{"id":670666,"date":"2026-04-04T03:46:39","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T03:46:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/the-switch-remains-the-best-console-for-shmups-since-the-saturn-and-these-are-some-of-the-best"},"modified":"2026-04-04T03:46:39","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T03:46:39","slug":"the-switch-remains-the-best-console-for-shmups-since-the-saturn-and-these-are-some-of-the-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/the-switch-remains-the-best-console-for-shmups-since-the-saturn-and-these-are-some-of-the-best\/","title":{"rendered":"The Switch remains the best console for shmups since the Saturn &#8211; and these are some of the best"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/the-switch-remains-the-best-console-for-shmups-since-the-saturn-and-these-are-some-of-the-best.jpg\" \/> <\/p>\n<p>\nThe Switch is well into its fifth year, somehow, and despite some stiff competition from the Steam Deck recently it hasn&#8217;t lost its lustre nor its position by my side wherever I go: maybe it&#8217;s something to do with the immense library I&#8217;ve got on mine at this point, filled to the brim with shmups of all sizes in what&#8217;s long been a speciality of the system. <\/p>\n<p>\nOnce it was the novelty of having these things on the go, plus the ease of playing vertical scrolling shooting games as intended in &#8216;tate&#8217; mode with the screen flipped (and without worrying about permanent damage like I used to when pushing a chunky old CRT on its side to play Ikaruga as Treasure intended). Now it&#8217;s just the abundance of classics that can be dipped in and out of at leisure &#8211; and the thing I love about the humble shmup is how immediate they are, making them perfect for short blasts.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nSo here&#8217;s a list of some personal favourites, and a rundown of the shmups that are in almost constant rotation on my Switch. There should be an emphasis on the personal, here &#8211; there&#8217;s no science here, and an awful lot of bias towards my own taste for simple, spectacular shmups rather than those with fussy scoring systems. So there&#8217;s no Ikaruga here, I&#8217;m afraid &#8211; apologies, I do love it but I&#8217;m not going to pretend to be a master of its rigid polarity-based system (when &#8211; or if &#8211; Radiant Silvergun ever makes it to the Switch you can be assured it&#8217;ll be top of this list, though). <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/the-switch-remains-the-best-console-for-shmups-since-the-saturn-and-these-are-some-of-the-best\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/the-switch-remains-the-best-console-for-shmups-since-the-saturn-and-these-are-some-of-the-best\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Switch is well into its fifth year, somehow, and despite some stiff competition from the Steam Deck recently it hasn&#8217;t lost its lustre nor its position by my side wherever I go: maybe it&#8217;s something to do with the immense library I&#8217;ve got on mine at this point, filled to the brim with shmups of all sizes in what&#8217;s long been a speciality of the system. Once it was the novelty of having these things on the go, plus the ease of playing vertical scrolling shooting games as intended in &#8216;tate&#8217; mode with the screen flipped (and without worrying about permanent damage like I used to when pushing a chunky old CRT on its side to play Ikaruga as Treasure intended). Now it&#8217;s just&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"excerpt-more\"><a class=\"blog-excerpt button\" href=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/the-switch-remains-the-best-console-for-shmups-since-the-saturn-and-these-are-some-of-the-best\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":670667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230],"tags":[132,8352,8353,8354,21,8351],"class_list":["post-670666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eurogamer","tag-arcade","tag-darius-cozmic-collection-arcade","tag-devil-engine","tag-gradius-ii-gofer-no-yabou","tag-nintendo-switch","tag-rayforce"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Switch remains the best console for shmups since the Saturn - and these are some of the best | Arcader News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Switch is well into its fifth year, somehow, and despite some stiff competition from the Steam Deck recently it hasn&#039;t lost its lustre nor its\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/the-switch-remains-the-best-console-for-shmups-since-the-saturn-and-these-are-some-of-the-best\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Switch remains the best console for shmups since the Saturn - and these are some of the best | Arcader News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Switch is well into its fifth year, somehow, and despite some stiff competition from the Steam Deck recently it hasn&#039;t lost its lustre nor its\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/the-switch-remains-the-best-console-for-shmups-since-the-saturn-and-these-are-some-of-the-best\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Arcade News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-04-04T03:46:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/the-switch-remains-the-best-console-for-shmups-since-the-saturn-and-these-are-some-of-the-best.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"480\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"326\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Arcade News\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Arcade News\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/the-switch-remains-the-best-console-for-shmups-since-the-saturn-and-these-are-some-of-the-best\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/the-switch-remains-the-best-console-for-shmups-since-the-saturn-and-these-are-some-of-the-best\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Arcade News\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/8460f5e5076b52fb2369f2f7ce6f2839\"},\"headline\":\"The Switch remains the best console for shmups since the Saturn &#8211; 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