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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.
I don’t think it was five credits after my previous post that I got the 1CC in GunForce: Battle Fire Engulfed Terror Island. While having the no-miss clear would be nice, I think it’d be more annoying to go for than its worth to me. I’m not really getting the”must get a perfect run!”-vibe from the game like I did with Shattered Soldier, for example. So I think I’m just going to move on.
It was an okay run overall. My fight against the first boss didn’t go exactly according to my usual battle plan, instead I kept jumping around like a moron, but hey. My first death was in the ladders of Stage 3. Real bummer that one, probably could’ve been avoided. It takes two bullets to take those guys down, and you’ll notice I did shoot him twice, but the second bullet hit him while he was still in the last frames of his invulnerability period which allowed him to take a shot off.
I’m very pleased I didn’t die again until the latter part of the last stage. The game’s all about finding the right pacing for each situation, sometimes you want to take your time and kill every enemy on screen, other times you want to just run past as fast as possible since enemies themselves don’t hurt you, only their bullets do. The hallway of lasers is certainly of the latter variety. The last two deaths were just unfortunate timing, especially the last one. Echoing my first death, the last death happened mere frames after my own invulnerability period had worn off.
I actually played Raiden III briefly before I played Raiden IV. At the time I did think that the slow ship speed was a tad cumbersome but I did practice the game a tad and liked what I played.
Many people complain about the slow ship speed in Raiden III but after playing Raiden IV which has a slightly faster default ship speed, I can say with confidence that Raiden III’s slow ship speed is not an issue. But that is only true if you understand how to play Raiden III or Raiden IV. Speed is not an issue because most of survival can be boiled down to using small dodges; weaving inbetween bullet spreads. Seldom is a situation where you need speed to reach a safe area. Rather, the safe areas are present in the design of the bullet patterns. Where it is the player’s job to find a good preemptive positioning and dodging strategy to avoid death. This includes not cornering yourself when bullets will trap you! I guess the laymen just blindly assumes speed is what is needed to avoid death. And we (shmuppers) see the same rash assumptions elsewhere such as in bullet hell games where the onlooker assumes a stupid amount of skill is needed to play these games. No, only a small chunk of enlightenment will do people good!
I can’t say what people will like or won’t like, however. But Raiden III and IV are no-frills, classic shoot’em’up action and this is why I love these games.
I came back to playing Raiden III after a long hiatus! (But not before my time with Raiden IV)
The last time I played I had practiced and familiarized with most of the game and was in fact mostly prepared to perform the 1cc. I got burnt out or bored of it, however, and stopped playing. Coming back recently was not that difficult, though. It’s amazing how the brain works. Because despite, at least, a few months where I had left the game, it only took me a couple hours of practice to become acclimated again with the stages and bosses of the game.
Both are great games and each offer a hefty dose of Raiden style gameplay. It’s hard to say one is better than the other but I think the bosses and stages of IV were more diabolical compared to III. Stage 6 and 7 are amazing in III. I like the colorful parts of Raiden III and I feel like Raiden IV had more of that. The more I think about both games, the more I realize they are quite similar to each other. My mind has blanked out thinking of both of these games together in my head. Guess that’s it. ’Till next entry.
Cleared Gigantic Army on Insane and aside from taking absolutely stupid hits in Stage 1 it was a solid run. I still say Beam Cannon is kind of overpowered, with just one shot (and a few from the Assault Rifle) I took down the TLB before he managed to even attack me. Beam Cannon is like a skip-the-bosses mode, with the Assault Rifle as main weapon you get three shots of it for each stage and that’s just enough to take down every miniboss and boss comfortably.
Almost makes me wish there was an even harder difficulty, but sadly clearing Insane didn’t unlock such a thing. I could, of course, try to beat Insane without using any secondary weapons at all. Could be an interesting challenge, actually having to fight the bosses properly. But I also have Gunhound to sink my teeth into…we’ll see.
I was flipping through games in Mame, trying some various stuff out. No, I’m not one of those people who has every MAME rom on my computer. I only have games I’m interested in playing. So, I tried out P47 Aces and right away I found out that it was fast paced, and likely a challenging game to clear. I like a good challenge and it piqued my interest further. Upon inspection on the Shmups forum nobody had cleared the game. Soon after I found myself save state raping the hell out of the game, figuring out the bosses, enemies to point-blank, special positioning and all the like: learning the game. Leader boards can really do it for me when it comes to shmups. Anyway, I found the game to be quite good. Detailed and colorful graphics, parallax scrolling with some stages having more than 4 layers to them, a variety of stages and cool enemy and boss animations.
