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There's a fairly significant bonus for having lives remaining in stock. I can't find a guide that says what the exact amount it but I know it's significant with a full no-miss being worth about 8 - 10 million? There's also a smaller bonus for any empty life boxes at the end of the game I think, if you gained 1ups without dying then lost a few lives before clearing the game. Not sure if the bomb meter contributes a worthwhile amount to the end tally.

Ha, there's a bonus for extra lives lost? Then I'm in seventh heaven!

Last night, I managed to get a clear with two lives (it should have been three), and thanks to your advice/explanation, managed a new personal best of 33.6 million! Makes me think that 40+ million is very doable, if I didn't make a couple of mistakes (missing gold dumps, like the st2 midboss) + dying a few times throughout the course of the game (that damn stage 4 midboss...). Also took to heart your advice on aspect ratio as well. I found stretching the screen width to 528pixels in Sony Vegas matched how it looked in mame, minus a slight loss in crispness.

Congrats on the new PB! =D

I didn't get a chance to watch the full run but I did catch a few snippets. One thing to note too is that unlike Espgaluda 2, where Ageha has a much stronger laser, Tateha is both the spread shot character AND the power character in Espgaluda 1. The two piercing blasts she fires are where her laser's damage comes from, and in normal mode her laser is stronger than Ageha's and benefits a bit from getting closer to enemies. Her lack of movement speed can be an issue though. In kakusei I can't remember how her boosted piercing shot damage stacks up vs Ageha's boosted laser damage, but if you get close to enemies you get a notable damage increase vs staying at the bottom of the screen. Get used to trying to use the shot almost exclusively when Tateha's in kakusei, especially on big enemies that need to die ASAP.

Still Ketsui. Lots of runs to various points in stage four. Sometimes I make the boss, sometimes not. Scores gotten a bit better too.

Jumping off of Bare Knuckle Roo's GigaWing run sans reflect I started to wonder if I could clear Under Defeat sans option. I put that idea to bed but recently it has crept up again. Might start messing with it this weekend.

Samurai Aces on ps2. Finding it tough but may be because I played the mobile version too much. Adapting to slow ship movement and power up token movement is the big challenge I feel.

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At long last, I've finally gotten around to playing the highly revered Tyrian 2000. And, uh, it's... okay. I feel like all of the people proclaiming this to be one of the greatest games within its genre have either not played many shooters, or have been blinded by nostalgia. The controls are very floaty, and my ship feels like a puck sliding around on an air hockey table. I must say, it's quite impressive, and even a bit staggering how much content and effort were poured into the game. But if you're going to tell an elaborate story in a shooter, please make it compelling.

One of the biggest problems with this game is that you can't replay levels, so you're virtually guaranteed to miss secret levels and essential story entries. I get that the developers didn't want you to become overpowered by farming currency, but just limit what you're capable of buying at any point, and there would be no problems. Raptor allowed for currency farming, and that worked out fine. In fact, pretty much everything about Raptor is better than Tyrian 2000.

edit: I didn't realize at the time that the game was designed to be played with a mouse. Knowing that now, the game has become a lot more fun, as well as quite a bit easier. I'm enjoying this a lot more now.

Pretty much. It's a passable euroshmup with inertia and your ship bounces around wildly when hit. One of the things that makes it popular probably is the sheer quantity of content in terms of customization and weapons. Sadly, it still has a lot of fundamental issues.

The best DOS shmup I've ever played is Sideline: http://sideline.ghegs.com/

Raptor's way too easy once you're fully powered up. I loved it as a kid, but I can see it for what it is: a shmup with a massive potential lifebar with ridiculous weapons that can turn levels into a calk. The lasers in particular. Stargunner has the opposite problem; it's a lifebar shmup but I keep feeling like I'm getting hit by stuff I can't see that comes out of nowhere. Major Stryker by Apogee is pretty decent, but its colour palette is limited and it has a kind of choppy scrolling thing going on.

Finally making progress on garegga (2016 rev), I managed to scrape into the final stage today. Although I have no idea how I would survive blackheart mk2...

