Is Shinobu Yagawa still at Cave?

[zakk]

m3tallica and jonny5 combine like voltron to turn a thread into crap

[kernow]

[EOJ]

(Some players didn't like the idea of infinite lives either, though AZI has since proved that you can clear the game without it and still score high.)

Quite a few players "proved" this years ago (e.g. YOS.K's 16mil ALL with Lace back in 2006). Ultimately you can't get close to the WRs this way (and Extended mode (maybe Harder too) is impossible to clear).

[Icarus]

Quite a few players "proved" this years ago (e.g. YOS.K's 16mil ALL with Lace back in 2006). Ultimately you can't get close to the WRs this way (and Extended mode (maybe Harder too) is impossible to clear).

YOS.K might have done it a while back, but to memory, AZI is the only player to have released a video of it.
Which is an interesting thought - why don't the majority of Pink Sweets experts in Japan release some kind of video? Is it something to be ashamed of?

[TLB]

m3tallica and jonny5 combine like voltron to turn a thread into crap

shhhh you're just jealous

[EOJ]

Which is an interesting thought - why don't the majority of Pink Sweets experts in Japan release some kind of video? Is it something to be ashamed of?

Yagawa games traditionally have far fewer videos released than Ikeda games. Probably because far fewer people play Yagawa games seriously, and they are harder to score high in. There are numerous scores in Yagawa games that are somewhat mysterious (308mil 2-ALL in MMP, 29mil in Batrider, etc).

[jpj]

well, you know how you get more points from shooting down a boss rather than bombing him? if you hover over a boss during the brief invincibilty after a death, you accrue points at the same rate as lace firing with Rapid and a Special Power-up (which is the highest tick points you can get from shooting) regardless of character. so the way to get the most points on all boss fights (once you've triggered invincibility) is bomb any particularly lucrative/dense patterns, put yourself on max speed, suicide, and then hover over the boss. when the boss eventually dies during one of the moments where you hover over it, you get the same amount of points for it's destruction that you would do from shooting it and surviving. so rather than hold A, and dodge like a madman, and be super hardcore, you can do just as well by simply dying a billion times per boss. the game is a bit of a mess. the only mode i enjoyed was Score Attack, but even then, the most lucrative way of accruing points on the final boss's last form is constant suicides and hover over him without shooting...

[EOJ]

Yes, I seem to recall discovering that many months ago.

[jpj]

sorry, i was trying to provide a more adequate response than "it's tradition with Raizing games [...] fewer people play them". there are actually quite a lot of pink sweets videos out there, the problem is they're almost all boring low-scoring runs.

in some ways i'm glad galford never took my money to release his replays. even the SA Mode replay is not all that interesting. only thing that has me curious is someone at gamebox posting an 8 mill with kasumi. even if you play the stage perfectly, you'll be finishing the stage and going into the last boss with 4.3 mill and 1:45 on the clock (best legitimate one i had was something like 4.1 mill). and then it's just luck of the draw if you'll even get enough points to cross 5 mill, and luck again if you get enough lucrative points to cross the 6 mill, and get the ALL. i just burnt myself out on it in the end.

but before pussying out on copyright worries, galford was unsure (and running a poll) if there would even be any interest in people watching said DVD, as it was done with the bug; and at 80 mins for one playthrough, that was probably an awful lot of constant suicides on the bosses (as well as other leeching and slowdown, etc). AZI's replay is probably more worth watching (which is weird, because i'm sure i had some replays of him doing boring low-score runs - kasumi clear with sub 5 mill scores i think - glad he persevered and upped his game)

i guess these things are open to interpretation, but i'm not one to take everything i read as gospel. my view is that the whole point of rank is the programmer being a cunt, and the better you're playing, the more the game tries to kill you, and end your credit. the idea that an arcade game would have infinite lives intentionally as some sort of convoluted self parody is clutching at straws a little bit. the game had an infinite lives issue. cave didn't really address it, so arcadia accepted scores on this version. at which point cave had released a bug-fixed version without infinite lives. however, again, there was no real distinction or official confirmation from cave (it was never titled pink sweets 1.5, for example), and scores weren't separated in arcadia either. so now players playing on the fixed version have a serious disadvantage when competing against players who abused infinite lives. so cave go on to a release a third version... re-instating infinite lives because by this point, abusing this mechanic has actually become part of the scoring strategy. and it's only at the 3rd revision where cave have fixed the issue of the game crashing during the last wave of enemies coming in from all angles at the end of stage 6, which happens maybe 1 in 20-30 credits.

