Shmups are difficult but not as much as Battletoads

[Enhasa]

http://www.twingalaxies.com/index.aspx?c=27&id=1855

You could be the world record holder for this title! Submit your scores today!

[Solarus]

That's an... Interesting list. At least it decided to put some difficult shmups up, which other lists tend to leave out for some reason.

I've always wondered what the big deal with Battletoads was. Everyone freaks out about the bike stages which I've never found all that difficult. Also, I've always found beating Wipeout HD on Elite was a lot more difficult than F-Zero GX Story mode on Very Hard (although both are extremely painful to play through). Also, no Ninja Gaiden?

[Raizen1984]

I'm kinda surprised they listed Super Ghouls N Ghosts above Ghosts N Goblins. I always thought the original GnG was much more difficult.

If it wasn't for the mention of DoDonPachi (why the Saturn version?) this would've been another forgettable mainstream 'Top Ten Of All Time' list, which basically just consists of whatever the journalist had on the top of his mind at the time. C'mon, Battletoads the hardest game ever? Really?

[Damocles]

Oh...hey...it's Twin Galaxies...


...yeah...

[sunburstbasser]

Saw that last night. Considering how much crap is on that site, I wasn't surprised to see Battletoads on there at #1. A hard game, but not Tatsujin Oh hard. Considering some of the hi-scores on the site I gave them one visit and never again.

Some scores that irked me:

Strikers 1945 II-704,200. Which means maybe 1-6.
Blazing Lazers-99,999,999. The different record holders claim no scoring glitch but I don't see how they can get that score when the last digit is always 0.

I never thought I'd have a TG bitch-a-thon but there I go.

[Solarus]

Blazing Lazers-99,999,999. The different record holders claim no scoring glitch but I don't see how they can get that score when the last digit is always 0.

My guess is that is the score cap. Once a player hits 99,999,990 and scores something else (having never played the game anyway...), I would imagine it rolls up to 99, 999, 999 simply because it can't go to 100,000,000

[unsane]

At least it decided to put some difficult shmups up, which other lists tend to leave out for some reason.

Shmups are easy, you have infinite continues.

[BIL]

Twin Galaxies? More like Masters of the Shooting!

Player Stock - although default is '3', we have determined that allowing a player a full
starting compliment of nine (9) ships is to be the official TG settings for this title

Force Bomb STock - although default is '2', we have determined that allowing a player a full
starting compliment of five (5) force bombs is to be the official TG settings for this title.

[crithit5000]

I still want to know their reasoning for that, especially considering practically the rest of their score guidelines are machine default.

[Elixir]

Battletoads isn't hard because it's hard, it's hard because of bad game design. I like to call it Spelunker syndrome.

[ncp]

#5: F-Zero GX (Nintendo Gamecube)

๏̯͡๏

[Zeether]

Some scores that irked me:

Strikers 1945 II-704,200. Which means maybe 1-6.

I think I saw a video of a guy scoring that and when someone said it wasn't as high as the Arcadia/Gamest scores he replied with "we go by TG here"

What a cunt.

[captpain]

At least they didn't list Contra as the most difficult. Moron game sites are always doing that.

[Dai101]

Battletoads isn't hard because it's hard, it's hard because of bad game design. I like to call it Spelunker syndrome.

Yup. Pretty much is that, specially when you play in 2P, game becomes imposible beacuse the game is glitch galore this way. Same goes with bayou billy.

[Davey]

Not that this really needs further discrediting, but...

What makes this game so brutal? Well, for starters the game does not include a save feature, you are only given only three continues, and forget extra lives too.

Uh, there are tons of extra lives in Battletoads. You get one every 100k, there are a few 1up icons throughout the game, and you can juggle the birds in level 2 for extra lives.

[Ganelon]

What's wrong with Battletoads? It just requires strict memorization, like any other tough sidescroller.

[Enhasa]

Surprising lack of incredulity over selections and bile over writing. Where is the shmups forum I know and love!


Battletoads is very fair, in fact that's why it's not that hard. The 2p really is messed up though. Like it's literally impossible for both players to survive some parts. Weirdest thing about the selections is that even within a given series such as DDP, GnG, Treasure shmups, and even Battletoads, they couldn't get the order right. Of course, this is explained by being compiled by vote, but that doesn't make the result look any better. Also with DDP, I bet they took every vote that said DDP, DDPDOJ, whatever, and just lumped them all as the same game.

