Strikers 1945 II

[Battletoad]

Battletoad - 1,150,600 - Ki84 Hayate - 1-8 - Mame

Yeah so I still can't clear this at all. Should probably practice the last bosses for a few days straight, but I'm just too lazy right now. Even then I almost never get to the final boss with lives or bombs in stock.
Got back into Strikers II in a little tournament, really fun to play this again.

[MauCast]

MauCast - 1,507,700 - Ki84 Hayate - 2-2 - Shmupmame 4.2

[stuminator]

stuminator - 2,386,100 - DH98 - 2-8 - PCB

This was so close, I lost on the final boss' last form.

[Plasmo]

That's a mindblowing score you got there.

Good luck on the clear!

[stuminator]

That's a mindblowing score you got there.

Good luck on the clear!

Thanks - and I've done it!

stuminator - 2,423,700 - DH98 - ALL - PCB

[Tar-Palantir]

For the DH98 Mosquito:

Tar-Palantir - 466,600 - 1-5 - MAME

[Vludi]

Thanks - and I've done it!

stuminator - 2,423,700 - DH98 - ALL - PCB

Grats on the first Mosquito clear here!

[Plasmo]

This is absolutely beautiful! Congratulations!

[PurpleTheGuy]

Greetings, Plasmo and everyone here in the Strikers 45 II Leaderboards thread!

I've come here today to post the score of my 1st ever 2-ALL of Strikers 1945 II with the F5U Flying Pancake that I got, as of a few hours ago earlier today!


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VioletHatPurple - 2,738,900 - F5U - ALL - ShmupMAME 4.2
*Note - If it happens to matter, I played the World version of Strikers 1945 II, like what BOS and Pegboy played on.

Video of my 1st ever 2-ALL of Strikers 1945 II! =D

ShmupMAME 4.2 INP file
ShmupMAME 4.2 NVRAM file




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Okay, so a little bit of a backdrop here... A week after I defeated Zil's score in Gunbird 2 back at Jun. 26th of this year, I decided to give Gunbird 2 a bit of a break, and I decided I'd go play Strikers 1945 II and go for the 2-ALL with the F5U Flying Pancake (This was back at Jul. 3rd/4th of this year). Indeed, from Jul. 3rd/4th to Dec. 28th of this year, I've been playing Strikers 1945 II!

I NMNB the 1st loop of S1945II in this run, and I actually did pretty well, survival-wise (I died only 1 time in the 2nd loop, and it was in a silly way in stage 2-5), at the 2nd loop, despite a number of mistakes I made in this run regarding the 2nd loop. I go into full detail about this and more at the description part of my 1st ever Strikers 1945 II 2-ALL YouTube video for this run, so you can check it out over there, if you like.

Incidentally, this was the 1st full run of the day I did for S1945II today. I woke up, did a full run of Strikers 1945 II soon afterwards, and well, I managed to finally get it! It was really nice, since, well, needless to say, I had lots of full runs that failed before I finally 2-ALL'd S1945II today.

I almost beat Erppo's score, but oh well, it's all good. I'm just happy to finally be done with this game, haha! I thought I was gonna be stuck playing this game for a while longer, since it took a bit longer than expected for me to get this 2-ALL of S1945II down for a number of reasons, so all-in-all, I can't complain.

[Plasmo]

Exceptional score by an exceptional player! Very sweet!

Will give the replay a watch later today, too! Thanks for uploading it!

[PurpleTheGuy]

Exceptional score by an exceptional player! Very sweet!

Thank you, Plasmo!

You know, to tell you, I actually once played this game several years ago. I even had the PS1 port for it back at early 2013 (Yes, it's that same bad port that Pegboy was talking about). Back when I played it at that time, I wasn't any good at STGs/Shmups, so I had nowhere near the level of experience and skill needed to be able to handle the game, to where I eventually just sold the port for a little bit of money.

Fast forward seven years later... After I played Gunbird 2 extensively, putting this together w/ me getting a DOJWL 2-ALL before my time with Gunbird 2, as well as considering all the other STG/Shmup games I've played before those two games, I thought about that time I played Strikers 1945 II several years ago &, well, I guess you can say that I decided, that I want to settle an old score I had with that game, as I have then gathered more than enough experience and skills to handle it.

Yeah, looking at it through that angle, indeed, it felt really good to get that 2-ALL of Strikers 1945 II!

Will give the replay a watch later today, too! Thanks for uploading it!

No problem! Well, I've always been making videos of every STG/Shmup game I've 1cc'd/2-ALL'd/ALL'd/ALL'd + TLB thus far up to this point, so this one wouldn't be any different.

The only nerve-wracking part about making this video was the worry, that my .inp file would de-sync while recording it (I do recall, that Pegboy had this issue, to where he mentioned about having to 2-ALL the game again on another version of MAME to finally get a usable replay that he can record, so that was a scary thing for me to think about, since, man, I don't want to have to do that same thing myself >_<;;), but once the recording got done without any de-sync and/or other weird things happening, it was smooth sailing from there.

[penny]

penny - 1,318,600 - Focke-Wolf Ta152 - 2-2 - Arcade (Japan) vid

[Meriscan]

Arcade version

Meriscan - 2,681,100 - Ki84 - ALL - shmupmame 4.2 vid

[Plasmo]

Extreme achievement.

Updated!

[DMC]

Congrats, Meriscan!

The speed of those bullets at the beginning of stage 2-8 is something to behold.
I noted you one-lifed the last stage after the first mid-boss or so. I'm curious because I made it to 2-7 long time ago (Original), and didn't play 2-8 at all. How does 2-8 compare with the other stages in the second loop? It seems the boss had some safe spots still, but probably damn difficult stage anyway.

[Meriscan]

Congrats, Meriscan!