To me P47-Aces feels like a horizontal Viper Phase 1 or horizontal Gunbird game mostly in regard to the enemy bullets. The bullets are fast and a decent amount of memorization is required for positioning during bosses. Popcorn enemies are responsible for the non-fixed bullets and at times will flock in large groups, shooting many bullets, requiring you to herd their shots or dart in between some of them. What I liked about the general gameplay is that it is very straight forward with what you have to deal with. There is a simple order to the types of threats, but the speed of the bullets and how you must react made for a fun experience. Here’s my stage run down.
-First stage is a countryside type stage, lots of rolling hills and a large green cliff side at the boss.
-Second stage is higher up on the countryside at dusk with some farmhouses seen on the ground in the distance. A huge battleship consists of the whole stage.
-Third stage is a desert canyon type stage where the difficulty really settles in, as if the 2nd stage wasn’t intimidating enough. Many larger aircraft are now appearing with more threatening patterns, and a new popcorn enemy that if isn’t destroyed fast enough will let out a fast large spread shot which webs into the bullets of other enemies quite annoyingly. The boss scene takes place in front of a town built at the edge of a cliff.
-The fourth stage is the token water / huge battleship stage, seen in so many other World War themed shmups. In this stage the sun sets and the colors of the stage change quite nicely, as a nice touch, if you time out the battleship, it will sink just as you see the sun setting into the horizon. The animation on the water is pleasing to the eye and stretches out to the horizon.
-The fifth stage is over a lake with forested area around, the greenest stage yet. The water comes into play here where enemy planes drop boueys that explode after a few seconds once they hit the water. The explosions are cool, big water splash animations and a BOOOSHHH sound to accompany. This stage is like stage 3 2.0: you are forced to multitask, destroying large planes, avoiding their balloons that shoot aimed shots, and also considering the popcorn enemies. Point blank and herd or bomb is the lesson. The boss is a plane set in the water, one of its turrets shooting at you at first, then as you pass it takes off from the water and battles you.
-Stage 6 is my favorite: the true desert stage on a purple night. A jazzy song plays here that is laid back and groovy. And even an orange tinged, crescent moon is seen slowly scrolling in the farthest background. This stage has the most layers to it. A foreground dune scrolls the fastest in front of you at the very bottom, the desert over which your flying, then large cascading dunes followed by a few more layers of more scrolling desert. This stage puts everything you’ve learned to the test, and makes you memorize it the most while introducing a new type of plane, a type of jet that looks like it bears the colors of the US flag. It’s just oddly bannered in such a way, I don’t know why but I find it funny. This stage has a tank hybrid boss, and is also the 2nd easiest boss of the game once you figure out the best way to beat it.
-Stage seven, still bringing new areas for stages, this one is set in a harbor city, the buildings of the city are the highlight of the background. You are flying over a bridge that runs along the perimeter of the city. In this stage you have to be aggressive in your point blanking, but it’s short. The boss makes up for it, being the most hellish boss of the game. It’s simply a war machine on wheels. One of the most annoying things about it being that it shoots out missiles that upon explosion sends out rows of bullets from each side. In the latter phases, the safe spots within those rows need to be known, as a big spray comes out periodically as well as popcorn ships swooping in for potshots.
-Finally, the last stage takes place over an arctic ocean, snowy mountains in the background and glaciers in the foreground, reflected off of the water. In this stage you’re hunting down the escaping enemy ships. The stage is basically 4 mini-boss aircrafts with popcorn enemies filled between them. Once again, the popcorn ships attempting pot shots at you as you try to take down the mini-boss crafts, which have four phases to them, the last being the most dangerous. Varied bullet blasts that sweep the whole screen. Clutch dodging required or bombs if you have them. The boss has something like 5 phases and is actually a walk in the park if you reach him while fully powered up, and have at least one life or a couple bombs to spare. If not powered up, it is an annoying battle, but could be bombed to death with 2 lives worth of bomb stock. I had to reach it by no-missing the whole game, apparently.
