shmups.system11.org

Rules: ,Put on "hardest" difficulty, extends every 1M, grab every powerup possible, and hold down the fire button the entire time. Good luck

1. Vorpal - 7,299,230 - Iron Mackerel - Stage 6.
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It's impossible, but it still is pretty fun. The bosses get crazy really fast. I got to the cloud level first boss (though for some reason it was stage 4 instead of 5...)

Actually if you remove or lessen the extends te rank ramp s up a bit slower to compensate. to truly max the rank yo umust leave the extends at 1 mil per, believe me without strategic suicide or intermediate rank control it will shoot up faster that way.

Sounds like you're not playing with japanese settings.

Yeah, I think that the "China/Denmark" version in MAME has the cloud stage as level 4...I also think the bullets are a bit more visible in that one, along with no extends.


Actually (if I recall the ST correctly), you'd want to tap the fire button constantly, since I think every button you push also increases the rank. In addition, you'd want to activate one of the "secret" option formations as soon as you could, since options' bullets increase rank even more when the secret formations are activated.

7,299,230 with Iron Mackerel on Stage 6.

Black Heart was displeased with me D:

I was playing with extends at 1M with the japanese arcade version via MAME. Replay available, gonna go watch it in a sec myself, and capture the 2nd Nose Levagghin fight to avi... it's rather ridiculous. My "safe" strategy that I usually use to kill it definitely does NOT work with high rank, heh. I think you just need to focus on his main turret from the get-go if you want to beat him unscathed at high rank.

OK, changed to 1M extends.

I'm sorry, I don't know why I said Stage 6. Black Heart killed me (Stage 5).

Rank Maxing 101.

1) collect almost every item
2) repeatedly tap the fire button as fast as possible.
3) collect uneeded items often.
4) actiavate special formations ( i suggest homing, it's te best of the bunch)
5) do tthe special shot power level up (i think the game has one)
6) try and milk tthe bosses.
7) if you have a choice between having anenemy drop medals and weapon bullets, prefer the weapon bullets.
cancel lots of bullets, either by bombing or getting within the poin blaank safe distance.
9) use a ship with penetrating bullets.

If the goal is to get rank completely off the wall, then having a high score table is counterproductive to that goal. Perhaps if instead of a high scores table, it could be a counter of mini Black Hearts? I counted 8 myself, if I remember correctly.

Though, that excludes anyone who doesn't get to the end of Stage 5 so I dunno....

Especially considering master Gain players intentionally maximise rank in order to score high.

Hmm, well, the more I read, the more I think this thread was a stupid idea. Shucks. I guess the Black Heart idea is good, but I've only gotten that far a couple of times, and I was trying to control rank...

I don't think this thread was a bad idea. I learned a lot of things in the couple of runs I did trying to max my rank out. Specifically that: shooting the castle seems to affect flamingo point gain (I knew keeping the weapon on the castle mean better points, but I mean positioning yourself on the castle so shots and weapon hit it), and bosses are much easier if you get used to their "hard" version... mainly the Stage 4 and 5 bosses.

So because of your post, I have become a (slightly) better Garegga player ;)

The idea wasn't a bad idea, just the actual rules that need to be set are very numerous, such as (possibly) enforcing faster Shot frequencies and so on. Plus, if a player was to go for maximum rank and still managed to score decently, they could progress much further than a player who isn't knowledgeable about the scoring tricks, due to the amount of extra lives the better player could use up to keep rank down.

I would suggest that instead of going for a MAX Rank scoretable - which is a problem in itself due to some ships being able to increase rank faster than others - you should consider changing the score table to list scores for the special HARDER Mode instead (Not EXTENDED though, since EXTENDED is a two loop game.)

Oh, by the way, I came across this emu-captured video of Garegga at maximum rank from the start of the game, uploaded to Japanese file repository hameko.net. The player has the Invincibility switch on so you can see just how lethal the game is at maximum

http://www.hameko.net/uploader/rd.php?get=hame_1138.lzh

anyone have a copy of the above video they would be willing to share?

I know this thread was resurrected from the past, but there is a way to set the rank at Max right from the beginning of the game if you use Mame. Run with cheats enabled, go in and set the rank manually. Since the variable that sets rank actually counts down (decrease as rank increases) you can probably just set it to 0 just after you pick your plane.