Shmup goals 2024 – Performative Escapism

[Plasmo]

Shmup goals 2024 – Performative Escapism



Rocket goes up. Rocket never goes down.

Here are the links to the previous topics. Have you reached your goals? Failed hard? Tell us!

2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017,
2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

You know the drill by now, kid!

(1) Personal Favourite Achievements of 2023: As the name suggests, post the stuff you're the most proud of here, whether you're an Easy mode survival player or a Lunatic scorerunner. Anything that stands out to you is what you want here, no matter how silly it may be!

(2) Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2023: Did a Power-up carrier pick you off or ram into you and ruin the GOD RUN? Whatever comedies/tragedies pop up most clearly to mind go here! These don't have to be specific occurrences but can be generalities as well in your gaming endeavors.

(3) Favourite Achievements by Others of 2023: Whether it's a long-time goal achieved by a close friend or a new WR set in one of your favourite games (or both at the same time!), you can post whatever stuff you enjoyed seeing other people do this year here!

(4) Goals for 2024: What do you have your eyes set on achieving next year? List all the clears, scores, and crazy challenges you want to achieve next year here. Be ambitious!

(BONUS) CHALLENGES TO OTHER PLAYERS: The fun one. Throw down the gauntlet and challenge someone else to something! This might be to beat one of your scores, or a race to a certain clear, or whatever you like. Remember to keep it a little friendly, but on the other hand, go totally nuts!

Alternatively, if you want to be lazy then just post your goals for the year as usual.

Your mission starts now. Are you ready?

[Steven]

2023 began and ended with R-Type Final 2 and Out Zone. That wasn't intentional, but that's how it happened. I got a few clears last year: R-Type Final 3 Evolved, Kyuukyoku Tiger, Out Zone 2-ALL, GG Aleste 3, Andro Dunos II, Fire Shark, Twin Cobra, Zero Wing 1P with the warp, R-Type Final 2 main course with only a starter ship, I think Battle Garegga Premium and Saidaioujou novice and SuperGrafx 1941 Counter Attack (all three might have been 2022 but I already forgot), and maybe some other things that I forgot about. My memory truly is terrible...

Notably,

(4) Goals for 2023: it's time to finally beat Kyuukyoku Tiger lol.

That certainly happened.

(1) Personal Favourite Achievements of 2023: Kyuukyoku Tiger, I guess. I don't feel I really did anything notable since I only really played easy stuff, but that may be a possible exception.

(2) Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2023: Still not completely comfortable with an arcade controller, which is why things like this still happen on occasion: https://youtu.be/Sr38r6Us4kc
I would have gotten the clear if I hadn't done that, and I don't think I have played this game since then out of disappointment and frustration. I really should just switch to playing with keyboard entirely at this point.

(3) Favourite Achievements by Others of 2023: Two things stand out to me: last year several people cleared the vicious RayStorm, so I salute all of you who did.

The second thing that stood out was that Jaimers killed the Daioujou Death Label loop 2 final boss a few weeks ago. That thing is extremely scary and only a handful of people are known to have done it so far, and it's quite an achievement.

(4) Goals for 2024: There are two specific games that I have in mind and I will be extremely pleased to simply survive even just one of them this year: Tatsujin Ou and Same! Same! Same! 1P version. It's not so much of a goal as it is something that would be nice, but it would indeed be nice. Even if I just finish the first loop of only one of them and do nothing else for the rest of the year, I will be happy with just that. In that sense I don't really have an actual specifically defined goal for this year, so who knows what will happen.

(BONUS) CHALLENGES TO OTHER PLAYERS: I have two challenges I want to make. The first is for Jaimers. The other is for everyone else.

Jaimers: 2-ALL of either Tatsujin Ou or Daioujou Death Label, as I'm not sure if you did the latter's 2-ALL or just the final boss.

Everyone else: You already know what I'm going to say. I've been saying it for almost a year at this point.

Go

play

Kyuukyoku Tiger

Get the 1-ALL and post your score! I made it to the 2-5 boss without autofire and I'm not very good. Unlike me, the game itself is quite good, one of the best games ever made, I promise! Go play it!

[Lemnear]

(1) Personal Favorite Achievements of 2023: 1CC Batsugun Special (1° Loop // 1-All) (i know that the city connection version is terrible but is the only legally available, oh and the remixes are nice!). I alwasy thought it was a harder game and always wondered why was rated so low in both Perikles 1CC difficulty list and Japanese 1CC difficulty list. Now i understand why.
I totally devoured the game, i miss only 2 trophies now (100 small v and 1M points with pigs).
Beating (with 100%) the 2nd stage in Image Fight on first try. It gave the thrill and the confidence necessary to explore more notorious "impossible" games.

(2) Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2023: The thrill and that sense of "skills" are sometimes shattered:
Survival Record in Strike Gunner S.T.G.: 30sec
Survival Record in M.U.S.H.A. Aleste: 20sec
Survival Record in Last Hope: 1-5sec.
Idk i'm totally unable with them...

(3) Favourite Achievements by Others of 2023: What i award is a "Knowledge Achievement", and a "Devotion Achievement", to a lot of the users in this forum for how deeply they know most games, nearly to the level of the developers or equal...it's just amazing (to anyone who answered my stupid questions with detailed and thoughtful answers).
Particularly impressed by BIL's 1LC channel... you are always outnumbered never outgunned.
I'm still impressed with BareKnuckleRoo 1CC shield-less run in Giga Wing...is absurd and at the same time demolishes whole game.

(4) Goals for 2024: Ketsui 1CC (1-All) Normal.
I don't care for the 2-All since the requirements are ridiculous demanding. Luckily M2 are enough smart to create a True-Boss Battle Mode. Thank You.
Now i know that if i beat Kyukyoku Tiger 1CC, Steven will jizz in his pants. (<3 i love your devotion and deep knowledge about their history and games).

EDIT: damn i'm the only non-Pro here? ( )

[To Far Away Times]

Here were my clears from 2023:

Sengoku Ace/Samurai Aces
Aero Fighters 3
Gana Blade
Thunder Cross
Twinkle Tale
Vastynex
Touhou 19

My favorite achievement was clearing Sengoku Ace/Samurai Aces since that was my first Psikyo clear.

Goals from 2023:

I really want to get a clear of a Psikyo game, probably Strikers 1945.

-Done!

Clear R-Type Final 3 whenever it comes out.

- Back then we didn't know R Type Final 3 was going to be a Playstation 5 exclusive.