I still want to know their reasoning for that, especially considering practically the rest of their score guidelines are machine default.

Unofficially, the way TG works is that: if you're the first person to submit a score/time for a game, you can basically use whatever rules you want, and later people will just have to follow you. Unless you're playing an old popular game that some ref actually knows, then he will force everyone to use his mostly arbitrary rules. sdkess got his SMB2 disqualified for double-jumping even though it didn't benefit him at all and can easily happen accidentally as was the case.

The fastest completion times on that linked page are all pretty good, btw. Of course, they're all SDA guys.

[Solarus]

Holy shit, I only just realized that the Enhasa that posts here is the same one that's an admin on SDA O.o

I've been a huge fan of speedrunning since I was a youngster, and have been browsing that site for years, although never made an account. It's something I was looking into taking a bit more seriously once I finish my engineering degree.

Well there's my shocker for the day (and this is the same day that I learned Futari is going region free, so that's no small feat >_>)

[GaijinPunch]

Guevara is harder than most of those. Ninja Warriors is another classic "hard as fuck" arcade game, but of course, has unlimited continues so is easy.

Also, DOJ being harder than DDP.

[Ed Oscuro]

When did TwinGalaxies start to think they spoke for everybody?

The moment they got a Forum I suppose.

Surprising lack of incredulity over selections and bile over writing. Where is the shmups forum I know and love!

Perhaps their antics aren't as amusing to us as they once were, or somebody is out on parole and can't write "SOMEBODY NEEDS TO END TG" on the Internet?

Also, TG = TransGendered. Still not as goofy as that little ref shirt Walter is fond of.

[Enhasa]

Oh wait I think we banned most of the loud opinionated people like icycalm, Recap, Ceph, Stuart Campbell (lol).

Also it doesn't matter if TG antics are old, those descriptions are still pretty golden. BTW that list needs some IIDX or something, I dunno, rhythm games are conspicuously absent.

Let's talk about which shmups are actually hardest! Or wait, we already have a thread for that.


Solarus: We have a lot of people who play shmups (3 whole teams in the ongoing STGT), which might seem strange in that you can't play most of them for speed, but shmups are a true gamer's genre after all. If you want to hang out, you don't need to sign up to post, and we have an IRC channel, but if you want to finish your degree first, maybe you better wait.

[Sasupoika]

Someone submit this score to Dodonpachi:
748,414,350 - Type A - SOF-WTN - 2-ALL ( All loops cleared )
Let's have a real world record there.

Edit: I am the bestest dodonpoochi playerer.
I have world-record.

Edit2: What, Battle Garegga no extends? What is this? And why cannot I find ESPra.de.?

[spl]

For all you people ragging on TG please remember they started in the 1980s.

In my mind they should stick to games pre 1990 since that is what they know properly.

Of course they will not have the top scores for shmups like the Japanese etc even games like Daytona USA they are FAR behind the REAL world records.. but where can you find these records?

At least they are making an attempt at keeping a high score board - Basically you should post your score there if you have a good score on a CLASSIC game.

I don't know why they bother trying to track the other games which they have no idea about but at least they are trying!

If you want to know the world record on Ms Pac Man then you can check it at TG - if you want to know the world record for Strikers 1945 II where can you find it??? Please tell me I would love to know.

[sven666]

If you want to know the world record on Ms Pac Man then you can check it at TG - if you want to know the world record for Strikers 1945 II where can you find it??? Please tell me I would love to know.

plasmo keeps a track of them on his site (to which i do not know the adress).

gemant used to have an awesome highscore list aswell but he removed it after arguments with the other italians, dunno if its still available somewhere?

the TG discussion has been up so many times im not even gonna comment on it.

ed: what a helpful post, huh?

[spl]

If you want to know the world record on Ms Pac Man then you can check it at TG - if you want to know the world record for Strikers 1945 II where can you find it??? Please tell me I would love to know.

plasmo keeps a track of them on his site (to which i do not know the adress).

gemant used to have an awesome highscore list aswell but he removed it after arguments with the other italians, dunno if its still available somewhere?

the TG discussion has been up so many times im not even gonna comment on it.

ed: what a helpful post, huh?

