Halley's Comet

A forum for saving and showing off all your hi scores
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spadgy
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Halley's Comet

Post by spadgy »

It was more terrifying than Edmond Halley could have ever imagined...
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A great little shooter from Taito. simple stuff, and very fast for a game from 1986. Thanks to lgb for the previous thread.

LAST UPDATE: December 14th, 2014

All defaults please, so:
Difficulty: Normal
Extend: 200K/1M/9.2M
Lives: 3

Submit your scores like this please:

NAME - SCORE - ROUND - INITIALS - AUTOFIRE/DELAY

For example: Meatloaf - 666,666 - 5 - MLF - ON/4

As a note 'round' could also be 'area'. It is unclear why the game uses both terms.

Time to rescue the planets from the comets! It’s what Edmund Halley would have wanted.

The Halley's Comet high score board

Code: Select all

1.  Ruldra       9,434,610     57     RUL     ON/7
2.  emphatic     6,947,600     41     JOR     OFF
3.  CHI          2,315,560     15     CHI     ON/1
3.  P_HAT        1,762,620     12     AAP     ON
4.  Rob          1,377,030     10     ROB     ON/4
5.  Ed Oscuro      879,070      6     EAH     ON/6
6.  lgb            745,390      6     TLP     ON/4
7.  roadrunner     713,950      6     RUN     OFF
8.  spadgy         562,790      5     OTA     OFF
9. 
10.

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spadgy
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Re: Halley's Comet (New thread)

Post by spadgy »

A new thread is up, and all scores not submitted in the previous thread have been added!
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Re: Halley's Comet (New thread)

Post by emphatic »

Great. It's really a lovely little game with epic, almost John Williamsesque music and cool explosions. IN SPACE!
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Re: Halley's Comet (New thread)

Post by spadgy »

Yeah - I'm honestly surprised it isn't more popular. With it's manic pace and epic setting, it deserves a far more treasured cult status.
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Re: Halley's Comet (New thread)

Post by emphatic »

Image

Code: Select all

2.  emphatic     6,947,600     41     JOR     OFF
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RegalSin wrote:Street Fighters. We need to aviod them when we activate time accellerator.
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Re: Halley's Comet (New thread)

Post by spadgy »

That's quite a boost to your score! Well done, and welcome back to Halley's Comet!

Updated.
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Re: Halley's Comet (New thread)

Post by emphatic »

Thanks. I think autofire is kinda needed in this game, as you need to tap quite a bit. :D
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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by spadgy »

Just an edit and tidy up. Decided it was about time to take 'New Thread' out of the thread title!

Oh, and time to replace the expired image...
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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by Despatche »

Hm... apparently there's a 1989 (FCDS) and 1991 (GG(!)) game called Halley Wars that seems to be a pair of conversions; the listed developers are credited as responsible for a lot of other Taito conversions. I'm sure that later GG version is different enough for its own board.

I'll have a look at them and see what's up.

edit: Right, so... the FCDS game is an ok conversion and a bit different from the arcade game; no extra options. The GG game is a bit different from that and has the strangest controls I've ever seen (at least in emulators), trying to change from a diagonal to a cardinal will just leave you "drifting" in that diagonal until you completely let go of the pad; if you dare to put up a table for this thing, it has three difficulty settings (and an autofire setting!).
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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by spadgy »

I see. Are they similar enough that it makes it worth adding them in with this score board?
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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by Despatche »

Certainly not. They're fairly different from the arcade game, and they're fairly different from each other.
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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by spadgy »

I sense another Despatche-run high-score board on the horizon! :)
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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by Despatche »

if you don't wanna keep them, i'd rather forget about them... i just thought there should be boards here for the sake of completeness.

of course, i'd rather forget about things like exed exes fc and kyuukyoku tiger fc too. so much for that.
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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by spadgy »

Just to be clear, when I said 'add them here', I meant as new, separate boards in this thread's OP. If anybody crops up having played the FCDS or GG version, I assume they'll do so here... we can decide what to do then!
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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by CHI »

CHI - 1,461,400 - 10 - CHI - ON

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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by CHI »

Edit:
CHI - 2,315,560 - 15 - CHI - ON/1

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Don't know are there any differences, but i played the Japan Newer Version :!:
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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by spadgy »

Who's this CHI character?

I updated it for him anyway... :wink:
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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by Despatche »

Not sure about the Japan versions, but there's a "Halley's Comet '87". I imagine it's something like Darius Extra.

Also, game potentially trivialized:
Shoot all but one of these squares and then press the hyperspace button (the smart-bomb) when the final square is lit. You should now receive 1000000 points! (this works for all level bosses).
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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by spadgy »

Did you confirm this trivialising detail through play Despatche? Or is the source somewhere? If it's true, certainly, it sounds like it undermines the scoring a little!
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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by emphatic »

I think I may be the source of that info making it online. I know I submitted it somewhere about ten years ago. I claim it works, as I have gotten it personally, but I don't think I've been able to do it in MAME.
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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

I haven't tried Halley's Comet 87 yet to see what the differences are, but I've been playing the version listed as "Japan - newer" and I've never gotten that trick to work. It just uses a normal bomb if you try to bomb kill the last square on the comet interior boss. Bombs don't appear to damage the bosses.

It's possible this is a trick specific to an older version or something, but I saw it mentioned on a counterstop playthrough... that never uses the trick... so I have no idea if it's merely a rumor or whatnot.