The speed of those bullets at the beginning of stage 2-8 is something to behold.
I noted you one-lifed the last stage after the first mid-boss or so. I'm curious because I made it to 2-7 long time ago (Original), and didn't play 2-8 at all. How does 2-8 compare with the other stages in the second loop? It seems the boss had some safe spots still, but probably damn difficult stage anyway.

Compared to the other levels in the second loop, it's not bad at all. My death in this stage is silly and a bit embarrassing, given that it's really not that hard. The mid-boss is entirely static, no popcorn enemies to shoot return bullets, nothing. The part after this mid-boss is also completely free, if you place your charge options where the flying enemies spawn from, it kills them before they become dangerous. This didn't work out though because my charge was all messed up after my death/low power. There is no randomness to the boss either. Execution might take a few savestates to learn timing and stuff, but it's not bad at all.

To sum up, stage 2-7 and 2-8 are in my opinion the easiest stages in loop 2. 2-5 and 2-6 are mostly hard because of all the suicide bullets during the stage and more importantly the boss. 2-1 to 2-4 are peak difficulty. If you enter 2-7 with 0 lives and 0 bombs, you still have a decent shot at clearing. So you saying you got to 2-7 means you got really close and that you've probably learned all the hard parts already.

[DMC]

Nice info, thanks! I think I will give it a go again.

You're done with this now, or aiming for the top spot?

[Meriscan]

Nice info, thanks! I think I will give it a go again.

You're done with this now, or aiming for the top spot?

I don't know about top spot, but I still play this game whenever I can. It's too much fun!

[Meriscan]

Small update

Arcade Version

Meriscan - 2,727,800 - Ki84 - ALL - shmupmame 4.2

[Meriscan]

Arcade Version

Meriscan - 2,899,400 - Ki84 - ALL - shmupmame 4.2 vid

[DMC]

Congrats on the score and on getting a 2.8 mil 2-ALL live on shmup slam! Very enjoyable run.

[Meriscan]

Congrats on the score and on getting a 2.8 mil 2-ALL live on shmup slam! Very enjoyable run.

Thanks, glad you liked the run!

[Meriscan]

Long overdue update. Trying to get 3 million again.

Meriscan - 2,956,000 - Ki84 - ALL - shmupmame 4.2 Vid

[wiNteR]

Personally, I would have definitely bombed on the second phase of stage-8 boss if I was on last life. But my way of doing it is a bit different (and perhaps not that reliable).
The last phase is kinda quite static and there is a fairly simple way to get quite reliable results on it (bit long to write in words though).

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Anyway, recently I am also working on the game. Basically a nmnb run (with flying pancake) with a number of other things (that are substantial enough). These include:
(1) Almost no use of charge shot (except the level-3 shot at few places) through-out the game. Or no use of lower level charge shots at all (but I think I need to check one or two spots to be completely sure about this). Essentially, level-3 shot is for two places (turrets in fortress stage and stage-8 opening part).
(2) And also, a few other things such as:
(a) Pacifist on some points in boss battles (e.g. stage-5 and stage-7).
(b) At one or two points, avoiding point-blanking for some (bigger) enemies if it trivializes them.
(c) At one or two points, facing some of the attacks head-on instead of by-passing them (e.g. the big tank in stage-6).

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One of the disadvantages of such a run is that lack of charge shots means that going for score (via collection of gold) is kind of not in question (at least for me), which is also a fun part of the game.

Hopefully, I will keep working on it (instead of giving it up half-way somewhere), which I will if my motivation (in general) doesn't go down. I don't know much about recording video, but I will try to save replay for the run [even though I approach with the same standard stage order as yours ..... sky/sea/desert/fortress, so probably resets will be needed]. After saving the replay, I will try to look up how to convert to video.

Actually, I don't know about saving replays either. But I will try to search for it before attempting full runs, which definitely won't be before 3 or 4 months ..... ofc if I keep playing in the first place.

[Meriscan]

Meriscan - 3,000,200 - Ki84 - ALL - shmupmame 4.2 vid

[Plasmo]

Holy shit, you did it!

...but where do we go from here?

Congratulations!

[Meriscan]

Holy shit, you did it!

...but where do we go from here?

4 million

[Meriscan]

Meriscan - 3,304,700 - Ki84 - ALL - shmupmame 4.2 vid

[wiNteR]

Few Random Observations:
(1) Good routing on the turret wall. Though such a routing might not be possible with flying pancake (without using level-3). At least the last time I tried I couldn't find one (would try again though to see if there is a reasonable way I am missing).

Edit:
[Actually, I tried it today to see whether my impression was correct or not .... and I think my above point isn't correct. That part is quite possible to no-bomb with pancake without using a level-3 chargeshot.]

(2) The main attack for 2-6 boss. Somehow I am not sure why, but I have never tried doing it this way (i.e. one or two small movements towards the left). Possibly this is due to fear of popcorn enemies. Instead, when it begins, I move towards the right (in a big way) and then make many small movements to the right.

(3) It seems that in this game (when at full bomb stock) using a bomb to get better timing on gold bars might not be useful (because of the trade-off of losing bomb points for the next pick-up).



P.S.
I think this particular video might not be running smoothly for some reason (even on higher quality). To check whether this was an issue just on my part or not, I clicked on an older uploaded video of yours in this thread and that seemed to be fine (on higher quality).

[Meriscan]

I think this particular video might not be running smoothly for some reason (even on higher quality). To check whether this was an issue just on my part or not, I clicked on an older uploaded video of yours in this thread and that seemed to be fine (on higher quality).

Looking at it again I think you're right. Kinda weird, since it's just my usual recording setup, pretty sure I didn't change anything. But I'll have a look at it so that future recordings won't look so choppy.