Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

[CloudyMusic]

After god knows how long I've finally managed to make a scoring route through Donpachi. Unfortunately, it's not anywhere near 99 mil ......



At least now I can score in the game without looking at Chibari's 99 mil run every 30 seconds

Wow, is that a real run or your route's theoretical potential? That'd be first place on our boards by a huge margin.

[LordHypnos]

Nice work General.

Still attempting full runs of UD, and doing seemingly worse and worse
Also stage 2 is like the most stage 2 stage 2 I've ever played. Keep on dying stupidly, but it's not like I don't know what to do.

Meh. I still make mistakes sometimes It's very different than Mars Matrix isn't it?

Also played some Valkyrius for fun. I ended up getting S- on stage 1 and S+ on stage 2. still can't make it through stage 3 though. midboss is way hard, and end boss is hard enough. That being said, I haven't actually done stage practice on this game.

That sword is an asshole, I hate that fucking thing. The two worst parts of that game are that sword and the stage 4 bosses lightning attack. What do they have in common?

They're both RNG.

You basically have to hope the sword decides to start shooting and doesn't come to the bottom of the screen. I kind of hope he fixes some things with the Steam release. Easier stage 3 mid boss would make me buy again.

That said I have a solid stage 3 boss killing method. The core is a sponge and you don't get much of a time bonus, but it works.

Its been a while since I've played so I need to confirm it, but I'll PM later today. For real this time.

EDIT: how does scoring and grade work in this game, anyway? Anyone know?

As a matter of fact..

Kill things. Raise the 100% multiplier at the top of the screen (stops at 200%) and don't die. Grade is based on your score and (*drum roll*) there is a score based extend at 20,000.

Mars Matrix's stage 2 is also pretty stage 2 . But yeah, there are many differences. I think I need to practice stage 3 a few times and then do a full run. That will probably work better, as stage 3 has some tricky reflex dodging that would surely warm me up for the dodging in stage 2.

Thanks for the info on Valkyrius. That's basically what I expected (though didn't know about the extend). It's a pretty great game. Also the music is really excellent (though the stage 1 music is kinda meh). As for the stage 2 boss, sometimes I can manage to warp away from his pursuit, but he's movement is naturally not very predictable, so I usually lose a life. I suspect I could figure something out for the stage 3 endboss if I just played against it enough times, but I appreciate the strategy info. Always good to have, especially since there are no good clear videos I could find on the intertubes.

[The Armchair General]

Wow, is that a real run or your route's theoretical potential? That'd be first place on our boards by a huge margin.

Nah, that score is just my route's theoretical score potential.

[Elodin]

I just recently got into Shmups after playing Ikaruga. I'm trying so hard to beat it, but right now I'm only able to get as far as the second boss (only two hours played though) I also just bought Darisuburst and I'm hoping that will be just as amazing (though I've never tried a side-scrolling shump before.)

[LordHypnos]

^Good Luck! With enough perseverance you'll be able to get it eventually.

Under Defeat progress: So, I think I need to practice stage 2 again, unfortunately. My first couple tries at it coming back after not playing in a few months, stage 2 went pretty well, but it hasn't since then

EDIT: I practiced a little today, and had a few good runs of 1-2 and 1-3. I think that how well I do in this game has a lot to do with what time of day it is, because it's very reflex based, and dependent on reading fairly tight bullet patterns to dodge through. This is especially true considering the degree of RNG in some parts. Also I do have a slightly improved strat for the 1-2 boss that I got from Hydeux's 1-sissy video, basically waiting until the rocket launchers are visible to bomb (used to do it earlier). It worked the one time I tried it, but I guess it's hard to know if I'll be able to survive the onslaught of bullets long enough consistently.

[NeoStrayCat]

Right now, try to get everything done much in Caladrius Blaze on the PS3 thanks to it being a PS+ title in the JP PS store, good thing and no need pay import prices, lol.

Also, same soon enough with Strania on PC/Steam. Trying to get the last achievement, freaking "Weapon Master" again, lol. Wish they excluded the "Bomb" for a playthough since its tough enough to use the Bomb weapon as it is in one playthough. Hardly you see it in the Strania Side, but more common in the Vower side. Either way, I'll get that done, and maybe some more scores on both of those games soon enough. X3

[ProjectAKo]

So I was checking out some arcadia scores when



Apparently I got the Alex Kidd high score in 1986 when I was only 1 years old

[EmperorIng]

sweet; nice job

[Stevens]

Starting to understand Esp2 black labels scoring a little more. Broke 70 million on stage 1 and 500 million overall by the stage 5 boss. Which is a full stage sooner than my old best.

