VistaBlade wrote:Gradius is made by Konami and Ikaruga was made by Treasure, so seeing additional games like these are still a possibility. Cave made much more obscure, Japanese shooters, like Muchi Muchi Pork! & Pink Sweets and Mushihimesama Futari Ver 1.5.
Possible, but not probable. The much-hyped Gradius V only sold 90,000 copies worldwide, and the Otomedius games didn't fare that much better. Taito completely axed its own shmup division, despite once being one of the most prolific publishers of the genre, and considering that DoDonPachi SaiDaioujo was officially
cancelled during some parts of its development due to lack of faith from the management, Cave is probably going to kill its arcade division sometime in the near future.
It's interesting that you should bring up Queen Larsa Ultra, because when I first came across videos of that, I was like "Cave, go home, you're
drunk." It was pretty much the big red flag that told me that shmups were going the way of the text adventure and the flight combat sim.