and you thought DFK had it's fair share of fuck ups...

ultimately, it could be a good game, but the rank on a non-infinite lives play through is simply too severe. let alone Harder or Extended Modes. and with infinite lives, you completely circumvent the difficulty of the boss fights for the reasons mentioned above.

all i ever managed to find out about batrider was that the score was tied in somehow with having the rank ridiculously high, to the point where the game is virtually impossible. and that before his 29 million ALL, LAOS also had the arcadia record with a 23 mill run, but that was not a 1cc...

and i don't think any yagawa game has replicated the success of battle garegga. i guess as far as the japanese are concerned, his games peaked in 1996 already

[jonny5]

m3tallica and jonny5 combine like voltron to turn a thread into crap

i love the old guys on this site who just come out once in a while with 'god, these new members.....back in my day.....etc....'

thanx for the enlightening commentary tho....glad i helped inspire you to enlighten this thread with your wisdom

[EOJ]

the idea that an arcade game would have infinite lives intentionally as some sort of convoluted self parody is clutching at straws a little bit.

Perhaps, but it's far more likely than Yagawa, a skilled, veteran programmer, erroneously programming the fucking lives counter in such a way that a serendipitous "infinite lives" mode would be triggered upon the 4th consecutive extend received. And there are the other pieces of evidence I've cited ad nauseum before: 1)ask CAVE and they'll tell you it isn't a bug, 2)Arcadia magazine consistently said it wasn't a bug, 3)it's in the final "bug-fixed" revision, 4)Extended mode is impossible without it.

and it's only at the 3rd revision where cave have fixed the issue of the game crashing during the last wave of enemies coming in from all angles at the end of stage 6, which happens maybe 1 in 20-30 credits.

Incorrect. This was fixed in the first revision (2006/5/17 version).

[Icarus]

Probably because far fewer people play Yagawa games seriously, and they are harder to score high in.

You would think that would be some sort of incentive. ;P

There are numerous scores in Yagawa games that are somewhat mysterious (308mil 2-ALL in MMP

No mystery. Doesn't the DVD player finish the first loop with about 100mil - and that's after a bunch of missed opportunities, dropped medals, delaying tactics on several of the midbosses, and speedkilling a few bosses? I read somewhere on a Japanese player's blog (damned if I can remember where it is) that around 175mil or more can be taken from each loop without suiciding, and that's with complete refinement of the scoring routes. I'd imagine that it'd be quite simple to take 150mil from each loop with just a refinement of the DVD player's first loop route.

(29mil in Batrider, etc).

Again, no mystery. Recently a Japanese player released a near 20mil MAME input for Advanced Course which ended just before the first form of the final boss, and that was with a few dropped medals, and missing Glow Squid who is worth about 1.5mil+ itself if handed properly.

Also, NTSC-J recently posted some information about another Japanese player scoring an O,8mil at an arcade, with some important points about his scoring methods - heavy use of Aura, milking every last point from the game and so on. That, combined with EIHoppe's notes about increased scoring opportunities via maxing the rank combine to give us more than enough information on how a 20mil+ score is achieved in this game.

In fact, the maxing of rank as a main scoring technique is in virtually all Yagawa games.

[moozooh]

Recently a Japanese player released a near 20mil MAME input for Advanced Course which ended just before the first form of the final boss, and that was with a few dropped medals, and missing Glow Squid who is worth about 1.5mil+ itself if handed properly.

Link?

[Icarus]

Recently a Japanese player released a near 20mil MAME input for Advanced Course which ended just before the first form of the final boss, and that was with a few dropped medals, and missing Glow Squid who is worth about 1.5mil+ itself if handed properly.

Link?

An AVI of it is on superplay, I believe.

[moozooh]

Nope, that one is a 17.8 mil. I thought you meant something else.

[Icarus]

Nope, that one is a 17.8 mil. I thought you meant something else.

Nope, that what I meant. There's also a 16mil ALL run by AZI up on nicovideo, using an unusual ship combination.

[GaijinPunch]

but it's far more likely than Yagawa, a skilled, veteran programmer, erroneously programming

Coding is tedious, hard, never done by just one person, and most of all - abstract. Bugs are actually very likely... even amongst the most skilled.

Batrider ~20mil

Once my monitor goes TATE I'm finally brekaing out my APB board. I'll post a 30 mil+ a few weeks after that probably.

[Danbo]

What happens when a Raizing game runs out of letters for the top digit...

