vertical.

 

[1upsuper]

In general I prefer horizontal. Gradius and Parodius are my favorite shmup series, and Darius and R-Type are great too. A number of my all time favorite shmups are verticals though.

 

[JustinH]

I prefer vertical, but I don't hate horizontal shooters or anything like that.

I'm not good at any of them, but I guess my favorite shooters would be the 360 Dodonpachi games. I guess Raiden IV and V weren't really bullet-hell shooters and I liked those, too.

Darius Gaiden is a lot of fun to play too, on the horizontal side. My love for that game might be mostly from the soundtrack, though.

 

[Cymbal Head]

Vertical feels so much more natural to me. I actually have a hard time playing horizontal shooters.

 

[Chopchop]

I like a bunch of side scrolling ones, but somehow my brain parses vertical shooters better.

 

[halcali]

I can hardly stand horizontal shooters, but some are quite fun and fair.

Vertical is like a frenzied dream to me. RAIDEN DX and MUSHIHIME-SAMA FUTARI 1.5 are the best examples.

 

[Jedi2016]

I grew up with the verticals. No school like the old school.

 

[Craig Majaski]

Horizontal all the way. Gate of Thunder is one of my faves.

 

[MADSUPERVILLAIN]

I don't mind horizontal shooters, but all my favourites are vertical.

 

[OgTheEnigma]

Vertical doesn't really make sense anymore with widescreen tvs, however it's very well suited for phones now.

 

[Rickenslacker]

I've always preferred vertical, I guess horizontal ones trigger some auto-scrolling platformer level response in my brain that makes me instinctively dislike them.

 

[CurseVox]

vertical all the way!!

 

[Dunan]

I like old-school vertical, but variety is good. In particular I'd like to see more variation in which horizontal direction they go in; it feels like 90% of horizontal shooters go from left to right.

 

[Spring-Loaded]

Why not all directions

philosoma

 

[El Crono]

My favorite shooters are:

1. Einhänder.
2. Axelay.
3. Ikaruga.

So I have to say horizontal.

 

[mrbogus]

Thunder Force III, R-TYPE, and Darius Gaiden round out my top three shooters so I'm gonna say horizontal is my preferred type.

 

[JershJopstin]

I think I'm more of a verti myself

 

[Palazzo]

I tend to like vertical more. Pure bullet-dodging games tend to grab me more than ones with significant environmental navigation, although I love games from both subgenres.

 

[TalonJH]

Vertical if I'm a ship or some other craft, horizontal (or isometri) when playing as something walking.

 

[CamberGreber]

All my Favs are Vertical unless where where talking about Pro-Gear and if where talking about Pro-Gear....hmmmmm.

My favorite is 19XX if just for those boss fights.

 

[ThorHammerstein]

I enjoy a good number of vertical and horizontal shooters. It's the isometric ones that I have difficulty with on occasion, like Viewpoint or Xaxxon.

 

[hongcha]

I refuse to call them "shmups"

Click to shrink...

Hear, hear! I refer to them as 2D shooters or the Japanese abbreviation "STG" (< "ShooTing Game").

As for the question in your OP, I really prefer vertical shooters. I've played a lot of horizontal ones, but I never really enjoy them as much as the vertical ones. I love Ikaruga and a lot of the Cave games.

 

[Virtua Sanus]

I was going to say that I do not have a preference, but it all depends on the presentation. Faster games seem to work better vertically whereas the more character-focused, level design oriented ones work better horizontally. I love too many games in both styles to really pick.

It is weird to imagine how relatively uncommon isometric shooters are now that OP brings them up though. I would love to see more myself.

 

[KDR_11k]

Definitely horizontal since our screens default to wider than tall. There's nothing really forcing games to have horizontal shmups be in the side view rather than top down with the camera rotated.

 

[gnexus]

Vertical. Hell, even better if the game supports flipping the axis, so I can just rotate my monitor vertically and play the game just as God intended.

 

[Deleted member 17210]

I like the rail shooter perspective most even though there isn't as much quantity of good stuff as the others. I guess I have a slight preference for horizontal over vertical but it still mostly varies by game.

 

[Eternalgamer]

Not a fan of wasting 50% of the screen, myself.

Click to shrink...

This is a good point for modern shooters. Horizontal on a modern tv gives you way more real estate for navigation.

 

[| TrusT |]

Both

Go and play Border Down. The best hori.

 

[GamerJM]

For some reason, I WAY prefer vertical. Shmups being horizontal have straight up killed my enjoyment of a game before.

 

[AzorAhai]

Spoiler: Resoguntal

cylindrical

Which is kinda like horizontal buch much better my friends.

 

[turbobrick]

I like the old horizontal ones over vertical. Not really a fan of the newer bullet hell stuff, which I think is all vertical anyway

 

[Gelf]

More into horizontal, if nothing else it seems like more of that type focus on level design and not just a screen full of bullet hell. I'm terrible at playing any of them regardless.

My real preference though is the much rarer flying into the screen rail shooter perspective like Afterburner or Space Harrier.

 

[cowbanana]

Both. Sub-genre is more important to me. I hate bullet hell, but love most other shooters.

 

[Sword Familiar]

I much prefer the horizontal ones.

 

[pswii60]

Maybe I lean slightly towards vertical.

There are just so many classics from 1943 to Mars Matrix to Xenon 2 Megablast...

But there's also awesome horizontal stuff, not just the obvious like R Type but also..

 

[noinspiration]

Blazing Lazers is vertical, so vertical.

 

[Teenage Fansub]

Not a fan of wasting 50% of the screen, myself.

Click to shrink...

Tip yer TV over.

 

[wafflebrain]

I prefer vertical almost always, yet Progear is probably my favorite shmup :P

 

[Devilgunman]

Vertical tate mode is the only way I want to play Shmups. I've been itching to make a vertical arcade cabinet for awhile now.

 

[Pellaidh]

Vertical > Horizontal > Widescreen Vertical (i.e. Jamestown)

I'm just more used to dodging left/right than up/down. On keyboard in particular up/down doesn't really work unless you rebind your keys.

 

[Voyevoda]

NieR Automata: "Yes."