You asked for them, and here they are: The official Shmopera posters. Available for $15 each, or $40 for the complete set (shipping is free), each poster is 16″x20″ and printed on high-quality photo paper. Each poster commemorates a year of the Shmopera: The Captain in 2008, The Spacebot in 2009, and DC65709 (aka “The Meat Cleaver”) in 2010.

A note on shipping: We are producing these posters as orders are received. We will be batching orders about every 2-3 weeks. If you want to stay up to date on poster production and shipping times, watch our Twitter feed where we’ll be posting all the information. If, for some reason, you need your order to be shipped immediately, send us an email and we’ll do our best.

To order, click here and you will be redirected to our store.

Thank you and enjoy!

Shmopera release celebration continues!

Masked Klaus sent in this video of him playing the Xbox Community Game “Beat Hazard” (which we discussed on this week’s podcast) using the Shmopera tune “White Pines” as the soundtrack. The result? Pretty bad ass.

Check it out:

Written by Hilden, this song features Jon Yeske on guitar, Scott Hass on bass, and Phil Haymes doing the solo; in addition to Hilden doing vocals and a bit of guitar at the end, and me playing drums.

Hey folks! To celebrate the release of The Complete Shmopera, I decided it would be pretty cool to record a video of my favorite track in the entire collection, “The Spacebot Is Me”. This was a pretty epic track that just has a certain magic about it – I haven’t worked it out just yet, it could be a number of things:

1) Hilden screaming like he has his balls in a vice

2) Awesome Flugelhorn solo

3) It’s a Guns n’ Roses piss take

4) The line “I watch the weapon systems come online”

5) BURN BURN BURN BURN

Well, either way something about this song just worked for me, and like an inspired badger on a mission I improvised the following guitar solos after only hearing the track once. One take to record. It was 6am and I was late for a train.

Frankly, this is the easiest guitar lead I’ve ever written and I still don’t know why. It’s also my favorite.

And with that, I’m gonna sign off for now, please feel free to check out my personal website www.philhaymes.com for more music and the occasional DGR/Robot Panic related track. Oh and for all you guitar freaks, yes that was a whammy pedal.

Okay, not without some hiccups, but the Complete Shmopera is available now!

First off, for those of you who experienced a wrong redirect, please email us at mailbag@drunkengamersradio.com if you haven’t already. We’ll send you the correct link to the Shmopera.

Second, thanks to all those of you who alerted us to a certain lack of security that could easily have been handled if I wasn’t such a shit ass “webmaster”. You are all fucking awesome. Seriously. You fucking rule.

Third, for those of you thinking about a purchase, here’s what you’ll get:

-All three years of the Shmopera, fully remixed and remastered.
-A special After Hours episode where we discuss the Shmopera.
-A set of three wallpapers of The Captain, Spacebot and Meat Cleaver.
-A short video look at us making the Shmopera Level 3. Mostly, you can see me make a total fool of myself.
-Three demo tracks that show works in progress of some Level 3 songs.
-A track of unreleased demos that didn’t make it into the Shmopera with some commentary by Hilden.
-Lyric Sheet of all the Shmopera songs. For sing-a-longs, mostly.

The cost for all this is a mere $10.00 donation to DGR. Hit the banner up at the top of main page to start the process. Be sure to check out the preview tracks as well.

As always, thanks for listening and we appreciate your purchase of The Complete Shmopera!

Hello friends! Just a quick note to let you all know that the Complete Shmopera will be available for download starting Monday, April 26th.

The Shmopera be available for a $10.00 donation to the show and will be in high quality MP3 format. Included in the ZIP file will be the following:

-An hour and a half of music comprised of all 3 years of the Shmopera. Newly remixed and remastered.

-A special episode of After Hours on the subject of the Shmopera. Found only in this package.

-3 Wallpapers featuring the Spacebot, the Captain and the Meat Cleaver

-A short behind the scenes video showing highlights from the making of Shmopera III.

-Unreleased material that never made it into the Shmopera plus outtakes and other funny shit I found.

Starting April 26th, the Shmopera Logo will appear on the main page of Robot Panic. Click the logo to go to the download page and follow the instructions in order to download your copy of the Shmopera.

