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

[Shepardus]

Whoa, nice!

[CStarFlare]

White Label ALL out of nowhere. Woah.

Nice job!

[trap15]

Also just 1-looped Hishouzame. Died at Area 142.

Very nice. Get the 2-ALL and then you get to experience what Hishouzame truly has to offer

[iconoclast]

Congrats Pazaizy! I saw that you were working on DOJ a while ago - it feels great when months of hard work finally pays off.

[Shepardus]

1cc'd Ikaruga on Easy! \o/



It's been a while since I had that feeling of 1cc'ing something for the first time, especially with no lives to spare.

[Squire Grooktook]

Also just 1-looped Hishouzame. Died at Area 142.

Very nice. Get the 2-ALL and then you get to experience what Hishouzame truly has to offer

Can't wait, the last few moments of the first loop are incredibly exhilarating and intense.

Which area is the end of the second loop though? The second loop seems to start a few areas past the beginning of the first one, I think. A bit confusing trying to figure out where you are at times lol.

[trap15]

All the loops start you at stage 2. According to an interview, they did this because they thought stage 1 was too easy to make people do again in a loop.

But yeah, the later half of loop 2 and the entire loop 3 onwards is pretty amazingly intense. Such a solid game.

[copy-paster]

1cc'd Ikaruga on Easy! \o/

Nice work, now try normal mode.
I've only get pass stage 4 and always died for that.

[Softdrink 117]

1cc'd Ikaruga on Easy! \o/
It's been a while since I had that feeling of 1cc'ing something for the first time, especially with no lives to spare.

Iky Easy is a good clear -- and definitely not as "easy" as the name might suggest!

I've actually been kinda inspired recently to try for Normal mode... not sure what to think of that. Part of me is looking forward to it; the other part is wondering why I am so fucking crazy.

[ciox]

Good job, Shep.
I don't think there's too much of a problem switching to normal mode since if you don't want suicide bullets you can just shoot with the opposite polarity right quick, other than that it's mostly the same deal but a little harder/faster, the game does get a little more complex in its enemy placement in spots though, which is interesting.
compare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIEkb076ORM#t=54s st3 easy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUB_d_wfKGk#t=54s st3 normal

[Ikazu-san]

http://i.imgur.com/mFXCUSi.png
Managed to reach stage 3 in mars matrix. Yeah, I guess that should be considered an achievement.

[pokemon123]

congrats shepardus.

Ikaruga never appealed to me much. Played the demo and wasn't a fan of it but I might buy it on steam I guess but some of the later patterns in that game look like they'd kill my eyes later. Like utsusho's "hell";s tokamak but 10x worse >_>.

[Stevens]

Roo, Blinge, Banana, Squire, Pazaizy, Shep - Great work! Inspiring shit from all of you.

Ikazu - You're damn right it is. MM is unforgiving but so rewarding. Stick with it and good luck!

[Shepardus]

congrats shepardus.

Ikaruga never appealed to me much. Played the demo and wasn't a fan of it but I might buy it on steam I guess but some of the later patterns in that game look like they'd kill my eyes later. Like utsusho's "hell";s tokamak but 10x worse >_>.

I didn't find any of the patterns to be very hard on the eyes - neither the backgrounds nor the bullets themselves are very bright and glowy like they are in many Touhou spellcards such as the one you mentioned. It can get confusing trying to wrap your mind around switching polarity repeatedly and making sure you're the right color before passing through a line of bullets, but if you come in knowing what you're going to do and avoid any unplanned polarity switching it's quite manageable (at least on Easy). On the other hand, any sort of panic will screw you over, as the later stages don't give you much time to think and figure things out on the fly. You also don't get many lives to work with if you're not scoring, so consistency, and thus planning (and lots of stage practice!), is important. With a good plan, most parts aren't particularly difficult to execute for survival on Easy, especially if you make liberal use of the homing attack to deal with tricky sections, since the actual dodging requirement is quite minimal compared to many shmups.

[ratikal]

I got a DOJ 2-ALL!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv10Rzz64HM

I've been playing DOJ every day since November, literally every day.

Man, that is some devotion. I wish I could have that same devotion. How much did you play each day?

Either way, congratulations on being the second westerner on defeating White Label!

[Drake]

I got a DOJ 2-ALL!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv10Rzz64HM

Congratulations, again!

People need to pay more attention to this! DOJ White Label 2-ALL. Seriously guys.

[LordHypnos]

http://i.imgur.com/mFXCUSi.png
Managed to reach stage 3 in mars matrix. Yeah, I guess that should be considered an achievement.

Stage 3 is where it starts getting fun

Also congrats to everyone here

EDIT: Also, in all seriousness, the trick to MM stage 3 survival is to get the hang of tap shielding and make sure to destroy the turrets ASAP (IIRC). Scoring is another matter entirely. There is a crazy amount of optimization you can do. I usually get a +1400 or +1500 chain; Rob has gotten around +3000 I think.

