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After buying a stick, the next step is to get the feel of it and master it, if you don’t know what I mean. On some shmups (rRootage, Parsec47, NOIZ2SA) I tend to fare better, but on some others (the Garegga spirital trilogy, and maybe RFA) I tend to do worse.
I did, however, execute a 1CC on Thunder Force AC, two days after 1CC’ing Thunder Force III a second time. I’ve found that using A/X/Y, with thumb allocated to changing speed, is more comfortable than X/Y/RB. Same goes with Gradius, which puts the powerup button on button 1 rather than 3. AC is a fairly good port, but is graphically weaker in some spots. I did like Haides [AC/TS], however, and Ellis [AC/TS], despite being the mutant lovechild of Thunder Force II Stage 3-2 and Stage 5-2 4-2, is actually a challenge and isn’t a bland diagonal-scrolling stage where barely anything interesting happens. Only thing really hurting it is a lack of autofire, though various versions of MAME, controller-provided autofire, and the Saturn port fix that.
Thunder Spirits sucks. Still no autofire (inexcusable considering the overrated-as-hell SNES controller’s buttons), worse music in some spots, and when I use external autofire (generated by my stick), the game slows down Gradius III style. There’s two stages unique to this; I kinda like the new Stage 8, but Stage 6? Cerberus [Spirits] looks even more boring than Cerberus [III/AC]. This is a textbook example of why I don’t think SNES completely trumps the Genesis: SNES may have the higher color capacity and all the Mode 7 fancy-shmanciness, but it lacks the power needed to keep a game like Thunder Force III running at 100% most of the time. And even with the higher palette, Spirits somehow manages to look WORSE on the SNES, partly due to the SNES outputting 64 less vertical lines and thus necessitating smaller sprites.
Well, enough console ranting. I’ve also been using the stick for Tetris: The Grand Master. To play TGM on a stick properly, one must switch the restrictor from its square 8-way position to the diamond-like 4-way position.
This is easy to do on my FSTE, it just takes a lot of time, as mentioned before. On TGM2 and clones of TGM3, I can easily do the up-down motion necessary to do a firm drop, but I still have issues with the current piece shifting left or right slightly by accident. I also have to relearn some of the techniques I use to efficiently get pieces into tricky spots. This is made tricky by how I play on a keyboard: arrow keys for up/down/left/right, A for CCW rotate, S for CW rotate, and D for secondary CCW rotate. This means my hands’ roles are reversed. My hands, on a stick, will attempt to do a technique, but fumble with it. I have, however, noticed more consistency when playing on a stick: in T.A. Death mode, I can consistently break into the mid-200 range, whereas on a keyboard I have some bullcrap rounds where I don’t even hit 170.
However, there are tricks that I find easier on a stick: Zangi-moves are easier and feel more graceful on a stick, for instance. In instances where I need to perform a Zangi-move and rotate, I can more confidently move while rotating at the same time.
I may make a more long-term switch to 4-way in the winter, when I go to do some intensive TGM training. Heck, I may even use it in Blockbox League season 4.
hai tecno soft i bs your last two bosses by taking advantage of my massive life count
So other than that, I’ve been playing some more Tetris: The Grand Master and its clones. I can finally get S1 in TGM2+/TAP. I still don’t like TGM1. Lack of hard drop firm drop means I’m kinda fucked if I get an overhang, and the game is slower, so I stack differently (stacking about 60-80% high to speed this the hell up), and my performance suffers. I can’t bear to play this game so much now.
I’m also going to participate in a Blockbox competition, because screw Tetris Friends unless it’s Sprint mode (and even then, screw Sprint mode too), and screw Blockles oh wait they deleted the old blockles which is basically crappy multiplayer Tetris with unremappable shit controls (up to rotate? space to hard drop while soft drop is still on down?). Given my poor track record with VS matches in BB, I’m gonna see if I end up sucking so hard that I destroy the fabric of time and space and create a fourth division.
but on the plus side i suddenly broke my record of 55 seconds on 40 lines by 3 seconds: 52″52
Well that was entirely unexpected. Did my usual run, was happy to see that my tactics for Stage 6 worked nicely, was a bit surprised when I even killed the boss (first time for that) and then my jaw dropped to the floor when I went and beat Stage 7 despite not having seen it before. So…yeah. R-Type Delta cleared on Normal using RX and it was a no-miss, no-bomb.
Huh.
Stage 6 was much more difficult than the last stage, in which the only part where I felt some worry was at the very end where you have to dodge the sperm without the Force. There were few very close calls there. Reviewing the replay I see the ship’s hitbox is very small, in Stage 5 there’s a bullet that passes through the back of the ship and in Stage 6 I end up trapped inside the boss’ coiling tail and almost the entire canopy is inside the tail for a frame or two. So the hitbox must be in the very middle of the ship. Or maybe that tail has its own hitbox smaller than its graphics, who knows.