If this trick did work scoring would be entirely broken as you could counterstop the game at 10 mil by the end of the first loop, rather than having to clear both loops to get the counterstop.

I'm hoping to get the counterstop for this. I've been playing it like crazy the past few weeks, had runs get to loop 2 Mars with 9.3 and 9.4 million then die horribly and get checkpoint killed. Current best is no-missing loop 1, dying abruptly on loop 2 Earth, making it past Earth and Venus with both at 70% damage, then finally recovering only to die on Mars. Loop 2 is quite a bit tougher as enemies move faster and go further down the screen before firing. Mars in particular is special as the enemy waves can overlap each other leading to some hellish dodges, and the comet interior has a unique miniboss mech that fires rocket punches at you that simply refuses to die any time I've shot it, thus necessitating the use of a bomb there. It has a ridiculous amount of health.
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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by emphatic »

I think you have to shoot the last lamp, then bomb, not sure about the technique now.
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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

emphatic wrote:I think you have to shoot the last lamp, then bomb, not sure about the technique now.
Doesn't work, I've tried mashing the bomb button immediately after killing the last open hatch. Memory is a fallible thing so I'm more inclined to believe this came about from a misperception rather than anything. I also can't find a single piece of footage that does this "trick", including on the counterstop video on Replay Burners' channel that even mentions this trick in the description!

Again, if this were a thing (and it might be specific to one of the versions of Halley's Comet? dunno) it would completely break scoring as you could counterstop in loop 1. In fact, you'd counterstop at 10 mil (assuming all versions counterstop there) by loop 1 Neptune or Uranus if you get this supposed 1 mil bonus on every level.

I did find an interesting trick though; if you move up into the text at the start of each planet it'll say "DO NOT ERASE!"... and if you press and hold the shoot button (without using rapid fire) it'll change to give what appear to be various developer names (as well as "SPACE RANGER" on Mars). Doesn't do anything for score but it's a cute easter egg.
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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by Lethe »

It works in both the base and rev 1 versions in MAME. Either the glitch is missing in the ACA version, or you haven't gotten it right yet.
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Video with explanation
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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Ah, so it's a glitch, not a deliberate scoring "trick". I'm playing the revision that's listed as being newer in MAME, which presumably fixes it, so we can assume it's a glitch specific to older versions. I appreciate the explanation! It actually makes me feel a lot better; it was mentioned to me by a few other folks as I was playing that there was a scoring trick but nobody actually knew the details of how to actually do it.

Now that I know it's a glitch I know I don't have to concern myself with it. I'm playing the newer (and presumably bugfixed) revision and only aiming for a no glitch 2-loop counterstop clear.
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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by emphatic »

Thanks for posting that, Lethe. I thought I was going crazy. :lol:

Another cool thing you can do in Halley's Comet is taking control of the ship in the last part of the attract mode. I didn't know you could change the text with the shot button, that's pretty cool.
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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

BareKnuckleRoo - 9,999,990 (counterstops here) - 61 (Loop 3, Earth) - BKR - 8.57 hz Autofire (2 frames on, 5 off)

This was played on the version that's listed as Japan, newer version, which doesn't appear to have those scoring glitches as far as I can tell.

Played on MAME while hanging out at a few friends. Sadly wasn't recording at the time (didn't really expect to nab it) but I was on fire yesterday after a couple false starts and I have multiple forumgoers to act as witnesses. =D Died once in loop 1 at the Sun or Pluto? then recovered uneventfully, made it to loop 2, died a couple times at Neptune, managed to recover (phew) and finally had a run through Jupiter and Mars without any major screwups... until I got to Mars and died right before the boss, oops. I did manage to recover immediately, limped through the boss at low power and fortunately didn't chaindeath.

Then we were getting hungry and needed food, etc, so I decided it was time to do the right thing any proper misanthrope would do. Instead of suiciding to death I dodged my way like a bad ass and helped the comets kill off all humanity! Hooray! The galaxy's finally safe from us. 8)

Image

Note that loop 3 gets weird with area naming. Instead of going to 61 as you'd expect (loop 1 is 1-30, loop 2 is 31-60) it just jumps back to using loop 2 numbering, so loop 3 Earth is technically listed as area 31. Weird.
Extend: 200K/1M/9.2M
Is this extend setting a typo maybe? It's not the default from the looks of it. MAME has 200,000 , 800,000, every 600,000 after as extend setting default, and this matches the score attack mode in the PS4 version. Didn't make a difference cuz the few deaths I had never affected my life stock badly.

edit: got the counterstop again in a recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ0CAHbU_4E
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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by BIL »

A small addendum to the good work posted above - seems the scoring glitch is in the ACA version (PS4 tested), just bugfixed out by default.

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I'm guessing the Hi Score mode disables the glitch by default, but will have to give it a go to confirm. :cool:

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Re: Halley's Comet

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

I'm guessing the Hi Score mode disables the glitch by default, but will have to give it a go to confirm.
This is my assumption; I haven't bothered to try doing the glitch while playing Hi Score mode on the Switch version, but the glitch would make scoring relatively meaningless since you can counterstop in the first stage. The default settings are also generally what the Hi Score mode uses, and the default is set to disable/correct the glitch.

Counterstopping is very difficult, but not unreasonably difficult by any means. There's plenty of games where even a survival clear alone is far more demanding (2 loop Dodonpachi clear for instance).
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