Better without Autofire

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jehu
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Better without Autofire

Post by jehu »

Are there any games that you think are best played without (external) autofire? Why? In what way exactly does the gameplay experience improve?

What constitutes better or worse in this case is entirely subjective. But if you could be descriptive about what, in your experience, improves without autofire - I'd be very appreciative. The point of this topic is not to denigrate anyone who chooses to use autofire, but to highlight games that are particularly enjoyable with it turned off.
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Based on a few recent conversations, I think potential candidates are games like Vimana, Metal Black, or Darius Gaiden. Though in no way do I think any of these cases is settled. For example, after getting a 30hz clear of Metal Black, I enjoyed seeing some of the more sophisticated elements of the game's stage design come into play when I went for a no-auto clear. I think I enjoyed the experience more without autofire, but some annoyances - like the enemies that spawn in on top of your ship - were made far worse. I could see the preference tipping in the other direction for someone else with different tolerances to those kinds of annoyances.

Recent comments Steven made have persuaded me that attempting a no-auto Vimana clear would be a fun, and potentially more rewarding goal after getting the obligatory 30hz 1CC.
An alternative title to the topic might be: "Games that are worth clearing both 'with' and 'without' autofire for two different, but still enjoyable experiences." But, you know, it's a little wordy.

To be clear, I don't want this thread to devolve into the boring 'is autofire cheating' discussions. We're all sick of that debate, so save those comments for another occasion.
Bassa-Bassa
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by Bassa-Bassa »

As a friend of mine says - to me, it's just a matter of not believing in the design-your-own-game scenario this habit implies. As it's a fact that external autofire makes the games easier, you are just setting your own particular rules, so 1) you're disavowing the author's own vision, and 2) actual competition becomes a bit pointless - 15hz AF? or is it 30hz for this one...? We play at factory difficulty levels for a reason, don't we?

AF has some sense when you use a control pad (where button-mashing is harder and more annoying than with an arcade panel) and that's how it became so popular (with home games/ports). Expert players who spend long hours every day practicing at Japanese arcades did the rest, of course.

Not expecting many people to sympathize specially since I don't play competitively (except against myself), but here's one opinion.

Short answer - always?
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jehu
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by jehu »

Bassa-Bassa wrote:Short answer - always?
I can respect the personal conviction, Bassa. But also, this is really not what I wanted in this thread, not because the argument is without merit - but because it's going to turn into a conversation everyone has had a few too many times. :lol: :lol: :lol:

But noted, noted.

If you're an ardent no-autofire player, are there any games you make an exception for? Anything completely intolerable without autofire? Games that autofire saves?
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by Bassa-Bassa »

This friend managed to make of me a total believer as I didn't find arguments against, lol, so I make no exceptions. That doesn't imply that I don't think many games could be better -and even need- an AF system, though, but then I just call it flawed and move on to the next one. Too many well designed games there to waste my time doing the work of game devs (which nobody but them could really do anyway).


Ed.- Same answer but staying on topic since I didn't read the disclaimer (was it an edit?) - any game which just demands button-mashing at times and leaves enough moments to let your hand rest a bit during play is a good candidate for this? Like the Parodius series, specially Da!

Area 88 (AC) is another good example, it has a quasi-AF system which prevents you from getting too tired and is serviceable enough, but the real rapid fire requires intense button-mashing intended to only use at times. You clearly break the system if you add external AF.

Mars Matrix is a single-button game as it wants you to learn the rythm, so any AF techique kind of destroys that.

Etc.
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To Far Away Times
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by To Far Away Times »

Darius Gaiden is in this weird zone where the main shot power is too weak without autofire and too strong with it.

Or you could just play Darius Gaiden Extra, which has autofire by default and not worry about it. :wink:
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SPM
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by SPM »

- XEVIOUS, especially dropping bombs. The game even has autofire for them and you can hold the button to spam bombs but it's more visceral/tactile/good-feeling (don't know how to describe it) when you hit the bomb button on purpose to hit the target.
Hmmm... NOW!! --> Tap --> Boom! --> Target destroyed :mrgreen: Image(emoji borrowed from BIL XD)

- VULGUS and many other classic games with a limited number of shots on screen and lots of randomness you can't route. It's impossible to find a proper autofire rate for every occasion and some enemies will escape through the gaps (but not you!). Tapping the button at the rhythm the game asks for in every situation is both useful and again, feels good! (what I usually do though is mapping 2 autofire rates and sometimes tapping one of them)

- KYUUKYOKU TIGER when recovering from a checkpoint. Same situation as before, you need to adapt quickly to different rates.

