Thanks for the congratulations! I've played the US version of Donpachi (on Mame). Is there a lot of differences between them?Plasmo wrote:Congrats on your first arcade clear! Stage 4 and 5 can be really tricky at times. Good job.
Have you played the Japan or the US version of Donpachi?
How many hours did it take you?
Instead of listing some new titles (Shepardus already did a great job here), I also want to suggest thinking about highscore chasing. Clearing is one thing, but playing for score makes you appreciate the game on a whole different level (and we have a whole sub-forum dedicated to that). Moreover, keep in mind, that Donpachi has 2 loops, so you could also aim for a 2-ALL.
There are many ways to go from here on. Looking forward to your next posts!
Counting practice and full runs, it took me maybe 10 or 11 hours. Funnily enough, I have being playing Donpachi for at least 2 weeks, but was going just 1 credit per day and without any kind of credit feeding. In my twisted mind, I thought that at some point I'd be able to magically pull a 1cc off of it. Then, 2 days ago, I finally got to mid stage 4 and the truth just appeared to me: If I didn't practice seriously, I'd never beat the game. So I made save states and started going over and over through stages 4 and 5 (since 1 to 3 were pretty consistent for me at this point).
Two things that I realized that were a game changer was:
1) Changing fromanalog stick to D-Pad. With analog I didn't have the precision I wanted and got some pretty dumb deaths. The 1CC run was the second I tried on D-Pad (with the first being a really close one), so I think that helps a lot in my case.
2) Changing my bomb button from circle to R1. I was using the default X for shooting and circle for bombing. Then, I began to notice that there was some bombs that just didn't activate because of my fingers position. Using R1 solved it, and in the 1CC run I didn't have any deaths for failed bombs (happened a lot earlier).
Finally, speaking of scoring, I admit that although I don't have a lot of knowledge on the subject, just to think about it makes me a little anxious. Let me explain it: I used to (still do sometimes) do speedruns, and I always got really frustrated when I had to restart because I've made some dumb mistake. I feel like highscoring is similar. Granted, everything I know about scoring comes from the "Full Extent of the Jam", but I feel that it is something really stressful, and I'd probably get more frustrated than have fun. Playing for survival, at least for now, seems more fun for me because I don't need to look for other people's videos to look for the best routes to optimize the scoring and such. Also, even though some mistakes can be harsh (like dying with a full bomb stock), you can always recover, which isn't true (again, for what I've read) if you lose a 300 combo.
But a 2-All is something I'm definitely eager to try, but maybe not now. The few stages I saw from Loop 2 made me crazy, the amount of bullets is enerving.