How many revs for Garegga and what's the difference?

Having finished Tyrian 2000 a couple of days ago, I've officially come to the conclusion that the game is mediocre. By the end of my playthrough, everything just devolved into a boring, poorly structured mess that I was able to coast through in my sleep. As with Robo Aleste, the storyline is an inane, pretentious, overwritten dumpster fire replete with unlikable characters. Stargunner wasn't anything special, but I'd put it above Tyrian 2000. Though I wish more shooters allowed you to pilot a flying pretzel truck. 

The Guardian Legend, however, is phenomenal. The people calling this one of the most underrated NES games of all time aren't wrong. I'm having so much fun with this, and really can't find anything to nitpick. It's a shame it didn't sell very well.

Zeroranger.

My word it's a lot of fun.

finally putting my Mega Everdrive to extensive use with MD Same! Same! Same!

It's good.

Theres something with that game that makes It feel so relaxing... Even when its hard.

Fire Shark is good stuff.

1-ALLed Easy and Normal in fairly short order but Hard is actually kind of tough. now that enemies are shooting at me more it's harder to avoid powerups I don't want. but I really like it and want to go for multiple loops. tfw you get to later stages and there's so many planes coming down and so many shots onscreen that the slowdown kicks in for a second. beautiful feeling

Isn't Hard similar to the arcade version? I need to check that

given the arcade version's reputation for extreme difficulty i'm going to wager it's considerably easier :P

but I can't say, as I haven't played the arcade version more than a few minutes

Hard is considerably easier. MD is a somewhat different game anyway due to less player shots (2 instead of 4).

Currently playing: Gradius series research. The Gradius III SNES hack is a convenient excuse.

After a week consumed by Katana Zero I'm back at Ketsui.

Finally broke through to stage five. I won't sit here and tell you I'm close to the clear, but I'm closer than I was.

ZeroRanger is so awesome. Just got to the third boss and...



Really digging the music too.

Keep at it, the game always gets cooler and cooler! And so does the music.

Was playing some Tatsujin Ou (or rather, Truxton II) last night. For the first time ever I made it past stage 2 on a single credit.

Good lord, these stage lengths. I was already tired playing at 11PM, but this is an exhausting game. The part of stage 2 with all of the ships floating in from behind starts to wear at your concentration after so long.

I wish I didn't die so early into stage three. It more or less sent me to the point of no return. Only realized about the 1up there after the fact.

Been playing a lot of G Darius lately and there's a lot to like but ultimately I found it pretty frustrating with a lot of "I have no idea how I died" moments.

Slowly continuing to improve in Ketsui.

Haven't made the 5th stage again yet but my runs are getting more and more consistent up to stage four. I'm getting the 1 UP on three sans dying with far more frequency now. Of course now I'll through one and two clean and die on stage three two or three times in spots I wasn't dying before.

Score is good enough to grab both extends sometime during stage three, but beyond that is nothing spectacular.

Super Aleste. Definitely better than Blazing Lazers, which didn't impress me very much. I dig the jazzy music, and the difficulty is very well balanced. On the downside, some of the weapons kind of suck, and the sound effects are kinda crap. I really like this game, but I don't like it as much as several other SNES shooters.

Back to stage five.

Getting 2700 - 3000 on stage two which is better than I had been doing. Getting the battleship to drop its 1 up nearly 100% of the time and dying on it way less frequently.

All around I'm improving, which I'd one of the greatest things about this (any arcade style have game really) genre.

Stage four could stand to be a bit cleaner overall, but I've got a pretty good handle on the mid boss and boss.

Been ages since I stuck with a shooter this long.

Raiden IV (Steam Version). I forgot how fun that game was. Second loop is pretty wild.

Nice one @Stevens! ...Sounds exactly like my garegga game atm.

I'm loving Garegga too! Much easier to get into than Bakraid IMO.

^ I actually found bakraid much easier to get into. I've only learnt more about garegga since the ps4 rev, despite having the saturn version for years. Great game, the equivalent of videogame crack for me.