Probably would have denied this for all the stolen sounds and images if it weren't for the gameplay. Though that could have been stolen too... Either way I think this was a good effort and pretty fun. My main gripe (besides the stolen images and sounds) with your game is how the collectible gems that fall are so freaking huge that it's sometimes difficult to see whats going on.

I'd like to see Kilin's opinion of the game but I think it's a pretty good shmup. 6/10

Slightly interesting.
but as Ferret said this should have been entirely original in order to hit a mark.

Am I now the local shmupper?

Here's a note for you. Tacking a copyright onto a game that has so much unoriginal content is useless and probably illegal.

Well, let's get started. WALL OF TEXT MODE TURN ON.

Graphics
Quite frankly, the graphics are poor and inconsistent. There's not much else to say. Makes it far too easy to pick out the ones that you didn't make. And in a game with static sprites like player ships and background objects, no animation needed, I wonder why this is the case.
The HUD is huge and so are the scoring sprites. You should always be able to see the bullets,and when half the screen is being eaten by insignificant things, your field of view becomes too limited.
Don't use the default GM show_message textbox in a game like this. There are cases when it fits, but this is not one of them.

Sound
Well I guess it fits. If nothing else, I enjoyed trying to pick out what game the song was from. I want to say the boss track was the stage 1 theme of TMNT on the NES? All I know is it was something from the NES, something I played as a kid.

Gameplay
It...plays like a shmup....
The player bullet patterns are good, as is the ability to switch between shot types. Gives some versatility between boss fights and stages.
The enemy bullet patterns are ridiculously simple. I have seen no patterns that wow me so far. They're all very amateur and by far lack the visual deception aspect of bullet hell shooters.
Looks like difficulty changes are mostly in damage rather than complexity. "Very Easy" had patterns that looked like they should be in harder difficulties, something newer players would find overwhelming. Regardless, I had to try to die, at which point I discovered you only had one life per stage, which evens it out I guess. Regardless, redoing entire stages on death is incredibly annoying, especially with the length presented here.
The bosses are very, very boring. One attack pattern for two minutes? Change it up or shorten it at the very least. Also, the same movement pattern for the first and second bosses?
A good rule of thumb for shooters is that the screen is longer depending on the direction. Vertical shooters should be taller than they are wide, and vice versa for horizontal shooters.

Final
I don't even think I touched on everything I wanted to. It seemed like a very average, un-innovative shooter. To be honest, I never finished the game. It couldn't hold my interest long enough to justify making it through 24 stages and 26 bosses. If there are this many complaints (and feel free to wait for other input besides my own) about the first couple of stages, I think it's a good sign that something needs work. Maybe I'll finish it one day, but I think a lot of things need some fixing up. Start with replacing the stolen graphics and audio. Then work on making gameplay more dynamic and interesting. Overall, good job in some regards, keep at it in others. Don't call this a full release just yet. But execute correctly and the game has potential.

5/10

Thank you Kilin, well said.

And no, I just consider you my personal shmup expert. :P

Eh. I guess it's unfair of me to compare it to a bullet hell when it wasn't specifically tagged as such. But it plays similarly to one, and me comparing this more to bullet hell than "just some shmup" should be taken as a compliment.

It's also unfair to rate based on a small amount of play time compared to the amount of content in the game. But for one, if I'd played through the entire game, that list would be longer than infinity. Second, it just doesn't hold my attention, and coming from someone who likes these games, that's a big deal. I think a lot of innovation needs to go into these things in order to make them fun and remotely comparable to commercial shooters. A registered version of Game Maker wouldn't hurt either. But for being unregistered, not too bad.

All right, let's not be a selfish whore and play a game by someone else for once, Taizen.

It was fun, but the graphics were indeed horribly inconsistent. I don't believe that graphics are everything, but even in overlooking that, the collectibles obscured a lot of the action at times and the stages and bullet patterns were very monotonous, simple, and repetitive.

I remember most of the MIDI files in use too. I would rip them from other projects and miscellaneous sites on the Internet.
Regardless, it's a very nice try at it, and completely blows any shmups I've made a few years ago out of the water.

And as mentioned above, the unregistered Game Maker does explain a little, but still :I

I'd give a 5.5 if possible, but I'll be nice and mark it a six.