Nothing says loving like blowing things up
So, what are your favorite shooters? Not FPS shooters, but traditional flying in a ship with tons of explosions left and right shooters. My favorite are:

Ikaruga
Silpheed: The Lost Planet

I do also have a soft-spot for some of the Gradius games, although those could be a bit on the challenging side! I must say that Life Force (NES) was one of my old-school shooters. That and Vapor Trail were most cool. There are probably a bunch of others I am neglecting, so I'll let you fill them in...

cheers,

-avatar!

Edit: and if there's one shooter I really want to play, it's Radiant Silvergun. The fact that Sega never bought the game to the States is just one example of their incompetence.

Sega never brought it to states because saturn was already dead in 1998 here.
as for personal favorites, lots of them.
Battle Garegga, Radiant Silvergun, Dodonpachi, Blazing Star, Metal Slug series, in the hunt(from people at nazca!), Batsuugun, Blast Wind, Sengoku Ace, Cotton, Shienryu, pretty much everything cave related, Ikaruga, Gigawing series, Bangai-oh.
at least some of them.

Radiant Silvergun
Shikigami no Shiro II
Life Force
Blazing Star
Blazing Lasers

The Parodius series.  "Parodius Portable" was a godsent, and has completely justified my purchase of a PSP five times over. (Once for each game in the collection.) ;)

"Ikaruga" and "Gradius V" are my favorite Treasure efforts, while "Gate of Thunder," "Lords of Thunder" and "Air Zonk" are my faves from Hudson.  And "Einhander" from Square, naturally.

Anyone remember "Astro Warrior" for the Sega Master System?  Shooting up those tile-panels was the freaken best.

What are the chances of that being released in the US? I'm guessing pretty close to zilch!
Pity...

-avatar!

Dodonpachi Dai-ou-jou - Still one of my proudest achievements was 1CCing this game.
Progear No Arashi - Probably my favorite shooter of all-time.
Guwange - Stylistically it's quite possibly the illest game ever. 
Sengoku Blaede - Another shooter with sick style. 
Gradius Gaiden - The greatest Gradius with the greatest soundtrack.

Last Resort / Neo Geo - Everything about this game is perfect. Incredibly detailed graphics, excellent R-Type inspired gameplay (for two players!). The cartridge version of this game has a sound test. It's the only Neo Geo game I know of to have such a feature and did I ever put it to use. I could burn 45 minutes to an hour rocking the soundtrack on blast while being entranced by the flashing menu text. It has the heaviest boss themes in a shooter or just about any other genre. I would kill to get the emulated guitar tones on the soundtrack with my guitar setup. The arranged soundtrack for the Neo Geo CD version is nowhere near as good.

I was about to post a new  thread but found this

Shooters are some of my fav games, I'm starting a collection of them, in fact I am tempted to start my own website on them and mabay even write my own game if time allows.

Thunder force series (boy I wish I could get my hands on technosoft game music collection Vol 5)
R type delta and final, I love there soundtracks
Raiden, very cool series

I was a big shmup nut a few years ago. I stopped just short of buying a Candy Cab and descending into the money pit of PCBs. I've still got my favourites, though I sold off most things like the Saturn and PC Engine stuff. I did hang onto my absolute favourites - Silvergun, Ikaruga, Gradius V, R-Type Delta, Gradius Gaiden and Zanac Neo.

Musha Aleste and Thunderforce IV

I have too many to list so I won't :-P  But I wonder about Silpheed... I bought it and played it once and REALLY didn't like it!  Maybe I should go re-try it sometime.  Also, I must buy a Dreamcast, though in a few months my friend will be bringing his so maybe I'll get to borrow that for a while!

Also attention to all shooter loving people, Kiki Kaikai 2 is SUPPOSEDLY coming to PS2 this summer so make sure to reserve some money in your wallet! :  http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/doc … 2/kiki.htm (nevermind the out-of-date date, it was pushed back.  Hopefully it'll be ready by summertime...)

I went crazy with Sexy Parodius on the Saturn. But it wasn't my favorite.

My favorite was Gradius III.

Some others I liked:

Lifeforce (aka Salamander)
Darius Twin
G-Darius
Raiden I & II
Legendary Wings
Starfox

No love for Einhander yet? Gotta fix that.

Also Contra Shattered Soldier, R-Type III, and Cannon Spike, for funsies.

My favorites are:

-Axelay (SNES)
-Einhander (PSX)
-Rez (PS2)

G Darius (PSX), the original Star Fox (SNES), and Ikaruga (NGC) are pretty good too.  I always wanted to like the Gradius series, but the difficulty and power-up systems made them too inaccessible for me.  I did play a ton of Gradius: Interstellar Assault for the GB, however.

I believe you mean to say, "Not nearly enough love for Einhander?"

That said...... Seriously.  What's wrong with you people?

I haven't played too many shooters in my time, but I'd go with:

(NES) Guardian Legend
(SNES) Star Fox
(SAT) Panzer Dragoon II Zwei

A lot of the usual and more common suspects have already been mentioned, of course...Einhander, G Darius, the Panzer Dragoon series, Ikaruga and Rez.  Along with those...lessee...I distinctly remember playing Sagaia (the Genesis port of Darius II into the ground way back in the day.  And Thunder Force III, which was just balanced enough to keep me coming back as well...oddly, I never really played IV...

I haven't played that many shooters, but out of all of them, Gradius V is the one I've spent the most time on (mind-numbingly aggravating time, but time none the less ).

That game is HARD.

I thought Sagaia was cool as well.  I like how you visit the various planets of the solar system.

Oddly on my end, I never played Thunder Force III.  IV was released as Lightening Force in the states.

Could have sworn there was a TF4 release under its original name, but my memory's shot...I should finally go play TF5 or something...

Still gotta put in props for the Parodius series...

Just ordered Parodius Portable, and I don't even have a PSP (yet, of course)...

-Joshua

I believe that the PAL version was released as TF4 if that's what you're thinking of.