ST: Metal Black

[Prickly Angler]

Wow, this is a pretty "interesting" bug, don't think it was mentionned before (outside Japan at least). Btw I alwas though those looked more like turtles, I was a bit confused when I read birds haha

I emailed Hamster a few months earlier about another release : never recieved any answer. Hope you don't suffer the same fate.

Thanks a lot for spreading the Metal Black love, including the "bonus" stages . Eager to see the update

[DrLight66]

Greetings everyone, first post here. Just wondering if anyone knows what difference the various Difficulty settings make to Metal Black? For both the MAME dipswitch settings and the options toggle on the Saturn version, there's four difficulty settings to choose from, going from:
Easiest
Medium/Normal
Hard
Hardest/Very Hard

By default the game is set to Medium/Normal, but if I change it to Hardest/Very Hard, I honestly can't notice a difference. Does it just set the game ranking so it's always highest instead of having to survive past Stage 4?

[BIL]

I still love this game. Even more than I did before actually! Nailed together a basic no autofire nomiss over the last week, gonna get guide v2 started this weekend. Sorry it took so long Prickly.

Unfortunately I think I also found another bug, again quite obscure: managed to somehow get killed by a magnet/barnacle at Round 5's climax. This happened once over many hours of play, and try as I might, I couldn't get it to happen again. Will get the video up shortly, just have to edit down my clips.

To be honest, I would be 95% on this and my previous find being something from the PCB itself, but you never know. Scenario is familiar: busy section, tons of dangerous stuff around the screen edges, something typically harmless (Newalone/Barnacle) getting flipped to lethal. That's my gigabrain impression anyway. Hamster seem unresponsive in English, but perhaps JP-literate players might find it of interest.

By default the game is set to Medium/Normal, but if I change it to Hardest/Very Hard, I honestly can't notice a difference. Does it just set the game ranking so it's always highest instead of having to survive past Stage 4?

Sorry bud, missed your post! >_< It often happens with new accounts waiting for approval. I've only ever played on Normal, but offhand, I would guess Metal Black is indeed just one of the many 80s/90s arcade games where the difficulty setting is quite subtle. It's that way more often than not, in my experience, and the ones I can think of that do noticeably change tend to simply crank the Rank, as you say.

[copy-paster]

Looks like someone had done gambling for st5 and 6 red star dudes RNG.

GGs for the nomiss would watch later for st4-6 intensity when I back home. My best run is a 1 miss clear because the red dudes in st5 didn't being chill TF off!

[BIL]

Looks like someone had done gambling for st5 and 6 red star dudes RNG.

GGs for the nomiss would watch later for st4-6 intensity when I back home. My best run is a 1 miss clear because the red dudes in st5 didn't being chill TF off!

Cheers bud! Yes, expertly spotted re: bombs. Of the four Starfish ambushes in Round 6, the second and third that occur amidst terrain simply aren't worth risking. Between their danger, and the ease of recovering Beam Level, there's no reason not to bomb.

...other than a NMNB run, I guess. In that case, the big threat is them spawning within terrain, which'll stop you from speedkilling them. Plus, in the third ambush, you have I-Beams doing their best to backshot you... with a Crawler Tank to speedkill, and a Flytrap Fence to whack through before that. Lots of variably-moving parts, rather pants-shitting peril for so late in the run.

I was getting some consistency in practice, by aggressively cutting through the Fence, speedkilling the Crawler, then fighting the Starfish and I-Beams at center-screen. But my finger was always hovering over the bomb. (having a blast making up enemy names for STv2 I wonder if there's any design docs / soundtrack liner notes out there... time to hit up VGMdb, methinks! I really should learn to read)

The last Insurance Bomb is right at the end, before the final Starfish ambush. When I'm hugging the bottom of the screen, there's a rare chance a pursuing I-Beam might be low enough to backshot me, instead of hitting my aura. Beam's rear guard will ensure victory. You can quickly recover for the Starfish onslaught via that massive Newalone cloud, and Omega Zone's generosity makes him a snap no matter your Beam Level.

Round 5's Starfish ambushes are generally less intense, but can still go awry via terrain-spawns. Here, I might've gotten away with aura-killing the one I bombed... but again, there's no real reason to risk blowing the run. The bomb will take out a bunch of other stuff, and the remaining enemies are all easily handled in the open. Just gotta be careful not to bump those incoming Pineapples with your puny L1 aura. (this happened in a previous run )

Well, there is one reason not to bomb there. Ghost is a lot easier to speedkill if you can roast him with a Beam Duel early on, then finish him off with L3. In a previous run where I bombed, I discovered his knack for half-materialising at pointblank and spreadshotting me. All good, taught me 2 macro-dodge over/under him. (the bomb in the current run was an accident/freakout; was expecting him to use his Beam, but instead got bolts + missiles)

None of MB's bosses are very dangerous in survival terms, but they do soak up quite a bit of fire; gets tiring sans auto. So I enjoyed figuring out how to cut 'em down with Beam Duels and followup L3.

EDIT: The Bomb/Beam dynamic really speaks to MB's Gun Frontier heritage, via Senba & co. And even GF's influence on Garegga! Less a "panic bomb," for desperate escapes. More a SPECIAL WEAPON, for proactive annihilation.

Spoiler

^ that one's goin' straight to Dick Stock.

---

Aha, found my Fatal Barnacle footage. Here we are:

10sec Edit
Full Clip (crummy routing, was a whole week ago)

Authentic "WTF?! Dammit!" pause.

TEH SCENE OF THE CRIME (■｀w´■)

Looking at it, I notice the Chibi-Sawm pops onscreen at roughly the same time I die. Perhaps that's important. Their heads are lethal to touch, but their bodies are harmless, with or without Newalone absorbed. I wonder if a flag got flipped around on that particular frame. MB sometimes has a lot going on WRT lethal/non-lethal objects, plus enemies/bosses eating up Newalone.

A closer look (｀w´メ)

I also see Chib-Sawm is flashing as I die, as if taking contact damage. I don't think my shots are hitting his head (only vulnerable part). Maybe that's relevant...

EDIT: Aha! Chibi-Sawm pops onscreen when I die in both Round 4 examples, too! Seems Blue Turtle was falsely accused - Round 5 doesn't have any. So it would seem it's something to do with...

1] Chibi-Sawm entering the playfield, on the same frame you're
2] Touching a normally non-fatal object. (Newalone / Barnacle)

Should make replicating this much easier. The real question, to me, is whether this is an ACA bug, or PCB-authentic.

---

As mentioned above, with Starfish spawn location RNG, my current route is 50/50 on bombing there anyway. So as with the previous incident, it might be best solved by nuking 'em. I'll see if I can replicate it. As I say, I never saw it again all week, despite many Round 5 NB clears.

This is perhaps primarily of interest to ardent one-lifers, and MB fans who just like digging about for deets like me. What with MB caring little about deaths to begin with, and not at all once you've enraged its Rank by surviving to Amazo.