Good portable shmups (for cheap!)

I love me some shoot 'em ups, or shmups for short. Used to be called shooters, but 1st person shooters took that monicker away. Used to be during the 80's and early 90's that the still thriving arcade environs had several shmups. Soon Street Fighter clones became more popular, and soon after THAT most arcade machines were racers or Dance Dance Revolution. But I still remember guiding that one spaceship (or two, if you were playing with a friend) against an enemy armada tossing millions of bullets at you. And the explosions. The wonderful, wonderful explosions.



Nowadays shmups are few and far between except on XBox Live Arcade. Since I don't own a XBox 360 yet (and am still leery about downloadable content, something for another blog), I have found barely any relatively new shmups. For those interested, I have found 4 really good shmups, and they are also very cheap if you can find them...I also got them sans box or instruction manuals, but since they are shmups, it's pretty easy to figure out what to do:shoot everything and don't get hit!



For the Gameboy Advance, are Iridion 3D and Iridion II. Iriidion 3D is pretty good; the graphics give the impression that you are moving into the screen and the enemy is coming at you. Again, good game, but it relies a lot on it's 3D 'gimmick' and is somewhat bland as a result. Iridion II is a huge step up though, with simply amazing graphics, incredible sound (I was surprised to hear such great music coming from the GBA speakers) and great gameplay. This top down shooter is a gem if you can find it



For the DS (of course, you can play the Iridion games on it if you have the DS Lite) are Nanostray and Nanostray 2, both great, great shmups. The first game is a top down shooter; you have four seperate weapons you can change on the fly using the touch screen. Each weapon also has a powered-up version which uses up energy, although this can be recharged by picking up blue coins. The game has eight levels each with a tough boss at the end. The visuals are excellent, some of the best on the handheld,and the music gets your heart pumping.



Nanostray 2 is just as good as the first, with a few differences. Now there is a sub boss in each of the eight stages as well as an end boss. You also have a standard shot that cannot be powered up, but you do have a secondary weapon that you pick before you start a level (out of seven different weapons). These use energy, but are more powerful than you standard shot. The screen scrolls from left to right and the action occurs on the bottom screen, so you can use the stylus to move your fighter. This works much better than you would think and is the way I play the game, but you can use the buttons if you want.



These are all highly recommended for shmup fans, but as I mentioned, are pretty hard to find. I did find all four at local Gamestops, although you may have better luck finding them online. Happy shooting!