Out Zone

[Shepardus]

Shepardus - 1,649,630 - 2-2 - Yes - MAMEPlus 0.160, "outzonea" romset

Video

[Square_Air]

Square_Air - 2,158,180 - 2-4 - Yes - ShmupMAME v4.2 (Set 2)

Pretty sure this is the standard version for this MAME build. I dabbled in this for a few days, and this game is definitely as good as everyone says it is. The only thing that irks me is the odd scoring mechanic with the zero wing ships that doesn't seem to mesh well with the rest of the game. That aside, i'm looking forward to doing more loops in this.

[Despatche]

Yeah, in ShmupMAME v4.2, the correct set should still be set 2.

I always thought the cameos were meant as cute jokes, not serious game design elements.

[drboom]

Noticed I never updated my score when I broke 3 mil:
drboom - 3,190,400 - 3-? - yes - pcb
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-sy75 ... zCel7APwG8

[Jaimers]

Jaimers - 9,999,999 - 7-4 - Yes - ShmupMAME v4.2 (Set 2)

Kinda surprised I'm the first counterstop.

Video
inp

[emphatic]

You did good!

[Despatche]

Cool to finally see this! Congrats.

[Square_Air]

Square_Air - 4,243,580 - 4-1 - Yes - ShmupMAME v4.2 (Set 2)

Finally returned to push for more loops and managed 3 before I blew it. This is without a doubt my favourite Toaplan game and I'll probably come back to keep pushing for that counter stop. Unlike Vimana which anesthetizes the soul and melts the mind, marathoning this game is actually really satisfying.

[UD2]

UD2 - 1759360 - 2-3 - No - PCB



Decided to make an account here after taking the plunge into PCBs. This is my first 1CC of any game and it ended up being a 1LC to boot. I got really liberal with bomb use in 1-6/7 as I didn't want to throw my run away and probably screwed myself out of a better score. On to the later loops!

This game rules! So excited for the M2 port to come out so that more people have a chance to play this masterpiece.

[maximo310]

maximo - 5,912,210 - 5-4 (438%) - Yes - ARCADE 0.220 (outzone romset- standard rank)



https://youtu.be/sV_4DNyIDmY

Played this for Dent's STGC #2, and made some quick progress thanks to how good the fixed 3way is in this game. No-missed loops 1-3, then messed up on 4-3 and had to waste some lives before recovering in 4-5. Then i messed up on 5-3 and hobbled for slightly longer ;-;

Game is so awesome to marathon; might push for more eventually.

[maximo310]

another loop :p; cs #soon

maximo - 7,341,400 - 6-1 (502%) - Yes - ARCADE 0.220 (outzone romset - standard rank)


https://youtu.be/Zncs4xKwjJY

[maximo310]

Last update for now

maximo - 9,999,999 - 7-1 (601%) - Yes - ARCADE 0.220 (outzone romset- standard rank)



Fantastic game! Only got a partial recording as I started while in VC, but my performance was pretty solid till loop 6.

partial recording: https://youtu.be/4tuhlbmebRg ( starts at 2-5)

[GGA_HAN]

Played on the cabinet at Galloping Ghost Arcade with no autofire, JP version PCB.



HAN - 3,032,430 - 3-1 (206%) - No - Arcade PCB

[aerobert]

What version is my PCB?

The intro shows the guy in the door of the drop ship and the text says "mission are you ready? Destroy all of them. Goodluck!!"

There was a good site that describes the differences between the romsets bit I cant find it.

[Despatche]

If anything I remember makes any sense, and it probably doesn't because MAME totally fucked this game, you most likely have the regular board. You have the intro so it's not the prototype. If there aren't way more bullets than there should be, to the point of causing slowdown in like stage 1, then you have the regular board.

[NMS]

NMS - 9,999,999 - 9-4 (846%) - Yes - Shmupmamev4.2 (outzonea - Standard)



Replay
inp

[Despatche]

I see we have entered the "stage number is score" phase of Out Zone's life. Congrats! Updated.

[Plasmo]

I see we have entered the "stage number is score" phase of Out Zone's life. Congrats! Updated.

