I DID IT! Share your latest 1CCs/other triumphs here...

[Sengoku Strider]

Star Parodier finally arrived this week. I'd read things to the effect of "you'll probably get the 1CC on your first attempt," but it took me 4-5. Sadly the game froze as the last boss GWAGHHHed, but I checked to confirm that was indeed the end of things.

The game on normal difficulty for the most part isn't tough, and on top of that it drowns you in lives and bombs. But it uses the Blazing Lazers gold lives system, meaning you can "upgrade" individual remaining lives to a respawn, but once you run out of those you get checkpointed. And recovery on the last two stages can be legit brutal, it starts you back at the beginning of the stage and you're not guaranteed the kind of timely upgrades you might need just to push through everything you have to shoot. What's worse, you get no i-frames during bombs, so they're hit & miss as bailouts. But situations you do get i-frames - respawn, taking damage - you can't pick up power-ups. This screwed me multiple times as I hovered over something waiting for the i-frames to end, only to find that meant I'd put myself in a bad position and immediately went down.

It feels silly to even mention these things in a game I 1CCed after only a few attempts. But being unable to get off a checkpoint 9 consecutive times kind of leaves an impression when you really feel like you're not supposed to be dying in this game at all in the first place. Same with burning through 15 lives on the last boss, whose patterns I'm sure you can memorize, but is way more difficult than anything else in the game unless you do. Which, since you'll probably just have enough lives to burn through it anyway, requires a deliberate effort on your part.

All that being said, that stuff aside I do really like this game, it's pure concentrated happy vibes. It's a shame it never saw any sequels. There are two difficulty levels above normal, and the hard one seems closer to Blazing Lazers in challenge (ie. on the not-so-bad side of average), so I'm sure I'll be coming back to this one for another run.

[Sengoku Strider]

Put the Nexzr 1cc to bed tonight.

Great shmup, I don't know that I agree with the rapturous flawless game praise though. Of the 6 proper levels, 5 of them are the same starfield background, with occasional foreground elements. The score/time attack carnival modes also show that with the mechanics they put together, this game would have been much better served doing away with the checkpoints and enemy insta-sniping (no bullet sealing to be found here). Like seriously, those modes are freaking amazing, the time attack in particular is so much fun. I spent hours with it. A whole game built like that could have had a real claim to best shooter of the generation.

But as a memorizer, it wasn't at all unsatisfying. It's clear Kaneko took inspiration from Image Fight here (among other things), and once that clicked for me suddenly I became a lot more tolerant of the vicious blink-of-an-eye deaths the game continuously hits you with. That soundtrack is one of the best I've ever heard in a shmup, or anything really. The anime-lifted sound effects were well implemented and satisfying, aside from that WTF-were-they-thinking noisy angled laser. And of course, the artwork is gorgeous, (though that just makes me wish they'd let the artists do more of it, rather than leaning so hard on that starfield). Both in use of colour and design.

Another one that I can certainly see going back to for a run at hard.

[copy-paster]

You've been crushing with PCE shmups lately mang, mind to take some detour with Konami shmups on the system? Their Gradius ports absolutely owns, and II being the highlight. As if arcade accurate port isn't enough they also add one exclusive stage and different endings on each difficulty.

On topic: I've been playing R-TYPE Delta back in 2015 and instantly became one of favorite of mine, but I didn't put much time for serious clear until yesterday with 1-death clear as a result via R-9A. The death also happens on stage 6 which made recovery way trickier.

[Sengoku Strider]

You've been crushing with PCE shmups lately mang, mind to take some detour with Konami shmups on the system? Their Gradius ports absolutely owns, and II being the highlight. As if arcade accurate port isn't enough they also add one exclusive stage and different endings on each difficulty.

