Video of loops 21-23; I've linked to the playlist containing the other 20 loops in the video description.
BIL wrote:Sweet Jesus.
Damn near the WR, if I'm not mistaken. Looking forward to your report.
Cheers guv! I would surmise that there are some particularly dedicated individuals out there who played until they got 99.999m (I guess that there's no ninth digit after that) considering that our Hall of Records also mentions some loop 182 Hishouzame scores and loop 58 Vimana results, but as I understand it, the classic cesura lies at 10m. I'm satisfied with that in any case - I ended loop 23 with 10,004,900 points and then allowed the game to kill me. I've gained 100 points per death since you lose your lives by dint of a popcorn crashing into you at the start of the first stage, meaning that I had 69 lives in stock when I stopped, I can most assuredly rest easy with such a conclusion.
Speaking of passings: the worst stretch was certainly 12-7 where I got ruffled quite a bit before finally moving onwards - karma had it that I got the single best recovery in 13-7 as a redress, managed to trash the stage after only one death. Most other deaths were in the first stage on various loops, sometimes followed by a few more in stage 2. The most peculiar demise was in 7-5, I haven't lost a life there in many, many years. No deaths elsewhere, but that is mostly inherent to my inability to recover from the mid-checkpoint in stage 4, i.e. run's over when I die in stages 3 & 4. I've practiced that checkpoint hundred of times, only got past it twice. Definitely one of the hardest in the series from loop 3 onwards.
A few other notes of interest:
- I wonder how exactly the game calculates/handles its suicide bullets. There's clearly some "unit system" in place, you sometimes get lucky enough that three or four entire enemy waves won't retaliate at all. This is especially helpful at the beginning of stage 7.
- I really want to use this opportunity to imprecate Konami for crafting arcade Parodius Da! the way they did: duckers in Gradius never counter with suicide bullets, obviously because there's not enough space in the final stage to avoid them. Penguin walkers on the other hand strive to leave not one, but two suicide bullets behind in the second loop, in similarly narrow corridors. Jerks.
- It seems like the few rough spots regarding checkpoint recoveries could easily be fixed with a slightly better hit detection and/or at least one power-up upon spawning. Incidentally, the worst checkpoints in Gradius II are also in stage 4 where you have to deal with volcanoes whilst not getting a single power-up (once you reach loop 2). It certainly doesn't look like they merely forgot to add the appropriate enemies, strikes me as quite intentional.
- Even though I prefer other Gradius games over this one, I have to commend the shot behaviour, both regular and in conjunction with suicide bullets. If you miss a few ships or kill some enemy at a bad angle with your options, your best bet is to move in a straight line (provided you don't run into another bullet or terrain in the process, of course). Later games add delayed suicide bullets and slightly different trajectories/bullet speeds that prevent simple solutions like this, and it does belong in the context of these games, but I find that this economy works splendidly in the first Gradius.
- At first I thought I was being superstitious, now I'm almost certain that using the missiles indiscriminately while firing the laser will effectively deaden the effect of the latter. I'm not sure if it has something to do with the sprite maximum (using missiles causes quite a bit of slowdown), but you can easily observe the effect when you try to cut through terrain with the laser. If you also deploy missiles at the same time it'll be a lot harder to actually hit anything. This is quite important in the final stage.
- The Big Core in stage 5 is the only one that has a chance of exploding almost instantly in my experience, I would imagine this is due to the fact you can hit him quite a while before he becomes active for usually, one last brain will fly by before the fight starts.