This is an unusual approach. What normally happens in case of a counterstop at least over in Japan is that the run that reaches the counterstop earlier is considered to be better as you have to do riskier things and score well as opposed to just play it super safe and get the max score later on. Oftentimes higher loops are a simple repetition and survival doesn't pose a further challenge. Scoring, however, always increases difficulty. This way you also get way more interesting 1st loops and not simple survival runs which keeps counterstop challenges more engaging. This is particularly true in the case of Out Zone with all its neat little scoring secrets.

Therefore, it ultimately becomes somewhat of a speedrun challenge who can reach the counterstop first. I personally consider maximo's score to be the best since he reaches the counterstop already in stage 6-6 showing off many interesting scoring techniques and secrets.

An alternative way of ranking counterstops is to simply not treat them in a hierarchy at all, making them all first places.

Thoughts?

[Meriscan]

Therefore, it ultimately becomes somewhat of a speedrun challenge who can reach the counterstop first. I personally consider maximo's score to be the best since he reaches the counterstop already in stage 6-6 showing off many interesting scoring techniques and secrets.

This seems like a very good idea. There is definitely potential to get this score earlier and it would be a fitting challenge for players to try to beat it faster, rather than play it really safe and only get the score because they survived for long enough.

[Sumez]

Might be speaking out of order since I've yet to beat more than a couple of loops of the game, but I'm not sure a 6-6 Out Zone counterstop really takes more skill than a 9-4 one? Getting every zero wing ship, and foregoing bombing is probably the more interesting aspect, while inching forward and emptying every single enemy spawn point is not. Since you only get score extends on the first loop, survival still holds a lot of merit.
In terms of the scores in this leaderboard, both NMS and Jaimers still continue playing as long as they can after reaching 10 mil, so their submissions would have to be changed if you want to change the rank order. Jaimers actually maxed out as early as 6-4, but keeps going for another loop before running out of lives. So that 7-4 counts for nothing.

In practice I don't think there's a reason to sort the counterstop scores, as they all demonstrated perfect mastery of the game, and a shared first place would be cool. Realistically, it's probably the better choice to go with the common standard and reward the earliest counterstop. Personally, the most interesting survival skill rating for this game IMO would be a speedrun ranking, since rushing through the game makes it so much more fun. I doubt there's much of a competitive scene for that, though.


I posted about this in the other Out Zone thread, but no one had anything to say, so I'll try asking here instead. What's the basis for using the easier rom set as the default, and regarding what the OP now says, what caused MAME to change their official priority? I can't find any indication that the harder version isn't an official later rom revision made by Toaplan. My PCB was definitely born with it, and as far as I can tell some Japanese PCBs had them too.
But they might max out on the same difficulty after a couple of loops, I'm not sure? If they do, there's probably no reason for a split board.

[NMS]

I see we have entered the "stage number is score" phase of Out Zone's life. Congrats! Updated.

This is an unusual approach. What normally happens in case of a counterstop at least over in Japan is that the run that reaches the counterstop earlier is considered to be better as you have to do riskier things and score well as opposed to just play it super safe and get the max score later on. Oftentimes higher loops are a simple repetition and survival doesn't pose a further challenge. Scoring, however, always increases difficulty. This way you also get way more interesting 1st loops and not simple survival runs which keeps counterstop challenges more engaging. This is particularly true in the case of Out Zone with all its neat little scoring secrets.

Therefore, it ultimately becomes somewhat of a speedrun challenge who can reach the counterstop first. I personally consider maximo's score to be the best since he reaches the counterstop already in stage 6-6 showing off many interesting scoring techniques and secrets.

An alternative way of ranking counterstops is to simply not treat them in a hierarchy at all, making them all first places.

Thoughts?

