SHMUPtember 2026

 

During the month of September, I had the most inspired idea, why not do a themed gaming month? It's not like I don't already do this with October with Spooptober, and November with Nintember That would mean that a straight quarter of the year would be preoccupied with a certain subset of games. I suppose, the benefit of Nintember is that I play Nintendo developed games, which come in a variety of genres. Anyway, what was the plan for September? Well, it was to play Shoot-Em-Ups, or SHMUPs for short. It's one of those on paper good ideas, until I remember that SHMUPs are not a bread-and- butter gaming genre for me. Perhaps if this was Platformarch (Hey, that's an idea) or some other genre of games this task would not be as daunting as it was. Regardless, I decided to look around the vicinity of the beast, finding weird or interesting SHMUPs to play for a month. I am still testing the waters and whilst I could have played infamous games, like Ikaruga Gradius III or DoDonPachi I did still want to have my nerves, sanity and my Steam Deck intact for at least couple more years

Before we go any further, I just want to explain what Shoot-Em-Ups are, mostly for the uninitiated. I imagine most people who click through to read my journey probably have a much better understanding of SHMUPs than I do, so feel free to skip past this entry and head straight to the games because I will probably stun you with my overwhelming ignorance of the genre. The term Shoot-Em-Up is an umbrella term that encompasses many different gameplay styles where you navigate a character through a barrage of enemies and obstacles to eventually challenge an end-of-stage boss, rinse and repeat a number of times, increase the difficulty as stages progress until the end of the game. I would say that is, mechanically, the core of the genre. Flavour is typically added via the means of power-ups to your main weapon, alternative weapon pick-ups, screen clearing "bombs", manoeuvrability upgrades, etc. In my head, SHMUPs commonly come with a kind of brutal difficulty, where small mistakes can lead to untimely deaths, causing you to lose power-ups and be in an incredibly vulnerable state trying to rebuild your arsenal or you could just give up and let the game over come because the writing is on the wall. SHMUPs tend to be reasonably short, I would say the average SHMUP is no longer than 30 minutes from start to finish, this is mostly because of the intensity of action in these games and the level of focus required would be exhausting if the game went on for longer than an hour. Also, I say from start to finish, this assumes a reasonably clean run of the game, which could take hours to hit that level of game mastery. Most of that time will be spent memorising enemy formations, attack patterns and strategies for bosses. Due to the general flow and structure of these games, a common challenge is to beat the game without using a continue. This is called a 1CC or 1-Continue-Clear, this concept whilst at times just a personal goal/challenge for some, has been incorporated into some games as a requirement for players to get the game's true ending. For SHMUPtember I focussed primarily on the horizontal and vertical scrolling SHMUPs, but there are types of games that some might classify as part of the wider umbrella, such as the run-and-gun, multi-directional shooter, or the rail shooter. The latter I would personally put in a separate genre, but does still have the hallmarks I would associate with a SHMUP.

My initial hesitance to doing this themed month comes from a small degree of history with SHMUPs. Growing up, I admittedly didn't play many SHMUPs and depending on how we categorise them, I owned at best, three? Perhaps four? At a push. As a slight a tangent, do we class Star Fox as a SHMUP? That is Nintendo's Star Fox, not the Star Fox that came out for the Atari which allegedly prompted the European name for Star Fox be changed to Star Wing. If we discount Star Fox, the only SHMUP I can remember owning was an Americar import game, Space Megaforce, which is the western release of Super Aleste. I have a lot of love and nostalgia for Space Megaforce and it remains one of my favourite SHMUPs to this day, even after playing a whole bunch more recently. I had beaten the game a couple of times, but never pushed myself past the normal difficulty level, mostly because Aleste's more advanced difficulties add some interesting quirks. Another game that I have memories of, but never owned, was Biohazard Battle on the Sega Megadrive/Genesis. The western box art for that lives rent free in my head as pretty peak box art. 

 

 

As console generations advanced, I feel that the SHMUP genre became more niche, and my personal preferences shifted. Why would I buy lkaruga on the Game Cube when Rogue Leader was right there? So, we can jump forward about six or seven years when I entered my Weeb phase. I am rather upfront and derogatory when it comes to talking about this, it was a part of my life where I watched Anime and read Manga as a weird counter-culture protest, masking it behind a "curiosity" of my own personal heritage. For context, my grandmother on my mother's side was Japanese, making me a quarter Japanese, which is an excuse and very tenuous at best link to a culture and society I was becoming increasingly interested in. Anyway, during this time I became very interested in Doujinsoft, and Doujinshi by association. Keeping it as simple as possible, Doujinsoft are essentially Japanese indie games, but that feels like a conversation for another day. It was in this interest that I stumbled across something that would shape my understanding of the SHMUP genre going forward, and I would say it has been a net positive, but there is a lot of negatives that comes with it. Touhou.