Goals for 2024:

Clear Pocky and Rocky classic and reshrined.
Clear Mahou Daisakusen/Sorcer Striker

[NuclearPotato]

2023 didn't really get going with me until around July; the first half was pretty quiet outside of getting the Metal Slug 1cc back in April (which does not count for shmup purposes, but I'm still proud of getting it). Feels like I started working more on scoring achievements, between trying to increase my G-Darius score, and actually joining a score tourney in La Calice Cup for the first time, but I did manage to get some 1ccs in the back half of the year in between all of that.

(1) Personal Favourite Achievements of 2023: I'd put getting the no-miss on G-Darius as the biggest achievement I accomplished last year, although actually getting over my nerves and competing in a score tournament is pretty close up there. I even managed to squeak into the top 25 for Raiden DX!

(2) Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2023: Missing out on 20 million on G-Darius on that no-miss run was pretty heartbreaking, thanks to a couple of mistakes early on; still want to get back to it and correct that. Honorary mention goes to me going to Galloping Ghost Arcade for my birthday to try and get some 1ccs on real hardware, only to fail at completing even the easiest 1ccs that I literally completed on my home setup the day before and the day after.

(3) Favourite Achievements by Others of 2023: Shmup-wise, Jaimers' DOJ Death Label clear is probably the most impressive thing, because christ almighty Death Label. But for shmup-adjacent achievements, it was certainly something watching the score wizards push Time Tunnel to its breaking point during La Calice Cup 7, basically mapping the whole damn thing out by the final few days, down to where the speed increases make things impossible. And here I was feeling satisfied by getting 2 loops and 100k on it

(4) Goals for 2024: Score-wise, I'd of course like that damn 20 million on G-Darius; it's just a matter of me putting my nose to the grindstone to get the clears going on it again (a Nu clear would also be a nice thing to shoot for imo). I also want to break 100 million on Deathsmiles; current best from around the time I first 1cc'd it is 97 mil, but I came nowhere close to that score revisiting it last year (damn my inability to do the recharge trick).

As far as first time clears go:

-Schildmaid MX Krieger Mode: I only got around to playing this just this past month, and I severely regret not doing so sooner; this game whips ass.

-Metal Black: I started routing this out thoroughly last year, but couldn't get the consistency down to get the 1cc on it at the time; hopefully I'll fare better on a revisit later this year.

-Metal Slug 2/X: 2 is also a game I started routing last year, after I got the MS1 clear; got a bit Slugged out after a bit though, so I set it aside. Not a shmup, but hey, the devs used shmup fundamentals to plan out parts of the game, so I'm counting it here

Kyukokyu Tiger: Ok I'm cheating a bit here on Steven's callout, because the version I actually want to clear is the PCE port, which is a bit of a comfier clear, and something more approaching my skill level. Still sniper hell, but a bit more fair, and a decent stepping stone into actually getting through the arcade original at some point in the future imo.

(BONUS) CHALLENGES TO OTHER PLAYERS: Play Schildmaid MX; you won't regret it.

[ZPScissors]

(1) Personal Favourite Achievements of 2023:
Getting to Hibachi in Daioujou Black Label. DOJBL 2-ALL has been something I've wanted to do for a while but was never really confident in my ability to do, but once the M2 port came out I decided to sit down and learn second loop routes, and this is the result by the end of the year. Now, it feels like something I'll be able to get done fairly soon.

(2) Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2023:
I was very busy at the time, but I feel like I could have put more effort in to Calice. I only had a few submissions per game at most and I feel like I didn't get what I wanted to out of that tournament.

(3) Favourite Achievements by Others of 2023:
I haven't been nearly as active in the community recently as I have been in the past, so I've probably missed a lot. Here's some things that come to mind though:
-Lorenzo's Touhou 12 3.3b: I remember teaching him the basics of scoring this game a few years back when he was just starting, and it's absolutely insane to see him reach the level he's at now. Back when I started playing a score like this would have put him in solid contention for the world record. (Nowadays it's about 300m behind but hey, maybe he could do it one day)
-Gobou's Touhou 6 800m: Absolutely historic run, and likely the last 100m barrier to be broken in this game.
-DMC's Great Mahou Daisakusen 80m: A game I've wanted to learn for a while but is just so daunting that I've never really gone all the way through with it. Always cool to see someone get a big score in this one.
-Plasmo's DonPachi 75m: The DonPachi streams are part of what got me back in to shmups, and it's cool to see this score improved yet again.
-Juju Kenobi's Sengoku Blade 2-ALL: This game just feels impossible to me, good job ending the year off strong!

(4) Goals for 2024:
Since I now feel like I'm properly back in to shmups, why not aim big? Three things I really want to get done this year:
-Dodonpachi Daioujou Black Label 2-ALL: This is my current goal, and I already feel like I'm close to getting it, so I must push further and finish it.
-Tatsujin Oh 1-ALL: This was the last goal I went fore before I completely lost motivation to play shmups back in 2022, and I just barely didn't get it, my PB is the second to last checkpoint of Stage 6.
-Gradius III 1-ALL: I promised I'd do this, but then I got busy with real life stuff and by the time that was over M2's DOJ port released, I do want to go back to this one though.

Same! Same! Same! 1p ver. 10m is a target too but I do not at all anticipate being able to get that done in 2024, even if I knock out all three of my main goals early.

(4) Goals for 2024: There are two specific games that I have in mind and I will be extremely pleased to simply survive even just one of them this year: Tatsujin Ou and Same! Same! Same! 1P version.

Yes, this is exactly what I was hoping to see from you on this thread!

[OmKol]

(1) Personal Favourite Achievements of 2023:
This year is very interesting.
— Raiden IV Arcade Original 2-ALL and Raiden II 1-ALL. I wanted more clears with fast bullets and I did it. Raiden II was done in two weeks but I was probably way too lucky.
— Gokujou Parodius La Calice score and ALL clear with special stage. I've got first place in La Calice STG category for the first time. I don't think 1.4M is really strong tho but it's also not bad when you have to practice 10 games in one month. Special stage clear was cool because I really find this stage fun and I enjoy all those music arrangements. I even did some captions for the whole clear.
— Donpachi 2-ALL. I wanted to use unusual Type-B and it's actually really fun to route the game with this ship. Also high scores feel even more impressive when I've finally cleared this game.
— Progear no Arashi 2-4. Played this game for less than month and it's probably my new favourite shmup. Impressive stage design and boss fights, both loops are very important and different regardless of how you play this game, scoring and the whole gameplay is one of the best I've ever tried.

(2) Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2023:
Maybe dying during Gokujou Parodius high score run so I've lost another 100k. Anyway it's possible to score much higher.