- and I'll add something from another post that applies here: some designs in classic games are kinda "ruined" with a 30Hz rate (such as dealing with a big enemy + zakos at the same time, which turns into a speedkill and then some dull zako management), so if the game's difficulty is doable, it's usually better to play it the intended way (without autofire or at least something reasonable)
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jehu
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by jehu »

Bassa-Bassa wrote:Ed.- Same answer but staying on topic since I didn't read the disclaimer (was it an edit?)
I promise it was there the whole time!

Area 88 (AC) is a good pick, imo. I was surprised to take home a first try 1CC when I gave it a shot on Mister. Must have been the autofire, because everything just went down like nothing.
SPM wrote:KYUUKYOKU TIGER + I'll add something from another post that applies here: some designs in classic games are kinda "ruined" with a 30Hz rate
I have a hard time with K. Tiger no autofire. It's such a brutal game, even as a 'zako manager' with the boss speedkills. I shudder to think what it would take to kill some of the later bosses with manual fire, but I suppose I should try it some time. Might make the early stages a little more interesting, anyway.

Xevious, I agree, is another great example. I don't feel as strongly with the 'Dragon' series of Namco shooters. Carpet bombing with no mercy, even if it's a little inaccurate.
To Far Away Times wrote:Darius Gaiden is in this weird zone where the main shot power is too weak without autofire and too strong with it.

Or you could just play Darius Gaiden Extra, which has autofire by default and not worry about it. :wink:
I actually think no-auto works pretty well in Gaiden. It opened up the game for me, at least. You have to be able to navigate the boss phases really well + you see so many more of them, and you can always manually tap for short bursts if you can spare the energy and concentration. If I'm just interested in a clear, I'd rather route out a no-auto run.
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by Steven »

Vimana is ruined with 30Hz autofire to the point where I feel it is detrimental to the experience. It saddens me greatly that the only thing anyone ever says about Vimana is that it's super easy since you can completely break it with 30Hz auto.

Nobody ever says that it's a cool and well-designed game, even though it is.

Nobody ever says that it's got a soundtrack that is so good that it will cause your entire house to spontaneously combust and burn to the ground, even though it does.

It's unfairly gotten a reputation for being brainlessly easy, and this is why. After hearing how easy the game is, I was highly surprised when I was completely demolished in a hurry on stage 1 when I played it for the first time, as I played on a cabinet that does not have autofire. Or maybe I'm just bad lol. Probably both. Anyway, going into Vimana for the first time, or any time, while abusing the broken 30Hz auto is doing both yourself and the game a disservice. Try firing manually or with an autofire rate that matches your manual rate of fire instead. PLEASE don't play Vimana with 30Hz and then dismiss it for being easy because you broke the game.

As for Kyuukyoku Tiger, the game is perfectly playable without autofire; like Hishouzame, you only need like 5Hz for the stages in most instances, although for some of the larger slow-moving planes and some of the later stages (8 and 9, especially) you'll probably want to go faster. Some of the bosses in this game can be insta-killed with 30Hz autofire before they even get a chance to get on the screen: the bosses of stages 2, 3, and 4 are like this, but you'll need a bomb for the lower stage 3 boss or you're going to get pointblanked, and I don't think I have ever tried it on the upper stage 3 boss. The stage 4, stage 7, stage 8, and stage 9 bosses are fairly scary if you don't 30Hz insta-kill or bomb + 30Hz insta-kill them.

Anyway, I don't play Hishouzame, Out Zone, or Slap Fight with autofire, as I simply don't think these games need it to be enjoyable. Out Zone already has auto on everything but the spread shot anyway. I somewhat like firing manually, because even though it does sometimes suck, firing manually makes you FEEL LIKE YOUR SOUL IS ON FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and that's awesome.

Oops, I forgot to mention the game that made me realize that autofire sometimes is detrimental: Hellfire. For some reason having auto on your shot button in Hellfire sometimes causes the weapon select button to act as if it has auto. Obviously that is bad. Depending on what revision of the game you are playing and what weapon you are using, you can only have 1 or 2 shots on screen at once at full power anyway, so autofire doesn't really help that much in this game anyway.
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by Jeneki »

There's stuff where I rarely use the non-chargeup shot. Vasara, Mars Matrix, etc. Even auto-pierce is awkward in Mars Matrix when it messes with shield timing.
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Steven
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by Steven »

Might as well get this out of the way right now, as I don't think anyone has mentioned it yet and I hope this whole debate doesn't happen here: autofire is NOT cheating. Go to Mikado. Go to Taito Hey. Go to basically any arcade in Japan, top-tier or not, and I guarantee you that almost every shooter they have has autofire on it. There might be a few weird exceptions, like how Mikado's 1944 The Loop Master doesn't have it for some odd reason, but yeah, it's not cheating. Hell, I don't think Mikado's Darius cabinet even has manual fire for the shot, just auto and faster auto.