So…what now? Do I go forth and try to beat the game with the other ships, crank the difficulty up to Hard, go for a No-Force clear or move on to something else entirely? I’m still in a WTF-just-happened state of mind, I really wasn’t expecting to clear the game yet. According to the game’s timer it only took me 8 hours and 20 minutes.
Video available at http://www.ghegs.com/movies/Ghegs_R-Type_Delta_RX_nomiss.mp4
Spent some time today to clear the game with the rest of the characters and put up the video of my highest scoring clear to my site. I even got a special request for a Tempest replay so I made one of that as well. Clearly I’m moving up in the world…now where’s my falsificare?
Arcade++ could be pretty fun if it wasn’t for the game’s technical problems, mainly the hard-to-see enemy bullets. The extremely short range teleportation gimmick is hardly a proper compensation. It’s sad, the game had some good potential…the characters are different enough (aside from Ruby and R.A.D being mostly copies of each other) and have unique weapons to keep them interesting. The stages aren’t too bad and the scoring system didn’t put me off, I even found myself figuring some of the more simple sections out: “Hmm…if I delay destroying that enemy I can keep the multiplier through this empty section until that power-up box scrolls in…”
Not the first time I’ve run into a game where I enjoy the scoring system but the game itself has issues that make it very hard to enjoy properly. Ah well. I’m sure I’ll get to Death Smiles or Raiden Fighters eventually.
I recently got a japanese Xbox 360 so naturally I got carried away playing around with it and forgot about Ether Vapor for a while, like I figured would happen. I plan to return to it sooner or later, I’m just not satisfied enough with the 1miss. The little break might even do me some good.
I bought the new console to play the games I had already acquired in anticipation of the event: Raiden IV, Raiden Fighters Aces and Death Smiles. After playing each maybe an hour I’ll probably leave Raiden IV on the shelf. It’s just not that interesting, the graphics are so shiny it’s distracting and the bullet wobble is really annoying. I see little reason to play it when the games in the Aces collection have none of those problems. RF1 has caught my attention the most so far, maybe I’ll start working on that at some point. Death Smiles seems pretty fun too, I prefer horis anyway and the scoring system doesn’t feel overly gimmicky which usually turns me off them.
While those games were the main reason I bought the system, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time playing XBLA titles. Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Mega Man 9, Omega Five, GripShift…all excellent games. I 1CCed Omega Five just today, but it was with the very overpowered Sensei character, so it’s not much of an accomplishment. I do like character-based shmups like this (Section Z, Final Mission, etc) so it’s something I’d like to work on more but sometimes I find the bullets hard to see and get hit without knowing why, so I’m not sure if I want to spend time on a game that has such technical issues. I’m not sure if I’m just getting old or something, but the most often I fail to see bullets is in high-res polygonal games like Omega Five and Raiden IV. But I am playing them on a SD CRT TV, which might be a reason to this.
Well, that didn’t take long. My first full run of the day resulted in a very fine clear of the game. It was a no-miss up to Stage 6, where I didn’t manage to destroy a large enemy and therefore cancel his bullets quite fast enough. Need to revise my strategy there a bit so I can do it 100% of the time. Final boss hit me three times, only one of which was of the “d’uh, I should’ve been able to dodge that”-variety. Overall, I’m pleased with the run, no stupid mistakes at all in the early stages. Hopefully that means I’m starting to get my game together and the final boss is all that stands between me and the no-miss.
Still, I gotta do some tweaking here and there. Outside the final boss, there are few attacks that can still catch me by surprise, and all of them have to do with the homing purple shots. They start out by NOT homing at you, only starting their hunt after they’ve gained some speed. Messes me up.
Replay of the clear available at http://www.ghegs.com/movies/Ether_Vapor_ALL_4miss.mp4
got a cool flat 130m out of the deal. there were a few scoring mistakes (lol lost fairy) and i just went and fucked the medal chain at the very end of the game, but i squeezed through to the large hovertank boss with 2 lives in reserve, and only died at the penultimate pattern of that boss. then bombfested the TLB because fuck if I was going to lose 10 million points.
you can watch the replay if you have the US version of aces and have an active xbox live account. no way for me to record an offsite video without yanking now-unreachable cords, sadly.
next, arcade mode.
(help me)
Dan Haigh
Ghegs
[DRZ] OTL-TIW
sikraiken
Alice
victoly
plasm0
Aquas
Raydere
szycag
BDA
bloocloud
Kollision
