shmups.system11.org

Way to put everybody else on this board to shame!

Wooo! Amazing work!

Thanks, all!

I should note that I don't have any special talent at shooting games. When I was new to Raiden DX, it took weeks of casual play before I could beat 1-3 (on any course). Practice and memorization work wonders.

saucykobold - 15,963,200 - 3-1 - 2P - expert, arcade difficulty - PS
I'll stick with the expert course for two to three more weeks before uploading a run.

Just pulled off this secret (for the first time) on the PCB, and you can definitely bomb at some point.

1) Blow cover off first tank
2) Destroyed second tank with bomb
3) Destroyed first tank before gold marker
4) Destroy radars.

saucykobold - 19,552,950 - 3-4 - 2P - expert, arcade difficulty - PS

I discovered something strange about the Playstation port. Arcade difficulty is actually two difficulties in one--I call them "hard arcade" and "easy arcade". When you start a new game, one of these is randomly picked. The difference between the two is fairly subtle in loop 1 but much more pronounced in subsequent loops.

I don't know if this applies to training and novice, but it definitely holds for the expert course. If anyone's curious, I could show you what the same section of the game looks like on easy and hard arcade.

The score I posted on December 11 was done on easy arcade. At the time, I didn't know about the variation in difficulty. CIT, could you replace that score with my current best on hard arcade? I'll try to upload the replay in a day or two.
saucykobold - 16,545,740 - 3-5 - 2P - expert, arcade difficulty - PS

Weird. So the selection seems random? Could rank be involved at all? I'd love to see some pics / vids, that's news to me.

Hmm, could be. I'll do a little testing this week and record a few videos for comparison.

Loop 1 (and 2-1)
The rest of loop 2 is basically a choreographed tapfest. It's available here if you're interested.

I played a few games recently; easy arcade was picked in only one of them. I think easy arcade is a programming oversight. Also, the difference in bullet speed becomes apparent very early on (maybe a minute into level 1-1). So, rank can't be causing this.

If you're curious, here's 1-6 on both variations of arcade difficulty.

Hard
Easy
In the latter clip, enemy bullets are a little slower and the boss doesn't shoot quite as often.

Thanks for the videos - I wish I could test this out myself, but I'm without my PS1 (or indeed any of my gaming stuff -_-) at the moment.

Wow, this is really interesting. Raiden DX used to be considered a nearly perfect port, but the significant differences definately make it not so.

As far as I understand, you can't have it as "perfect port", because the PCB had a frame rate which playstation is not capable to replicate. I used to play the PCB for many years, so I can confirm that the port, while being as good as it is possible to be on playstation, it is not exactly identical, and there is nothing you can do about it. The same issue persists with r-type, mushihime-sama, dodonpachi, and other coin-ops with odd framerate of 57 or sorts.

for this reason, they had "easy arcade" which is bit slower than PCB, and "hard arcade" is bit more difficult. The whole issue is irrelevant, unless you are really serious about competing for points. Which, for this game, I believe we are

the whole issue isn't close to irrelevant even if you were just casually playing for top scores (wait what)

I seen some simular replays on youtube. Replay looks like Arcade-4 difficulty judging by the ultra fast enemy bullets. Does anyone here own the pcb and can you adjust the dip switches to get the maximum auto-fire rate?

No adjustment is available. Fairly certain autofire only exists on the export version, not the Japanese.

Thats because cabs in japan already have turbo-fire switches. shame really, as ive got no chance of beating the japanese highscore of 21million. Its probably alot higher nowadays.

The WR score is 29,937,580 (loop 7 stage for Training (Alpha). I didn't know that you were going for Training course, Mills.
Over 20mill should easily be possible without autofire. (which doesn't mean that it's in fact easy, should be brutally hard of course)

No, i was referring to Charlie Mission/arcade pcb. You really stuggle on 3rd loop Charlie mission because the fire doesn't deal with the enemies as efficiently as 1st or 2nd loop.

The japanese don't keep track of scores higher than 10mill, that's why I thought you were referring to Alpha mission.
On which loop does the dificulty max out on Charlie mission?

Loop 4 is the hardest, I believe (in Alpha, you'll reach the equivalent of loop 4 by the time you get to 2-1). Behold:

PCB
PS (tool-assisted)

I dont get that period. why would the japanese have a WR console score and not arcade pcb? You cant loop alpha or bravo mission on arcade pcb, only charlie.

Well you can definitely loop 練習コース aka Practice Course which translates to Alpha mission on the port, doesn't it?

All courses are loopable in all versions.

Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie are the names for the three courses in the western PCB version.

One small qualification:
To loop into Expert from Novice, you need to start on Training. If you start on Novice, the game always ends after 1-5. Hence, the Novice WR is "only" 7,659,600 (as opposed to, say, 20+ mil).

I played all three courses yesterday at london casino arcade. Alpha and Bravo do not loop only charlie mission loops after stage 9. What am i doing wrong to loop alpha and bravo missions, dont forget im playing arcade jamma pcb?

If you start on Alpha, you can loop into Bravo by meeting these conditions:

At least 99% kills
100% secrets
Don't die
Don't bomb

After you make it to Bravo, you can loop into the sixth level of Charlie course by fulfilling those same conditions. Remember that you can't loop if you start on Bravo.

If you're still unable to loop, then I'm guessing it's only possible in the Japanese arcade version.

Well doing the kills % and first life no bombs is no problem, doing the secrets shit is. Cant be asked to re learn all the secret stuff as the game in general is boring. Can't i just one life and no bombs to the end of alpha and forget the secrets as i hate playing alpha and bravo missions, id rather just loop charlie?

Why are you playing it then?!

You only have to do 6 of the 7 gold pyramids, but then I can only do that when lowering the difficulty.

If you want to loop every time, then just do Charlie.

Del requested to put it in on my behalf as there was alot of talk going about this game with the highscores and he wanted to see if i could loop it again after a long stint from playing this game. i ony just found out about the Alpha,Bravo,Charlie loop a few weeks ago, so all those years of solely playing charlie mission no one (not even here) could explain why the japanese scores were so high. 3rd loop charlie with 15million was my best score.