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

[Perikles]

Thank you so much for the kind words, guys, you're so sweet. And mighty congratulations to chum, I wish I were able to say anything substantial but I don't even know what is happening there. Looks immensely frightening to me, however.

Here's my video in any case. A few notes on the run if you're interested:

- The sole reason why I pick up a second speed-up in the beginning of the second loop is the 2-5 boss. He was the biggest roadblock for the longest time. If he decides to go for his aggressive behaviour (which he does in this run, too) he is extremely dangerous. I practiced this guy over and over and still got killed 9 out of 10 times. I've read that it is possible to influence his course of action by positioning oneself in specific spots on the screen when he shows up, but couldn't get anything to work.

- I decide to stick with the DNA laser for 2-2 even though the stage is clearly designed for the other two weapons. Reason being that those evil jellyfishes are enormously resilient on the second loop, I've had it happen that three or four survive for so long that they will pester you during the boss fight. I'd rather flail around the stage than having to deal with all that.

- 2-3 went unusually well. If you throw out the pod too early against the thruster it probably will get stuck in a bad spot which renders this stage exponentially harder.

- 2-4 is the hardest stage in the game for me alongside 2-7. So many enemies with fast bullets! It got very close multiple times, particularly at 28:08. Glad that it worked out.

- I almost messed up 2-6 by missing the upmost crawler at 31:40. I had to make that stunt there, you don't want him to shoot you while being restricted to that cramped space. This is most likely one of the hardest stages the first time you get here, but memorization works wonders.

- 2-7 was scary as always! I panicked a lot during this stage, just can't keep the nerves under control. It's not that hard if you're methodical about it but if you miss one or two enemies at crucial points you're going to regret it.

- Believe it or not, I was terrified while facing the final boss! I've had it happen during practice that I died in that safespot, I still have no idea why that is. Maybe the position is rather strict, it seems to have worked splendidly this time, however, allowing me to crush the Bydo empire!

Holy shit, nice work Perikles!

How would you say the arcade game compares to Super R-Type and its godawful checkpoints? More/less punishing, maybe about the same?

Super R-Type is a lot more painful, that's for sure. One loop of R-Type feels like 10 minutes while one loop of Super R-Type feels like it's an hour long. I have to admit though that I can't quite recover in the original R-Type as well. I just have no clue how to survive the final boss without both of the bits. Since you only get the bits in three stages (1, 4 and 7) my credit is over when I die after stage 4. I know how to recover from most checkpoints, I just can't beat the final boss without exploiting the safespot.

The important thing, however, is that almost every death in Super R-Type feels cheap. You either get hit by something that clearly did not hit you (those laser beams from the seventh boss for example linger around long after they left the screen, it would be funny if it weren't so sad), because the slowdown abruptly ended while you were not prepared for it or because of some other ridiculous trouvaille (I love those little enemies in stage 7 that have the chutzpah to shoot directly through their platforms). R-Type is certainly a lot harder, but every death is self-inflicted.

I will say that everything from 2-4 onwards in R-Type III is pretty much worthy of a true Irem loop, especially 2-6; while at the same time being more accessible as far as checkpoint recovery is concerned. Truly magnificent design!

[CStarFlare]

Took down Great Thing in DBCS. One miss; I think I could no miss the CGL route if I was less stupid during the opening of the GT fight - I always take 5 or 6 hits in the first barrage, then do rather well on the same patterns later in the fight.

I'm not great at scoring with Gaiden, but as Gaiden was my first love in the Darius series I want to clear all the routes with it. The EX courses should be interesting.

EDIT: Got the no miss. Still ending the fight on x1, but I'm getting a few BHB kills on his dolphins at least.

[OlDirty]

Few days ago i missed my first ever Cave game 1CC f close.So today as a christmas present,i guess,i did my first ever 1CC in Mushihimesama normal mode.I think nothing special for most people here,but it took me nearly 60hrs on steam to get there.Maybe i'm just no talented enough,but i also play shmups for a year only.

[Stevens]

I think nothing special for most people here,but it took me nearly 60hrs on steam to get there.

Don't downplay your accomplishments, congrats on the clear. Nice work!

[AxelMill]

It was no easy feat, but, after months of practice, I finally 1CC'd Gaia Seed on Normal, ending A.
Hail your new shmup lord.

Spoiler

JK, ez as sheet, it took me three tries.

[Deca]

I completed every Normal route in DBAC, EX immediately owning the hell out of me lol

[DocHauser]

Just have my PSP over Christmas and New Year, so I've gone back to Darius Burst. Managed to clear Burst Mode against Dark Helios and Great Thing, so that just leaves the same two routes in Arcade Mode and I'll have cleared all routes (still a lot of stages in Mission Mode to beat, though).