[Limbrooke]

Nope, that one is a 17.8 mil. I thought you meant something else.

Nope, that what I meant. There's also a 16mil ALL run by AZI up on nicovideo, using an unusual ship combination.

I guess it's a bit unorthodox for Grasshopper A, Chitta C, & Shorty Start, Shorty being the most unusual to me.
It's a good run and score-wise not much different from DMC, which is to say I think he could nab an E or G if he got a clear in Advanced. Ultimately the H run that was found by Kaiser, if it was a clear, no-dropped medal run, would be the best to have seen to date. However, even H is still a ways off from the O NTSC-J saw and further still from the T by Laos.

With all the strategy discussed I suppose it's fair to say there isn't much to be desired from visual testimony from NTSC-J added to what is already known but it's the fact that such a run, T, is executed considering all that which is quite interesting. Understanding and seeing first-hand don't qualify as the same thing, not even close. So while it's fine & dandy to say it's possible for a T, that was already known before as it's a verified/listed recording and that doesn't mean people wouldn't want to see for certain what exactly happens.

Suffice to say, Battle Garegga (and perhaps the Mahou games to a lesser extent) is the only Raizing game to see large distribution of a near world record run. Batrider, Bakraid, & Brave Blade all for the most part have a large gap between a record seen to a wide audience versus the world record. Ibara is the Garegga in this sense for Yagawa's Cave line-up. Pink Sweets and to a lesser extent Muchi Muchi Pork also have had a mystique about them.

Anyway, I hope Yagawa continues to make games although it has been very quiet on the Cave front the past year pardon home-ports so it's a wait and see situation to be certain. In the meantime, I wonder if INH (which has also been terribly inactive) would consider some more Raizing super-play fare.

but it's far more likely than Yagawa, a skilled, veteran programmer, erroneously programming

Coding is tedious, hard, never done by just one person, and most of all - abstract. Bugs are actually very likely... even amongst the most skilled.

Agreed.

[Icarus]

A little mystery around the scoring techniques isn't a bad thing, because it can still fuel discussion and give people a reason to keep investigating the game - especially with Raizing games where scoring techniques can vary greatly. For games with a simplistic nature, popular titles, or games with a great deal of coverage, this isn't the case.

[Limbrooke]

A little mystery around the scoring techniques isn't a bad thing, because it can still fuel discussion and give people a reason to keep investigating the game - especially with Raizing games where scoring techniques can vary greatly. For games with a simplistic nature, popular titles, or games with a great deal of coverage, this isn't the case.

Who said it was a bad thing? I agree that it fuels desire to continually persue but there is again the nature of curiousity wherein knowing what the record score is and what the discrepancy compared to what most people playing are scoring. For the most part, Yagawa games seem to have a much greater air of mystery than most games thanks to the deep and often varying strategy involved.

Not to be off-topic but there are other cases where there is a wide difference in scores, 1943, which is one example to your last sentance. Of course this is an uncommon occurrence to be sure.

[jpj]

cancels (such as crouching forward into fireball - or cr.MK, f+P) was never intended by the programmers of street fighter 2 world warrior. but abusing this mechanic has now become a staple of the 2d fighting genre. the KOF games usually will even tell you in the onscreen move-lists what moves are cancelable, or super-cancelable

you can counter-stop capcom's alien vs predator by simply performing a throw while the timer hits zero

ddp doesn't calculate your end of stage bonus's correctly if you play on the 1P side during the 2nd loop.

esprade had to have a 2nd revision because of an issue with the extends

i can come up bugs and glitches from veteran programmers all day long if you like (in fact that would probably make for a fun thread)

apart from infinite lives in an arcade game being the worst idea i've ever heard, if you genuinely believe this was intended from the outset, can someone explain why they chose to release a 2nd version of the pcb where this supposed feature was then removed...?

Batrider ~20mil

Once my monitor goes TATE I'm finally brekaing out my APB board. I'll post a 30 mil+ a few weeks after that probably.

and then icarus would post a 31+ mill just to spite you

[DMC]

Glow Squid who is worth about 1.5mil+ itself if handed properly

Wow! How?

