I am not proud.  Scoring systems are important because they’re what keeps you entertained on stage 1 when you’re really working on beating stage 7.  My immediate goal was just to clear any of the Raiden Fighters games on Aces (arcade difficulty).  Through some combination of deception and misperception, I thought 1 was the place to start.  Naturally, this was entirely wrong.

Raiden Fighters is the hardest of the three for a no-scoring clear.  By a huge margin, if we allow for a Sim 35 clear of RFJ.  In keeping with the aforementioned lack of pride, I am abandoning it entirely.  So now 2.  Jet might be easier if I were prepared to deliberately earn Sim 35, but that seems annoying.  2 has really passive enemies, weak bosses and the ludicrously powerful Fairy.

Two serious plays later and I’m on the final stage.  Passivity is out the door once the ground enemies show up in 7, so I die rapidly.  I took a few passes at Training and learned enough to no-miss the stage reliably, including a single bomb at the boss.

Back to the real game, I reach stage 7 with my last life and a single bomb: exactly what I need to clear it.  All nerves, but I pull it out, bombing all the boss’ spam for the clear.  Well, no.  Seems I had failed to notice that just beyond the “Stage 7″ selection in Training mode is “Stage 7 + TrueBoss”.  I thought the game was over, because this is where all my training runs ended.  Instead, there’s a pair of turrets, a few drones and then a much tougher boss.  All of which was moot, since I died to the very first attack from those turrets.  Expertly done.

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