[LordHypnos]

Been taking a bit of a break from Under Defeat due to actually doing worse the more I practiced... Hopefully I'll be able to progress eventually.
Mostly been playing indie / doujin games including:

Valkyrius: Finally made it to stage 4, but it's actually pretty difficult so far. Keep getting ended by the second gunboat's shockwave taking me by surprise. I managed to no hits swordface twice in a row, too. I was pretty happy about that. Might have just been good RNG though (didn't feel like it, as I didn't get the good pattern right away the second time).

Prismatic Solid: IDK how to feel about this one. Definitely a fun game for the most part, but sometimes I'll have the most defensive chromosome formation, and somehow one of the bullets will get through, mysteriously. Most of the time, the most defensive formation doesn't feel necessary, especially since it's really weak (I usually actually just attack enemies with the chromosomes themselves when I use it). Also it seems like the shower formation is the best, most of the time. It's pretty powerful and have some front protection. I guess it's just a different experience playing a bullet soaking game over a bullet dodging one.

Chronoblast keeps failing to start for me

Aeternum: for some reason dodging danmaku patterns in a hori is impossible for me

Mecha Ritz (on PC, the others so far were XBLIG): quite a lot of fun and quite a few interesting patterns, though it starts out a little too easy, and you have to slog through quite a bit of that to get to the fun parts. I've made it to the final boss almost every time, due to the large number of extends and adaptive rank, but haven't been able to beat him yet (well, I think it's the final boss anyway. I don't really know). Weird, but interesting art style on this one, and great music.

Final Boss (also PC): This one's really good. Would require a lot of practice though, which I don't really want to do while I'm still working on Under Defeat. Am actually kinda looking for a good game to play alongside UD for when UD gets too frustrating. So far Valkyrius seems to be the one.

Also revisited Mountain of Faith a bit. I've been a little better able to let myself bomb since starting to play shooters again, and as a consequence, really rapidly got scores just behind my top score Still seems like stage 4 is too hard to bomb spam through, though, because in doing so I quickly run out of power, and can't really regenerate it fast enough... well maybe that's not entirely true, but I still think this game would require a lot of practice to clear. It's not like bombing is entirely free here (people seem to like to characterize this game that way).

And revisited Cho Ren Sha, as well. Stage 3 is still too hard for me to consistently get through, but I will say that it seems like I'm doing better at it now than in the past, generally, again due to letting myself bomb more. Such a nice fast pace game, but the stages are also a little on the long side, not unlike most games in this list, I guess. It's kinda frustrating though how bad I am at this game, considering some people seem to be able to blind clear it. Makes sense considering how many bombs you can get if you're good at getting the power up rings, and I am both bad a bombing and bad at getting power up rings, but still.

One thing that I've been feeling recently playing all of these fan made games is that there aren't nearly enough Mars Matrix clones. In fact, I think the only creator who was actually influenced by Mars Matrix at all was Final Form Games with Jamestown, and that's far from a clone, and also much more fun as a multiplayer than single player game (also it doesn't run on my computer). If you want to play Touhou clones, there's like 1,000,000, if you want CAVE clones there are thousands, if you want Yagawa-alikes there's at least Hellsinker and Ring^-27.

Anyway, giant post over, Lord Hypnos out.

EDIT: Wait, forgot to mention Wisplisp Array of List. Very fun caravan game. It's kinda funny how sometimes I can get into the rhythm of it and make it pretty far, and other times I just die right after the part where the music changes. Also beat the easy mode.

[Stevens]

Prismatic Solid is one of those games where there are a ton of weapons and only one or two are any good.

It is a damn shame Jamestown multiplayer is local only. Online sessions would be a lot of fun.

[Squire Grooktook]

Mecha Ritz (on PC, the others so far were XBLIG): quite a lot of fun and quite a few interesting patterns, though it starts out a little too easy, and you have to slog through quite a bit of that to get to the fun parts.

Not an issue at all if you unlock the higher difficulties. I have a save file with everything unlocked, if you'd like it.

[Shepardus]

I've been mostly playing Dariusburst Chronicle Saviours lately, but also a bit of Mushihimesama Original Max. Stage 3 keeps destroying me, and the more I practice it in training mode the worse I get at it... The second half of stage 4 is also pretty nasty, but stage 5 is comparatively easy except for the boss. My best run a couple weeks ago made it up to halfway through the stage 5 boss, but I haven't been able to repeat that since.

Mostly been playing indie / doujin games including:Mecha Ritz (on PC, the others so far were XBLIG): quite a lot of fun and quite a few interesting patterns, though it starts out a little too easy, and you have to slog through quite a bit of that to get to the fun parts. I've made it to the final boss almost every time, due to the large number of extends and adaptive rank, but haven't been able to beat him yet (well, I think it's the final boss anyway. I don't really know). Weird, but interesting art style on this one, and great music.