 

 

Now, I have a lot of love and respect for the Touhou franchise, mostly because of the music and the creations that have come about because of it. But, I would be remiss to ignore the damage this had done to my perception of the SHMUP genre. Touhou resides in the Bullet Hell sub-genre of SHMUPs, a style of game that is characterised by enemies (Mostly bosses and sub-bosses) having visually amazing and complicated looking bullet patterns, the hell portion of it being how much of the screen real estate is dominated by bullets and the ask of the player is to navigate these patterns, attacking is somewhat secondary. I am not ashamed to say that skill issues are the barrier for me here, my approach to gaming has typically been more reactionary than pre-planned, or if there is anything planned, it is a short sequence or step in the wider picture. Historically, whilst I have always had some degree of stubbornness when it comes to playing games, I was also reasonably quick to move on, I didn't want to put in the time to become competent enough at the games I was playing to achieve the seemingly impossible. But, it was due to this period with Touhou where I figured that SHMUPs weren't for me. In hindsight it seems ridiculous to brush off a genre of games because I struggled with a fringe example, my only reasoning would be more about not enjoying the gameplay loop and the inherit frustrations of learning the game, instead of reacting good enough. I suppose the other thing with Touhou, I was able to "beat" some of the games, by chucking enough lives and continues at a situation, but this prevented me from getting any of the good endings for the games I played in the series, as the games demand a 1-Continue-Clear to get a good ending. So, mentally, I could see the goal in the distance, but the gap between my current position and that goal felt too vast. Not without significant time and mental investment.

 

 

This brings us closer to the modern day, I suppose, I can't think of any other notable stops on this prelude, besides the time I spent playing Space Impact on my Dad's Nokia 3310. As with everything I talk about here, we are now in the RetroAchievements era anc I was revisiting old games, beating and logging things from my childhood, including a certain Space Megaforce. At this moment, around 2024, I wasn't Mastery hungry, just beating the game was enough for me at the time. That was a badge of honour. The site itself organises games in numerous ways, with genre hubs, developer/publisher hubs and of specific interest here; series hubs. This was when I learnt that Space Megaforce was Super Aleste, and that there were several games in the series. In my mind, I said to myself, if I can beat Space Megaforce, then Aleste, GG Aleste, MUSHA and Power Strike should be within my ability, right? And, if you have followed me on Fedi for a while, you may be aware that I speak of the Aleste series in obnoxiously positive tones, especially the GG Aleste games. At some point, I will talk about these games in more detail, I have enough words and thoughts to fill a chapter of a book. Despite having an overall decent time with Aleste, I was still treading cautiously around the SHMUPs, before now I only picked up Arrow Flash and Abadox: The Deadly Inner War. Both, I should add, decent games. Initially, my September plan was to revisit games I had beaten but not mastered. I have become a little obsessed over my ratios. Initially, I started with the Aleste games, as they were enjoyable and after remembering they had infinite continues, the challenge became more about blind stubbornness over skill, that was something I knew I could rise to. But even though the stress of certain segments in certain games were peaking my blood pressure and causing me to make noises unheard of within the presence of my Wife. I came out of the experience.. Kinda wanting more. Because a run of a game could be within the scope of twenty to thirty minutes, this fit with my availability far better than chipping away at a JRPG or a Collect-a-thon. It was a weird moment of clarity. Suddenly the appeal made sense, the short-term memory was firing on a handful of cylinders, and I was feeling more competent. It was at that moment I figured, because the naming convention made sense, that I would strive to play a bunch of SHMUPs over the month of September, and dub it SHMUPtember, and you better believe I felt smug about the name.

 

 

So, if you're just here for the games and some expanded views on them, welcome back and for those of you who now regret the last few sections, I'm terribly sorry. It will happen again on a different topic. So, let's actually talk about the games I did play during SHMUPtember 2026:

 

•     Legendary Wings                          NES 

•     Aero Fighters/Sonic Wings            SNES 

•     Robotech: The Macross Saga      GBA 

•     InsectorX                                       NES 

•     InsectorX                                       Megadrive/Genesis 

•     Coryoon: Child of Dragon            PC Engine 

•     Alpha Mission                               NES 

•     Curse                                              Megadrive/Genesis 

•     Final Soldier                                  PC Engine 

•     U.N Squadron/Area 88                 SNES 

•     Trouble Shooter                            Megadrive/Cenesis 

•     Burning Angels                             PC Engine 

•     Aleste 2                                        MSX 

•     Aleste Gaiden                              MSX 

•     GG Aleste 3                                 Game Gear

 

You might think that, looking at the game list, I randomly chucked darts at a board and just went with the flow, and you'd be partially right in that assumption but there was also some degree of calculation. Some of it was just looking at the box art and feeling obligated to play it, this was the case for both Legendary Wings and Curse. Others, it was just a matter of looking at some screen shots or the RetroAchievements mastery badge. But, one core thing, I also looked at any comments or completion rates on these games. Not everything I played was in the realms of "everyone has beaten this" territory, as of writing this Burning Angels only have six other players who have mastered it. So there was still games that would have and did challenge me

Right, without any further delay, I think I should start talking about some games. I will go through them in the order I have laid out above.