Yeah, I kind of fell in love with the platform when I got my Duo-R RGB modded, I can't seem to stop playing it. I got the Gradius 1CC about two pages back

I have Gradius II in the stack, saving it until towards the end because of how good I've heard it is. I don't have a physical copy of Salamander yet, but based on my time with the virtual console version it's replaced NES Life Force as my favourite version of the game. It'll be in the next 3-4 PCE shmups I get (still need Super Star Soldier & Winds of Thunder). Do you know if PCE Parodius Da is worth getting if I already have the Saturn port?

[Herr Schatten]

Do you know if PCE Parodius Da is worth getting if I already have the Saturn port?

It dials down the arcade's/Saturn's murderous rank quite a bit, so yes. Except if you already have the SNES version, which does the same and has a pretty cool extra stage, while I think the PCE game has one stage cut.

[pieslice]

1CC'd the Bitwave Outzone Common Version. Clutch 1CC with zero lives left so improving score is very feasible if I do better in the second loop

[Nahar]

I just 1CC'd Mushihimesama Original difficulty.

[Sengoku Strider]

I got the 1CC for Macross 2036 on PC Engine. I ended up liking it way better than I expected to. I'd read some dismissive or disparaging comments in the past, but in hindsight they were of the "the only ratings are 10/10 or trash/10" variety. The game is a good but not remarkable shooter - the main area it lacks is in stage design, with lots of empty gaps without much happening. Dialling up the difficulty increases the enemy count and fixes that, however. It's also a horizontal shmup without much in the way of environmental obstacles throughout much of it.

But this game's ace in the hole is its production. They got the character artist for Macross on board, used the real music, voice actors, sampled sound effects (except for your ship's shooting, the one effect you hear far more than any other, WAIIII) created new mech designs, and the game tells a canonical story (based on the Macross II timeline) that takes place following Do You Remember Love? There are copious well done cinemas, so the whole thing really does feel like a lost Macross movie, the Super CD format letting it do this more effectively than the Super Famicom's Scrambled Valkyrie (also part of the same timeline) does.

It works in a few tricks from other games - the boss battles have you in mech mode and control like Forgotten Worlds, the buttons rotating your firing angle. This is super awkward until you get the hang of it, but once you do it does a decent job of evoking the sense of a mech duel. Your ship's main fire is reminiscent of UN Squadron, and it has you buying secondary weapons between stages in a similar fashion (your score doubles as currency).

I've also seen it referenced as difficult, but uhh....it's pretty casual overall. There are at least two 1ups hidden in every stage, there are score based extends, and hidden invincibility pickups midway through every (I think) level that last the duration of the stage until before the boss. That's not to say it didn't take a number of playthroughs to get the 1CC, the game finds plenty of ways to kill you in the back half, and those items can't help you until you've discovered where they are and mentally mapped them out. Which is a little challenging because the backgrounds, while great looking, are mostly endless repeating loops with occasional foreground elements; there were some I assume were there but never did find.

Anyway, recommended for fans of the series, you'll get more out of it than others will and it's certainly one of the better video game representations of it.

Do you know if PCE Parodius Da is worth getting if I already have the Saturn port?

It dials down the arcade's/Saturn's murderous rank quite a bit, so yes. Except if you already have the SNES version, which does the same and has a pretty cool extra stage, while I think the PCE game has one stage cut.

Hmm...sane difficulty is always appealing, but I'm not sure that's quite enough to bite. There are still like 30 other PCE shooters worth getting for me.

[DGR114]

I 1cc’d Raging Blasters a while back. Sorta feels like it doesn’t count since I did it on novice difficulty.
(I’m awful at shmups.) Total score is 2,119,753, I Can’t post a pic right now because I’m on mobile.

[Radtastic]

Does Mecha Ritz count?? I'm a casual shmup player in my 30's and I finally 1CC'd that game.

[Sengoku Strider]

I 1cc’d Raging Blasters a while back. Sorta feels like it doesn’t count since I did it on novice difficulty.
(I’m awful at shmups.)

Does Mecha Ritz count?? I'm a casual shmup player in my 30's and I finally 1CC'd that game.

They certainly do count. Everyone starts from somewhere, and the only person you really need to be competing with is yourself. And not quitting, whatever level you're at, is the biggest part of that.

