Auto-Fire: Gift from the Gods or Refuge of the Weak?

[bargora]

In (or near) the beginning, there was Space Invaders, Galaga and Xevious, and one button press equalled one shot. Or at best, shot-pause-shot. (This is why Robotron 2084's nearly infinite firepower made my jaw drop in 1984.) Somewhere along the line, one button press changed to equal "a bunch of shots". You see this in Giga Wing and in Time Pilot. These days, games seem to just give you the auto-fire as a default, no questions asked. But then, that's usually because they throw 5-10 weak enemies on the screen per second.

So when you guys play the old-fashioned one-press/one-shot games, do you usually pull out the third-party controller with the auto-fire button on it? Or is that breaking some sort of shmupper honor code? Personally, I make that my one concession. I try my best to be a one-credit (OK, maybe 3), no-less-than-normal-difficulty shmupper, but I refuse to press a button 2,000 times over the course of a half-hour.

The exception that proves the rule is Viewpoint (PSX). That game becomes hilariously unbalanced if you turn on the auto-fire.

[Kid Fenris]

I dig the autofire option simply because it's easy on my hands. I usually need a lot of practice to make it through a decent shooter, and pumping a button over and over is murder on the thumbs after an hour or so.

[Captain Wrong]

I tend to go with whatever the game's cerator put in. If there was auto fire in it to begin with, I'll probably use it. I think using a third party conrtoller with auto when it wasn't in the game to begin with is cheating.

[ROBOTRON]

Welllllllll......I used to feel that way...until I starting destroying controllers by constantly hitting those fire buttons! For example, I've owned a Neo-Geo since 1990. I quickly wore out the buttons on the original controllers and have bought probably 10 more in the last 12 years. The MAS sticks I have for my Geo cost $125 bucks each. It simply isn't cost efficient to keep buying new controllers, thats why the last 2 I bought have rapid fire lock ons....

[bargora]

Hmmm. Long after I put up the first post, I bought a copy of UN Squadron and a Super NES Advantage at the Funco, where the clerk sternly admonished me against using the auto-fire with the game!

[Anonymous]

In some of the older games, Auto-Fire required its own strategy. A lot of NES games in particular would only let you fire three shots at a time, leaving you vulnerable since auto fire almost invariably shot all three at the same time. but it really helped with bosses and mid bosses where you had to get in close and shoot like mad before jumping back.

In other words I don't have a problem with autofire, mainly because it wasn't as advantagous as other it first appeared to be.

[nitebycandlelite]

I've never been that big a fan of Shmups that don't let you have ridiculous amounts of your firepower on screen, call me fickle or even not retro... I just always thought the best ones were the ones with ultra-carnage in them.

I've never really liked autofire though, because if the coders didn't write an autofire option into the game, then that normally means that they didn't want you to use it!

Exceptions are Track-and-field a-likes. Just for fun, though. It's quite amusing finishing events in very little time... I actually prefer to even play these "properly", even though I have reasonably slow thumbs.

My £0.02