That is clearly not the point of this thread, but I figured I might as well mention it and get it out of the way since it's basically obligatory when discussing external autofire.
jehu wrote:Games that autofire saves?
Oops, missed this before, but Same! 1P is greatly enhanced by auto. The game is ridiculously insane with it, so without it... well, I have made it about halfway through the game without it, which is basically exactly as far as I have gotten with it, and while it's doable if you really want to play it that way, I would still recommend auto because you're probably going to hate yourself for playing that crazy game either way, so you might as well reduce the stress of playing that game as much as possible. No auto does make you appreciate the flamethrower a lot more, though.

I would love to see someone no miss at least the first loop without auto entirely. I'm sure there is probably some absolutely crazy dude out there somewhere that can no miss 1P Same! with no autofire while blindfolded and with no audio, and whoever you are, crazy Same! dude, you are a badass.

I also do not really enjoy Tatsujin without autofire... but I also do not really enjoy Tatsujin. I have heard that it becomes significantly more enjoyable once you learn the game, but I am still at the stage where I slam into all of the enemies that come from behind on stage 2 after picking up all of the speed powerups and lose control of my ship when trying to make precise movements. More practice required!

Oh yeah, Tatsujin Ou has internal autofire, but apparently you can disable it with the DIP switches. Is there anyone who is insane enough to play the game while firing manually with the internal auto disabled? I doubt it, but if you exist, you are just as badass as the aforementioned crazy Same! dude.
Last edited by Steven on Tue Dec 13, 2022 6:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by SavagePencil »

well I guess it DEPENDS…
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Lethe
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by Lethe »

Raiden DX is an odd one. The international versions have 15hz internal autofire, and AFAIK that's enough to do all of the speedkills you'd do with external 30hz (albeit a bit more difficult). Was autofire cheese a deliberate part of the original Raiden II design? No, it's entirely playable without, and IMO DX is more fun that way given it's not balls-crushingly hard at all times like II is. Did the developers accept it when they knew that autofire was becoming common and that cabs outside Japan were unlikely to have external auto installed? Absolutely. Playing auto off means you get to see more of the boss design, but the developers eventually worked counter to that themselves.
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by Starfighter »

I use autofire whenever I can (one button for autofire, one for regular shot and then bomb/the other ones), but there are games where I need to be very precise with the amount of damage I'm doing, in those cases it's often easier to use the regular shot. For more control, you know?

I also know of people with disabilities that need autofire, but I guess that's another discussion. :)
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PerishedFraud ឵឵
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by PerishedFraud ឵឵ »

Fuck mashing. If your vision includes it you're clearly a blind motherfucker because it's not a fun mechanic in any shape or form.

Some old arcade games have subverted this already with a single key press that fires a burst, letting you get into a rhythm instead of breaking a finger. Carrier Air Wing and Metal Black come to mind. Considering how old these mechanics are, having mashing in a modern game should be a legal offense.

Using autofire to become busted is shit though, but you can just use weaker autofire to play normally in such games in most scenarios. If there's specific benefits to manual fire such as timing shots and whatnot, I usually just set the autofire to another button, letting me use both.
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SuperDeadite
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by SuperDeadite »

Last Resort is way more fun if you use the unit charge shot properly than autofiring the base shot.

Another one for me is Viewpoint. Viewpoint plays best of you master the "quick charge" shot and use it constantly.

Autofire will totally break Fire Barrel. As in bosses will die before they can even attack.
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by blazinglazers69 »

Yeah, I'm not mashing and wearing out my buttons lol. Other than exceptions where you need it off for something like a charge shot, I will always use it. Unless you're competing or something and need set rules, this is such a basic QoL feature to me. Can you even imagine a shooter being released today without an autofire button option? (I'm sure there's a few exceptions, and I don't care. Vast majority of stuff has it is my point.)

What's nice is that in games like R-Type when emulating is that you can just set two buttons to be the shoot button and make one autofire and the other manual for charge shots.