(3) Favourite Achievements by Others of 2023:
— Donpachi 75M by Plasmo. It was really fun to follow all this progress in very intense high score runs.
— Ketsui Ura 2-ALL, Sengoku Blade 2-ALL, Mushihimesama Futari Black Label God Mode 5B by JujuKenobi. A several impressive clears in one year! JujuKenobi consistenty does really insane goals.
— Progear no Arashi 94M by Wes. It's really cool to play this game and also follow progress of someone else while looking for strategies. Playing this game is already good but being able to watch streams of the same game makes it so much better.
— La Calice Cup 7 and Gun.Smoke 1.69M by Dent4F. After some huge break he did it again. Outstanding competition which delivers good games, meme games, all of those with insane competition, with fun and useful discussions. Even game voting is surprising. For example Progear no Arashi wins in category with Dodonpachi Daioujou and Dodonpachi II: Bee Storm. So many players were really surprised watching this but thankfully for this I've got another favourite game! And btw exceptional performance in Gun.Smoke, it's a pure joy to watching him playing this game again and again not just for clear but for some heavy milking.

(4) Goals for 2024:
— Progear no Arashi 2-ALL.

[eksratu]

(1) Personal Favourite Achievements of 2023:
I got into shmups this year as a newbie, and it's been a blast learning to play them beyond credit feeding. Mushihimesama was the game that tipped me over the edge of actually trying for 1CCs, and finally clearing Ver1.5 Original and 1.0 Original felt great.

(4) Goals for 2024:
I have the M2 DOJ port and I've 1CCed Super Easy, Arrange L, and Arrange S. Black Label 1-ALL is next, but I dunno what ship/doll combo to use yet. I'm also chipping away at Mushihimesama Futari BL.

(2) Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2023:
I have wasted quite a bit of money trying to find a good gamepad. I don't have a left hand, so my controller/stick needs are rather particular, but I've settled on the 8bitdo Neo Geo pad for now.

(3) Favourite Achievements by Others of 2023:
I'm new around here and still catching up with what's been done already. It's fun reading old threads about various games, especially when people talk about their first clears.

[linko9]

Haven't really shmupped much in the past couple years, but hopped back in in the last few months of the year. Think I will be spending a lot time on cave stuff especially this year.

1) 1cc Touhou 6, 7, 8 in a 24 hour period; 7 on hard, others on normal. Hadn't played any touhou games in over 15 years, but touhou 6 was my first 1cc, which got me into the genre. 2nd 1cc was DDP loop 1. I grinded for weeks for that first 1cc all those years ago, and it was good to see I've gotten a lot better at shmupping since then; think I got all three on my first or second run. Might go for PCB lunatic this year.

2) Took like two full days to figure out how to set up mame correctly; first time doing it on my VRR monitor. Should have been really easy, but I are dumm. One major stumbling block was figuring out I had to tell my 60 hz monitor to have a 61 hz refresh rate so games that run over 60 fps would work right. Amazing experience once I figured it out though, lag similar to CRT.

3) Have enjoyed watching MarkMSX's youtube vids, seems to be doing pretty well considering the niche subject matter. Good for him!

4) 1-All Ketsui. This game intimidated me for a long time, but fired it up this year, and could reliably get to stage 4 boss or 5 after a couple days practice. Still gonna be a bit of work to get through stage 5.

[maximo310]

(1) Personal Favourite Achievements of 2023:
- Commentary on various events/shows ( Shmuptember, Shoot the Baugette Restream, Raiden DX Kumite vs Merscian, STG Weekly). Being able to provide thorough & knowledgeable commentary ( or finding other players that can explain those details) is something that I've always liked (whether from me or from other players) in this community, and I want to extend thanks to the organizers of those events as well as the players that came onto STG Weekly! Defenitely want to keep that up for this upcoming year as well.

Illumination Laser ALL - I remember learning about this game through Emuser's commentary on his run & DrThunderousX's masterful run a few years ago. I wanted to see if I could clear the game with no slowdown ( on the default 10 mhz CPU option, the game has massive amounts of slowdown from stage 2-3 onwards, while changing it to 50 mhz removes it entirely). It took a while mostly due to stages 5-7 being a massive difficulty spike compared to the first half of the game, but I got a decent 9 million clear score. Banger soundtrack too.

Raiden DX Novice 6.6 million ALL - Thanks to this game being featured in La Calice Cup 7 & to the gadget work through Mersican & Olifante, I was able to increase my PB by 600k while playing from mid-late November.

RayStorm R-Gray 1 ALL & RayStorm R-Gray 2 ALL -
Finally was able to knock this gem off of my goals list with some more free time in December & the excellent M2 RayZ port.


(2) Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2023:
- At some point in March, I injured my right hand through over-exertion & accidently whacking it on the side of a table. Took a good 3ish months of PT & exercising to stop my wrist/hand from locking up but its mostly under control now. Plus it gave me a good excuse to play through Wizardry 1-4 ( & figure out where saucykobold got his nickname from).

(3) Favourite Achievements by Others of 2023:
-Aquas' Pink Sweets Lace WR - My man went hard on Pink Sweets all this year & it certainly paid off with some incredible optimization & tech for one of the lesser known Yagawa games.
- All of the new RayStorm/RayCrisis/RayForce clears- It was exciting to see a lot of people clear an entry from this trilogy ( & especially RayStorm) thanks to the M2 port. Really goes to show how good quality ports can make older games more accessible & push people to go for the clear ( & beyond).
- seeing the new classic Raiden clears from various players. OmKol cleared Raiden II & IV 2-ALL really quickly too, that guy learns games so fast lol. It'll be interesting to see if next year continues this trend, or brings new types of clears like Raiden II 2P side.
-Juju snagging a clutch Ketsui Ura 2-ALL
-Mersican's Air Gallet WR - This guy is way too humble about this achievement, but it was very impressive to see his commentated vid that was about 3 years in the making. He especially makes the final boss look like child's play w/needing to bomb as part of his route.
- All the new content/guides that have come out, including Pearl's How to 1cc guides for Garegga/Batrider/Ibara for straightforward & concise steps to clearing. He also just released a How To Improve At Shmups vid earlier today here
-Revival of Calice Cup- Thanks Dent for setting up the tourney once again & for the game selection!


(4) Goals for 2024:

Having fun, maybe adding some Yagawa to the menu. Along with some more Raiden DX brainstorming. We'll see how it turns out.

[Lander]

Personal Favourite Achievements of 2023

• Cho Ren Sha 1CC
• Crimzon Clover Novice PB
• Gave SaiDaiOuJou a chance, and accrued more peripheral DDP skill

Fairly humble, but nonetheless pleasing - it's been a busy year on other fronts.

Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2023

• Demoing Cho Ren Sha to my shmup adjacent brother-in-law, reaching the final boss on one credit, then overextending a bomb dive and dropping the run just before the TLB showed up

2023 in review

[✓] Accrue more yet-to-be-determined 1-ALLs
[✗] Get past Stage 4 on one credit in Battle Garegga
[✗] Make enough shmup R&D progress to make a presentable thread in the Development subforum

One of three, could be worse. Shmup R&D took a long-winded digression into building a compiler that can properly generalize over field functions, which is this close to robust compilation.
Lotta work, but quite an adventure with it. In time it'll encode the various aspects of Video Game via pure mathematics, but there's still a way to go before it draws a ship and threatens it with bullets.

[Steven]

(4) Goals for 2024: There are two specific games that I have in mind and I will be extremely pleased to simply survive even just one of them this year: Tatsujin Ou and Same! Same! Same! 1P version.

Yes, this is exactly what I was hoping to see from you on this thread!

We'll see. I have gotten to the halfway point of both games but gotten demolished by the Tatsujin Ou stage 3 boss and sniper tanks early on Same! stage 6.

I do really want to finish one of them this year, although I am not sure which one it will be. I've done almost all of the memo for Same! enemy placement already since I've cleared the MD and the 2P versions multiple times and almost everything is in the same place in those, but I have to account for the much more aggressive 1P AI and insanely fast bullet speeds here and adjust accordingly, which I have not finished doing yet. That should theoretically be less work than Tatsujin Ou, as I haven't even done the memo for Tatsujin Ou's second half yet.

I'm planning on getting a Tatsujin Ou PCB within the next few months, so that will be cool, but I think it might finally be time to actually figure out how MAME works because savestates will be invaluable for this game. M2's Same! practice thingy isn't perfect, but I think it should mostly be good enough.

-Mersican's Air Gallet WR

I knew I forgot someone. This one made me really happy as well.

[DMC]

"Performative escapism" is very fitting.

1) Personal Favourite Achievements of 2023: I had a good run in Great Mahou Daisakusen recorded, including item collecting, scoring, and survival--it's so easy to miss an item or get a game over by the boss medley at the end--so I was happy to pull it off.

(2) Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2023: Nothing big but dying twice on the ninja boss--the same attack both times--in the said run was a bit of a screw-up.

(3) Favourite Achievements by Others of 2023: Having recorded a couple of commentary tracks myself, I paid more attention to the commentary of others. Very high levels of commentary in general by Meriscan, Jaimers, Juju Kenobi, Softdrink, EmperorIng, Plasmo, Prickly Angler, and many others. One of the highlights was the Batsugun demonstration of scoring tricks and cool safe spots with Meriscan and Jaimers.

I am also catching up on the great kumite streams of Rezardi, Chinopolis, Wabbylegs, Pearl, and others. Their commentary illustrate so well the love/hate, joy/pain duality of playing these difficult games. Chinop's thinking-out-loud/internal dialogue commentary on his performance is something I can strongly relate to. For example, comments like "I'm making every mistake in the book right now" during Pink Sweets had me smiling.

(4) Goals for 2024: Learn stage 5 and 6 in Soukyugurentai better.

(BONUS) CHALLENGES TO OTHER PLAYERS:
He might be busy with garegga/batrider/parenting, but I would like to see Eaglet take on Bakraid at some point. Sort of like "the unstoppable force vs the immovable object". I'd pay for a stream of this.

He might be busy with darius/academia, but I would like to see Prickly Angler get a 1cc and/or good score with Rika and Ryota in Soukyugurentai. He did an impressive live clear with Kaoru on shmups slam in 2022, and it would be nice to compare the playing styles with these different characters.

[Nahar]

(1) Personal Favourite Achievements of 2023: Getting into 1CC'ing games regularly is a great goal by itself, but the run I'm proudest about is my Mushihimesama Original difficulty 1CC clear.

(2) Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2023: I attended a live shmupmeet in Cascante (Spain) and I fucked up a very good Mushi Original run by dying, with full bomb stock, one pixel away from victory, to the last boss. I ended clearing the game at home, but I really wanted to do the clear in a live event. Sad!

(3) Favourite Achievements by Others of 2023: I saw Jaimers doing a live superplay of Dodonpachi with a saturn pad and arcade buttons at said event. It was astonishing!

(4) Goals for 2024: I have two goals, one directly related to shmups, another tangently related. First one is getting a 1 credit clear either on Mushi Maniac or on DDP first loop. Aside from that, I want to expand my ongoing spanish podcast about shmups to a full coverage podcast about new releases, indie games, shmup-related news, and keeping the word going around.

(BONUS) CHALLENGES TO OTHER PLAYERS: Keep up te good work, keep beating world records and, if you have the time, clear some newer, indie games that are slowly bringing back the genre to the general public. On to good times, and hppy new year everybody!

[JayLab]

(1) Personal Favourite Achievements of 2023: Progear 2-ALL and Dragon Blaze 2.6mil were two runs that I was very proud of this year. Both felt like solid milestones in my shmup journey so far. I also took care of some unfinished business with Rayforce, and got a 6.6mil clear that I was happy with.

(2) Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2023: Heading into the last stage of Dragon Blaze on 3mil pace and then mentally collapsing and dying 3 times.

(3) Favourite Achievements by Others of 2023: So many cool things this year. I am always astounded by Maz's progress in Ikaruga, and I was pleased to see him get a new PB just recently. Juju dropped a Ketsui Ura 2-ALL and a Sengoku Blade 2-ALL in quick succession, which was just phenomenal. Plasmo and Meriscan with WRs in Donpachi and Air Gallet. QLex's amazing gdq run in Dangun Feveron. Wes' ongoing PB progress in Progear. Fatso finally getting his 8m in RayForce. Just a non-stop stream of incredible runs by the community this year.

Special mention to DenT for reviving Calice Cup this year too. Always a great time, and this one was no exception.

(4) Goals for 2024: With the new port I'm ready to actually learn DOJ for real. Probably gonna do a decent scoring 1-ALL of WL, then switch over to BL and maybe go all the way? Idk, mainly I just wanna enjoy the game and hopefully get some nice scores along the way.

Bucket list for whenever: Dragon Blaze 3mil, Tatsujin Oh 1-ALL, Raystorm R-Gray2 ALL, Ketsui Omote 2-ALL, Strikers II Focke Wulf 2-ALL.

(BONUS) CHALLENGES TO OTHER PLAYERS: Looking forward to the Progear gang hitting their goals this year (Wes 100m, Omkol 2-ALL). Otherwise - Have fun, be well, and dedicate your life to Psikyo.

[davyK]

Last year was 1CC (m-shot) Mushi v1.5

Would like to clear arrange and then tackle Maniac. Had level 5 and 4 runs but I've left it. Arrange is very do-able. Just need to focus. Level 4 of Maniac is a wall.

OT.....Got distracted by 106%ing Super Meat Boy last year. Was satisfying though.

