I DID IT! Share your latest 1CCs/other triumphs here...

[eternal]

This was almost a month ago now, but my last big 1cc was Espgaluda II: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MraBCPsbHpY

That's probably been my hardest clear thus far, but I felt that it wasn't too much harder than Futari Original? For pure survival, a lot of the bosses just come down to resource management with Asagi; learning a route to reach each boss with 500 gems, and then spending the gems to skip risky patterns instead of burning through bombs.

Fun game though. I love how they doubled down on the horizontal bullets from the first Espgaluda's final boss. Half the bosses in this game end with some kind of slow-moving horizontal pattern.

No idea if the final boss's final pattern is beatable with no miss/no bomb with other characters. Feels like you have to be in kakusei for it, and you'll die once your gems run out. That's probably my only real complaint. In comparison, it was really fun to do a perfect clear (no kakusei) in practice mode for the final boss of the first Espgaluda, even though I'd never risk it in a real run.

[Sweatlord_STG]

Gradius II

https://youtu.be/l2drZ_8FjjM

It could have been a perfect run easily. But somehow I fucked it up at the very end. Oh well, at least it's a clear.

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Raiden DX Training

https://youtu.be/R1BIN4uiuQ4

Nothing I could show off with, but it was lots of fun.

[Gas]

Managed to get a 1CC and 1LC as well of the arcade version of Truxton, the first arcade shmup I've managed to get a 1CC for. A very tough game, remember at the start just thinking I'd be happy to get past stage 3 in 1 credit. Before then I had only played a few retro console shmups and 1CC'd some of the Touhou games on normal. Seems shmups are the only single-player genre where the games are still hard after abusing cheese strats and save stating every section to practice. Was a pretty huge adrenaline rush during the very last 1CC run when the end was in sight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHQ9Rwev1Tg

[Sweatlord_STG]

Managed to get a 1CC and 1LC as well of the arcade version of Truxton, the first arcade shmup I've managed to get a 1CC for. A very tough game, remember at the start just thinking I'd be happy to get past stage 3 in 1 credit. Before then I had only played a few retro console shmups and 1CC'd some of the Touhou games on normal. Seems shmups are the only single-player genre where the games are still hard after abusing cheese strats and save stating every section to practice. Was a pretty huge adrenaline rush during the very last 1CC run when the end was in sight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHQ9Rwev1Tg

Congrats! That's one hell of a first clear! I was also going to go back to this game soon. How long did it take you to get the clear?

[Gas]

Managed to get a 1CC and 1LC as well of the arcade version of Truxton, the first arcade shmup I've managed to get a 1CC for. A very tough game, remember at the start just thinking I'd be happy to get past stage 3 in 1 credit. Before then I had only played a few retro console shmups and 1CC'd some of the Touhou games on normal. Seems shmups are the only single-player genre where the games are still hard after abusing cheese strats and save stating every section to practice. Was a pretty huge adrenaline rush during the very last 1CC run when the end was in sight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHQ9Rwev1Tg

Congrats! That's one hell of a first clear! I was also going to go back to this game soon. How long did it take you to get the clear?

Thanks! I checked the log file for Retroarch, and it ended up taking me 54 hours to do, with the last 8-ish hours being all 1CC runs. So doing each section on average 108X each. I usually write down a bunch of notes in a spreadsheet that could be added to that hours count, with which savestate numbers mean what, good ways found out to get through sections, bombs I'm able to use for certain midbosses. At about 3 parts hints I randomly stumbled upon online really helped (2 were safe spots, and how for the wide blue midboss pair, the second one for whatever reason doesn't shoot if you kill the first one fast enough).

Hard to express well, but a sense of devotion really kept me going to see this one through to the end. Memory is vague now whether it was to this game specifically or these games as a whole. (Other factors also contributing small parts to sticking through it)

[bsidwell]

Added Asuka & Asuka and Prehistoric Isle 2 to my revenge tour of easy games. Maybe it's time for something that'll take some actual effort...

[LordHypnos]

Speaking of things that don't take much actual effort, I got the Nemesis GB 1-ALL! I was looking over the retroachievements for this game, though, and it looks like there's a bonus stage on stage 2 as well as stage 4, so I want to figure that out at some point. Sadly, there are no score boards for Nemesis GB, so I'll just post a screenshot, here. I think I died on 2-3.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

Gradius II - Similar to Sweatlord_STG above, bagged the 1CC a couple of nights ago. Died right at the spider but was far enough along that I recovered at the very easy final checkpoint.

I've been practicing on PS4 for years, I really wanted to get the clear before the collection came out - all those gadgets and savestates are just too tempting and make learning the game so much easier.

Went back and achieved the No Miss last night https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoSNU419B3g

[Sweatlord_STG]

Gradius II - Similar to Sweatlord_STG above, bagged the 1CC a couple of nights ago. Died right at the spider but was far enough along that I recovered at the very easy final checkpoint.

I've been practicing on PS4 for years, I really wanted to get the clear before the collection came out - all those gadgets and savestates are just too tempting and make learning the game so much easier.

Went back and achieved the No Miss last night https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoSNU419B3g

Awesome!! Congrats! That's awesome that you got the no-miss. I just hate how I could have had it so easily but fucked up at the very end. I still want to get the no-miss, but at the time I wanted to move on to other games.