If you don't feel confident in the genre, I can tell you that nobody is inherently bad at shmups. There are a series of skills you can learn that transfer between games, which will make them easier to chip away at as you go. Relaxing your eyes for a wider field of vision, building a habit of reading bullet trajectories from further away, tap dodging, keeping track of your ship's position through your shots rather than having to stare at the ship itself, etc.

And learning a game - the mechanics, but especially enemy placement and boss patterns - is a much bigger part of it than reflexes. If you can already be shooting at enemies as they come on screen because you know where they're going to appear, you suddenly find the playfield much more wide open.

[Angry Hina]

After 11-12 h I 1cc'ed Hishouzame with the last life with lots of difficult recoveries. Was fun to learn them and i think the run is kinda exciting because of the deaths but because I've learnt more or less, how to survive very part of the game (but wasnt consistent enough) I wasnt satisfied yet. The 1LC came a bit surprisingly after ~2 further hours but the M2 port dont saves the replays of the not-main version of the game (sucks!). It took me further 2-3 hours to pull this off again but now Iam satisied with the result ^^ What I like especially is, that i played it "blind" end never watched replay to mimik the tactics (even if its not that necessary in this game).

recovery run:
https://youtu.be/Sr2tN0OUZfs
1LC:
https://youtu.be/IaI9rJP64DQ

[Steven]

Hishouzame is so fucking good. God damn do I love that game.

What are you going to do next? Since you have the M2 collection, Same! Same! Same! 2P is probably not an unreasonable clear if you can do Hishouzame, but it's over twice as long as a loop of Hishouzame and you can probably expect a nasty chain death if you die in the second half of the game.

[Angry Hina]

Yeah, its really well done for such an early game. Checkpoints are all suitable to recover to full strength (in 1st loop), difficulty rises more or less linear, the difficulty spikes are not that high compared to the rest of the stage and even if there are not that many enemy types, the game feels never boring.

I thought about Same^3 2P but I dont know... Same Same Same is a collection of nearly all gameplay elements I hate in STGs. You have the unbalanced weapon types combined with weapon change Items you hardly cannot avoid completely (or, if you whant them (Speedups), they are hard to get), you have speed ups so you are not only without firepower after a hit, you are also terribly slow, the wide angled 1st stage blue weapon feels much weeker than e.g. the one of Tatsujin (so, another recovery problem), its long AND the by far biggest issue with this game are the kamikaze planes in every stage in high masses AND they come from behind ALOT!

Ive 1cc'ed the MD version (on easy) and I hated the item dodging and all the kamikaze planes and I guess the MD version (on easy) is easier than Arcade 2P, right?

Possibly I go finally to another more modern STG like Mushihimesama but possibly I try to take down Kyuukyoku Tiger (at least it has only a few attacks from behind and nearly no kamikaze enemies).

[Steven]

The first half of arcade 2P Same! is actually easier than the first half of the MD version on normal. Arcade 2P's difficulty increases significantly at the halfway point, and from then on it's moderately more difficult than MD normal difficulty.

Kyuukyoku Tiger is significantly more difficult than Same! 2P. Like WAY more difficult than Same! 2P. I think it took me about 15~20 hours of practice on the MD version to get the arcade 2P clear (yeah, that's right, I practiced for the 2P arcade version on the MD version and it worked), but Kyuukyoku Tiger took like 80 hours or something like that, with most of that on the first half of the game, especially stage 5. Eventually I decided to bomb my way through the Otakebi field on stage 5 and now I can sometimes no miss all the way to stage 7 without autofire, but getting to that point was really fucking hard. I have no idea why it took me like 6 months to beat stage 5, but it did, and after that the game really isn't so bad. Even the stage 10 boss isn't so bad with the starting peashooter once you know what to do.

[Angry Hina]

80 hours sound really long ^^;
But if gameplay elements are so stupid as in same^3, it feels longer as it really is
But thanks for the warning.