Would also like to 1-all DOJ BL and 1cc Futari original.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

(1) Personal Favourite Achievements of 2023: I don't think I've done too much shmuppy in 2023. I was quite pleased with the no-miss of Drainus's hardest mode, Ridiculous difficulty. Also working out how to trigger the secret ending scene thanks to some clues from a youtube commenter, even if the trigger requirements are silly and grindy.

The biggest 1CC hilariously was Rad Racer 2 of all things, a game that's always been the bane of my childhood existence (the traffic is pure memorizer bullshit compared to the first game).

I did surprise myself by getting a clear of Giga Wing Generations on the first time I ever reached the TLB. It turns out I'd been sabotaging myself by trying to use the worst shot type in the game (the green one) when the homing shot type absolutely mows down everything, and while the game's tough, the TLB fight is significantly shorter and easier than the first game, which I was not expecting!

(2) Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2023: Failing to get anywhere meaningful with Donpachi. I'm close to the actual clear, but after reaching the 2-5 TLB a few times I've made little progress.

(3) Favourite Achievements by Others of 2023: Apologies to anyone I've forgotten; there's been a lotta great clears over the past year. Stuff that springs to mind is some of the incredible scores posted in the Donpachi thread, OmKol putting up a 1cc with Type B, EmperorIng's crazy Giga Wing 2 scores. ZPS's 1ccof all loops of Batsugun Special was also super inspiring, another one of those clears I'd like to try and nail someday. Seeing Shmuptopia crank out an Expert clear of Rolling Gunner was also cool, we'd chatted a lot about the game off and on and his progress on it has been insanely fast.

Even stuff like seeing the grind as a relative beginner pay off for stuff like Starfighter in Espgaluda is nice to see!

(4) Goals for 2024: 1cc Donpachi. I'd also like to tackle Futari BL God, possibly 1.5 Ultra too, but I really gotta get off my butt and put serious time back into 'em.

I'm still impressed with BareKnuckleRoo 1CC shield-less run in Giga Wing...is absurd and at the same time demolishes whole game.

Don't be too impressed; there's a lot of games out there that are much harder to 1CC normally. Even without reflecting you get enough resources, your hitbox is CAVE-tier tiny, and the patterns are generally all designed to be dodgeable so even if you mistime a reflect you're not in a no-win situation (aside from one rush of enemies before the stage 5 boss that's designed to require reflecting or bombs). It wasn't meant to a flex; I kinda did it to make a point that all the old reviews of Giga Wing claiming how "impossible" the bullets are to dodge are nonsense. GW2 and GWG are much more "dense" I find, and the difficulty starts much higher rather than ramping up by stage 4, so I'm not sure it'd be as doable in those. Might be, though.

[Meriscan]

Personal Favourite Achievements of 2023: Finished what felt like a years long journey of playing Air Gallet. My oldest replay was from Aug 2020, and early on this yeat I got 11.37m. But I also tried a lot of shmups from developers that I hadn't paid much attention to in the past years, like getting 12.6m in 1941: Counter Attack. And 6.8m in Raiden DX Novice. Hope to continue that trend next year.

Favourite Achievements by Others of 2023:

• The korean player H.J has done incredible work on Strikers 99. Beating CYS-SAK's already incredibly impressive score of 3.601m and now he holds two massive WRs in the Strikers series. And I can't wait to see what he's going to do next.
• Third_strike's continued rampage on the forum leaderboards. The most remarkable of his scores would be the Giga Wing Generation ones.
• RZM's 25.3m Cyvern score. It's been really fun watching this guy stream Cyvern as often as he did and seeing his progress.
• Maximo's Raiden DX Novice 6.6m. I don't often play games that other players are also focussing on at the same time. That's why I was very excited when Maximo kept improving his Raiden DX scores throughout the last months of the year. I probably wouldn't have sticked with that game if not for his continued pushing of Novice mode.
• Plasmo's new Donpachi WR. The bee games always look very scary when played for score. And Donpachi might be the most scary of them all.
• DMC's 80m GMD. Finally someone bear ADI's old (and very sketchy) score. Really loved the commentated video as well.
• EC's Giga Wing 2 scores. He's been pushing his scores throughout the year and with different ships too.
• M.Knight's ChaosField WR sweep. He's been able to get the world record with every ship and pretty much destroyed all the previous WRs while doing so. You love to see it!
• Ako briefly returning to Macross II and pushing his scores even further.

Dent bringing back Calice was also incredibly fun. I've often enjoyed shmups the most while playing during previous Calice Cups and this one was no exception.


Goals for 2024: I'm still playing Raiden DX, hoping to improve my PB. Besides that I'd really love to 2-ALL Strikers 99, which is the only Strikers game I haven't cleared yet. After that I want to learn more new games. Right now I'm thinking about Blazing Star and Progear.

But besides the shmup goals I also want to make more score guides/commentaries like I did with Air Gallet this year. I'm working on one right now for Raiden DX. Hoping to get this one out soon.

[Juju Kenobi]

(1) Personal Favourite Achievements of 2023:
- Getting a Ketsui Ura 2-all 355m clear. Most of my efforts this year went toward this goal. Very happy that I was able to do it!
- 5b clear on Futari Black Label God mode. I played this game with the idea to clear it with a nice score. Got a first clear with 3.4b. Kinda got hooked and from there I pushed, improved my routes, until I got this run.
- Sengoku Blade 2-all with Hagane. I did a 1-all with Koyori a while ago. I decided to come back, but this time with a better character . I expected this to be way harder, but Hagane is kind of a monster, making many boss fight and stage sections almost trivial.
- Finding the time to go to several IRL events and meeting more people from the community.
- Organizing a new edition of the Shoot the Baguette event. I really thought it would be a disaster, considering how many irl stuff I had to deal with at the same time. Then somehow everything got sorted out, and I even got a decent internet connection 2 days before the event ^^

Pretty busy year for me, both shmupping-wise and life stuff. Very satisfied with how it went overall

(2) Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2023:
- Being unable to follow any kind of proper planning. My last year goals said : "Ketsui Ura, Ikaruga 33m, Gunbird 2 and Futari BL Original scoring."
I guess Gunbird got replaced by Tengai, Futari BL Original by God
- Seeing my first loop of Ketsui regress further and further scoring-wise. Consistency was definitely the main concern. At first I routed for 225m-230m then the run that cleared barely got 200m. So the lofty ideal of getting a clear close to 400m ending up barely pushing over 350m.
- Kinda not my fault but not being able to stream or upload much for most of the year.

