PS2 Gunbird, and shooters in General!

I thought you shoot em up fanatics here would be interested to know I accidentally stumbled upon PS2 Gunbird Spcecial Edition for a snip at £9.99 in Gamestation (I think it was only released recently in the UK, in fact). Looking at Gamefaqs, I don't think this game has even been released in the US of A yet, which is a shame. Anyway, they seem to be perfect conversions of the Arcade verions (both 1 and 2), with fully customisable practice modes (including the option to switch on very distracting hit boxes), 3 screen modes (normal vertical with borders; wide which stretches the visuals to fill the screen; and a horizontal that doesn't alter the d-pad directions accordingly, sadly. There's no proper widescreen mode either), and 7 difficulty levels (with infinite continues, which is a bit poopy if you have no self control!) and NO slowdown as far as I can see! The downside? Get this: as far as I can tell, there's NO SAVE FUNCTION. Doh! I can't believe they missed that out of an otherwise awesome package, I mean, what games in this day and age DON'T have save functions? It's still waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than R-Type Final, which I picked up a few weeks back, and bored me witless after having only played it for less than an hour (stuck it up for sale on Amazon). Is it me or are the vast majority of 2D shooters with 3D visuals still inferior to their purely 2D counterparts? I reckon even all the previous R-Types were better than Final! I got Ray Crisis a few years back, and that also seemed to suffer the same problems as R-Type: they just seem obsessed with flash 3D gimmicks and setpieces, but the gameplay seems to lack the breakneck blood & guts pace and style of the top 2D blasters. Worse still, their graphics also seem really choppy and dated considering they're 3D anyway! I haven't played all the recent shooters, so someone please tell me I'm wrong! There are exceptions to the rule of course, like Mars Matrix and Treasure's mighty Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun (still not played this yet. Grrr). Shooters I'd like to have a go on: PS2 Silpheed, Psyvariar 2 and Gradius V (though I've never been a fan of the Gradius/Parodius series). Anyone any other suggestions?