If you really need the emotional validation of strangers on the internet on whether or not to use autofire, ask yourself why. Are you playing for fun or for some vague sense of accomplishment that won't be satisfied unless you make things a little more inconvenient for yourself?
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pulsemod
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Better without Autofire

Post by pulsemod »

games like hishouzame without autofire aren't super mashy and generally using autofire is a detriment during stage segments, so I think cases like that are where it works well. it's less about making the player hurt their finger from mashing and making it a bit more Aim And Shoot! timing and position are key. for the bosses I switch to an autofire button even if it's not a crazy fast auto because that involves actual mashing. and I'd never play same same same without auto!
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jehu
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by jehu »

Another one that comes to mind is Eco Fighters. I'm a little on the fence, actually. It seems to be balanced around no autofire, or rather the in-built setting, but I had fun tearing it up on mister's CPS2 core. Capcom even went so far as to not include the autofire option in Arcade Stadium. This oversight, or intentional exclusion, really annoys me, actually - I'd like to have the option, even if it will create an imbalance. (I feel like I need to continually reaffirm my own personal support for autofire. Really do not want this thread to slide into the 'autofire is cheating' territory.)
blazinglazers69 wrote:If you really need the emotional validation of strangers on the internet on whether or not to use autofire, ask yourself why. Are you playing for fun or for some vague sense of accomplishment that won't be satisfied unless you make things a little more inconvenient for yourself?
I do hope there are relatively few people who neglect autofire for 'emotional validation of strangers on the internet.' And I do think this applies to almost no one, though I'm sure you could find a few. The issue at play here is that sense of personal satisfaction, the fun you have with a game by yourself.

I know from experience it can be fun to mow things down in games like Vimana and Fire Barrel. But the rather lackluster reputation of these games seem to harden around the 30hz autofire play experience. They're not perfect games. However, I think both of the above - and many other games highlighted in this thread - can actually be enriched by alternatives to 30hz autofire.

So for me, it's not so much a question of emotional validation. Rather it's a chance to reclaim some of the games that might continue to be overlooked because of the 30hz meta. If someone won't take a game seriously because of a broken experience with 30hz, that seems like a much more regrettable circumstance - and a much more common one - than the no-autofire validation seekers.
SuperDeadite wrote:Last Resort is way more fun if you use the unit charge shot properly than autofiring the base shot.

Another one for me is Viewpoint. Viewpoint plays best of you master the "quick charge" shot and use it constantly.

Autofire will totally break Fire Barrel. As in bosses will die before they can even attack.
All good examples - especially Fire Barrel, I'd forgotten about it. That's one I really need to give another go with a more reasonable rate of fire.
PerishedFraud ឵឵ wrote:Fuck mashing. If your vision includes it you're clearly a blind motherfucker because it's not a fun mechanic in any shape or form.
Hard to disagree with this. The best scenario is that there's some kind of in-game design choices that eliminate the need for mashing. If not, I'm always opting to use autofire. It's why autofire absolutely saves Tatsujin for me, while being relatively worthless (even counterproductive, as Steven mentioned) for a game like Hellfire. Metal Black is my limit, can't pump and play for many rounds in a row. Or the aforementioned Darius Gaiden where built-in autofire gets you most of the way, and you can mash when really need it (tolerable for me in those moments).
SavagePencil wrote:well I guess it DEPENDS…
depends on WHAT...
Lethe wrote:Raiden DX is an odd one.
Given the really nice suite of autofire options on the PSX port, I never even considered not using 30hz speedkills on DX. If I ever get good enough at the game to not take every available survival advantage, maybe I'll do a few runs with a 15hz max. Not today, though. Tomorrow either. The patterns I do see are hard enough...
Steven wrote:Oh yeah, Tatsujin Ou has internal autofire, but apparently you can disable it with the DIP switches. Is there anyone who is insane enough to play the game while firing manually with the internal auto disabled?
I love the idea of some grizzled hardcore fuck going through the trouble of manually turning off Ou's autofire... Not going to be me, but I hope to live to see the day when a playthrough pops up on Niconico.
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Herr Schatten
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by Herr Schatten »

There's an old Amiga euroshmup called Lethal Excess that actually goes out of its way to actively prevent the player from using autofire. If the game detects a steady fire frequency, the player ship stops firing at all, thus forcing the player to fire manually. But then it's not a very good game in the first place.
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by John4300 »

Just curious, doesn't G-Darius get kind of insane with the amount you have to mash the button to win beam duels at later zones if you are not using autofire? Or do I remember wrong?
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by Rastan78 »

John4300 wrote:Just curious, doesn't G-Darius get kind of insane with the amount you have to mash the button to win beam duels at later zones if you are not using autofire? Or do I remember wrong?
Yeah I believe the rate needed on some late game counter beams is at least 15hz which is just at the edge of humanly possible. Like some people can actually mash that fast but not very many. Not to mention you would be mashing the whole game up to that point and possibly be already tired. The solution would be to let the boss attacks loop several times bc the mashing rate required will reduce as the fight goes on. The problem is then you have to face more difficult patterns.