I agree, it should be whoever reaches the counterstop first as it's the old standard. If someone can counterstop the game, they should be able to keep on playing for a long time. Using survival only, if someone wants to claim first place, it would be a matter spending the whole day doing this over and over, which isn't really interesting. For example my 9-4 run was something like 3 hours and a half, which is already pretty long. I know Jaimers also has a 14-ALL which is 5 hours and a half long he never submitted, so beating this gets a bit absurd. In loop 2 I messed up the Zero Wing secret and couldn't find a way to get them back despite trying, which was entirely my fault and caused me to do a few more loops to get the CS, while maximo and Jaimers managed to get most of them judging by when they reach the CS (there's probably a difference regarding bomb usage, but the Zero Wing secret is the main score factor). So their runs can be seen as better as they probably routed that part better (I only routed them for loop 1).

Judging survival after the counterstop isn't a particularly good metric as we all probably got more reckless after reaching it (or killed runs), because at this point it doesn't really matter. I personally played a bit differently after reaching the CS because I was more relaxed, the mindset is just not the same (although what caused my game over was still an honest mistake that could have happened before the counterstop, not a change of route). In a way, it would also be unfair to rank lower a run that ended simply because the player killed it on purpose (which I think is what happened in maximo's run), while the survival skills were present.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

This is an unusual approach. What normally happens in case of a counterstop at least over in Japan is that the run that reaches the counterstop earlier is considered to be better as you have to do riskier things and score well as opposed to just play it super safe and get the max score later on.

I agree with this, I think it's important to record three separate factors with respect to counterstops:

• First person to counterstop: the first person who manages to achieve a counterstop in a given game gets marked accordingly as such.

• Earliest counterstop in the game: the earlier in the game you trigger the counterstop (as in you're getting a higher score earlier in the game) the higher the position on the scoreboard.

• Farthest stage reached after the counterstop: once you achieve the counterstop, record how far into the game beyond that you've gotten. Only applies to infinite looping games, but this allows for people who want to play for survival beyond the counterstop a category to compete in. You'd still record what point in the game the counterstop was obtained.

That way, even after the first counterstop is achieved, there can still be ongoing competition to push for the counterstop even sooner, and for those who are crazy enough to want to play infinite looping games for a long period of time, you can give them a category to compete on.

[maximo310]

I see we have entered the "stage number is score" phase of Out Zone's life. Congrats! Updated.

This is an unusual approach. What normally happens in case of a counterstop at least over in Japan is that the run that reaches the counterstop earlier is considered to be better as you have to do riskier things and score well as opposed to just play it super safe and get the max score later on. Oftentimes higher loops are a simple repetition and survival doesn't pose a further challenge. Scoring, however, always increases difficulty. This way you also get way more interesting 1st loops and not simple survival runs which keeps counterstop challenges more engaging. This is particularly true in the case of Out Zone with all its neat little scoring secrets.

Therefore, it ultimately becomes somewhat of a speedrun challenge who can reach the counterstop first. I personally consider maximo's score to be the best since he reaches the counterstop already in stage 6-6 showing off many interesting scoring techniques and secrets.

An alternative way of ranking counterstops is to simply not treat them in a hierarchy at all, making them all first places.

Thoughts?

I agree, it should be whoever reaches the counterstop first as it's the old standard. If someone can counterstop the game, they should be able to keep on playing for a long time. Using survival only, if someone wants to claim first place, it would be a matter spending the whole day doing this over and over, which isn't really interesting. For example my 9-4 run was something like 3 hours and a half, which is already pretty long. I know Jaimers also has a 14-ALL which is 5 hours and a half long he never submitted, so beating this gets a bit absurd. In loop 2 I messed up the Zero Wing secret and couldn't find a way to get them back despite trying, which was entirely my fault and caused me to do a few more loops to get the CS, while maximo and Jaimers managed to get most of them judging by when they reach the CS (there's probably a difference regarding bomb usage, but the Zero Wing secret is the main score factor). So their runs can be seen as better as they probably routed that part better (I only routed them for loop 1).

Judging survival after the counterstop isn't a particularly good metric as we all probably got more reckless after reaching it (or killed runs), because at this point it doesn't really matter. I personally played a bit differently after reaching the CS because I was more relaxed, the mindset is just not the same (although what caused my game over was still an honest mistake that could have happened before the counterstop, not a change of route). In a way, it would also be unfair to rank lower a run that ended simply because the player killed it on purpose (which I think is what happened in maximo's run), while the survival skills were present.