[Dave_K.]

apart from infinite lives in an arcade game being the worst idea i've ever heard, if you genuinely believe this was intended from the outset, can someone explain why they chose to release a 2nd version of the pcb where this supposed feature was then removed...?

jpj, then why did yagawa program a "multiply mode" separately from an "invincibility mode" from the very begining, if not to practice this very feature? It was intentional, not a bug. Maybe a poorly designed feature, but the insane rank also seems to point to this being his intent. The only reason why they took it out was because fans did not like this feature and thought it was unfair, so he (or someone else) caved in (pun intended) and removed it. Only problem was this was released as an unannounced fix and not a version upgrade, so previous arcadia scores remained, and fans got pissed again, so cave put it back in a later bug fix.

[Icarus]

can someone explain why they chose to release a 2nd version of the pcb where this supposed feature was then removed...?

Wasn't there a huge amount of hate aimed at the game during the early days of the initial release because of the discovery of the infinite lives thing, which led to the second version being released with the "feature" being removed?

I personally think that the third and fourth versions of the game, with the infinite lives trigger being reinstated, we're more of a reaction to the fact that by then, the majority of players still playing Pink Sweets were abusing the mechanic, similar to your Street Fighter 2 analogy.

Who said it was a bad thing? I agree that it fuels desire to continually persue but there is again the nature of curiousity wherein knowing what the record score is and what the discrepancy compared to what most people playing are scoring. For the most part, Yagawa games seem to have a much greater air of mystery than most games thanks to the deep and often varying strategy involved.

No one said it was a bad thing, it was more a figure of speech. And I agree, the mystery behind the differences between scores is what usually drives strategy discussion, and has always been a fun part of the endless threads about it for me.

Glow Squid who is worth about 1.5mil+ itself if handed properly

Wow! How?

Last time I checked, both forms are worth 800k total. The rest is efficient milking.
Protip: low firing rate.

[jpj]

if you're playing in an arcade, how would you practice a feature that is only selectable from the test menu? and is it not possible that it's in the options as a left over because it's the extend system for SA mode?

ultimately, the miscommunication between cave and arcadia ruined what could have been a good game (and if some the game's balancing issues had been ironed out).

we pretty much agree on how the three different versions came to be, and it's much of a muchness over which way round it began. either it was an oversight that didn't get spotted until a while after release (as it's not common to pick up four extends in a raizing game without a death - especially as they are not score based in pink sweets). or it was a terrible idea from the outset, and they "caved in" and released a fixed version, only to have the issues we've pointed out about arcadia not separating the scores, and creating an uneven playing field.

either way, it was a mistake - which is a shame really

(am i allowed to make posts about pink sweets having flaws without john deleting my posts and removing my account - or is that just cave-stg? he's already busting the swears and italics, i might have to watch myself )

[Dave_K.]

if you're playing in an arcade, how would you practice a feature that is only selectable from the test menu? and is it not possible that it's in the options as a left over because it's the extend system for SA mode?

Yagawa, has always added practice features in his games that are only selectable by the operator, like pause/slow/stop modes in Batrider. Good point on this being the basis for SA mode, even though its named differently with the intent of practicing on all levels, which doesn't make sense for SA practicing. Come to think about it, after the interim fix was deployed, didn't that break SA mode where you actually do die and loose ships? So maybe another reason they had to put it back in? In which case what they temporarily removed was the system, not a bug. I wouldn't be surprised if there were others at cave making these stupid decisions about the "fixes", given how normal it is for IKD games to get changed based on player feedback.

[EOJ]

either it was an oversight that didn't get spotted until a while after release (as it's not common to pick up four extends in a raizing game without a death - especially as they are not score based in pink sweets).

It was discovered less than a week after release, actually (which makes me wonder if someone working at Cave told some players about it early on). Some ops asked Cave about it then, before the first "revised" release, and Cave told them it wasn't a bug. This puzzled many players, and most didn't believe it, so thus began the practice of labeling it a "bug", which continues today on Japanese forums. There are discussions about this in the 2Ch Pink Sweets archives stretching back to April 2006, freely available to anyone with access to a computer.

Yagawa was way ahead of his time with Pink Sweets. So, it's not surprising that it takes a long time for some people to really understand and accept how the game was designed (whether or not they like it is a different matter).

[Aru-san]

What happens when a Raizing game runs out of letters for the top digit...

I would guess that Z,999,990 (35,999,990pts.) would be a supposed counterstop for a Raizing game...unless it ends up doing something crazy and starts using random titles to go beyond that score.

That's only in theory, however. No one player that we know of, not even the pro players, have managed to reach this high of a score in any Raizing game that utilizes letters to roll over the score.

[EOJ]

Ibara rolls over into lower case letters (i.e. 36,000,000 is a,000,000). Not sure if Raizing games did this too.