2021 was a pretty good year. Looking back on it, a lot of my favorite game series either had their old games re-released or had completely entries. finally come out. It was a really damn good year for smhups. These aren't included in this years list but amazing Cave games like Espgaluda II, Mushihimesama, and even Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu came out for the Switch thanks to LiveWire. And towards the end of the year we got awesome stuff like Ilvello Swamp + Radirgy Swag's physical release that comes with both games. And then of course there was the recently release compilation of Deathsmiles I & II by City Connection! Some other notable shmup releases were Eschatos on the switch, one of my favorites (I hope Qute ports over their other games and R-Type Final 2, a new entry in a landmark series. Oh and Darius Cozmic Revelation which included a HD port of G-Darius and and Dariusburst. This was honestly an amazing year for shmup releases, and I even managed to get invested into a new series. The Smash DLC came to a bittersweet end, and while Ryu Hayabusa didn't make it, I'm grateful to Sakurai for adding in Pyra and Mythra! There was a lot of stuff I didn't get to follow up on through out the year and I'm still lagging behind a bit, but I think this was a strong year for games as a whole, even if you take some of the more modern and mainstream games into account There's actually a pretty good amount of games I need to catch up on and finished, and some new ones that I'm looking forward to. Sorry that this post is several days late, some stuff prevented me from finishing ahead of time.
