Everything about Hydorah screams "awesome."
Yeah, the game itself rocks, and I'm not just saying that because A) it's an indie and B) for some insane reason, it's free. Locomalito pumped three years into this bad boy, and it shows. What's more, high-res posters, box art, and even an instruction manual were created for Hydorah; this is how you win my heart.
To paint you a picture of what we're dealing with here, the developer compares the game to "Gradius, Castlevania, or R-Type" and "other classics treated worse by the time: Turrican, Enforcer, Space Manbow, Hellfire, Guardian, Hydefos, and Armalyte." I don't even know what some of those are!
"Think of this game as a bastard son of the classics: it has the genes, but it's not a clone of one or other. It has a lot of original content, so I hope you understand my intentions when you also notice something familiar with the old times." Oh, we do (we do, right guys?).
On a good year, I play, oh, three or so new shmups; my pride can only take so much torture, you know. From what little of Hydorah I have managed to fumble through, I'm ecstatic this is one of the lucky few I'll get around to playing -- really playing -- this year. You should do the same.
Freeware Game Pick: Hydorah (Locomalito) [IndieGames]
Contest:
10:30 PM on 06.04.2010 | 
One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn't belong.
http://www.locomalito.com/filosofia.php
"If you fought the Bydo and shooted the Bacterians in the core, you are ready for the war against the evil god Hydorah. Choose the path to follow and fight planet by planet against hordes of meroptians. The game features lots of short and intense levels with fantasy spacial landscapes, unlockable weapons and secrets, and a large library of enemies and bosses. There is a single dificulty level, based on the 80's standards. It can be very hard, but with every beaten level there will come the glory.
Graphics and playability are both old school style, simple but hard polished. I want to give an special mention to the original soundtrack, composed exclusively by the brilliant Gryzor87, who has not hesitated in taking legendary synthesizers to create a retrofuturistic, powerful and sometimes dark soundtrack. Each level has a same-lenght track, composed to fit the visuals like a glove.
The whole game takes obvious influence from Gradius, Castlevania or R-Type, but also from other classics treated worse by the time: Turrican, Enforcer, Space Manbow, Hellfire, Guardian, Hydefos, Armalyte and many others...
Take the controls of your ship and prepare to die!"
Awesome!!!
Please post more of these games or can someone point me to an indie games blog thats tracks these:)?
I love how the announcer guy sounds like he's saying "TUBA!" when you get a turbo.
@Caffeine Knight - Damn, that guy really knows his shit. He named some of the most obscure SHMUPS I had never even heard of.
@Call Buster - Haha, that is funny. As soon as they started talking in the intro vid, I had to smile. The use of double dribbble speak in old games like this always fits perfectly.
I need to quit playing so many damned fighters and get back to SHMUPin' as I could see this one taking a while. For whatever reason I'm pretty terrible at the horizontal ones. I stumbled through the first few levels, very fun and very tricky levels you really have to learn from your mistakes at times.
no one ever mentions Lifeforce when talking about classic shmups. Blasphemy.
2 player co-op NES goodness. Those were the days...
Lifeforce was actually a spin-off of the Gradius series by the same people and included many elements that were included in future Gradius games.
I basically consider it to BE one of the Gradius games, just without the title.
http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29410&start=0
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