Vertical Shmup is an original browser shooter. The camera climbs a water channel walled by two riveted piers while craft enter from the top: the small ones only block the lane, the divers drop in a zig-zag and fire one shot at wherever you were when they pulled the trigger, and the wide ones stop mid-field and fan out three. Your own craft is always firing, so your fingers only ever handle position — on a phone you hold the steel plate below the playfield and slide in both axes, and your thumb never enters the battlefield at all. Kills fill a ledger that pays out crates; a power crate adds a tier, and the barrels, the bolt width or the wing pods change with it, so you can see that you got thicker without reading the gauge. A hit spends your shield first, then sets off one of your bombs by itself, and only when both are gone does it cost a life. When the bar runs out, the sector boss presses into frame — and when that happens is decided by the channel alone, so you can neither stall it nor rush it.

A coin goes in, the screen stands up tall, one small craft climbs from the very bottom while the water and the piers slide away behind it — the upright flying machines always sat nearest the door, because a passer-by understood them at a glance: nothing to memorise, no map to learn, push left and right and the shots go out by themselves. What stays with you is the thickening: a few crates in, the single thin bolt has become three, the channel looks exactly the same, and you are no longer the craft that walked in.

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【街】 The coin arcade · 1988–2000 →

1. 01

   Tap the playfield once to start — no sign-up, no download. On a phone hold the steel plate under the playfield and slide in both axes; on a desktop use the arrow keys or WASD.

2. 02

   Firing is permanently automatic and there is no fire button on touch at all. A run asks exactly two things of you: dodge, and move onto the crates.

3. 03

   Three ways to drop a bomb, all of them the same bomb: the bomb key on the right, a short tap on the plate, or a second finger while the first keeps dragging. On a desktop it is Space or K.

4. 04

   A power crate adds one of five tiers, and each tier changes the gun count, the bolt width or the wing pods. A bomb crate adds one bomb; a shield crate buys you one free collision.

5. 05

   Esc or P pauses, and the battlefield really does freeze. Sound and reduced flashing are both one tap away in the top bar at any time; tapping the seed in the summary copies a link to the exact run you just played.

Press your thumb down properly before a big slide: the plate has enough travel to cross the whole field in one stroke, and lifting mid-way costs you nothing — the craft holds where it is instead of snapping back to centre.Do not make small taps on the plate to dodge: a short tap is read as a bomb. For fine adjustments keep the thumb down and move slowly — once a press leaves the dead zone it is a drag for good and can never drop a bomb by accident.Going to get crates beats standing still and dodging: the thicker your fire, the more craft you clear in the same time, and the faster the next crate arrives.The wide craft pays the most of the three enemy types at 800, and guarantees an extra crate on top, so when one holds mid-field put your fire on it instead of only dodging its three-shot fan.With a shield up you can afford to take a risk, because the first collision is forgiven and clears the screen; once it is gone, go back to clean positioning. A bomb is a last resort, not a damage tool.The warning before the sector boss is preparation time: clear what is left on screen and move down to the middle, so that when the fan comes you have a way out on both sides.Not beating the boss is fine: hold out without firing a shot and its withdrawal ends the sector just the same, at the price of those two bonuses. Reaching the next sector alive is worth more than trading a life for them.

How do you play a vertical scrolling shooter on a phone and on a desktop?

In Vertical Shmup you only handle position; the firing is automatic. On a phone hold the steel plate below the playfield and slide in both axes — one stroke crosses the whole field — and there is no fire button on touch. On a desktop use the arrow keys or WASD, Space or K for a bomb, Esc or P to pause. Your thumb stays below the playfield and never overlaps it, so it cannot hide your own craft.

How does the firepower upgrade work in this shmup?

Kills accumulate into a ledger, and once it fills a crate drops, so getting stronger is a rule rather than luck. A power crate adds one of five tiers, and each tier changes the gun count, the bolt width or the wing pods — you can see your spread widen without looking at the gauge. The first crate of every sector is always a power crate, so every run offers that first step up.

How do you score points in a plane shooting game like this, and how do you get a high score?

The score has exactly two sources — craft you destroy, and the sector bonus paid once you kill the sector boss — so a high score takes shooting, not only surviving. A small craft is 100, a diver 250, a wide one 800 and the sector boss 5000, and the sector bonus is 2000 times the sector number; the last two are paid on the kill only, so a boss you let withdraw pays neither. A crate picked up at full power, with full bombs, or with a shield already up converts to 300. A clean run and unused bombs add nothing.

What happens when you get hit, and how many lives do you get?

Three lives, but a single touch does not end one. On a hit exactly one rule fires, in order: inside an invulnerable window nothing happens; with a shield up, the shield is spent and every enemy shot is cleared; with no shield but a bomb in hand, one goes off by itself; only with none of the three do you lose a life. Losing one costs a power tier but never the whole stack, and a power crate is guaranteed to drop when you respawn.

When does the sector boss show up in a vertical shooter like this?

The channel decides, not your reflexes: when the progress bar runs out there is a warning, and then the boss presses into frame. You cannot summon it early and you cannot stall it by holding fire, so the bar is the whole answer to how long until the big one. Once it is in, the bar keeps moving, and when it fills the boss withdraws on its own.

What if you cannot beat the sector boss?

Then do not fight it. Stay alive long enough and it climbs out of frame by itself, which still ends the sector — only the kill bonus and the sector bonus go unpaid. Its band and your craft's rectangle never intersect, so the body cannot hit you and the only threat is the fan from under its hatch. Once its armour is halved, the firing interval halves too: that is the one change it ever makes.

How does the bomb work, and why does nothing happen sometimes?

A bomb clears every enemy shot on screen, damages every craft in view and buys you a short invulnerable window. The key, a short tap on the plate and a second finger all drop the same bomb. Nothing happening has exactly two causes, and the key shows you which: still cooling down and it goes grey with hatching; none left and it takes a red outline while the bomb gauge flashes red. Neither case spends a bomb.

How many levels does this shmup have, and does it get harder?

There is no fixed number of levels — you can keep climbing. Sectors 1 to 6 get harder step by step, and from sector 7 on the parameters hold at the sector 6 values, so from there it is a high-score chase under one settled ruleset. What steps up is enemy health, enemy firing interval, enemy shot speed, formation size and the sector boss's armour (900 up to 3400); sector length itself never changes, so the difficulty comes from the content rather than from a longer channel. The run ends when the three lives are gone, which makes how far you get a question of how long you stay alive.

What were those upright plane games in the arcade called, and can you still play one in a browser?

The genre name is vertical scrolling shooter: the picture climbs, your craft fires automatically from the bottom, and a large machine waits at the end of each stretch. Vertical Shmup is an original browser version of that core loop — it opens and plays immediately, and your best score and last result are kept in this browser on this device (a refresh returns to the attract screen; a run in flight is not resumed). A run is decided by one seed, and tapping the seed in the summary copies a link to that exact run.