jpj wrote:the thing for me when talking about treasure, and silvergun/ikaruga/gradius v is that they were masterminded by a guy (hiroshi iuchi) who had, until then, worked as a pixel artist, drawing background graphics with konami and treasure. he is the ultimate shooter fan, an obsolute obsessive. and he was so determined to make his own shooter that he quit treasure in the hope of doing it. and when no company he approached had any interest in releasing a 2D game (especially a 2D arcade game - this was 1997 after all), treasure brought him back and said if it means that much, he can direct and make his own shooter. and thus radiant silvergun was born. considering this was his first attempt at the genre, i think he did an amazing job. perhaps even over-ambitious. i can't think of any other shmup developer who have released a game as good as this on their first attempt. and obviously ikaruga was only his second entry into the genre. i think he's done a great job all things considered. his passion for shooters is amazing, and i think you can feel that in his games. he drew most of the backgrounds in silvergun one pixel at a time.
Fun fact: That is the thread in which I got banned from that forum. The entire forum pretty much gangs up on me in that thread. This is why I made Insomnia, it was impossible to promote good thinking about games on any other site, and I was getting banned from places left and right. A few people in each place appreciated me, but the moderators would be flooded with requests to ban me from everyone else—and most often even the moderators would hate me. Then ten years down the line I created a philosophy that champions mass extermination lol. Once you realize that witch hunts are homo sapiens’ default response to superiority there’s really no other solution.