Raiga: Strato Fighter - WR scoring?

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BareKnuckleRoo
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Raiga: Strato Fighter - WR scoring?

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

How the heck is the world record on this achieved?

My personal best is currently the highest known video recorded score apparently at 2,295,550. ALL clear of both loops deathless with relatively decent luck with the random Extend items (which are stupid by the way). However, even with the random extends factored in, there is a massive gap between my score and the world record. This is probably among the most skillful of shmup runs I have recorded in terms of the amount of effort put in to squeeze out every last point, and yet there is a huge point discrepancy I can't even think of how to account for.

For reference, my run of 2,295,550 (ALL clear, no deaths): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skExYa7_3GY

The WR is by Matsu at 2,743,090 apparently (also has a no autofire score of 2,625,320). Extends give a massive 40,000 points at the end of game, but that's like 12 extra extends I'd need to get to reach that level of score!

I'm pretty confident I've gotten a ton of the potential points from the stages and bosses, in particular with a no-miss clear that manages to milk not only the stage 1 bosses, but the extremely lucrative final bosses in both loops. You have to actually kill them before they time out, or you miss out on a large kill bonus, so there's a difficult timing element involved in knowing when to go for the kill or risk them dying on their own via timeout.

There's one thing I suspect may be involved in that WR: Raiga: Strato Fighter has a two player mode that adds lots of extra enemies. Like, about doubles a lot of the weaker popcorn enemies, which is pretty huge score potential (you also appear to get more item drops). As long as you start with two players you trigger the extra enemies, then even when one player dies, the second player still has to deal with all the extra enemies. Scoring does not have a multiplier aspect involved, so it is straight up linear scoring tied to how many kills you get in stages. So the questions I have are:

a) Assuming Matsu was playing single player only, is there some kind of massive scoring trick I've missed? If there's anyone else knowledgeable about the game who could look at my run and see if there's some scoring trick I've missed I'd really appreciate it. There is nothing noteworthy about milking the stage 2 to stage 5 bosses as they give a nearly worthless amount of points if you attempt to milk them (and as far as I know they all time out, so there's no infinite milking trick to be had), and it doesn't appear the gap in my score vs the WR is due to random extends since I'd need over 12 extends to make up the difference which is a ridiculous amount.

b) Is there a way of knowing for sure if Matsu was or wasn't playing in two player mode? I have yet to test the potential score difference from enemy kills (not counting random extends).

c) If Matsu was using the two player mode to get the extra points, does that change how the scores are listed? Do we list the two player mode's extra enemies as a separate scoreboard entry, like a kind of "Hard Mode"?
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trap15
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Re: Raiga: Strato Fighter - WR scoring?

Post by trap15 »

They definitely would not be using the 2 player mode. That said, it may be possible that there is a bug which causes the extra enemies to come out in a 1 player game.

I would recommend at least checking how many points you can get from all the milks to their maximum extent, that's usually how it ends up in this sort of game. There also may be points for picking up the weapon changes (I haven't played this game for score, so I didn't check if you get points for them) that you could be missing, though I haven't checked your replay to see.
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BareKnuckleRoo
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Re: Raiga: Strato Fighter - WR scoring?

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Nah, it's not a game where item pickups give points, so it's not like Gradius in that sense.

The final boss milks are by far the most valuable in thr game followed by the stage 1 boss (which is vastly less). The other bosses are so bad for milking points that I think tops you'd be fortunate to get about 20,000 points from them across both loops. I think the timing on the run was such that when I went for the kill on the bosses I milked I had about a 10 second window to spare or so before the timeout, just to give me a buffer in case I had a sudden death.

I remember purposefully timing out bosses and checking the time and I think I clocked it at around 3 minutes for the timeout. As long as you kill them before 3 minutes are up you will get the relatively valuable kill bonus.

With the random extends contributing such a large amount of score I can't honestly say it is good to play for score. It is more to satisfy my curiosity than anything here. I originally thought I was close to the WR then I realize I had misremembered how much the extends were worth and was still way off from WR on the deathless clear. :'(
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