Clearing Mecha Ritz on the normal difficulty is pretty easy, scoring and starting at higher ranks is where it's at. If you start at rank 100 or above the rank will range from 100-300 instead of 0-99, which makes it significantly more difficult (I still haven't cleared it yet...), though you have to play for a while to unlock that (or download Squire's savefile which I think is linked in the high scores thread). Also if you're saying "him," that's probably the false last boss and not the TLB, which you trigger by not letting the timer in the bottom right drop to 0. Mecha Ritz is all about speed - driving up rank makes the bullets go crazy fast, makes the game itself scroll faster, and gives you more firepower, which helps with getting time bonuses from the bosses and minibosses (key for getting the TLB), and and scoring is largely based on how quickly you complete the game (the end bonus multiplies your entire score by a factor calculated from the maximum rank you reached and the amount of time it took to complete the game).

And revisited Cho Ren Sha, as well. Stage 3 is still too hard for me to consistently get through, but I will say that it seems like I'm doing better at it now than in the past, generally, again due to letting myself bomb more. Such a nice fast pace game, but the stages are also a little on the long side, not unlike most games in this list, I guess. It's kinda frustrating though how bad I am at this game, considering some people seem to be able to blind clear it. Makes sense considering how many bombs you can get if you're good at getting the power up rings, and I am both bad a bombing and bad at getting power up rings, but still.

Keep at it! If you can get through Mars Matrix, you can definitely get through Cho Ren Sha. A lot of it comes down to becoming familiar with the enemy types - even if you don't memorize the levels themselves, most enemy formations give you enough time to react to them before they start firing, if you know how they behave when you see them. In the later stages it also helps to play aggressively and get up close to take out large enemies before they become a problem (especially in stages 4 and 5).

[Stevens]

Stage 6 boss. A hair under 600 million. Need more practice on 4, 5, and 6's boss.

[LordHypnos]

@Stevens: Yes, online coop would be awesome for Jamestown, it's pretty amazing how fun it is as a multiplayer game. Also would be nice if it ran on my Computer

@Squire: Cool to know about Mecha Ritz having a way higher rank mode that you can play. I imagine if I kept at it it wouldn't take too long to unlock, considering that I have only played 6 times total according to the game. Might take you up on that at some point, though.

@Shepardus: Yeah, I've been told that many times, but I've kinda come to the conclusion that clearing Mars Matrix takes a somewhat different skillset from pretty much any other shmup. Part of the reason why I want more Mars Matrix based doujins (or any at all). Also probably helps that I pretty much actually memorized every single enemy spawn and bullet pattern when I was learning MM (It was pretty much a passive thing, as I just played it so many times that I eventually knew what was coming), which I have yet to do with any other game. Mind you it's hard enough that even with memorization I seldom get the clear when playing (maybe have cleared it like 5 times total).

One thing I forgot to mention earlier was Tumiki fighters (a Kenta Cho hori that is not especially random unlike all his other shmups). Also has a more arcade like format with 5 or 6 stages that you play in sequence or something). I used to not be able to get past stage 2, and was doing much better this time around. I think I made it to 4 maybe once or twice. It's a fun game. Takes a bit of time to get used to the mechanics which are a bit odd. I wish that you could have a UD-like choice of which way you rotate when moving, because I would prefer something like UD's reverse rotation, and you only get the equivalent of normal rotation in Tumiki fighters. I can cope, though.

Also since the last post I managed to get to stage 6 of Valkyrius, and played some Eschatos, which remains a favorite (though like many other easy games it takes a bit of time to get to the fun part, which I would say starts at about the stage 2 boss). I got pretty far too, around parsec 17 for probably only about the second time.

[Stevens]

Getting close to that Valkyrius clear LH. You'll have it soon. Are you earning the extend?

Stage 5 is probably my favorite in that game. The opening as you fly up through the atmosphere, the insect laser web things (They're so awesome), and then the battleships. Shame the boss is weak design wise, but it gets the job done.

The hitbox in Espgaluda 2 360 feels smaller than black label.

[Stevens]

84 million on stage one in Black Label. Mind you I still have no idea how to properly zetsu, but for now that is OK.

Run went to shit after that though.

[Mero]

So I was checking out some arcadia scores when



Apparently I got the Alex Kidd high score in 1986 when I was only 1 years old

Was probably a topical name at the time, I think the Project A-ko anime was from '86.

[ProjectAKo]

So I was checking out some arcadia scores when



Apparently I got the Alex Kidd high score in 1986 when I was only 1 years old

Was probably a topical name at the time, I think the Project A-ko anime was from '86.

Exactly. But strangely I feel like I need to play that game now, so I can connect with this mysterious dude from ages past.