[Softdrink 117]

I got a DOJ 2-ALL!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv10Rzz64HM

Wait what the hell -- this is amazing!

Awesome first post man! Keep it up. :3

[LordHypnos]

Finally made it to Gunbird 2 stage 1-5!!!! I USED TO THINK THAT SHIT WAS IMPOSSIBRU

In the scheme of things it's not much (Def. not even in the same league as a DOJ 2-ALL), but definitely feels pretty good to finally get there.

[Stevens]

Nice work brother, been missing you round these parts. Still digging?

[LordHypnos]

^Yeah, not too much time for shmups, but I'm trying to get a little in. Gunbird 2 does have the advantage of being relatively short length, too. I still plan on taking on your Under Defeat challenge tho. Probably will get back to it once I hit a wall in Gunbird 2, or get sick of it or wtv.

[Pazaizy]

Thanks to everyone for all the congratulations! You guys are making me feel very welcome.

Congrats Pazaizy! I saw that you were working on DOJ a while ago - it feels great when months of hard work finally pays off.

Yeah, it feels absolutely amazing. When I started practicing and realized how insanely difficult WL was, I thought I wouldn't be able to do it! I remember how at one point, just full-chaining 2-5 and killing Hibachi took me over 100 tries and beating the 2nd loop starting from 2-1 took me well over 600 attempts.

I've been playing DOJ every day since November, literally every day.

Man, that is some devotion. I wish I could have that same devotion. How much did you play each day?

I spent around 400 hours playing WL. I used around 350 hours to practice and the last 50 or so hours were spent doing runs. If I didn't have a DOJBL 2-ALL it would've taken way longer.

[Stevens]

I'm in awe of your dedication.

**Hand clap**

[pokemon123]

so going to sound dumb but does no keeping your lives in WL really make it that much harder than BL?

[Shepardus]

It does make it harder (or at least less forgiving), but WL's also harder in other ways, such as slower hyper generation, and I think differences in rank and boss patterns.

Edit: I was streaming today and I cleared Recca's Zanki mode. It was quite a surprise to me considering I've never seriously practiced Recca and I had never seen most of stage 4 before (barely got past the first boss of that stage yesterday but that's it). I'm lucky I happened to be recording at the time. The whole time through stage 4 I was just wondering when it would end and if I would actually make it all the way...

[Pazaizy]

so going to sound dumb but does no keeping your lives in WL really make it that much harder than BL?

Yes, but that's not the only thing that makes it harder. The scariest part is that you have to earn every life back 1 by 1. You can only earn them back by either not dying or by not bombing during a stage, note that I said either of the 2. You don't have to do both of them. Considering that every boss has really nasty patterns, this is way harder than it sounds. The stage portions are also extremely difficult, but at least they can be done somewhat consistently. Except the turret section in 2-4 which will probably wreck most players because of the randomness involved.

Most notable differences in terms of enemies/bosses or mechanics are:
The 1-1/2-1 boss' pattern which he does when you kill both of it's turrets is notably harder.
The 2-2 boss is insane. He can literally give you a mis-mash of patterns that become undodgeable. This happens because there's no set sequence to his attacks. Also, some of his attacks can force you to make a dodge that's pixel perfect. (Pattern in action at 0:21 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM2J0JC5Tas)
The final pattern of the 2-3 boss only uses large bullets. In Black Label the boss gives you smaller bullets towards the end.
The 2-4 midboss only fires large bullets. In Black Label the aimed bullets are small and the rest are big bullets.

The blue ships that fire rows of blue bullets directly downwards have less space between the rows of bullets. (The ships at 38:16 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv10Rzz64HM)
Hachi's 2nd form has way less HP than he does in Black Label.
In White Label, when you bomb and immediately hyper, you will die anyways. Which means you have to wait for the bomb-invulnerability to cool off before you can hyper without dying. In BL you can hyper immediately after bombing and still not die. This is very important for the Hibachi boss-fight.
In White Label, it takes a bit more damage to make Hibachi start his final pattern.
Hibachi's final attack, the washing machine, only uses the large blue bullets. In Black Label, half the blue bullets are large and half are small. This is a very important thing to note because this attack is the run-ender.

Oh, and hypers spawn way slower in White Label. This forces you to chain more of the game without hypers and makes grabbing bees on time way more strict.
The hitbox of the A-Exy ship is different. I'm not 100% sure, but it feels a little bit larger to me.

Sorry for the wall of text.

[pokemon123]

well WL just become a whole lot more interesting to me. Thanks!

[Jaimers]

Congrats again! Going from Touhou Lunatic to a DOJWL 2-ALL is quite some progress.
And yeah the hitboxes in WL are way bigger then they are in BL. Hitboxes in BL feel more like Mushi or Ketsui hitboxes but in WL they feel more like DDP hitboxes.

Touhou team represent!

[BIL]

Superb posts, Pazaizy.

[copy-paster]

1LCed Salamander.