Because of that insane requirement combined with the fact that the PS port and ver. 2 board included auto by default, I don't think I've ever heard anyone argue that auto off is the better way to play G Darius.
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by Bassa-Bassa »

jehu wrote:I promise it was there the whole time!
My bad, then. Likely had to do with being a bolded line at the posts end - my eyes must have seen that as a signature and skipped it for that reason.


Lethe wrote:Raiden DX is an odd one.
Given the really nice suite of autofire options on the PSX port, I never even considered not using 30hz speedkills on DX. If I ever get good enough at the game to not take every available survival advantage, maybe I'll do a few runs with a 15hz max. Not today, though. Tomorrow either. The patterns I do see are hard enough...
Remember that ports got additional AF options because they couldn't count on every user having an arcade stick to play the games, so they needed to feature a reasonable system for control pad users. It's the same as R. Silvergun when it got the home version - releasing the game for a console with a bundled 8 buttons control pad and not including the option to assign the special weapons to the extra buttons -given the annoyance of simultaneous button pressing on this kind of controllers- would have been hardly forgiven, but the game is clearly designed after an arcade panel with 3 buttons, and part of the substance itself is learning its control system as it was conceived and properly execute it. I think any discussion about the convenience of external AF should specify first and foremost if you're using control pads or arcade panels, as it's night and day in this regard.


Steven wrote:Might as well get this out of the way right now, as I don't think anyone has mentioned it yet and I hope this whole debate doesn't happen here: autofire is NOT cheating. Go to Mikado. Go to Taito Hey. Go to basically any arcade in Japan, top-tier or not, and I guarantee you that almost every shooter they have has autofire on it. There might be a few weird exceptions, like how Mikado's 1944 The Loop Master doesn't have it for some odd reason, but yeah, it's not cheating. Hell, I don't think Mikado's Darius cabinet even has manual fire for the shot, just auto and faster auto.

That is clearly not the point of this thread, but I figured I might as well mention it and get it out of the way since it's basically obligatory when discussing external autofire.
I don't know first-hand how it is these days in Japan, but the sure thing is that cabinets featuring external AF weren't there in the 90s, much less in the 80s. It's not hard to think that the few arcades that are still alive and have room for 30 years old games are trying to satisfy modern demands for a niche, following a trend established by hardcore users (customers) whose health just was in danger under intended conditions. Ultimately, it's not really relevant as the games are what they are by their own selves.

I agree that button-mashing (as in really mashing the button to tire) is a lame technique as such. I'm all for identifying those games which feature it without any thought. But saying that using an external, improper device to make a game easier -despite all the acceptance it may have got in whichever contexts or magazines- is "not cheating" is more than a stretch. At least, let's not pervert the concepts so that we don't fool ourselves.

-Hopefully you don't mind much the counterarguments here as well jehu, I felt obliged.-
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by Sengoku Strider »

Bassa-Bassa wrote:This friend managed to make of me a total believer as I didn't find arguments against, lol, so I make no exceptions.
Carpal tunnel is the argument against.

PC Engine has the perfect solution to the issues this thread poses, offering multiple built-in levels of autofire. The middle option especially works well with games like Gradius with hard on-screen shot limits that lead to an autofire rate too high getting you ganked. It's been making a serious case for my favourite old-school shmup system lately, the top games in the library are so well made, and the hardware is really responsive and up to the task.

But on that note, OG 3-screen Darius is the poster child for "totally sucks with autofire." The (excellent) 2019 Mega Drive port has multiple levels of autofire, but I think going above 12 Mhz was a bad idea unless you mapped a higher rate of fire to a separate button for point-blanking bosses. And even that 12 Mhz would probably put you in some bad situations if it weren't a single-screen port.

Hmm...suddenly I want to check out the PCE Super Darius titles.
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by Rastan78 »

Bassa-Bassa wrote:I don't know first-hand how it is these days in Japan, but the sure thing is that cabinets featuring external AF weren't there in the 90s, much less in the 80s. It's not hard to think that the few arcades that are still alive and have room for 30 years old games are trying to satisfy modern demands for a niche, following a trend established by hardcore users (customers) whose health just was in danger under intended conditions. Ultimately, it's not really relevant as the games are what they are by their own selves.