[AxelMill]

I finished Einhander for the first time a few minutes ago. I defeated Hyperion when I had no lives or continues left, it was pretty intense, though not as difficult as I expected this final boss to be. The fourth and fifth stages gave me much more trouble.
I like it much more than when I first played it. Maybe because I learnt more of it lately.

[KoopaTGR]

I just got a 1CC of the original Batsugun!

This game is not that hard, but unlike the 1st loop of the Special version you actually have to know the stages to get far.
The last 2 stages are much longer than the first 3 although the game is in total only 18 minutes approx. (not including the ending!)
I used Type B for this run, and only got a score of about 3.4 million although I have heard the scoring is YGW like
The Batsugun Special 4-ALL will be a long way away...

This will be my last arcade 1CC for 2015, and for now I'll just play casually and maybe experiment with some other games i.e. clearing with different characters.
Hopefully a 2016 goals thread will pop up soon!

[Perikles]

Got what is without a doubt my toughest clear so far: cleared both loops of R-Type II! I almost threw the towel yesterday when I managed to screw up at the last possible moment (slammed into the first embryo boss instead of gently nudging into the chamber) but I had to get that clear. The Bydo empire is no more, now there's only the "More Evil Empire" from Zing Zing Zip left (I also have to get a better Delta score, play it on Bydo difficulty and finally try out Leo, so yeah). Going to post once more when I got the video up, so many clutch moments in it I can hardly believe it. I also want to thank saucykobold for his amazing videos and his invaluable advice, couldn't have done it without you.

[Jonst]

Cleared akai katana zetsu with a new hi score of 451 million, finally my scores are improving!

[Perikles]

Alright, the video of my R-Type II 2-ALL is finally uploaded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVhk1GvKtQg. I've put various notes in the video description as quite a few people aren't aware of the possibilities the game gives you. If you don't know exactly what you can do and what you cannot do you're most likely not going to beat the second loop as it is very difficult.

I unfortunately die at the final stage of the first loop in a miserable way, but at least I was able to demonstrate that it is indeed possible to recover in the first loop even though it took me a few attempts. Would've loved to get a 1LC, but I think I'll pass on that one for now.

My heart almost stopped beating at 41:10 when I realized that I was not hitting the crawlers. I was frames away from dying at the end, I've never had such a clutch moment in my shmupping career!

And thank you very much for your kind words, BIL!

[BIL]

The sheer onslaught of bullets hammering straight at you from 2-3 onward is amazing to watch, as are the requisite streaming and Force/Bit techniques. Irem's best stuff really transcends "avoid the robot foot" rote. Looks more like staving off relentless gnashing death. Love the loop jellyfish escape too, those things really wanted a piece of your ass.

[pegboy]

Awesome job on R-Type 1 & 2. I'm shocked how quickly you 2-ALL'd those back to back. Crazy.

[EmperorIng]

Clearing any Irem game deserves plenty of props. I don't know how anyone can find the patience to survive R-Type II - it pushes the boundary of unfair for me. Congrats on totally putting the two R-Types away, Perikles. I like Delta quite a bit, though am nowhere near to clearing it (I do find "avoiding the robot foot" to paraphrase BIL, difficult).

Probably my last 1CC of the year, and an easy one: Gate of Thunder:

~Score Submission~

This is the epitome of "manageable" right alongside Thunder Force III. Gate of Thunder is a little harder on default difficulty than TF3's "cruise till they lose" joyride. That said, TF3 is the better game. It has a few too many slow spots where you are supposed to soak in the music and graphics (instead of shooting and dodging enemies). Gotta show off that Super-CD power, I guess! The game doesn't really pick up until stage 4 or so, when dodging environmental hazards and enemies becomes a bit more involved.

The bosses are pretty wimpy in Normal - even the final boss - with one or two attacks that are easy to dodge (as long as you didn't die in the stage and lose your CRAWs - i mean, uh, options). Devil difficulty (of which I only played the first two stages) seems to make them more aggressive with different patterns, so that's cool.

I wonder if I'll get one more clear in before the year is out. This has been a pretty good year for me as far as 1CC'ing games go. 11 shmups, not counting non-shmup games.

[pegboy]

I posted this in the strikers hi-score thread but whatever, I'm posting it here too:

Strikers 1945 II 2-ALL is finally done after 4 months of practicing.