[copy-paster]

Just play Darius Gaiden using ABDHLQV route.

Wow, I'd never expected I no-miss'd until last boss, his first and last attack patterns get me away. I should got my 1cc with this one.

[Stevens]

Still Esp 2 Black Label with some Futari on the side.

I was stuck around 50 million in stage 1 for a while, but in practice I was able to figure out three mistakes I was making:

- Was entering/exiting awakened mode too frequently costing me gems.

- Not dispatching the mid boss fast enough.

- I was killing the bullet spewing ships too fast.

Making some corrections I am now scoring well over 100 million in stage 1 (132 is my best) with kakusei only.

Next up is no missing to stage 4's boss.

[broken harbour]

Crimzon Clover World Ignition...

This just might be my favorite shmup ever, hot damn is this game intense without being over the top difficult.

Getting close to a 1cc as well, kind of... I can get thru stage 1 to 3 without dying and then in stage 4 its a bloddbath, still have to learn the stage better.

But I'm really good at stages 1-3.

I'm having a hard time getting double breaks, I can do it on the stage 1 boss and again at one point in stage 3, are they really that rare or do I just suck?

[Shepardus]

I'm having a hard time getting double breaks, I can do it on the stage 1 boss and again at one point in stage 3, are they really that rare or do I just suck?

You can save up your break meter until you've got both your break and double break ready.

[LordHypnos]

Got back to UD finally. After a few warm up runs of 1-2 and 1-3 (which weren't fantastic, but okay), I started trying to learn stage 4. Making some progress, but it seems to start getting hard with those weird lightning cannon things. Not sure how to deal with them yet. Also, I think that cannon is the way to tackle the latter half of stage 1-3. We'll see though, could have been a fluke. Rocket is definitely necessary in the first half and for the boss, though.

[broken harbour]

I'm having a hard time getting double breaks, I can do it on the stage 1 boss and again at one point in stage 3, are they really that rare or do I just suck?

You can save up your break meter until you've got both your break and double break ready.

Oh really? I assumed you had to build the meter back up while you were already in break mode to earn a double break.

[Stevens]

Making some progress, but it seems to start getting hard with those weird lightning cannon things. Not sure how to deal with them yet.

One of the things I love about UD (possibly my favorite thing about it) is its methodical pacing which more or less forces you to plan every second off your run.

When they appear (they always come in pairs) you will always want to deal with the 1st EMP cannon as fast as you can. Ideally time your rocket so it hits just before or as it is firing.

The first set (EMP and two turrets on each wall) - I rocket the first one, shoot the four turrets, and then rocket the last one (you will want to wait until it fires a second time or your option might be destroyed).

2nd set (Two EMP's next to each other) rocket the first as it comes on screen, shoot the 2nd.

[LordHypnos]

... which more or less forces you to plan every second off your run.

Now there is a similarity to Mars Matrix

... methodical pacing ...

That part is less like MM . I appreciate this about UD, too, though. It's very planning oriented. That can be quite fun

When they appear (they always come in pairs) you will always want to deal with the 1st EMP cannon as fast as you can. Ideally time your rocket so it hits just before or as it is firing.

The first set (EMP and two turrets on each wall) - I rocket the first one, shoot the four turrets, and then rocket the last one (you will want to wait until it fires a second time or your option might be destroyed).

2nd set (Two EMP's next to each other) rocket the first as it comes on screen, shoot the 2nd.

Cool, that's helpful. Using these tips I was able to get past the first pair. The stage definitely gets harder after this though. I'll have to experiment a bit to figure out a route for the next part.

[Stevens]

Now there is a similarity to Mars Matrix

Only if you're scoring!

Cool, that's helpful. Using these tips I was able to get past the first pair. The stage definitely gets harder after this though. I'll have to experiment a bit to figure out a route for the next part.

I think the biggest tip I can give you with regards to UD ( is you basically want to kill shit fast, and when possible before they start shooting.

My DC is in the shop (laser was physically hitting the discs), but when I get it back I'll ghetto record my replays by stage if you like and upload them to Youtube.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Popped in a random credit of DFK 1.5 for the first time in months, 1cc'd it on my first try. It was a really rough clear, but I was still pleased with how far I've come in terms of struggling to beat it when I was first playing it. It's nice to really be able to measurably see how much my skill with this style of game in general has improved - even the laser wheels, while still hard as hell, aren't completely and utterly hopeless for me.

Is the general consensus that 1.01 is easier than 1.5? It feels like it is, because even without autobombing, the fact that bomb items are a full refill gives you way more items to work with, and you can bomb much more liberally knowing you'll get a full recharge.

[OmKol]

Hitogata Happa on Nobilmente difficulty. TLB is so horrible, I hate time limit.