[Steven]

When I got the 1CC I had almost exactly 60 hours on PS4 (I think when I got the 1CC my time was 60 hours and 54 minutes or something like that), maybe 10~20 hours on Switch

Edit: checked and it's 14 hours and 16 minutes or something like that

and also several hours on PCB at Mikado, so I am not really sure, but it took about that long, with almost all of that being on the first half of the game, especially that bastard stage 5, which the online leaderboards suggest is where most players game over and never get any further. On Switch almost half of the top 100 scores are stage 5 game overs lol. I'm pretty sure it's the hardest game I have ever beaten in my life, but difficulty is subjective, so...

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I 1cc’d Raging Blasters a while back. Sorta feels like it doesn’t count since I did it on novice difficulty.
(I’m awful at shmups.)

If you're having fun with it, that's all that matters! There's no shame in being bad at shmups and playing at a skill level that's appropriate for you as you work on improving.

[BurlyHeart]

I 1cc’d Raging Blasters a while back. Sorta feels like it doesn’t count since I did it on novice difficulty.
(I’m awful at shmups.)

Does Mecha Ritz count?? I'm a casual shmup player in my 30's and I finally 1CC'd that game.

They certainly do count. Everyone starts from somewhere, and the only person you really need to be competing with is yourself. And not quitting, whatever level you're at, is the biggest part of that.

If you don't feel confident in the genre, I can tell you that nobody is inherently bad at shmups. There are a series of skills you can learn that transfer between games, which will make them easier to chip away at as you go. Relaxing your eyes for a wider field of vision, building a habit of reading bullet trajectories from further away, tap dodging, keeping track of your ship's position through your shots rather than having to stare at the ship itself, etc.

And learning a game - the mechanics, but especially enemy placement and boss patterns - is a much bigger part of it than reflexes. If you can already be shooting at enemies as they come on screen because you know where they're going to appear, you suddenly find the playfield much more wide open.

This is a great post.

If you're having fun with it, that's all that matters! There's no shame in being bad at shmups and playing at a skill level that's appropriate for you as you work on improving.

Very true. It's all about enjoying the ride.

[Nahar]

1CC'd Like Dreamer Maniac Difficulty with the TLB in 'round 10 hours. Very fun game, I'll try to get the 1CC in Expert aswell.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Drainus - Arcade Hard - no miss 1CC

The game's pretty forgiving to 1CC as you've got a lot of extends, but going for a no miss of any of the 1 hit kill modes means you have to avoid stupid mistakes including collision deaths from popcorn enemies. I'm still working on Ridiculous difficulty, the one story mode that has 1 hit deaths which is a 2 loop game and has tankier enemies in loop 1 (much tankier in loop 2), but this is a good start I guess.

If you're not used to arcade difficulty shmups there's a lot of modes to have fun with as you learn the game, and if you're used to playing tougher arcade shmups then aiming for a deathless clear is a good way to spice things up.

[Dumple]

Star Parodier finally arrived this week.
...
All that being said, that stuff aside I do really like this game, it's pure concentrated happy vibes. It's a shame it never saw any sequels. There are two difficulty levels above normal, and the hard one seems closer to Blazing Lazers in challenge (ie. on the not-so-bad side of average), so I'm sure I'll be coming back to this one for another run.

Star Parodier is an absolute candy-coated delight. It's not one of the best shmups by most measures, but boy did it make me happy. Now I feel like playing it again - or at least listening to the relentlessly perky soundtrack.


Just to throw an "I DID IT!" in the thread - I got a 1-ALL of Progear! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sjsP4ksoYw Like Dodonpachi, this is a game that became much easier once I stopped hoarding bombs. (...although of course, getting to the loop requires using way fewer bombs!)

[Creamy Goodness]

After a shelacking I got from Esprade I decided to dial back the difficulty a bunch and got a 1cc in Gate Of Thunder. I was expecting a cake walk and for the first 5 stages it is indeed a breeze, but there is a significant difficulty spike come stage 6 and death can be pretty punishing especially with all the enemies thay come from behind. So the clear was more stubborn that I expected.