You are correct about keeping the Zero Wing secret active for as long as possible ( and then getting it back if you accidently pick up more C items) ends up being the main difference between getting the CS earlier vs playing additional stages/loops. Especially as you probably want to use a few bombs in certain spots ( like one on the stage 5 boss) to improve consistency and minimal score loss. I ended up getting a bit lucky with re-triggering the Zero Wing secret in that run, since I lost track of the C item count a few times.

That being said, I'd probably go with earliest counterstop since its consistent with general counterstop rules in other games, and that you have to be more on top of things to get the CS earlier ( which probably can be done at 6-3/6-4 at earliest, maybe 6-2?)

And yes, I pretty much ended at run at 7-1 on purpose.

[Despatche]

That's perfectly fine and preferable, I just assumed that distance was considered to be better. I have swapped the orders.

What's the basis for using the easier rom set as the default, and regarding what the OP now says, what caused MAME to change their official priority?

The "easier" board is the one that even MAME said was the most common board. It was replaced with the "harder" board because that board was deemed to be "newer" and MAME has this obsession with making the newest set the parent. Still amazed DOJBL was never promoted to parent at any point.

Bullets and slowdown everywhere just fundamentally feels like a bootleg. No other Toaplan game behaves like that. It might not be a bootleg, but it's also definitely not a "normal" version of the game.

[Sumez]

I'm not sure what's bootleg'y about it. The bullet count isn't particularly high, and it feels perfectly well balanced to me. From what I've seen of the easier rom set, that behaves very similarly from the second loop onward, so it's not really as unique as you make it sound.
I'm not too into mame stuff, but it sounds logical to me to treat the latest revision of any game as the "default version", especially for arcade games which had many common revisions over the years. Though if that's the mindset, it's even more strange to me that the older, easier version would be the default.

Honestly, I'd really love to hear the story of these revisions, from the horse's mouth if possible. But it's probably too much to wish for, for little details like that to get included in shmupjunkie's upcoming documentary. If it's a hack orchestrated by some distributor to make the game harder, I can understand not treating it as default, but I have seen no indications that that should be the case. :\

[Steven]

So I want to start playing this game now that it's on MiSTer, and there are a few revisions listed: old, older, oldest, Zero Wing conversion, harder, and just the regular one with no descriptors. Which one of these is the one that I should be playing? MiSTer unfortunately has adopted the MAME "newer = parent" thing, as well, so it's kind of annoying to have to dig through menus to find the good versions of the games instead of just choosing the first one that you see. Not much I can do about it, though.

Honestly, I'd really love to hear the story of these revisions, from the horse's mouth if possible.

Give me 18 days and I might be able to have the answer for you! No promises, though.

[Sumez]

To my knowledge there are no straight up bootleg hacks, so I'd think any version is valid for this thread? As previously stated I found the "harder" version quite easy for an arcade game, so I personally think it's a good one to play.
But since all versions are listed together on one scoreboard (which is fair I guess), playing "the regular one with no descriptor" is probably the better approach. It definitely has a massive scoring advantage over the harder one.

As far as I've heard the Zero Wing conversion plays the same as the harder romset and is changed only to be compatible with the different board layout. It's all hearsay though (and another thing I'd love to see sorted out), I'm not sure if there are actually multiple revisions for that PCB as well, possibly undumped.
You can very easily tell if you're playing the easier or harder version based on whether the very first enemies in the game will immediately lay fire on you while playing on Normal.

[Steven]

Alright, thanks. I guess I'll just use the no-descriptor version. I also tried to run the "oldest" version just now on the MiSTer and I got a black screen, so I guess I won't be playing that version for now anyway. I wonder which one will be used in the M2 release. Same with the 1P version of Hellfire, for that matter, although I imagine it will be the one where your ship changes colors.

[Sumez]

Good point, I never even considered the upcoming port. I guess that might clear up some things

[Steven]

Yeah, the M2 releases will be interesting for the games with a few different ROM versions, like this one. Off the top of my head, I know Slap Fight has a few different versions listed in MAME as well, and there are also several versions of Hellfire listed on the MiSTer for both the 1P and the 2P version.