I agree that button-mashing (as in really mashing the button to tire) is a lame technique as such. I'm all for identifying those games which feature it without any thought. But saying that using an external, improper device to make a game easier -despite all the acceptance it may have got in whichever contexts or magazines- is "not cheating" is more than a stretch. At least, let's not pervert the concepts so that we don't fool ourselves.

-Hopefully you don't mind much the counterarguments here as well jehu, I felt obliged.-
Autofire circuits were absolutely around back then or they wouldn't show up in Gamest scores from the 80s and 90s. I did visit arcades in Japan in the 90s, but unfortunately that wasn't something I paid attention to at the time. My guess is they were much less common and installed in arcades where more hardcore score chasers gathered? A lot of people may not know even Taito manufactured official "Taitotech" synchronized autofire boards that could produce a variety of rates.

The argument for autofire being cheating is kind of suspect if you don't know the developers intention. Western gamers seem to see it as if it's not default then it's cheating. Info is kind of hard to come by regarding this. Even in Darius Gaiden the main programmer went on record saying autofire is used in the game to raise rank and that high rank is essential to the best scores. Within months of the game's release Japanese players were taking advantage of that rank boosting metagame to push the game to its limits. Meanwhile we are still arguing almost 30 years later. It's right there in the Gamest Mook developer interview that came out in 1994.
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by BIL »

I will say, whichever approach you prefer (0/10/15/30hz), Metal Black is genuinely a different game via manual fire. I really notice the full palette of shot types (L3 = quicker midboss kills, MAX = comfier area defense), as well as the risk/reward of The Beam - unbridled dominance followed by a cold light of day comedown (as my Dick Squad colleague Agent P. Fraudy-kun has noted - it's just like blowin' a load :shock:).

And when I can't simply vaporise everything in my path via 30hz, the short-term solution (and longer-term complication) of a quick piercing/guillotining L3 beam becomes viable. A potential slippery slope, but artfully-done, that same slip n' slide can launch you back to L3 fighting trim and MAX screencrusher girth! It's a notably organic, spectral take compared to the typical "lost ur shot? LOL U FUCC" dynamic.

Caveating all of this: I find MB's burst fire much less obnoxious than the typical pew-pew peashooter. The easy wax on/wax off rhythm is more aesthetically germane, and just less repetitive. I'm pretty sure I can outrun, outwrestle, and outfuck Takahashi Meijin, in that order (loser pays for dinner Image). His tapping? I'm the one getting fucked! You know what else? Octopus > Human in the great "shoot ink out of your arsehole" challenge. It's ok to be second-rate when the prize is irrelevant. Unless you're in some unfortunate underwater espionage scenario involving predatory marine life - then you're in deep shit, while Takosuke-kun enjoys a clean getaway! But I'm guessing you know why you ended up there sonny, hope you managed to reproduce, because Mr. Shark is gonna eat your asshole balls AND taint in one big beefy *CHAWMP* Image

TLDR: Some games are genuinely worth experiencing in manual and auto, independent of challenge. Also, lots of STGs are just irritating sans auto but that's not my fault so don't have a big cry about it FFS. Design ethos of the Gods: Saigo no Nindou / Metal Slug HMG sweet n' low. Leisurely tapping reaps max rapid, strenuous tapping is a waste of time; comfy and tactile, not irritating.

Also, I can never abide by Final Fight with autofire on, so this is all pretty feels as opposed to reals anyway ;3 ;3 ;3
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Rastan78
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by Rastan78 »

I think it's cool that MB had score tracking for manual and auto. That's probably the ideal solution. One of the best tidbits from a dev we have on that is where the Gun Frontier dev said the auto rank boosting factor was never meant to curtail ops from installing circuits, in spite of what some people probably thought. It was an experimental attempt to balance the game for a wide variety of users. Maybe not perfectly balanced, but perfect balance is overrated IMO.