And on the topic of Gate of Thunder being considered essentially Thunder Force 3.5. I gotta say although it is a good game, TF3 is on a whole other level. Graphics, gameplay, and even music are just that much better IMO.

[Sengoku Strider]

And on the topic of Gate of Thunder being considered essentially Thunder Force 3.5. I gotta say although it is a good game, TF3 is on a whole other level. Graphics, gameplay, and even music are just that much better IMO.

I can accept preferring TFIII & its weird but cool spakkety-spakk bullet registration SFX. Liking the raw Mega Drive crunch that only a Z-80 4OP FM synth with super steppy 8-bit waveforms can bring. So much so that you're cool with only 3 channels of music most of the game. They made it work. And there are things I think you can grant TFIII outright, namely both level design and level variety. Gate of Thunder is a whole lot of mecha-hallway stuff.

But declaring TFIII is on a whole other level than Gate in like every category? 'Tis a bridge too far I say. That first stage of Gate provides more spectacle than anything in TFIII does. They hit you with the obligatory R-Type battleship tribute stage immediately; you know Don Jingi is serious fucking business from the jump. One of the fundamentals TF III really nailed was embracing the horizontal aspect ratio, and building forward & backward fire into the ship. This allowed them to keep the player engaged with both sides of the screen. Gate takes this same concept, and makes it much more immediate with the . Just having to double tap to switch any weapon between forward & backward fire is a brilliant next step for that, while still retaining the strategic elements of the TF weapon menu. I think Gate of Thunder holds its own taken as a whole.

But congrats BTW, lol

[miwa]

Got Crimzon Clover Word EXplosion 1CC in Arcade Original with the 'let's skip this pattern' Type-Z ship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRbAphkQgO4

[To Far Away Times]

And on the topic of Gate of Thunder being considered essentially Thunder Force 3.5. I gotta say although it is a good game, TF3 is on a whole other level. Graphics, gameplay, and even music are just that much better IMO.

I can accept preferring TFIII & its weird but cool spakkety-spakk bullet registration SFX. Liking the raw Mega Drive crunch that only a Z-80 4OP FM synth with super steppy 8-bit waveforms can bring. So much so that you're cool with only 3 channels of music most of the game. They made it work. And there are things I think you can grant TFIII outright, namely both level design and level variety. Gate of Thunder is a whole lot of mecha-hallway stuff.

But declaring TFIII is on a whole other level than Gate in like every category? 'Tis a bridge too far I say. That first stage of Gate provides more spectacle than anything in TFIII does. They hit you with the obligatory R-Type battleship tribute stage immediately; you know Don Jingi is serious fucking business from the jump. One of the fundamentals TF III really nailed was embracing the horizontal aspect ratio, and building forward & backward fire into the ship. This allowed them to keep the player engaged with both sides of the screen. Gate takes this same concept, and makes it much more immediate with the . Just having to double tap to switch any weapon between forward & backward fire is a brilliant next step for that, while still retaining the strategic elements of the TF weapon menu. I think Gate of Thunder holds its own taken as a whole.

But congrats BTW, lol

Now that you mention R-Type, in some ways, I think Gate of Thunder kinda reminds me of an R-Type II style sequel.

Now first off, R-Type II is really good. It is more of the same on a superb foundation. And while R-Type II doesn't have any weak elements, many of the things that it is very good in were done even better in the original R-Type. Art direction, music, stage design, every thing is an 11/10 in R-Type 1. And R-Type 2 is like a 9/10 or better in most of those things. Like, Gate of Thunder is really damn good, a perennial borderliner for me on the Top 25 of all time, but Thunder Force III is peak of the genre type stuff.

[Sengoku Strider]

^^ It's funny you say that, I was just watching the Electric Underground ranking every R-Type video the other day. He was talking about how R-Type II was like the archetypal R-Type that really established things for the series, like 'when you close your eyes and think of R-Type you see R-Type II'. I'm like, you do?

