Monthly Archive

I got the Pulstar no-miss clear!

Having already made it to Stage 5 boss in normal play, I went and savestate-practiced the latter stages because I got frustated over having to play ~20 minutes just to make it to where I’m having problems. Worked wonders. Figured out quick-kill techniques for the last four bosses, though they basically boil down to “get real close so your pod does huge damage”. Still, felt good finding those. Of course using those means points lost, you could milk some of the bosses for spawning enemies, but it’s a checkpoint-shmup anyway, so scoring isn’t really a high factor in the game’s appeal in the first place.

There’s a Whoops-moment just before the fourth boss, when I accidentally detonate the pod when I was just trying to lock the bits back in place. Oh well. Luckily that boss can easily be done without the pod and I just played Stage 5 a bit more carefully until I got powered up again. Come to think of it, I imagine the first five stages could be done without the pod completely…but from Stage 6 onwards there’s quite a lot of enemy fire coming your way, I don’t know if those are possible without the pod’s frontal protection.

I really like the C powerup, which increases the shot’s charging speed and allows you to hit rapid max faster with fewer button taps. It’s like the developers saying “Fuck that constant tapping, here, take this so your fingers won’t fall off”. And even then the game is roughly 50% about applying charge shots, I do almost the whole last stage with that alone.

Anybody else notice that the first boss is like a garbage-version of the final boss? Looks kinda the same, has similar attacks…it didn’t occur to me until this last run.

Video at my site and Youtube.