Cursed scoring systems

[christianbelchior]

I'm on the lookout of completely idiosyncratic scoring systems, which I'd like to call cursed, but you can throw in scoring systems that fit your definition on what is a cursed scoring system- just don't forget to tell what is your definition of a cursed scoring system in your post.

Hope to find good cursed scoring systems, my definition or your definition.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

X-Out's score = cash. I'm sure the stage 2 boss can be milked infinitely but otherwise a score run would involve never losing a ship and then selling all your lives and weapons and beating the last stage with the smallest ship and pea shooter weapon.

[Shatterhand]

Like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0uZdcKPI14

[Herr Schatten]

Look no further than NMK's games. Their scoring systems are so idiosyncratic they qualify as trolling.

Like "bump into the background" in P-47 Aces, or "touch the right edge of the screen for big scores, also avoid bonus points items" in Hacha Mecha Fighter. I'm sure the NMK experts here can name a few others.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

Like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0uZdcKPI14

Milking usually insn't intentional design. Iunno if you can call it cursed though.

Meanwhile in sky adventure, you get points for destroying some enemy shots, and if i remember correctly the game actually wants you to milk those based on the end of level score bonuses.

[LordHypnos]

Raiden Fighters Jet might count. There's just so many elements to scoring.

First, you've got medalling. This needs to be unlocked by basically letting a medal float next to you and collect other medals until it turns purple, then you collect that. Not only that, though, you also need to have a certain number of medals simultaneously on screen after this, they will disappear, then you get the 10k medals which you can increase the value of in the same way as e.g. Battle Garegga until they're worth 100k. You can't recover a chain if one falls off screen though, like you can in Garegga. The medal can only float near you if you have an active slave (what RF series calls options)

Then you've got secret fairies. You want to collect these, but you can accidentally kill them. They will also drop a bomb if you leave them on screen for long enough. Most of the time they will come out of tanks that have had the turret destroyed but some are triggered by other things. There are also secret micli. These spit out medals. Sometimes you need to shoot them to get them to spit out the medals, though. At least there's no penalty for killing them. For the micli you need to fly over a particular spot for a duration to make them appear (you can fly away and then back though).

Fairy collection (less sure about discovery) can be chained along with with "Quick Shot" (destroy an enemy before they can fire) and "Destroyed at a Time" (destroy specific enemies or turrets within a short time of eachother) bonuses as well as the "DX Bonus" (destroy all 3 trains in simulation level 5?), as well as probably other things for a multiplier (adds x1 for each link in the chain. Probably maxes out at some point).

Finally, as if that weren't enough, there's also grazing (not sure how this is calculated). I believe grazing is tricky to pull off unless you're playing slaves (oh yeah, that's right, you can also play as the slave of any ship. They all have a smaller hitbox and the same spreadshot but will have the same speed and bomb as the ship has. More secrets!) due to the ships having larger hitboxes. Miclus (also a secret character but unlocked by default in some romsets and the Aces port) also has a pretty small hitbox. It's slave (which is the fairy) has the smallest hitbox. I don't believe there's any visual indication when you're grazing.

There's also bonus enemies in various places.

Depending on where you die you will also see different levels.

Your option formation changes when you grab a slave while you already have two of them. The formation is determined by your life+bomb total.

I've only just started to scratch the surface of this wild scoring system (thank goodness that people have figured everything out by now) but as an example, there's a spot where you get 1-3 tanks (depending on how many enemies you kill leading up to it, I think). You need to destroy the turrets on these tanks then wait a little bit for fairies to come out, but you do want to eventually destroy the tanks (they're worth a lot of points and have medals underneath them to add to your floating medal). The tanks also fire a pattern out of their body, and there's a big plane that comes down and a few smaller tanks to contend with all shooting at you. You need to somehow manage to avoid killing the fairies while destroying all the other enemies and eventually the tank bodies and also not accidentally grabbing the floating medal that's following around. When I do this I usually end up with like a billion items all over the screen and need to be careful to get the bombs and slaves in the right order so that I don't end up with a bad formation. This is approximately 1000x as difficult as playing the stage for survival. YCW makes it look so easy

In spite of how silly this is it's very fun

Look no further than NMK's games. Their scoring systems are so idiosyncratic they qualify as trolling.

Like "bump into the background" in P-47 Aces, or "touch the right edge of the screen for big scores, also avoid bonus points items" in Hacha Mecha Fighter. I'm sure the NMK experts here can name a few others.

NMK definitely has some weird ones. In Gunnail you want to suicide all of your lives at the beginning of every stage.

[Plasmo]

Is this finally the Pink Sweets appreciation topic?

[BulletMagnet]

Already been kinda discussed here...

[christianbelchior]

Already been kinda discussed here...

Just wanted a thread which puts more focus on cursed (idiosyncratic) scoring systems, so I made it

[christianbelchior]

Is this finally the Pink Sweets appreciation topic?

Y e s

[LordHypnos]

Speaking of suicide-based scoring systems, the Special mode of Omega Fighter (UPL, 1989) (not to be confused with the Special romset. Both Special and original can be set to Special mode) is somewhat unusual. You can get a "special" bonus if you don't destroy any enemies. It's quite large (maybe 1,000,000 points? I'm not sure). The game's track of it resets when you die, so the best way to get it is to suicide on the boss of each stage. Because your ship's explosion deals damage to enemies, you can set this up so that you destroy the boss by suiciding into it, so you still get the points for the boss (and the rest of the enemies you killed) but also get the Special bonus. Luckily, the special version also gets rid of the 10x proximity requirement for the bomb/extend gauge, so you get extends like candy (note that your lives max out at a pretty low number though, so it's perhaps less easy than that would make it seem). There still exists the same proximity-based multiplier system as in the normal version, as well, so you'll have to do more than just suicide on bosses if you want the high score.

[Buffi]

The counterbanking in mushi Maniac/Ultra is real cursed
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=67577

[sven666]

Jerking the stick in xii stag / trizeal?

Theres a blooper video from the superplay dvds where they burst into laughter over the ridiculousness of it..

[christianbelchior]

Jerking the stick in xii stag / trizeal?

Theres a blooper video from the superplay dvds where they burst into laughter over the ridiculousness of it..

Someone upload the blooper video to YouTube please

[LordHypnos]

Jerking the stick in xii stag / trizeal?

Theres a blooper video from the superplay dvds where they burst into laughter over the ridiculousness of it..

You know what, I think that wiggle-based scoring systems, which would include XII Stag, Psyvariar, and possibly Night Raid (sure looks like the player is wiggling, maybe to extend the duration of the Hug Launcher?), are a good choice for cursed scoring systems due to the fact that they will destroy your arcade stick

TBH, Night Raid probably counts in any case, what a bizarre game.