(3) Favourite Achievements by Others of 2023:
I'll probably forget half of the important stuff but here I go anyway :
- Plasm0 WR in Donpachi for type-C. Being a fellow Donpachi enjoyer myself, this was definitely great to watch.
- Meriscan Air Gallet score. A beautiful run for a beautiful game!
- Jaylab Progear 2-all and Dragon Blaze scoring progress. I do enjoy both of these games a lot and Jaylab routes improved so much in Dragon Blaze!
- Maz endless progress on Ikaruga. And the activity around the game in general. It feels like new tech is dicovered every week.
- Omkol Donpachi 2-all and his recent progress on Progear.
- Also Wes progress on Progear as well. Many 2-alls and so close to 100m now. Also, Progear is somewhat popular now, we did it guys!
- The french community being as active as ever, with amazing achievements from M.Knight, RZM, Mutmut, Khaos, Prickly Angler and many other.
- DMC GMD run provided with great commentary. Give it a watch! Also Feedbacker progress and beating the 60m milestone.
- Icarus 59m run in Espgaluda.
- CRI progress on DDP DFK and Erppo runs in Garegga. Definitely interested in trying out both these games one day and it's always good to see the old guard putting out amazing stuff.
- Dent coming back and resurrecting the Calice Cup. Always an amazing event to follow. And the selection of games was really great.
- Seeing more and more great shmup content and commented runs. Like Pearl, Vinu, Billy Kane, Shmuptopia, DMC and many more

(4) Goals for 2024:
So about me being unable to follow any kind of proper planning ...
... time to make another list that I don't expect to follow:
- Learning Futari BL Original scoring. I actually started doing so, so this is definitely happening this time
- re-learning Donpachi, but with type-B this time. Still no confident enough to reveal any score goal (but I like to dream big)
- Improving my PBs in both DDP and DOJBL. Really want to get 3b in DOJBL this year
- Optional : Garegga 1CC, no idea about the score or the ship

CHALLENGES TO OTHER PLAYERS:
Now that DOJ is out, it's time to learn some chains

[Wes112]

(1) Personal Favorite Achievements of 2023:
- Ikaruga 32.7m PB. I keep telling myself that I'm satisfied with my previous PB's and then I watch a couple of MAZ's streams and feel motivated to start playing again and push for a new one lol.
- Getting my first Progear (and CAVE) 2-ALL.
- Gradius III SA-1 clear on Arcade Difficulty

(2)Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2023:
- Even though I'm really proud of the Ikaruga PB I got this year, in that run I did drop my chain twice in chapter 2 and it ended up costing me a 33m score...at least I have a reason to come back to it once again though

(3)Favorite Achievements by Others of 2023:
- Maz's continued Ikaruga PB journey.
- Both Juju and PEG's Ketsui Ura 2-ALL clears.
- Jaylab's Progear 2-ALL clear.
- Plasmo's Donpachi 75m WR run
- Morsalty's Eschatos Original Hardest clear

(4) Goals for 2024:
- Main goal is to hit 100m in Progear but no big deal if it doesn't happen.
- Even though my heart belongs to my leverless controller (lol) for fun, I'd really love to improve on playing shmups on stick.

(BONUS) CHALLENGES TO OTHER PLAYERS:
Omkol: Go get that Progear 2-All bro

[third_strike]

(1) Personal Favourite Achievements of 2023:

Sengeki Striker 2-ALL 1.3Bi
Shienryu 2-ALL 50Mi
Daioh 2-ALLCounter Stop
Got a new Arcade pad
Giga Wing Generations scores
V-V 2-ALL 32Mi


(2) Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2023:
HellFire

(3) Favourite Achievements by Others of 2023:
Emperoring, Plasmo, Meriscan, BareKnuckleRoo and M.Knight's existences is a big achievement!

(4) Goals for 2024: Since the end of November I have been very busy studying biology, physics and chemistry. I think I will only be able to play satisfactorily from March onwards maybe.

(BONUS) CHALLENGES TO OTHER PLAYERS:
Make an explosive break at Cave and go to break Bakuretsu

[Starfighter]

(1) Personal Favourite Achievements of 2023: Getting my 1CC in Espgaluda! That was, after all, my main goal as stated in the 2023-thread. It wasn't an impressive run or anything, but it felt great finally beating one of my favorite shmups. Hands shaking, heart racing, having a beer afterwards, all that good stuff.

(2) Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2023: There were no screw-ups. I 1CC:ed the games I started playing.

(3) Favourite Achievements by Others of 2023: I'm sorry to say I haven't kept a close eye on what others have been doing this year. I've mainly just kept my head down, going through game after game. Something very sad (not going in to details, not the time nor place) happened in april and parts of me just... shut down. I've mostly been in a day-by-day kind of state since.

(4) Goals for 2024: I want to 1CC DOJ. Right now I very much believe that's way out of my league so that feels like an ambitious goal!

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Sengeki Striker 2-ALL 1.3Bi
Shienryu 2-ALL 50Mi
Daioh 2-ALLCounter Stop
V-V 2-ALL 32Mi

I'm ashamed to say the only one I've put any noteworthy time into is V-V which I quite enjoy, but I've seen footage of the others and damn this is a crazy list of clears for the year!

[Meriscan]

I'm ashamed to say the only one I've put any noteworthy time into is V-V which I quite enjoy

I don't think anyone is going to shame you for not putting more time into Sengeki Striker.

[third_strike]

I remember I played Sengeki and EspGaluda on the same night and was determined to play the second one. But in my sleep I dreamed about Sengeki, so...

[M.Knight]

(1) Personal Favourite Achievements of 2023:

Spoiler

-The first game that really caught my eye in 2023 is Cotton Rock'n'Roll, which got released on Steam in January. I knew I would enjoy it, but I didn't expect to love it to the point of clearing with all the characters, trying some more scoring, and playing it live for Shoot the Baguette. One of the highlights was the 249mil Ria PB I got while preparing for that live event.

To be fair, clearing isn't necessarily super difficult with most characters but it's definitely a blast and the scoring makes you explore the game a lot. It is a fantastic game and the best Cotton by far. Give it a shot!

-After getting the Chaos Field score hat trick in 2022, I still knew there was some scoring improvement potential for some of those runs. The Hal 306mil PB especially was good enough but not fully satisfying as there clearly was room for more. I even labbed new strats to exploit his strengths some more, and managed to get a 355mil score, which is now very respectable.

-Another game I got into more seriously in 2022 is Sanvein. Back then I only cleared the 3 routes, but 2023 is when I started to really explore the scoring, at least in the most lucrative Inner Wards route. This meant I also had to switch gears and use a different loadout with the Graviton shot. Relearning the game was not without some hurdles but it was also very cool, especially since that weapon is very effective in the right hands. It might feel like mastering the missile subweapon in Dangun when coming from a less strict Roll background.

In the end I broke past my 100k goal with a 115k score, then went on to showcase the game at Shmup Slam and the run was pretty good.

