futari ultra discussion

[Bananamatic]

i've been thinking about making a separate detailed commentary someday

thing is the games are just too short and fast to commentate them in detail without pausing the video all the time with 1 person, not to mention with 4 of them while 2 of them know nothing of the game and 1 is clearly trolling everyone else

special demonstrations is probably a better format for detailed explanations than voice commentary

Pretty much every boss was nerfed, or at least slightly altered. Stage 4 boss is a pretty obvious one, going from a nightmare to a pretty doable boss. As in, it's easier than the stage 2 and 3 boss now. Then god mode came and we all had a laugh.

I believe only st3 and st4 bosses were nerfed, probably too much
st5 nerfed almost every enemy on the other hand

[SMC]

Am I the only person who finds black label original harder than 1.5?

I find the stage 3 boss harder in BL.

[Strikers1945guy]

I only like ultra for survival but once you get passed the whole "omg it's too hard" instant thought it's not sooooo bad.

I think a lot of people play stage 1 once, get their ass handed to them, and call it quits.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Futari Ultra is punishingly fun. I think people are just scared off by it because they see how difficult stage 1 is, but the later stages are actually a bit easier due to more bullet cancels. It does have a very entry level if you want to play it seriously.

Am I the only person who finds black label original harder than 1.5?

Black Label Original is indeed harder than 1.5. If you're scoring, that is. At low rank, you're much stronger than in 1.5, and there's a fair amount of slowdown, so for strictly survival play it's a bit easier due to the shorter boss fights. But when you're scoring serious there's a lot of point blanking to be done, vicious rank effects, and more enemies than in 1.5, and ends up being a good deal tougher than 1.5.

[rjosal]

I like stage 3 the best. Massive cancels all over the place, it feels great to time them right. Stage 1 is my least favorite. It's the kind of game though where a 1cc is out of reach and I just play each stage individually.

[Bananamatic]

stage 3 is actually the second lowest scoring stage, way less score than st2

[Cagar]

I've lately noticed some early symptoms of Gusification in Bananamatic.

About fultra:
I will at least get to stage 4 or 5 if the PC port is-
...and this was the moment when it really struck me. An official CAVE port on STEAM? Omg I might start playing shmups seriously again.

[Bananamatic]

I've lately noticed some early symptoms of Gusification in Bananamatic.

no, you're just turning casual

[Smokey]

I believe only st3 and st4 bosses were nerfed, probably too much
st5 nerfed almost every enemy on the other hand

Stage 2 boss also didn't have the bullet cancelling egg things, the extra difficulty comes from being weak. But you're right, 1 is pretty much the same and 5 is purple vomit bomb spam either way.
The stage 5 nerfs were pretty lame, except for the lanterns. All the yummy gems just makes scoring so delicious. I feel like the last stage should always be the hardest, but 1.5 makes it kinda flatline.
The real big nerfs were in original and maniac modes. Seems like most of the effort for 1.5 was put into them, since every stage and boss was nerfed.

Here's something I wonder. How difficult could it be to 1cc 1.01 ultra with all of the shots? The only known 1cc was with normal reco. My guess is it's possible, but there's low interest in 1.5; let alone 1.01. It may never happen.

[SMC]

What about 1.0(0) Ultra? I'd like to see someone clear that

[PROMETHEUS]

I agree I feel it is the best though I have played it little yet,
I just wish they fucking destroyed the stupid counterstop barrier???

[WizardYuuka]

I agree I feel it is the best though I have played it little yet,
I just wish they fucking destroyed the stupid counterstop barrier???

They probably didn't expect people to reach it, but at the same time why pick such an arbitrary number as 4b rather than 9,999,999,999 or something?

[Bananamatic]

maybe because 32 bit unsigned integer is 4,2bil something?

why bother with avoiding that if you're not expecting people to reach it so I guess they just put in a cap to avoid stuff horribly breaking like in sdoj if it did happen

[CStarFlare]

It's disappointing that they didn't fix it in the X360 port. Gus mentioned that there was plenty of room above the 4 billion mark so it's a shame they didn't take the opportunity to raise the ceiling like they did in BL.

(Maybe if Futari hits Steam, it could be removed by Cave or a fan patch? Could be something to push Blackbird on if Futari winds up in his lap.)

[Bananamatic]

or you'd end up with something like "fixed" sdoj or pink sweets where the leaderboards are dead due to not being anywhere near arcade accurate or even worse people would stop playing ultra in arcades

then again futari has some questionable port design like not being able to practice from the midboss and no way to quick reset to st1 and still be able to save a replay (even if you do reset on st1 in normal play, it won't let you save)

[CStarFlare]

Both SDOJ and Pink Sweets' ports fundamentally changed how high-level scoring worked - SDOJ cut the score potential by order of magnitude by fixing the bug, and Pink Sweets completely removed the way score play was traditionally done. If Futari's score cap was extended to 10 mil (like in BL) scores between 1 and 4,000,000,000 would literally be unaffected while players who breach the 4 billion mark could safely claim have counterstopped the game under arcade accounting practices.

I'm not sure people DO still play Ultra in arcades to any significant degree - the best serious score players have probably hit the counterstop and moved on, and they're not coming back to it like they have to Maniac mode or other Cave games. There's literally no score left to gain and nothing left to compete for, even though the game clearly has room for a higher level of performance. The X360 leaderboard has how many counterstops now?

[Chaos Phoenixma]

I would also love to see the counterstop removed on a PC release. It would allow for people to really try to push the mode, every point in it would actually matter then. Stage 2 boss would be even scarier when you actually have to milk it.

Of course, it's possible that not many people would seriously play it at a high level due to it not being arcade version. Not that I'll ever take Ultra seriously.


And yeah, if SDOJ and PS ports ever happen on Steam, the leaderboards should have overflow on as the standard, and there should either be seperate leaderboards for no infinite lives and infinite lives for PS or actually offer the option to play with it active.

And please have separate PS/MMP 1.00 and 1.01 leaderboards instead of combining the 2 versions in the same damn leaderboard like the 360 version does.