What Shmups Are Essential for a good collection?

[shallowgamer]

Console:
Gates and Lords of Thunder, for different reasons each
Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga
Blazing Lazers/Space Megaforce
Thunderforce series, but particular focus on 4 and 5
Souky
Battle Garegga
Galactic Attack (Layer Section)

Alright- I've had my eye on Battle Garegga for some time now. Is it worth the price of admission? I can't find it for less than 70 bucks.

Which, when you think about it, isn't terrible. At least it's retained its value. The alternative is putting 60bucks on an X360 game and slowly watching it go down to $20.

[baphomet_irl]

i think IO on the C64 is a great shmup - the music and the graphical style are very nice

[marurun]

If you're the sort willing to do such things, sample it via MAME first and then pick it up for the Saturn if you think it'll hold your attention.

[racketboy]

Racketboy, I think you need to add a wiki to the site so when you ask these questions we can go mark up the wiki. For example, for this question I would have added platform sections: Arcade, NES, Genesis, SNES, PCE, Saturn, PSX, DC, etc... And then we could pare down the essentials from among the different categories.

I've been planning on it -- just need to get it set up