-Another Slam showcase game, Tsukihime no Shiro. This Shikigami no Shiro-inspired doujin shmup with Tsukihime characters might be tricky to run on OSes from the 21th century but it's definitely worth playing! I only had a basic Normal difficulty clear before 2023, but this year was the opportunity to go all out on Unreal difficulty (the second hardest), and trying to clear and score with as many characters as possible.

While I still have some characters left and not all my scores are super optimized, it was quite interesting to explore the scoring especially since there was basically no serious footage of the game before the Shiki gang got into it. All the strats and routes are homemade!

Out of all the runs, the Arcueid 1.6 bil score is the one I pushed the most, but it's still possible to do even better for this one too I think as 1.7bil sounds very enticing.

-With Prickly Angler, we cleared a bunch of Darius games and routes in co-op in the past. But this time, we also tackled Metal Black and it turned out to be a tougher nut to crack than all of our past co-op ventures. The extra firepower is handy and the bonus stages turning into competitive VS minigames is very fun, but the game also sends a lot of subtle extra traps your way.

Whether it is increased enemy aggressiveness or additional enemy spawns, it really feels more devious than it looks. In the end, even if the run that cleared was a bit rough and unpolished, we earned our victory and made it to the end and that's what matters.

-One of the clears I got was the MMP 1.0 1-ALL with Momo, in the context of a forum tourney. That's a game I really like and easily the most fun YGW shmup. And I also love the music, vibe, atmosphere, characters, etc. so it was cool to push myself all the way to finally get a long overdue clear on it.

-I was able to attend a whole bunch of meetups this year, and met lots of familiar players but also new faces which was really awesome! Mikado Europe, Stunfest, HFS, James Games Center. That was a lot of moving around the country or even travel abroad and it was absolutely worth it. Such a good time, and hopin' for more in 2024 with y'all!

(2) Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2023:

Spoiler

-During Calice Cup, I really got into Dr Toppel's Adventure. Probably way more than reasonable lol. The game is super cool and really captivated me. I thus ended up going for a 1mil score grind even though I already was at the top of that game's Calice leaderboard with a somewhat comfortable lead.

The clock was ticking and the final days of the competition were nearing. I wanted to beat this nice score threshold before the end. But sadly, even after 11 hours of streamed play on the very last day, my best run ended up short, at 980k.

During the session, I had a run that could have definitely gotten beyond the score goal if I kept my cool and succeeded at the checkpoint milk one more time. However, despite the two opportunities to do it that I was given, I flubbed both times and fell short. Well, maybe another time!

-At some point during the year, I wanted to improve my Psyvariar Delta score progress and get beyond a simple X-B clear. However, this X-B double KO remains my best score and I did not focus on the game much afterwards. Gluon is still very very far away. Something to eventually correct!

-I put more time into Psyvariar2 than its predecessor, especially very late into the year. It came to the point where I was able to get TLB unlocks on a rather consistent basis and was grinding Shooting Type runs to get a somewhat ambitious 80+mil score. I kept improving and learning things about the TLB, but couldn't quite nail it before the end of the year. Actually, the very last credit I played in 2023 could have been the run, but I panicked at the last second and crashed.

I did end up getting the goal some days later thankfully, but 2023 was already over by then!

-In December 2022, I was playing the GBA Gradius and was nearing the end of the game with a best run going into the speed stage. However, in 2023 I lost all momentum and didn't push for a clear even though it wasn't all that far away. This ought to be fixed at some point.

(3) Favourite Achievements by Others of 2023:

Spoiler

-Qlex was already on fire in 2022 when it comes to Dangun Feveron, and yet he kept the disco ball rolling in 2023! What a better way to prove disco is not dead by doing even more marathon runs of this groovy game? His Stunfest run was already great, but when you think that was peak performance, he submits the game for SGDQ and is able to perform an insane live 1-life clear run that unlocks the TLB. I just couldn't believe it, what an incredible feat. The only blemish is a stage 1 chain break that prevented a PB, but when everything else goes so right, it's hard to be bummed about it. Just randomly thinking about that run even months later gets me hyped!

-You'd think a year can't contain more than one crazy good Dangun Feveron player but you'd be surprised by how much room there is on Planet Feeeeeeeveeeeeeeeer. Bamd fell in love with the game and put a ton of practice in it, continuously improving his Uotaro consistency and stage PBs. He then managed to nail a 14mil run! The dedication, razor-sharp focus, and the results speak for themselves.

-Cotton Rock'n'Roll is a great game and it looked like Ratikal felt the same given his very impressive scoring proficiency! He came back to shmups from out of nowhere and really got into this game, especially with Appli and her playstyle of magic spells and enemy grabs. In just a few weeks, he was able to improve his PB all the way to 260mil, basically only 10mil away from current WR. What crazy pace! He also showcased the game at CoinOp Classic, a live event. That run was pretty cool as well!

And if you thought that was enough for him, you'd be wrong. Why not get a 300+mil Tacoot score as if it was child's play too while we're at it? Super cool stuff!

-RZM carried the Cyvern momentum and went all the way towards getting the 2-ALL and dethroning the previous community record score for this game! What a journey.

-The Fumiko archetype in Shiki games is very alien to me, but not to Mishi! While we were focusing on Tsukihime no Shiro, he managed to get this Kohaku run that broke 1mil. A very inspiring run that makes this character look approachable and fun.

While I haven't score-cleared the game with Kohaku yet, this run definitely motivated me to try it some more!

-At the risk of sounding like a broken record...GOTYO and Eiden's Karous competition is still going on! How many years has it been already? The days of Fxxk of Da World are way behind us now and the 6bil in it being the best they could do has been thoroughly supplanted over the years. 18bil is the current threshold to break!

-If there's one player I associate with high level Air Gallet play, it's gotta be Meriscan! And how much higher can you get than actually beating the arcade WR? Nicely annotated run too with lots of info on the tricks and techniques used.

-Night Raid is a cool game and the weird scoring metrics add to its unique personality. I was looking into the Near Zero score some months ago but couldn't crack how players managed to keep a 0 score on the final boss and its wacky item spam. After some attempts, I put that topic aside and moved on to other things, thinking I might come back to it some time in the future. However Mari had way more resilience than I and her research on it ended up bearing fruit as she found strats to keep a 0 score on this fight. She hasn't managed to nail the 0 score in a full run yet, but I'll be rooting for her whenever she tries again!

-Radiance Alesta's Radirgy live clear at Slam was pretty fun! It's nice to see a newer player from the next generation get into Milestone/RS34 games, and the run itself had some clutch moments. Being down to 1 life in stage 5, but managing to get the M logo life refill and then not even losing any lives on final boss anyways was a cool sight!

