My first SHMUP

[GSZX1337]

I love Gradius and all, but I think the difficulty factor is a bit too much for anyone other than an 8 year old with too much time on his hands, like I me when I got my SNES. "Gradius syndrome" an the checkpoint system really piss me off.

Zero Wing isn't a bad starter. All you have to know is that you want the green powerups.

I wish I knew about Zero Wing back when I had an actual Genesis. Gradius 3 led me to much frustration. You still have to get your power-ups after you die, but at least your ship only needs one power-up to be powerful (instead of the many power-ups needed to get the options in Gradius).

[marurun]

I think U.N. Squadron is a great starter shmup. You can buy weapons and plane types and stuff and choose the order of many of your missions. Plus it gives you something of a context. You're not some lone dude in a spaceship, but rather a part of something. Much more inviting.

[RCF86-Q2]

Games like Gradius or R-Type are brutal for beginners. Even for more experienced players the first playthrough of the games will definately be a hard kick in the balls. It's rather admirable you would be able to start with something like this and try to stick through with it. I remember I got R-Type myself a bit over 10 years back and I can't really say I loved it. Now maybe bit under 10 years later I found some different kind of shmups for PC (and MAME) and fell in love with the genre again.

For a beginner before going and buying a ton of shmups before even knowing what you actually might like I'd recommend to try out some free games for a start to see what you're really into. There are a lot of different kind of games and of course not everybody likes the same games.
A good site for trying to find and download shmups (Demos and free games) is shoot the core database:
http://shootthecore.moonpod.com/database.php

And for a beginner I'd personally suggest something a lot less hard, something that others than shmup fans also generally like, freeware and still awesome. For example Tyrian

[PGchris]

Yeah this game is really hard but thats kind of why I like it so much it's addictive to inch along and try to make a little bit of progress at a time. It does seem like I'm kind of stuck though at the end of level three so if this continues I could have some serious frustration and might have to move to something a bit easier, but for now I'm into it.

[black flag nc]

Gradius III is a great game. It was one of my first shmups back when I was a kid. If you have a PS2, try out Gradius V.

I think the Raiden series is a good shmup series for newbies, but avoid RAIDEN TRAD on the the SNES. Got my wife into Raiden 3 (PS2) and then eased her into more complex shmups.

Now she's beating my Giga Wing scores!