Once again, thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy the Complete Shmopera!

Email Us: mailbag@drunkengamersradio.com
Voicemail Line: 612-424-3835
DGR Twitter Feed
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We’re proud to bring you the latest Episode of the Shmopera this week! We and our friends have been working hard to bring you the most hard rocking and authentically musical Shmopera we’ve ever created! Unfortunately, by presenting this music first in a podcast format, certain drawbacks become apparent. Namely, the smaller files sizes demanded by podcasting means any music suffers in both quality and in stereo vs. mono. And this particular Shmopera set is going to get it in the ass in terms of quality and presentation, I’m afraid.

But fear not, friends! We’re going to be offering the ENTIRE Shmopera series in much the same way as we did the ZomBOOsical! in 2009. For a $10.00 donation, you will be receiving the following:

1. ALL Acts of the Shmopera that we have recorded over the last three years. All of these tracks have been remixed and remastered in order to make them the best our meagre skills can. The Complete Shmopera, at long last, in kick ass HI-FI! The way it was meant to be heard!

2. A special After Hours episode featuring the Drunken Gamers talking about the creation of the Shmopera from the start of it three years ago until now.

3. A behind the scenes video taking a look at the Drunken Gamers and Friends as they create Act III of the Shmopera in all it’s awful glory.

4. A custom piece of Shmopera artwork in wallpaper format featuring a yet to be revealed character from Act III of the Shmopera.

The Complete Shmopera is planned to be made available Late March/Early April. Stay tuned to this site for more updates on the Shmopera, including preview tracks of the songs in high quality format. As always, thanks for listening and your continued support of Drunken Gamers Radio!

SHOWNOTES

00:00-Show Intro
09:38-Drunk Dials
17:28-Mailbag
35:18-Mega Man 10 Review (WiiWare)
41:20-Retro Review: Star Solider (NES)
44:44-Interview with Nathan Fouts-Mommy’s Best Games
1:04:43-Shmopera Episode III-Act I
1:18:02-Five Things
1:29:25-The Last Shot
1:32:15-Show Close

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DGR: 03.07.2010

Over at Shmupmonth.com things are in full swing! MC Wilson and DJ Incompentent have put out the first of a weekly podcast dedicated to all kinds of shmup greatness. If you’re looking for some ideas on what to play or just need some SCIENCE! to help you play better, then the Weekly Shmupdate is the place for you!

Here’s a run down of what you’ll find on this week’s episode!

M.C. Wilson and DJ Incompetent present this first episode of the Weekly Shmupdate, a podcast that examines all that’s worthy of Shmuppreciating during Intergalactic Shmuppreciation Month. This episode features some great basic information on shmups presented by both the Couch Bandits and DJ Incompetent, as well as the first 2010 Shmup Month Contest entry. Good luck to all participants!

Add it to your list of podcasts today by going here:

Weekly Shmupdate: Week One

A “shoot ‘em up”, also known as a “shmup”,is a game in which the protagonist combats a large number of enemies by shooting at them while dodging their fire. The controlling player must rely primarily on reaction times to succeed. Beyond this, critics differ on exactly which design elements constitute a shoot ‘em up. Some restrict the genre to games featuring some kind of craft, using fixed or scrolling movement. Others widen the scope to include games featuring such protagonists as robots or humans on foot, as well as including games featuring “on-rails” (or “into the screen”) and “run and gun” movement. Formerly, critics described any game where the primary design element was shooting as a “shoot ‘em up”, but later shoot ‘em ups became a specific, inward-looking genre based on design conventions established in those shooting games of the 1980s. -from the Wikipedia entry on “Shoot ‘em up”

Welcome, friends, to Intergalatic Shmuppreciation Month 2010!

Once again, it’s going to be a great month of celebrating one of our favorite genres that rewards the skillful and revels in it’s unforgiving old school aesthetic! During the month of March, we’ll be celebrating the shmup (or shoot-em-up) along with a whole bunch of other podcasters and friends. Before we get too far into it, however, I suppose there are some of you wondering what this whole celebration is all about.