The game had some fairly memorizer heavy parts, it required me to no-miss untill the end of the game. Dodging bullets was fun the whole time, and the way enemies die was done well. The bosses deteriorate after each phase, as well as some of the stronger aircrafts. The death explosions were cool, usually showing the craft splitting in half or breaking into smaller, distinct pieces. The game gave a great impression of destroying stuff. Popcorn enemies ‘parts’ would kind of lob up into the sky playfully, almost like popcorn does when it pops. Sometimes during the game it’s fun to watch that popcorn pop and watch their debris fall.
Yeah, I should mention the music was done by Manabu Namiki too. A very classic shmup soundtrack that did its job, and bragged only a little bit with catchy melodies, holding steady with the atmosphere and tension for the rest. A funny and cool thing about the game is that ramming into stuff, terrain, enemies or bosses doesn’t kill you. It just bounces you away. I really liked this about the game, I think I would have been more frustrated as there were some parts where you make contact with enemy planes but don’t shoot. The funny part is that the core element of scoring higher revolves around bouncing off of stuff. Every bounce is worth 100 points. On top of that, there are certain places that you can bounce to gain points very quickly. Basically getting your sprite stuck into an area will rocket it up a bit. I didn’t bother with it much during my run, but I do show a few places where that is possible.
Also, about my run. I recorded an .inp of my 1cc in Mame Plus .133. Kaisero has offered to make the videos of my run since my computer can’t handle the recording. I will update this post with those videos when they are up. I think you will enjoy watching this game. But I encourage anyone looking for a slightly memorizer, challenging, fast and thrilling shmup to give P47 Aces a go. I did have to do a lot of specific practice with save states to accomplish the 1cc, but I had plenty of fun doing so, conquering certain parts of the game. The game is only about a half hour so the stages go quick and there isn’t a whole lot to learn in between the tough parts.
I used the chick with big boobies ‘Kim Blaire’, but there is a loli, a generic tough guy 24 year old and a geyser who goes by the name “Captain Uncle” for the characters.
A note about the music: The sound emulation is slow, apparently! I checked out the actual soundtrack and it’s so much faster that I find it weird! I’m used to the slow music, hahaha.
And that’s a no-bomb clear of the game. Practicing the game on emulator with savestates paid off, the last boss is appropiately the hardest thing in the game. Even when I figured the patterns out I would still sometimes lose against him, he’s rather tricky. This run has quite possibly my best fight against him, I don’t take a single yet until the very last pattern. When he does his four orb attack there’s a small window in which you’re supposed to jump from a platform towards the other side – too soon and you hit the earlier explosion’s tip, too late and you hit the later one’s.
I sort of want to play the game as the other character as well, her weapons act differently enough that new tactics would need to be devised. And her flamethrower is just awesome, it cuts through bosses like…a flamethrower through most things, I suppose. But to balance it out her homing weapon is far worse. We’ll see if I get around to it.
Now to take care of Silver Surfer. And I realized that 2010 is far along and I haven’t started on Street Fighter 2010 yet. Promised myself I’d clear that in its proper year.
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.
Got the no-miss clear of R-Type’s first loop. I’m pleased. And I beat Kiken’s score by almost 100k, that’s a nice bonus.
Second loop’s a bit tricky. The first two stages aren’t that bad (though in this run I messed up in 2nd stage boss) but Stage 3 is already pretty brutal. The big cannon/thruster at the end of the Big Ship takes much, MUCH more hits, the turrets at the front of the ship regenerate quite fast…it’s a whole new ballgame from there on. I’m actually a bit tempted to work on the second loop – the game’s so short that even if I played through both loops it would still take less time than a full run of Contra: Shattered Soldier. But if I do decide to go at it, I’d be doing it with R-Types for PS1 rather than the Dimensions port I played here. Nothing wrong with Dimensions, but in the end I’m just a bit more comfortable with the original – especially since Dimensions doesn’t have customizable controls.
But then, I also want to work on R-Type 2 and about 30 other games. I have a list of gaming feats I want to accomplish, and now I can mark off one of them.
Video at http://www.ghegs.com/movies/Ghegs_R-Type1XBLA_1stloop_nomiss.mp4
I have been enjoying Mushi Futari 1.5 Original mode right off the bat. I tried Ultra once or twice and was annihilated before the end of Stage 1. Haven’t touched Maniac or arrange or novice stuff really. When I got into Mushihimesama 1, I tended towards the Maniac mode. It was the first Cave game whose scoring system I learned and got good at. I shuffled Original mode off to the side for the time I spent nailing down a better Maniac route.
