Squire Grooktook wrote:Dragon Blaze
Gave it a return. I've loved and appreciated this ones mechanics for over a year or two now, but I never quite noticed before how intense and hotblooded the combat feels even when you have most of Psikyo's infamously sterile routes memo'd. Wonderful time even without any successful progress into the second loop.
To me the game is at its best when you've completely memorized it, as that's when you can best engage with the game's rhythm without reservation. I think certain aspects of the game such as the slow, dense bullets (compared to other Psikyo games) and the unsealable suicide bullets paired with an emphasis on close-ranged attacks only really make sense when you've got a plan to misdirect the threats. I was slow to learn the game because I would much rather play the parts I already know than try to figure out new stages.
Emuser wrote:Just got 121M on the barely mentioned Blaynix. I had just uploaded a lower score to YT the other day, so I probably won't bother with this one for now. I got the 16x multiplier kill against the final boss too.
Very nice! I take it that the game doesn't counterstop at 8 digits like you were suspecting?
As for myself, I've been dabbling with a few different games. I played a bit more
ring^-27 after putting it aside last December. I learned how to unlock five extra modes so it's not like I have any lack of things to play around with. I encourage others to play it, if only to justify the existence of the highscores thread - if I were to post scores for all the modes I've played it'd be a wasteland of dozens of tables with one entry each. I've posted plenty of info I've gleaned from it in the highscores and strategy subforums' respective threads, so the lack of explanation of its systems shouldn't be an issue anymore.
I've also been playing some
Raiden DX - I'm a fan of the thrilling stage designs and enemy attacks, and the graphics and sound effects are incredibly satisfying, top-notch even today, but I never really liked the Raiden-style
(yes, I know it originated before Raiden...) weapons and powerups, and the bosses annoy me to no end especially as I keep screwing up the stage 1 boss point-blanking tactic. The medal flashing actually doesn't annoy me as much as I thought it would, other stuff such as the fighting spirits/"Guts" rating discourage me from taking score seriously.
More to my liking is
Thunder Dragon 2, which combines swift enemy movements and attacks with brisk movement and responsive weapons. I always draw comparisons in my mind between this game and Dangun Feveron thanks to their speedkill-based scoring and enemy waves, but I've been playing this one over Dangun recently because it feels more manageable to me. Not so much the overall difficulty, but more about how chaotic and overwhelming all the item collection can get in Dangun Feveron, and how much I suck at its bosses (TD2's bosses feel easier on average and less random to me, though that may be because I feel more encouraged to use my bombs).
I played a few credits of
Out Zone too - I love the music and the gameplay's fun, but man do I suck at it.
Last but not least, since last weekend I've been playing a lot of
GR3, a freeware Gradius fangame in the style of the MSX Gradius and Nemesis games, created by NIGORO (or GR3 Project, as they were known at the time) before they created La-Mulana. I'm very surprised at how little mention this game has gotten on this forum, so much so that to make up for it I'm going to create Hi Scores, Strategy, and Shmups Chat threads later this week when I have more time. The creators are fairly well-known, albeit not for shmups, and there's a page on it on the Gradius wiki and an entire Japanese wiki dedicated to it, but I couldn't find more than one or two passing mentions here. I myself knew about this game years ago (back when I was first playing La-Mulana), but only now put in the time to get past the first stage. If you're familiar with La-Mulana, especially the original freeware version, GR3 plays pretty much exactly how you'd expect a shmup from that team would play. I'll leave it up to you for now to figure out what exactly that means, but suffice it to say that it's not for the faint of heart (especially the "Re-Death" version, which remakes all the stages into much harder versions). Sadly, different versions of the game require different versions of the Java Runtime Environment, and even versions that run in modern JVMs may sound different because the Java MIDI synthesizer (yes, the soundtrack is in MIDI, and it's actually pretty good) was changed relatively recently. You shouldn't let that stop you from taking the game out for a spin, though - it's clear that a lot of love (and perhaps an unhealthy dose of sadism) went into the game.
Still, there are some really great bullet patterns on some of the bosses
SATAN/SAVIOUR/FATHER/LAWWWRD HAVE MERCY UPON ME 