-After a hiatus, DenT4F came back in full force with a new Calice edition! And one of the games in the tourney was Gun Smoke, one of DenT's favorite arcade games of all time. This passion really showed. He absolutely dominated the Gun Smoke leaderboards during Calice.

-All my fellow Gan Sumokers for the crazy Calice comeback and win! For almost half the tournament, our team was left in the dust and it looked like we had no chance to survive make our time. Even just getting second-to-last place seemed like a lofty prospect and a final objective we could be satisfied with.

But as the end of the tourney got closer and closer, we pushed the games (shout-out to Scowsh and his successful Progear 1-ALL grind) , encouraged all team members to submit scores for all the games, motivated each other to progress, and shared strats.

The end result was a remontada probably none of us would have expected, with us having the top score and highest participation rate in the final results!

-Third_strike casually destroying so many games haha, especially older ones. Taking a look at the helpful Community Records thread from January 2023 onwards should tell you how prolific he has been!

(4) Goals for 2024:

Reviewing last year's goals:

[+] Keep on having fun
[~] Return to Shiki 1 & 3 ==> Oooops, I barely played either. However, lots of Tsukishiro play so it's fine I gueeeeess?
[~] Practice Illvelo to possibly get the other 9bil score that has been waiting for too long ==> Oooops, I haven't played it at all. At least I got Chaos Field scoring to make up for it?
[+] More Success gaming hopefully (Psyvariar/Sanvein/Cotton) ==> Ahh, finally a goal I can validate without weird rationalizations lmao

-Keep playing and having fun
-Getting even more into Psyvariar games
-Chaos Field - Ifumi 400mil. It's time to do it. I have had strats that allow it for almost a year now, it's just a matter of actually playing the game.

(BONUS) CHALLENGES TO OTHER PLAYERS:


PLAY JUST 4FUN

[Sengoku Strider]

'Performative escapism' is a wonderful subtitle.


(1) Personal Favourite Achievements of 2023:

I went on a tear through the PC Engine library in the first part of the year. Final Soldier, Soldier Blade, Star Parodier, Gunhed, Nexzr, Macross 2036, Gradius, Spriggan, R-Type I (don't have the second part yet), Gate of Thunder, I 1CCed them all and had a fantastic time doing it. That system is my happy place.

I also played a ton of Aleste Collection's challenge mode, and cracked the global top 25 at one point. There are really clear paths for me to improve, too.

(2) Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2023:

But I guess there's such a thing as overdoing it, not every PC Engine shooter I took on was a smooth ride. Dragon Spirit was kind of a hassle, and it got sidelined. Aero Blasters' final stages were so punishing I put it on the shelf to come back to, and haven't yet. But it was Gradius II that really did it. I got to the final stage, was able to fight my way off those brutal (but freaking fantastically designed imo) checkpoints on the last few stages. But I just couldn't get past that final section. The PC Engine port gets really tough because the lower resolution results in less screen space, and there are safe spots in the arcade game (like the mid-boss on the final stage) that are completely off screen in this version. I kept hammering and hammering at it for days, I was so damn determined not to let that game beat me that I ended up burning myself out on shmups for months.

(3) Favourite Achievements by Others of 2023:

Seeing new shmups continue to find attention and success. Seeing Classic Game Room come back. Also, practically everything on Jaimers' channel. The man is a cyborg.

(4) Goals for 2024:

1. 1CC Gradius II.
2. 1CC GG Aleste 3. Whenr it came out, some players seemed to whip right through it, but I've been stuck at the end for a while now. It's astounding a game that feeds you i-frames every few seconds manages to put up that much of a fight. [EDIT: Just got it. I really just needed to plant a save state at the last level and practice until I had the enemies down.]
3. 1CC Deathsmiles on the toughest route.
4. 1CC Sengoku Blade. I can reach the last boss on one credit, but haven't managed to take him down without continuing yet. I can't feel like the Tengai avatar is legit until I do.

(BONUS) CHALLENGES TO OTHER PLAYERS:

Have fun and don't be miserable. These games are brilliant, and you're living through a marvellous renaissance of them.

[Sengoku Strider]

Beating (with 100%) the 2nd stage in Image Fight on first try.

This is insane BTW

Survival Record in M.U.S.H.A. Aleste: 20sec

The game's less difficult than it might initially appear, at least in the early going.

Try using the spread bomb weapon. At max power it creates black holes that suck enemies in, clearing up a lot of the screen.

Jack up your speed (you need to pause to do this IIRC). I always play on 7 or 8 speed, it's very controllable and gives you much more survivability.

Never use the homing formation for your options aside from very specific situations. It just gets your stock wiped out in a hurry. Also do not hesitate to constantly change option formations as the situation calls for (doing this efficiently will require memorizing how many button presses they are away from each other). I find 3-way the best default, but change a lot because keeping them out of harm's way and their fire on enemies helps a ton.

[Lemnear]

Beating (with 100%) the 2nd stage in Image Fight on first try.

This is insane BTW

Survival Record in M.U.S.H.A. Aleste: 20sec

The game's less difficult than it might initially appear, at least in the early going.

Try using the spread bomb weapon. At max power it creates black holes that suck enemies in, clearing up a lot of the screen.

Jack up your speed (you need to pause to do this IIRC). I always play on 7 or 8 speed, it's very controllable and gives you much more survivability.

Never use the homing formation for your options aside from very specific situations. It just gets your stock wiped out in a hurry. Also do not hesitate to constantly change option formations as the situation calls for (doing this efficiently will require memorizing how many button presses they are away from each other). I find 3-way the best default, but change a lot because keeping them out of harm's way and their fire on enemies helps a ton.

I "feel" Image Fight more natural than many others, more intuitive on some solutions. Funny because i didn't liked this type of memorizer at first.
I'm totally negated for Raizing games or stuff like M.U.S.H.A./Strike Gunner STG/Daioh and similar games (fast tiny bullets, unintuitive patterns etc.). Meanwhile i'm ok on Psikyo games, so i can't spot or describe exactly what the difference is
The problem is Battle Garegga, it looks and sounds too good to not be played, but damn...
EDIT: i think that i used the Homing formation in MUSHA immediately.

[Gamer707b]

Impressive reading some people's list. Mine isn't so well put together. I actually already accomplished one goal before I even wrote it down. That was 1ccing a Cave game. I cleared a lot of 16-bit shmups last year, so just continue that this year. Actually, I got a PC-Engine Duo-R late last year, so my goal with that is to simply experience a wide variety of the PC-Engine shmups (especially the Soldier games) and clear them. Also, I want to delve deeper into the M2 Ketsui and DOJ. Would love to clear Ketsui. My goal is I guess is less specific. Just get more skilled at bullet hell and love the process.