STGT ’09 is over! It was the first STGT in which I tried to play as often as possible and actually tried to get a good team-ranking. Individual ranking sadly had to be irrelevant, since I had to miss the second week due to university stuff. Nevertheless, I thought the game selection was just splendid and I had great fun playing and talking about the games.

After the STGT I wanted to go back to Batrider, but because of a completely surprised last week that was Garegga, I’m hooked to this one again. I was able to regain all my strategies during the STGT and now it’s time to actually improve my score by more than just 30k. If I stop playing Garegga now, I maybe never come back to it again, because it just takes a lot of time to get into the game after a longer break. I have to count after how many bullets some targets die, so you can put your options to back formation in the very last second. I have to listen to the music to know when some enemies selfdestruct or when bosses time out. I have to know exact screen positioning for correctly placed bombs. There are so many little things I just don’t want to learn again. Sometimes I just wish I could record replays…

So I just had my best credit in Garegga ever. The result is a new highscore, F,5mill, but I’m not really happy, eventhough my first next goal I set myself indeed was F,5. So why am I frustrated instead of jumping through the roof? That’s mainly because this credit was perfect in every aspect (for me). I didn’t make a single mistake and I died on Glow Squid’s first form. Both of Glow Squid’s forms together give you around 500k…. 500k! That would’ve been a G score…a G score!

I didn’t break my medalchain even once, got both Mad Ball’s more or less perfect, got 3,1mill after the flamingoes using the suicide game over technique, milked Black Heart mk2 and…. died on Glow Squid!!!!

Score progression was as follows:

Stage 1: 580,000

Stage 2: 4,500,000 (3,1 after the flamingoes)

Stage 3: 6,000,000

Stage 4: 7,800,000

Stage 5: B,500,000

Stage 6: D,500,000

Stage 7: F,567,320 (E before BHMKII)

I had at least three stupid and avoidable deaths: One at Junkey Monkey, one at the many turret section where Glow Squid bursts out and a last one at BHMKII’s first form. I always am so nervous when my score is high and I reach the last boss, but this time, it was another level of nervousness, I could already feel G!

The main problem I have with replicating such a run are the damned flamingoes. Sometimes I get only 2,5mill from them and only like 1/20 of the time I have over 3mill, which I’ll definitely need for a G score now. It’s just so damn random and makes it overly frustrating. On top of that I break my medalchain there very often, it doesn’t seem controllable to any extent.

Anyway, I’m just a bit pissed atm, it’ll probably take months to get that kind of credit again, if I haven’t already stopped playing again by then.

Beatmania iidx Empress got released a few days ago, but I don’t want to start somwething new, when I haven’t finished this one.

We’ll see if this story gets a happy end.

I still love you Garegga!!!

xxx

-Plasmo