It was only untill long after did I play and 1cc Mushihimesama’s Original mode. And I’m glad that I did, it’s great fun. It may have been because of the other shooting game experience I got in the meantime that let me appreciate Original mode more-so. Because now I see how Mushi1 Original feels like a Toaplan game. The systematic sweeping mechanic is put well into play — when you get to the edge of the screen and have to carve back through the bullet patterns. That hypnotic sweeping of aerial destruction. And to be honest, Futari’s original mode feels like that but on lots of steroids.
I was trying to clear Mushi1 Orig. with Lx 4+ but hit a wall at getting Lx4. I think I was pretty close, if I had just focused and pinpointed my run a bit more. Soon after my curiosity of Futari, followed the wait for the game. I decided on getting a US Cock-Box 360. Pretty glad I did to be honest. I got most of the retail shmups, RE5, Tales of Vesperia and Star Ocean 4. AND FUTARI, BITCH.
I hyped up Futari to myself a lot and I’m really enjoying it. I jumped right into the scoring system of 1.5 Original. My initial plan was to play the first two stages with the scoring mechanic in mind, then the rest of the stages for survival. It didn’t take long for me to start playing the whole game with scoring in mind, pinpointing parts where I needed to ignore it. I started using the practice mode fairly soon and it’s pretty damn handy, running St. 4 and 5 alternatively and their bosses with the rank at an ideal run setting. Been hitting the first extend right before the last set of icicle blockades in st. 2. The first two stages remain fun because of the scoring, unlike Mushi 1′s first 2 stages.
The game has been pumping the adrenaline a little bit too which is always good for playing a shmup. All the stages are pretty cool. Been trying to play maybe a half hour+ a day at least. I’ve already cleared with all the character types except for Abnormal Reco. Abnormal Reco is actually pretty fun I think, but hard to score or survive with. Her A-Shot Option Lock is really powerful and if you know the enemy positioning you can just take care of business close range. Some patterns are hard to fight close range, though.
Tonight I had a pretty crisp run, not dying untill right before Larsa. Then once again for Lx3, 324mil. Beating my last score by 30mil. It might be hard to get those extra points, the top score on the shmups board is 400mil but I’m gonna go for it. Still having a lot of fun with the mode.
I still have to create my Live account and get some scores on there. >_>
As of about 2 hours ago, it is Christmas here on the Pacific Coast, so Merry Christmas to all.
I went out and bought a VGA cable for my 360, looking to put my nearly-3-year-old secondary monitor, an Envision H170L with a native resolution of 1280×1024, to good use. After a little setup, I decided to use Mushihime-sama Futari as a guinea pig. Even in yoko mode, playing Futari in 360 mode was mindblowing–everything looks much clearer.
And, I can more easily tell the difference between the pixel hell that is Arcade mode and 360 mode (or as I like to call it, Futari HD) than I can on a horizontal CRT.
I’d like to put the LCD in a vertical position and experience true vert awesomeness, but I have no easy way of doing it at the moment, and I bought my monitor with no regard to tate. *sigh*
In the midst of playing around with my new setup, I, about an hour ago as of this writing, decided to kick off Christmas by taking a 1CC on Black Label’s Original mode, using Palm; I’ve always been more of a fan of fast movement coupled with concentrated firepower than slower movement with a wider spread.
I could’ve easily no-bombed Stage 5 (Cave, I’m really happy for you, I’ma let you finish, but Raiden had some of the best fast bullets of all time!) up to the indoor area like on a previous run, but I have trouble replicating the lines I made that made bombing unnecessary. This was also the run where I finally had the scoring system under control (A-shot with blue counter, and C shot with green counter); I was able to pick up two extends (and the Stage 5 1-up) and finish with a little under 210 million and a life left (lol, Larsa bomb spam).
Next up: Figuring out how to make playing for survival and playing for score go hand in hand in BL Maniac. And maybe more 1.5 because it’s starting to collect digital dust.
p.s. The record for Rez HD Area 5 is 9 million. I have the replay file, and it clocks at over 99’59″999 and I stopped watching about 1 boss form in, so maybe it’s not really a falsificare so much as GOOD OLD FASHIONED HOURS LONG MILKING geez fuck this game
Dan Haigh
Ghegs
[DRZ] OTL-TIW
sikraiken
Alice
victoly
plasm0
Aquas
Raydere
szycag
BDA
bloocloud
Kollision
