Ah, nice edit on that run cycle. I have to say I was eagerly waiting for it while I was watching this thread because I've wondered how I could go about making my run and walk cycles more dynamic as I usually go about it the way Fry did for this one.

Really looking forward to the improved run cycle as well as the other animations. 

I believe Punky = Souly.

I agree about the speed issues. I'm not super great at shmups, but I do play them pretty often. In this demo, I always see bullets coming and see what hole I want to escape through, but the ship is too slow to actually make it. In the end, it feels like the only way I can make it through those holes is to fully memorize the bullet patterns and to move way ahead of time which I think should only be a minuscule part of the shmup experience. I think it might be a wise decision to go with a speed option, or the recent trend of high speed along with a "slowdown" button for weaving through those extra tight spaces.

Great graphics, however I can't help but agree with Helm about them being a bit too similar to other games' graphics.

Well this makes things a bit more interesting...