In reality, I had to clear this fucking game 3 times before I could get a useable replay. First time I accidentally overwrote my replay when I was trying to output the video...you have no idea how mad I was. Second time my replay desynced early on during playback...last time I use shmupmame probably ever.

I switched over to the newest version of MAME and the 3rd time was the charm and now I have an actual replay. At least I proved to myself that clearing it was not a fluke. This time I only died once in 2-6, which is also the farthest I've ever gotten without dying.

Unfortunately my highest score was during the first time I cleared it (2.58M), so my replay is actually not as good of a score, but it's still decent 2.54M or so. It's too bad you get barely any points for having extra lives at the end, a feel like that should be a much bigger bonus.

[Perikles]

Outstanding achievement, pegboy, I knew it was only a matter of time before you get the 2-ALL. That's something I wouldn't even dare to attempt, Psikyo's second loops are really something else. Every 2-1 stage of Strikers 1945 was harder for me than the entire first loop combined, it's obscene! You might want to try directly recording a video while playing if it doesn't lead to slowdowns or frame skips or what have you, seems like the safer bet in cases like this (Sand Scorpion would always desync during stage 2 but it worked perfectly fine to just record a video whilst playing). But man, clearing the game three times is indeed a Herculean task!

What're you gonna play next? Some more console games? Another Psikyo title? Something else entirely?


@EmperorIng: One of my gripes with Gate of Thunder is that you really can't soak in the music because the sound effects are just too damn loud if you use any other weapon than the green laser (PCE syndrome at work)! I've no idea why this happens so often on the console, even amidst the finest games - it must've been painfully obvious when they tested the games, after all.


And thank you very much for your kind words, all!

[BIL]

Hardass 2ALLs rolling in. Congrats pegboy, "Psikyo loop" are words brave men dread to behold.

Audio balancing issues bring to mind Saturn Hyper Duel and especially Blast Wind... holy cow, could they have used BGM/SE sliders among all those neato virtual dipswitches. Like the one in Thunder Force V! lololol.

[pegboy]

Here's the stinking video for Strikers II 2-ALL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=599ubitYGq4

[Shepardus]

Congrats to everybody for their achievements, some very impressive stuff recently!

@pegboy: Damn, Strikers 1945 II is already hard enough, but you went and cleared it three times? I can only imagine how pissed you must have been after the first two replays didn't work out. I have yet to accidentally overwrite an input file, but it's always a fear in the back of my head when I'm rendering one to video, so if I'm feeling especially paranoid I back up the input file to Dropbox before doing anything with it.

@Perikles: I watched your 2-ALLs of R-Type and R-Type II (well, the second loops of each and that recovery in the R-Type II replay), and those second loops are way more intense than I expected; the last few stages of R-Type II almost look like something out of a bullet hell! I was very impressed with your Force pod handling and your use of the option bits to do collision damage. I've been meaning to spend some more time with older (pre-mid 90s) shmups, especially horis, since I've never really been able to stick with them, and R-Type's the most interesting series to me with its aesthetic and the Force mechanics. I just may go for a 1-ALL of the first R-Type after I've gotten through the games I'm working on right now.

[LordHypnos]

Am srsly impressed by the 2-ALLs Holy shit. Will have to watch at some point.

[ShamefurDispray]

1cc on Judgement Silversword...easy mode

Now to move on to big boy normal mode. Literally had only 1 life left. I went in with 5 or 6 to the stage 30 boss. It was disappointing not being able to fight the final 3 TLBs. Didn't realize they weren't on easy mode. I love this game though! It feels more "fair" than any shmup I've ever played while still being a good challenge. It's a nice, linear ramp in difficulty as the stages progress unlike Cave games where stage 3s end up making you look silly. It's the perfect difficulty level imo.

I 1cc'd Eschatos on easy too awhile back. The scoring stresses me out though. I can't fucking stand missing chains in the early sections and reset constantly...kind of like when I play Raiden Fighters. I got 34 million on Aces "Normal" (basically easy/not Arcade) mode and a 1cc after 40ish hours but it wasn't even fun. It was just this sick desire in me to get those goddamn gold bars. I would seriously reset 10 times at least on level 1 or 2 before having a real run every time I played. It was seriously turning into work.

Raiden IV on the other hand is a fucking cross-eyed whore with venereal disease. I can practice that shit and grind for hours and the shit I practice will STILL give me trouble. Like the second boss's bullshit patterns. So frustrating. I can never get the spacing right.

[gimebe]

World record, on stream.

The previous one was low and I still had 2 deaths and major chaindrops, but I'm happy.

