RQ: Gradius II [Famicom]

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Gustlik
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RQ: Gradius II [Famicom]

Post by Gustlik »

Hey guys! I've found a pretty strange issue about Gradius II that Google knows nothing about... (excuse my bad English, I'm not a native speaker). I'm not sure if the Gradius II Arcade topic is the right one to post this.

I've decided to challenge myself with a Gradius II no-shield run today. I wanted to undust an old bootleg cartridge I've bought as a kid, it is hacked to have a stronger shield, so I had another excuse to abstain from using the shield. Besides this and lack of "KONAMI 1988" at the title screen, everything looks and plays exactly the same.
My run:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2wFdGG1bew

After playing a loop through the game and re-viewing the gameplay video, I've noticed that I've earned a whopping amount (~650k) of points for killing the Spider Walker. In my previous runs (including those on that bootleg cart and on original one), I usually finished a 1cc loop with 400-600k score. I thought that the scoring system might have been hacked too, but then I saw a video where a dude finished his 1cc with over 1m score (750k of which he got after killing Spider Walker) on what seems to be an original ROM.
Over 1m run:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KfvX61n9Bk

I thought that the amount of points you get for killing that boss depends on how fast you kill it, but if it was true, speedrunners would finish with similar scores (and they hardly ever get over 600k). Has anyone found out what's the strat for maximizing the amount of point you get from the Walker?
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Sumez
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Re: RQ: Gradius II [Famicom]

Post by Sumez »

Decided to necro this thread as I figured this out last week, but haven't seen it documented anywhere else.

Basically, it turns out it's a glitch. The spider walker isn't supposed to give you more than 15,000 points, but the game doesn't actually remove the object when it dies, so you can keep killing it for 15k on nearly every frame, and even without trying for it you'll probably "overkill" it at least 4-8 times.

Usually the difference is simply how long you keep holding the fire button after it starts exploding, without moving away from it (which explains why I got a ton of points on my first clear, but not much on subsequent ones)
You can get over a million points this way quite easily, but there might be some weapon combination and strategic option placement that can increase points even further?

Ultimately it doesn't matter though, because scoring in this port is broken. You can just park your ship and options across the upper left side of the Moai boss, keep the fire button held, and keep going for a few hours, if you want a high score. A bit disappointing that bosses don't time out like on arcade.
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