ISM is, at it’s most basic, a month set aside to devote at least a little of your precious gaming time to a shooter of your choice. The idea is to celebrate by playing. For some, this means a casual credit feed of a shmup that’s been sitting in your pile of games or XBLA/PSN list gather dust. For others, it’s a time to focus in on that goal of the illusive 1CC. However you choose to celebrate the genre is completely up to you. The main idea is to play shmups in March!

For may of you, this may be your first ISM or even your first attempt at playing a shmup at all. Well, March is a fantastic time to jump in! There are plenty of resources available for you to check out. First off, visit our own Shmuppreciation Category where you can find links to free shmups on the net, reviews of great shmups to play and even some tips on how to play shmups better.

Another great resource is the Shmups.com Forums where all kinds of great shmup players share their wisdom. It’s one of the best places to read up on the genre and learn how to play these games at a high level.

You should also visit the Intergalactic Shmuppreciation Month Website where information on past ISM’s can be found as well as any new information regarding events for this year.

As far as this site is concerned, keep checking back each week for Shmup Month articles from us as well as our contributors. In addition, tune into Drunken Gamers Radio to hear our Shmuppreciation Month episodes that include the latest edition of the Shmopera! What is the Shmopera, you might ask? You may want to go check out that Shmuppreciation Category I liked to earlier. More to come on that front later.

So go out and enjoy a shooter of your choice and have fun! And let us know how YOUR ISM celebrations are going by submitting your stories to us. Just click the Submit a Story link over there in the sidebar. We look forward to hearing from you!

Happy Intergalactic Shmuppreciation Month!

We try to do everything we can to support shmups here at Robot Panic/Drunken Gamers Radio. Well, now’s our chance to put our money where our mouths are as Kotaku has broken the news that Cave’s new sequel to Mushihimesama will in fact be region free.

“We had a lot of good feedback from overseas users,” [Cave's Makato] Asada told Kotaku, happy with the strong response to the insect-themed, vertically-scrolling shmup. “So for this time, as a test, we’re going to make the game region free so that overseas users can play it.”

“By making Mushihime-sama Futari region-free, what we’re doing is measuring the amount of overseas users,” Asada explained. And if you care about your Cave shooters, it’s probably a good idea to import a copy. Or two.

“This will have a direct impact on whether Espgaluda II and other titles will be localized for America,” Asada warned us. “So it’s probably a good idea to pick it up!”

You hear that? Espgaluda II will be impacted by the sales of Mushihimesama Futari 1.5.

So please, support the cause by pre-ordering Mushihimesama Futari 1.5 through your favorite import store. Play-Asia has the pre-order here for $68.90.

You like yourself some shoot-ing-shoot-ing-shooting games? No idea how this event has even hung on this long, but it’s still around and it still wants you to play with it.

Shooting Game Tournament 2009 is a friendly score competition among users of shmups.com. The score validation works like in the hi-score threads. You just play the game on PCB, emulator or any console port and post your score which you don’t need to prove. ANYONE CAN JOIN!

Contestants are broken up into teams by choice or assigned.  Over a hundred people compete in teams from all over the world. There have been full teams from Italy, UK, Sweden, Brazil, Japan, Canada, France, and other countries I’m not thinking of.  People still come out of the woodwork to attend this. It’s an interesting event and one of if not the best thing going for the shmups community. The big changes this year are no voting for the upcoming game and there is no break in-between games. It’ll be six weeks of five games played on mega-illegal-fun MAME. Players submit scores by posting in a designated thread. You can choose to play as much or as little as you want. No need to register with friends. Come with people or come alone. You play your cards and the organizers will sort you out.

Players can sign up by going to this thread, sign in, quote the 2nd post of the thread, fill out the entry form, then post it in the thread. People are around to help out if you don’t understand. Don’t be afraid, child. Compete. No need for skill levels. Everybody of all types welcome you with open arms; some with more gin on their breath than others.

Registration period is now. The shooting begins August 31st.

I do believe this also means Robot Panic turned one year old recently. Congrats to the three deans for not stumbling drunk and accidentally shutting the site down for 365 days. They should make a ceremonial chip for accomplishments like that, like sobriety periods.