Yesterday night I decided to play through some Mega Man 3.  I got excited at the prospect as my friend in Japan narrated what was happening in the Game Center CX episode for Rockman 3 (Talking on Skype).  Arino had severe issues clearing the game, coming in at something like 23 hours.  In my first experiences with the game at a young age, I felt the game had a darker tone to it… I think that was Snake Man’s stage.  I totally forgot that Snake’s Man stage opens up to an outer sky area.  But yes!  I played Mega Man 3.

I cleverly defeated the 8 robot masters with a few continues.  As I was attempting to finish the first of the next 4 stages, my foot hit the OFF on my power surge, so the power went out on the computer.  So I stopped playing that for the night.

Alright.  I planned to 1cc Salamander 1 and 2 recently, here’s the story about how that went down:

I picked up Salamander Portables on the PSP about two years ago and had been playing the two Salamanders just casually since.  I thought, hey, I’ve played these casually enough, hell, (most of my runs were ending at the same points,) so now it’s time to devote to them and clear them.  I chose Salamander 2 first.

Since the only method I have of playing Salamander 2 is on the PSP, I couldn’t make use of save states as I did for Salamander 1.  At first, I played many runs of the game, plowing through the first 4-5 stages easily, then I would hit a wall usually at the asteroid filled stage with the big gunwall boss.  I hit a wall, a gunwall.

After more runs I discovered that the asteroid stage was giving me problems most of the time because I would no-miss my way to that stage.  The rank in fact piles up to an apex and when the rank is high, it feels like everything is moving fast:  the popcorn ships being spat out by dispensers, the oncoming popcorn enemy swirls and turrets that shoot many aimed bullets.  If you’ve played the Gradius games you know that if too many threats flood the space around you — it can mean quick doom.  The rank gets crazy.

What I had to do to counter the rank was to suicide at a specific spot: about 40 seconds before the rotating core on the battleship level, on the last pass under the battleships that surround you.  This is a good place because there are some power-up drops at this point that you can pick up right after suiciding.  It brings the rank down quite noticeably for the next stage, and it makes it much more manageable.  I did that.  Fighting the boss of this stage was sloppy at first, but after a while I figured out how to do it cleanly.  After that is the hardest vertical stage of the game (and the last?) The game gets a bit more serious with a mid?boss that requires a strategy and memorization to effectively beat.  It’s a 3 segmented Gradius 1 Big Core-lookin’ boss.  The trick is to destroy one of the side pods quick so that you can feel safer on one side of the screen.  If the pods survive they continue with a spread laser attack, coupled with straight-shot lasers from the main core, covering most of the screen.  I often choked on that pattern if it occurred more than once.

The last boss was tricky.  He has a variety of attacks that I needed to know how to react to:  when I reached him on my 1cc run I was feeling very nervous about clearing it because of that boss.  I lost my last life remaining during the battle and the adrenaline was pumping.  With determination I narrowly dodge some of his final attacks after I die and pick up only 1 or 2 options.  He felt like he had more health than usual as I got some good hits in, after coming out unscathed of that crisis.  Then almost at the last second I beat him.  I felt pretty accomplished as I noticed my heart was beating harder from that craziness.  Didn’t make it past the first stage of the loop.

Then regular Salamander. This game is kind of an odd one.  I went to MAME to play this one.  There are specifically tricky parts that require a plan of attack to survive.  The first half is relatively easy, and then a vertical stage with a gunwall boss.  The gunwall three-core boss requires a certain trick to defeat it without losing a life.  It involves positioning yourself inside of the gunwall so that these bouncy blue balls don’t fill the lower half of the screen, instead, so that they lob out into a trapped space within the gunwall.  The positioning and timing to pull off the technique needed some articulation, but once I discovered the trick, it didn’t take long for me to grasp the proper execution.  Failing to execute it well enough can lead to a prompt game over.

Following this boss is a horizontal asteroid stage.  A pretty easy stage.  Thanks to save states I was able to find the right positioning to blow through it with little effort.  Then another vertical stage, in this stage, pink energy bursts launch from the ground towards you, there’s an easy ass Gradius I Core rush and then some Moai heads to obliterate.  That sums it up about.  A medium difficulty shooter that’s particular on planning for a few segments of the game.

It feels pretty good to have these two classics under my 1cc belt *shrug*.  I recommend giving them a shot, especially Salamander 2.  It has this triumphant presentation about it that makes it a memorable game.  The original, well, I love the music, and I have a soft spot for the this Gradius relation, I suppose.