Here's to 2016.

[ratikal]

World record, on stream.

The previous one was low and I still had 2 deaths and major chaindrops, but I'm happy.

Here's to 2016.

HOLY SHIT! Congratulations man!

[The Armchair General]

World record, on stream.

The previous one was low and I still had 2 deaths and major chaindrops, but I'm happy.

Here's to 2016.

Great job! Nice to see western players competing for world records.

[Perikles]

I'm on a roll lately. Just got the Gradius II 2-ALL, died at 3-8, which is to say the final stage in the third loop. Didn't quite beat saucykobold's score since I can't consistently pull off some of the scoring tricks, but my secret baby moai head technique worked like a charm. Also wrote one hell of a wall of text for the upcoming video (which is 90 minutes long and will probably take forever to be uploaded ), so stay stuned! Lots of embarrassing errors and epic flailing, I can promise as much.

[xxx1993]

1CC'd Astebreed on the hardest difficulty! This game is a lot of fun!

[CStarFlare]

Beat QUZ on Dariusburst AC. I think I still have three routes to clear yet, but I imagine the worst is behind me.

[Perikles]

Got the Gradius II 2-ALL up and running: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAEcUOc ... e=youtu.be

I originally wanted to include all my notes in the video description, was perplexed to see that there's a character limit. Here're my remarks on scoring if anyone is interested:

Spoiler

Now for scoring! Even though the scoring system is fairly straightforward in Gradius II there are a few spots/traits that merit special mention:

You do get points if enemies die by dint of the blue power up capsule. This will not happen in any other Gradius game as far as I'm aware. Take that opportunity to murder multiple fiery dragons whenever possible (see below).

The first stage is a great opportunity to rack up some easy points (in the first loop, that is). Every one of those fiery dragons is worth a whopping amount of 3,000 points, you should try to take out as many as you can! I'm not entirely sure how the spawn condition works, it is somehow related to the rank and your position on the screen, it seems like the game creates a lot more of these if you stay on the right side all the time.

The next important stage for scoring purposes is the fourth one, especially on higher loops since you have to overcome a lot more of those deadly volcanoes. The downside is, however, that this is the second-hardest stage in the game on higher loops (right after the final stage), particularly if you get greedy and try to milk too many of the fireballs, at least with my setup.

Fifth stage is also very lucrative. You should try to destroy as many of the ion rings that the moai heads spew out as you can as the heads themselves aren't worth many points at all. The mid-boss will net a massive boost to your score if you're able to position yourself just right, allowing you to milk all four of the heads. I'm unfortunately not consistent at this at all (it's very finicky to do, notably with just three options) thus I settle with milking the upper two guys.

The last important stage for scoring is the boss parade. If you kill all the bosses and suicide on one of Covered Core's missiles you will have gained 50,600 points from the bosses themselves and probably another few thousand points from the zubs in the beginning and the eyeballs from Gau. There are three disadvantages to doing this, though: 1. It's quite hard to reliably recover. Those zubs have active hitboxes right after they materialise, mercilessly wiping you out if you're not extremely careful. It's not rare to lose multiple lives in a row there. 2. This is also really bad since there is a good chance that the first stage of the subsequent loops might kill you a few times as well. You don't want to start a loop with just one or two lives, that's for certain! 3. It's frankly mind-numbingly boring once you got past the zubs. Tetran (the third boss) and Covered Core (the last one) are not a pleasure to fight the first time around and it doesn't get better upon repeating the same tryst over and over again. They'll most likely even time out if you don't have at least two options and the laser which are not that trivial to get.


No idea what's up with that creepy noise during 15:34, never had that happen before. It luckily doesn't last very long. The graphical glitches in the beginning of the sixth stage and during the ending seem to be normal on shmupMAME, however. 36:40 is quite possibly the dumbest mistake during the entire run, I thought I would get an option for some inexplicable reasons.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

Just cleared Mushihimesama Maniac for the first time on a run that really shouldn't have cleared.

I still am not consistent with some of stage 4 or most of stage 5, and I managed to somehow get lucky at a few points. when I messed things up.

The stage 5 boss practice in Arrange helped too, even if I completely screwed up the fight and only just barely cleared due to bombspamming at a few points for safety. And even then I thought I had screwed up again as I had no bombs left and ended up in a very bad spot for one of the attacks.

Horrible score since I don't know how to chain stuff.

Guess I should try to clear Original or Arrange next. (or try to learn some more of 1.5 Max stuff)


Edit: Of course, the replay appears to desync on the stage 1 boss . Not sure if there's anything I can do about that.