See this my point lol. Normally Japanese arcade games have got their top scores saved on the official website but as soon as the game is old - it is all deleted never to be found again. Don't know how true this is for shmups but in alot of the official websites for Jap games they have a "ranking" page.

It's very much the case with racing arcade games such as Initial D and Wangan Midnight - All the old record/rankings have been deleted or removed. Only the current games are open to view or enter.

[Solarus]

Solarus: We have a lot of people who play shmups (3 whole teams in the ongoing STGT), which might seem strange in that you can't play most of them for speed, but shmups are a true gamer's genre after all. If you want to hang out, you don't need to sign up to post, and we have an IRC channel, but if you want to finish your degree first, maybe you better wait.

Haha I may just do that I still have a lot of time for gaming (ok maybe not rightfully as much as I use, but still Besides, I'm on a work term now >_>), there's just unfortunately not enough hours in a day for me to follow strategies, develop new ones and hack through the thousands of deaths to perfect everything which would otherwise be required in a serious speed run. I have been doing casual speed-running in pretty much every capable game that I play, own or both though.

In response to the general trend of gaming websites that make "hardest games ever" lists, I've always had a few pet peeves with what they consider "difficult" to be, but I at least cut them slack in that most of them are american websites or magazines and won't play many of the games which would bump much of their list off the charts The only games I've ever just been bothered by on these lists have been Battletoads (a very average beat em up that does nothing to seperate it difficulty wise from many other difficult side-scrollers, unless you count the broken multiplayer which is physically impossible to beat with no deaths), Contra (probably the most easily memorized sidescroller ever.), and any game that has no end (the difficulty is completely relative). In the same light, the only games on these lists that I would nominate on my own in a heartbeat, are anything in the Ghouls 'n Ghosts series and the new age Ninja Gaiden games (if we consider Master Ninja anyway).

Sometimes these lists don't even think and just release the results from a poll of their many times extremely casual fanbase (One that pops to mind was a list of 25 hardest games ever in which Portal was ranked >_>)

[bsidwell]

If you want to know the world record on Ms Pac Man then you can check it at TG - if you want to know the world record for Strikers 1945 II where can you find it??? Please tell me I would love to know.

Right here, ace.

[Enhasa]

And here is its sister thread for top western scores if that floats your boat (thanks to Plasmo): http://cowboy.ikaruga.co.uk/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=76

MARP has better scores for many/most games, and even better, you can actually watch them.

Gemant used to keep a comprehensive list but took it down. AFAIK he still maintains it privately though. Just ask him and he can tell you whatever you want to know about a game. I think I actually used to have a zip file or something with an offline version of the list, but I don't know what happened to it. For racing games in particular, I used to have a bookmark to this crazy top Japanese arcade racing team, but since I can't find that either, I guess I lost that too.

I have been doing casual speed-running in pretty much every capable game that I play, own or both though.

Not to further derail the topic of this thread, but I noticed this void recently and we have a casual speedrunning board now. Just like the concept of a high score board here or elsewhere. Check it out. Old times are welcome, as well as new threads.

The funny thing about endless games and that list is: if Donkey Kong had no kill screen and was just endless, nobody would consider it really tough at all, as it doesn't really do as much to kill you on a per-second basis as a lot of other games. But since there's a kill screen, and only a couple of people have reached it, even though the developers never intended that to be considered "beating" the game (in a normal game, it's intended to be beaten by more than a couple people, and not take forever to do so), now it's considered really difficult. That's pretty bogus. For the average player, who just plays for loop/clear or score, most arcade games are more difficult in practice.

You serious about Portal? That's one of the easier puzzle games I've ever played.

[Solarus]

You serious about Portal? That's one of the easier puzzle games I've ever played.

No joke. I'll see if I can find it later. That and a few others things on there made me... Smile...

[Ed Oscuro]

For all you people ragging on TG please remember they started in the 1980s.

Having heads stuck up behinds predates the 1980s, but good arbiters of world records have existed since...oh, 1955

It's just incredible that they let whatever goofball comes along with their own favorite "winning" DIP switch combination set that for everybody. The opportunities for abuse are too glaring to overlook. I'd create a Major Stryker highscore and mail them 15 pounds of VHS tapes if they accepted computer scores (also if I really had a burr up my ass; I don't).