When I first heard Muse's "Map of the Problematique", I thought "Man, this would make an awesome soundtrack for a shooter." I originally wanted to make my own animation, similar to Cabana Baby's Street Battle, but then I realized I completely lack any artistic sense, so it would make more sense to takes clips from other shooters and assemble them together to match the music. I think it turned out pretty well! I double-timed the speed since it matched the pacing of the music better, and I think it looks pretty damn cool.

There were several key scenes I wanted to use to put together the vaguest pretense of a plot. The opening of the song is accompanied by several dramatic cutscenes of characters running towards their ships, getting ready for action. I cheated and used a bit of footage from Wing Commander, which isn't technically a shmup, but looks awesome nonetheless. The actual takeoff is from Progear, which I think matches up with Ikaruga as having the best looking takeoff scenes of any shooter out there.

I wanted some kind of big explosion to match up with the crescendo around the 2:18 mark, so I picked Darius Gaiden, which I think is far and away the coolest. I also thought the bombs would be cool against the percussion in that segment, which is also echoed with the gigantic laser dueling from G-Darius near the end. There are also a few points of the song where the singer references a vague romantic interest, so I put in the princess from XEXEX in both of these scenes. I also really dig those parts where the screen puts up something like "STAGE 1 BEGIN" with flickering letters, so I used a similar scene from Final Soldier. I actually had to triple the speed for that one, because it skipped over those frames when I doubled the speed. Still looks cool though.

Most of the rest of the games were just kinda chosen randomly and happened to look cool. Due to issues with resolution, I had to skip any vertically-oriented shooters - it already looks funky enough with 256x224 NES footage next to 384x256 from various arcade boards. This meant almost no Cave shooters, which is unfortunate, because they would've worked really well with it. Still, in the end, I prefer horizontal shooters anyway. I also stuck with ones I could capture through emulators, because the quality is much better than anything captured through a video card.

You can grab high quality videos from Fileplanet or Megaupload.

Anyway, the full list of games, in order of appearance:

1. M.U.S.H.A.
2. Wing Commander
3. Pulstar
4. Sol-Feace
5. Progear
6. Lords of Thunder
7. Blazing Star
8. Thunder Force IV / Lightening Force
9. Tengai / Sengoku Blade: Sengkou Ace Episode II
10. Recca Summer Carnival '92
11. Gradius II (Famicom)
12. M.U.S.H.A.
13. Xexex
14. Thunderforce III
15. Bari Arm / Android Assault
16. Pulstar
17. Sexy Parodius
18. Darius Gaiden
19. Trouble Shooter 2 (Battlemania Daiginjou)
20. Gley Lancer
21. Axelay
22. Soukyugerentai / Terra Diver
23. Gunhed / Blazing Lazers
24. R-Type
25. Xexex
26. Final Soldier
27. Xexex
28. Air Zonk
29. Mars Matrix
30. Giga Wing
31. Gate of Thunder
32. G-Darius