Also I think it's easy to overlook how much the mags like Gamest could be in cahoots with the devs. For example a Gamest editor came up with the change list for Darius Extra Version. And the dev Kurabar said he proof read the Gamest Mook for DG. After all how did they get such precisely detailed info on every enemy type, point value etc just as soon as the gsmes came out? So it's not like you had some random rogue mags subverting the will of the devs. I can imagine devs of games from the 80s being totally blindsided by the effect of auto, but by the 90s they had to know or be living under a rock.
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BIL
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by BIL »

Very interesting, re: the GameST Darius Gaiden mook! That whole epoch sounds so rad, with the devs of these fiendishly technical games doubling as ST consultants.
Rastan78 wrote:Maybe not perfectly balanced, but perfect balance is overrated IMO.
Agreed. I'd rather have three unique ships/cars/etc, even if the score tables get heavily slanted, than a perfect-yet-boring spread. Of course, it's not like a good designer can't deliver on both variety and balance, but the former scenario is hardly the disaster some portray it as. This is what individual ranking tables are for, after all.

Going extra-genre a sec, The Ninja Warriors Again (SFC) infamously has two masterpiece characters (Ninja, Kunoichi) and an overpowered dud (Kamaitachi); but it's not the power that's the problem, it's the boring Crouch P spam. The PS4/NSW remake largely corrects this. IIRC, Ninja is the clear winner there (Time Attack-based game), but you need a helluva lot more than Crouch P to reach his full potential, putting on a game-length masterclass in Mad Murder Machinery. Image

I'd be A-OK with a manual and autofire ship choice. This is how Thunder Dragon 2 works, with 1P benefiting from 30hz, and 2P the exact opposite - 30hz will cripple its natural 60hz autofire, causing awful Euroshump feels. Worth noting that like MB's Black Fly, the 1P ship is quite comfy even via manual fire - my real concern in the manual/auto debate is "does it feel good to shoot things?" Noting that sometimes, too much power can be just as bad (eg Vimana). Generally speaking, I want to shred and pulverise, not vaporise. There's them feels again. ;3 That balance of viscerality and finesse is a huge part of my enjoyment, with STGs and similarly hardcore gametypes.
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by Bassa-Bassa »

Sengoku Strider wrote: PC Engine has the perfect solution to the issues this thread poses, offering multiple built-in levels of autofire.
Sorry for nitpicking, but AF controllers for the PC Engine came later, the console was bundled with a simple control pad originally. Likely you knew that, but for what it's worth.


Rastan78 wrote:Autofire circuits were absolutely around back then or they wouldn't show up in Gamest scores from the 80s and 90s. I did visit arcades in Japan in the 90s, but unfortunately that wasn't something I paid attention to at the time. My guess is they were much less common and installed in arcades where more hardcore score chasers gathered?
Discussing this with this friend who was there mid-90s, he was quite sure to have never ever found a single STG with extra fire buttons, and he really moved a lot to play arcade games in many places across Tokyo. So that guess seems legit. Moreover, if it had been a widespread practice, game makers would have started adding the feature much sooner since operators' satisfaction was always the priority. Which was the first STG with a dedicated built-in full-auto button, DOJ? That's 2002.

The argument for autofire being cheating is kind of suspect if you don't know the developers intention.
How the released game as it comes doesn't show the developer's intention?


Western gamers seem to see it as if it's not default then it's cheating. Info is kind of hard to come by regarding this. Even in Darius Gaiden the main programmer went on record saying autofire is used in the game to raise rank and that high rank is essential to the best scores. Within months of the game's release Japanese players were taking advantage of that rank boosting metagame to push the game to its limits.
Those players lucky enough to work or live near Akihabara, I guess. To me, that's the other reason why cheating seems like the proper term - every user should be provided with the same conditions. Hardly is it a meaningful competition if that's not the case.
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by jehu »

Bassa-Bassa wrote:-Hopefully you don't mind much the counterarguments here as well jehu, I felt obliged.-
Not at all, man. Glad for the discourse actually. I was just worried the topic was going to go off course early, but now we've got the discussion simmering a little, think there's more room for some parallel discussions. (And you're right about the bolding. I thought that was going to call more attention to itself, but it just looks like a signature...)
Rastan78 wrote:The argument for autofire being cheating is kind of suspect if you don't know the developers intention. Western gamers seem to see it as if it's not default then it's cheating. Info is kind of hard to come by regarding this.
With your comments on 'intention,' we're getting into literary studies' 'death of the author' territory. Not that it's my favorite thing in LitCrit, but here I think it's healthy. Not knowing developer intention doesn't suggest we should always use it or always turn it off. Rather it suggests: in favor of 'using autofire' and 'not using autofire' - and using all potential autofire rates in between - there are only arguments. Middleground arguments - in this case, autofire rates that are between MAX AUTOFIRE and ABSOLUTELY NO AUTOFIRE - are notoriously difficult to adjudicate, so the discussion naturally gravitates to one of the poles. Through, incidentally, this makes me all the more interested in cases for 'human-level' autofire rates for certain games. The sustained challenge with none of the excess wear on your joints and your buttons.