Have you ever played Gradius GBA? I played it for a while a long time ago but never made it to the end. Then recently I played it again and found it much easier than back then, apart from the big wheel at the end. It replaces the crab (spider, needle walker, whatever you want to call it) so to speak, which results in an abrupt high increase in difficulty. I think there might be different ways how to deal with it, but the one that seemed most obvious or natural to me was crazy. I had to stay in a tiny spot, where I had to remain while the screen was scrolling, so I had to keep tapping at the right pace. I played through the game with save states because I just felt like I wanted to see the whole game and maybe use the saves for practice. But surviving that wheel was intimidating and seemed ridiculously difficult compared to the rest of the game.
I still want to beat it anyway but for now I was going to focus on other things for a while.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

I still have Gradius Advance, although I haven't looked into getting a charger for my old clamshell since I moved to NA. I never beat this one properly either, there is a knack to the bigwheel - basically staying on the right hand side of the screen and knowing which nook to hide in. The problem with Gradius Advance I remember is that you're almost out of control with just one speedup.

PS - recovering at the spider is more impressive than a no miss.

[Sweatlord_STG]

PS - recovering at the spider is more impressive than a no miss.

Haha thanks! I tried to be aware of what I did wrong, which is going back under the crab soon enough because it will crush you if you wait too long. It's very misleading because it looks like it is still far away but at that time is already your last chance to go back under before getting crushed. I practiced it many times but for some reason I got distracted by the enemies around and waited too long and then it was too late already all of a sudden.

Regarding Gradius GBA, I thought it would be great if they made the game part of the next collection and adjusted the colors. What I mean is, for anybody who doesn't know - the display of the GBA and also the one of the first GBA SP model was crap, and all colors for each game were chosen by how they were supposed to look on the crappy display, because they would not look the same on a normal screen. So if you play most GBA games on the first SP (the one that had backlight, but it was darker than the one of the later SP), everything looks like intended. But if you play the same games on any "normal" screen, like if you emulate them, play them on the later brighter SP, or on a TV via the Game Boy Player for the GameCube, you will see the "true" colors of the games and the games will not look as intended anymore. There are a few later games where you can switch between different modes to work around this issue, and there are ports of games where the colors weren't changed at all (so these will also look fine), but most games that were exclusively made for the GBA suffer from this problem.
When playing Gradius GBA for instance, you will notice the difference between the two displays from the beginning anyway, but it is most obvious at the part where you fly through waterfalls. On the darker SP screen they are white and blue (like any waterfall in a game), but on the brighter SP screen (or any TV, etc.) the same waterfalls are pink! And this is just the most obvious example, as the whole game looks off on any normal screen.
So if they included it in a future Gradius Collection, it would be great to have the colors adjusted, so one could finally play the game on any screen without the colors being off.

[Faith]

Batsugun No Assist Normal 1CC.

Finally @_@"... took 9 hours. Fun, but feel like many cheap shot moments with cheap deaths.

A lot of enemies coming from bottom/bottom side which shoot at you from silly angles with tiny high speed bullets which are hard to get a quick lock-on with eyes.

Also feel this game suffers from major visibility problems.

Your shot fills the screen with too many colors, and also, enemy bullets come in almost every color in the silly rainbow too.

And e.g. Stage 5 have parts with yellow bullets against gold background -___-"... but generally feel this game just likes to throw random small bullets from the side.

I played Bitwave Edition, which for movement, I find no big lag problem... but the bomba feels very hard to reflex-bomba.

Never had I play STG where so many times I died and go "wtf I did press bomba."

Also the hitbox is super weird, but I think I read hitbox problems were solved in Special, so I will try to play that next time.

And finally: both Stage 4 & Stage 5 boss... what were they thinking? Such mess.

Whole game only 3 extends is mean lol.

But always lol when reach Stage 5 boss and see name... GROUND OF THE GARAXY! "Garaxy" >.<!!!~

[Lethe]

Also the hitbox is super weird, but I think I read hitbox problems were solved in Special, so I will try to play that next time.

Still weird, now it's just half size. Small enough that I once accidentally left the invincibility dipswitch on and didn't notice until loop 3.

If you end up wanting to go the whole hog with Special, top priority is remembering a foolproof way to trigger all the secret pigs, since they give out extra XP = extra bombs and Special bombs are insane. The pair of pigs at the start of stage 5 especially will give you tons, so you can build up bombs on the stage 3 pig, blow everything on stage 4, and then get it all back right after. Loop 4 is just plain easier than loop 3 if you're comfortable with danmaku-type improv dodging. I'm not very good at the game but a couple of spare lives (out of 6 in Special) is an easy clear so long as I make it to loop 4.

[Faith]

If you end up wanting to go the whole hog with Special, top priority is remembering a foolproof way to trigger all the secret pigs, since they give out extra XP = extra bombs and Special bombs are insane.

Thank you so much for this info!!!

Did not know it, and yes, hope to do 4-ALL completion for Batsugun Special!~

Right now, decided to try something a bit crazy... because... this game have Steam Achievement for Co-Op 2CC @_@"...

But my hubby is really bad at STG... so I decided, to try and do it solo haha.

I did test route today, managed to 4CC with both P1 & P2 side playing Type-B (lucky can do this).

Doing this still playing Normal Ver.

The good news is... that DPS is now x2, and if both player bomba together, you get hyper bomba which is super power.

Actually, for Batsugun Bitwave on Steam, there is also achievement for clearing game with each character (each ship type have two characters, so six total).

But it seems on Batsugun you cannot just start on P2 side solo?!

If I press P2 Start on main screen, nothing happen. I have to press P1 Start first to show ship select, then use P2 Start to select P2 character; which means all P2 char need to be done Co-Op.

So now, clearing all character first. Then will focus to route Co-Op 2CC solo play control both ship. Think this is most stupid thing I ever did in STG, but fun!~

But yes thank you for the information on Special, will definitely enjoy that too!~

[Steven]

Hold shot as you press start on the title screen to start on 2P side for Bitwave Toaplan games except Out Zone and maybe Dogyuun!!, but I don't remember how Dogyuun!! works on PCB. Also maybe Twin Hawk, but I don't know about that one at all.