I spent a week & a half banging my head against the last stage of Gradius II for PCE, and not succeeding. It might be easier if I just restarted every time I died on the last stage, but I hate letting the checkpoints win. I decided maybe I just needed to take a break & come back to it later, because for sure this is one of the toughest games I've ever tried to beat.

With some rubbing alcohol & effort I finally got my Darius Twin cart working, and 3 days later I have the 1CC. Wow, I don't remember the game being this easy, I don't think I ever beat it solo back in the day. My friend who owned it sure didn't. It was really only the last couple of stages that presented any trouble. Back when it came out it was my first - and for a long time only - exposure to Darius. Coming back to it now having 1CCed 1, 2 & Gaiden, I kind of understand why it's seen as a lesser entry into the series. It's not that there's anything wrong with it, just that it's more Darius but with less stuff compared to other games in the franchise. I still really enjoyed it though, it's still got some killer tunes in the soundtrack, and not unlike "just more Thunder Force" or "just more R-Type," "just more Darius" still makes for a solid base game. Now I need to get a copy of Darius Force at some point. Otherwise next up in the series is my copy of G-Darius HD on PS4, but I'm already hung up on one tough game.

[Sengoku Strider]

Not quite a full 1CC? I no-missed R-Type I on the PC Engine, which is only the first four stages. One of these days I'll have to buy part II. But when I do, I'll at least have extra lives, 2 speed & full power ups. Glad to check that one off.

[Gamer707b]

And on the topic of Gate of Thunder being considered essentially Thunder Force 3.5. I gotta say although it is a good game, TF3 is on a whole other level. Graphics, gameplay, and even music are just that much better IMO.

I can accept preferring TFIII & its weird but cool spakkety-spakk bullet registration SFX. Liking the raw Mega Drive crunch that only a Z-80 4OP FM synth with super steppy 8-bit waveforms can bring. So much so that you're cool with only 3 channels of music most of the game. They made it work. And there are things I think you can grant TFIII outright, namely both level design and level variety. Gate of Thunder is a whole lot of mecha-hallway stuff.

But declaring TFIII is on a whole other level than Gate in like every category? 'Tis a bridge too far I say. That first stage of Gate provides more spectacle than anything in TFIII does. They hit you with the obligatory R-Type battleship tribute stage immediately; you know Don Jingi is serious fucking business from the jump. One of the fundamentals TF III really nailed was embracing the horizontal aspect ratio, and building forward & backward fire into the ship. This allowed them to keep the player engaged with both sides of the screen. Gate takes this same concept, and makes it much more immediate with the . Just having to double tap to switch any weapon between forward & backward fire is a brilliant next step for that, while still retaining the strategic elements of the TF weapon menu. I think Gate of Thunder holds its own taken as a whole.

But congrats BTW, lol

Now that you mention R-Type, in some ways, I think Gate of Thunder kinda reminds me of an R-Type II style sequel.

Now first off, R-Type II is really good. It is more of the same on a superb foundation. And while R-Type II doesn't have any weak elements, many of the things that it is very good in were done even better in the original R-Type. Art direction, music, stage design, every thing is an 11/10 in R-Type 1. And R-Type 2 is like a 9/10 or better in most of those things. Like, Gate of Thunder is really damn good, a perennial borderliner for me on the Top 25 of all time, but Thunder Force III is peak of the genre type stuff.

It's funny how you mention Thunder Force 3, because Gate Of Thunder reminds me more of TF 3 than it does R-Type 2. I never knew why, then I recently watched either a Shmup Junkie video or someone else's saying two of the main people behind TF went on to make Gate Of Thunder. And yes, I agree. I would put it as one of the all time greats. I might get scorched here, but this era of shoot em ups is the best for me. I'll take these games over most bullet hells.

[Angry Hina]

Coming back to it now having 1CCed 1, 2 & Gaiden, I kind of understand why it's seen as a lesser entry into the series. It's not that there's anything wrong with it, ....

I think there are many things Twin is doing just wrong or simply is very weak designed