I think in almost every STG, there is an argument for MAX AUTOFIRE. Persuasive arguments for non-optimal rates are rarer (IMO) and much more interesting, hence the topic. I myself was surprised playing Metal Black to realize that there are some cases where I have more fun without MAX.
Rastan78 wrote:Even in Darius Gaiden the main programmer went on record saying autofire is used in the game to raise rank and that high rank is essential to the best scores. Within months of the game's release Japanese players were taking advantage of that rank boosting metagame to push the game to its limits. Meanwhile we are still arguing almost 30 years later. It's right there in the Gamest Mook developer interview that came out in 1994.
This is a really interesting case. I went and looked for it, and - if we Westes are allowed an excuse for overlooking this detail - it seems to be because the English translation was only released slightly less than a year ago (Dec. 2021).

However, I'm not completely convinced that the interview itself suggests anything about autofire as you're arguing. You're referring to this passage, right?
Spoiler
—How many different gradations of difficulty (rank) are there?

Kurabayashi: Well, if you divide them up very finely, there’s 16 million levels of gradation. (laughs) But if you look at the actual effect of the rank on enemies, it’s far less, somewhere between 16 and 256 levels of difficulty. The way you raise the rank is by firing your shot continuously, destroying boss parts, destroying entire enemy formations, and taking power-up items. All of these will raise it a little. It also goes up naturally the longer you play. Conversely, if you don’t take power up items, the rank will stop rising temporarily.
Maybe it's a translation thing (is it? please correct me if I'm misinterpreting), but I don't read this statement as explicitly referring to autofire use. IIRC, rank in Gaiden doesn't increase for shots so long as you hold in the shot button and use default autofire rate. However, if you're manually mashing, you get the rank boost - this is what I took him to mean. The more shots = more rank feature certainly opens the door to the autofire meta you're referring to, but I don't know that this clears up the question of 'intentionality' for autofire and Gaiden. I'd default back to your first point: we ultimately don't know the intention here. And this leaves open the door to the enduring legitimacy of both the AUTO and NO AUTO approaches.
BIL wrote:I will say, whichever approach you prefer (0/10/15/30hz), Metal Black is genuinely a different game via manual fire.
When I was finding this out for myself and researching the clear, I was struck by many of your old posts where you were seeking to disabuse the community of the idea that Metal Black was a brutal, unforgiving clear. The 30hz clear came pretty quickly for me, so I thought the apparently widespread community consensus of Metal Black's difficulty was strange. But then I began to infer that the prevailing opinion must have been based on no-auto attempts. Is this right, do you think - or is this just a bad inference?

Community opinion on Metal Black seems to have changed quite a bit since then. I'd theorize that's because of the more universal move to 30hz, but I'm not sure why I think there would have been so many more no-auto pumper players then. Has there been a community-wide change in stance towards the AUTO question over the last 15ish years, or am I just imagining?
Spoiler
Also, BIL I raise your rather elegiac ode to the dead Mr. Catepillar with a brutal techno tribute to the ULTRA-BUFF vision of the bastard who pulls walls together with PURE CORE STRENGTH. A much-loved DJ tool to deafen warehouse-dwelling clubbers with ear-shattering square waves this past summer.
BIL wrote:I'd be A-OK with a manual and autofire ship choice. This is how Thunder Dragon 2 works, with 1P benefiting from 30hz, and 2P the exact opposite - 30hz will cripple its natural 60hz autofire, causing awful Euroshump feels.
Fuck, did I not know this? I knew this, right? I need to get back to TD2 - I've always hated 2P, but I rather doubt I turned off my full-auto settings when switching from P1. Might open up the game again.
Rastan78 wrote:That's probably the ideal solution. One of the best tidbits from a dev we have on that is where the Gun Frontier dev said the auto rank boosting factor was never meant to curtail ops from installing circuits, in spite of what some people probably thought. It was an experimental attempt to balance the game for a wide variety of users. Maybe not perfectly balanced, but perfect balance is overrated IMO.
Thanks for bringing all this cool info into the thread, Rastan. Making me think - good shit.
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Rastan78
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Re: Better without Autofire

Post by Rastan78 »

@jehu yeah it's a translation thing. I thought it was odd so I delved into it and found the original passage in the Mook. The phrase KBR used is 連射 (ren sha) which is the Japanese term for rapid fire. You see it on all those clear autofire buttons at Hey on the autofires that say A連射 15/SEC etc.
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