STGT '11 Week 1 - Gokujou Parodius thoughts and discussion!

[Deca]

What determines when bells are released from normal item-bearing enemies?

[Hagane]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SHdLqmyGbA

To score that high, you'd have to do a lot of purple bell farming and Special Stage milking--get to the end of the level, kill the TLB and suicide at the same time, repeat until you have no lives left, win the game.

Many thanks! I was just chaining yellow ones.

[drauch]

I'd say Sexy Parodius is the highlight of the series, if anything; but yeah, that is essentially the main series. Different versions have certain characters added/omitted, as well as secret levels and such. Oh, and there is some silly strategy game that exists as well.

[sikraiken]

I'm seeing the world record is over six million, how the hell does he get so many points? Any good superplays to watch?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SHdLqmyGbA

To score that high, you'd have to do a lot of purple bell farming and Special Stage milking--get to the end of the level, kill the TLB and suicide at the same time, repeat until you have no lives left, win the game.

The reason the arcadia record with koitsu is 6M is due to the fact they play with 2loop settings. For STGT, we are only doing 1loop.

By the way, I find it funny that the same person who took down his replays during XEXEX is the same person who is posting that gokuparo youtube video on the forums. ;)

[Remxi]

Does someone mind writing a small explanation of the mechanics in this (or link me somewhere)? What's the difference between Auto, Semi-Auto and Manual and how does the powerup/medal system work? I've never played a Gradius or Parodius game before and it's a little confusing trying to get started.

[Sumez]

I'm excited to have a reason to play my PCB! It came with the cab that I bought, but since I TATE my monitor 99% of the time I've spent maybe only an hour playing it in the past.

:O
If you aren't too attached to it, and looking to sell once STGT is over, let me know

[Sumez]

Yeah I believe there is rank which is probably similar to other Gradius-type games where it is affected by survival time and how much you're powered up.

Dying once or multiple times noticeably reduces rank if it's high it seems.
I've been trying to keep it down by going minimal spread power, missiles, and maybe a shield here and there. Yet stage 3 remains pretty hectic. I'm trying to treat it like the rank from Gradius 1 which gets crazy if you power up more than 2 options.

Ranking in Parodius is pretty severe, which wouldn't be a problem if you had enough extends, but after the second one you're out of luck (in Da! - I don't remember if you even get them in Gokujyou), so it's tough as hell to manage. If anyone is an expert in managing Parodius rank, I'd love to see them spill the beans.

[burgerkingdiamond]

Any quick tips on scoring? mechanics?

I took a quick run last night and after I beat the mermaid instead of going to the cake level I was on the moai level... The cake level's supposed to be 3rd right?

[Sumez]

Moai level can happen after either of the stages depending on what your score is when you defeat the boss.

[burgerkingdiamond]

Moai level can happen after either of the stages depending on what your score is when you defeat the boss.

which one is from higher score?

[hwl]

I'm already about to ragequit this first week. I hate this game when it comes to scoring.

[Aguraki]

some helps here:
strats shmup thread: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=4106
gokujo wikia:http://gradius.wikia.com/wiki/Gokuj%C5%8D_Parodius!

I have a tough time with the autofire on wolfmame 0.99,changing bell color with it is tough.
Also what fire rate(auto fire settings) do you use,I can't get a nice one its either slow or in packs.

[Sumez]

which one is from higher score?

Stolen table from GameFAQs:
Stage 2 - Hundreds digit is 8 or 9
Stage 3 - Hundreds digit is 6 or 7
Stage 4 - Hundreds digit is 4 or 5
Stage 5 - Hundreds digit is 1, 2, or 3
Stage 6 - Hundreds digit is 0

I wouldn't worry too much about it. There's about 20% chance of reaching the maoi stage after each boss, (~30% after the 4th boss, 10% after the 5th), so with a complete playthrough giving you nearly 70% chance of randomly reaching it, I wouldn't start looking at the score until a few stages in.

[Deca]

I wouldn't worry too much about it. There's about 20% chance of reaching the maoi stage after each boss, (~30% after the 4th boss, 10% after the 5th), so with a complete playthrough giving you nearly 70% chance of randomly reaching it, I wouldn't start looking at the score until a few stages in.

Might be worth forcing it out after stage 2 to take it on at lower rank...though you'll have to deal with the following stage at higher rank. The stage isn't as difficult as it may seem, and stage 3 can really turn into a mess if the rank gets up on you. I'm thinking activation after stage 3 is ideal, but then again that boss doesn't allow for any easy score manipulation sooo...

Decisions, decisions! This game is fun, I like it

[Sumez]

I always loved the Parodius games, some of the first Saturn titles I got, but I never really played them competitively. So even though I'm not participating in STGT, I'm hoping it will encourage people on here to get more into rank management and share what they find out.

[Herr Schatten]

Does someone mind writing a small explanation of the mechanics in this (or link me somewhere)? What's the difference between Auto, Semi-Auto and Manual and how does the powerup/medal system work? I've never played a Gradius or Parodius game before and it's a little confusing trying to get started.

Auto: The game picks powerups for you. Shot and missiles are mapped to one button. Checkpoints are removed in favour of instant respawn.
Semiauto: The game picks powerups for you like in auto mode, but you can press the powerup button, if you want to pick one outside of the automatic routine. Shot and missiles are mapped to one button. When you die, you go back to a checkpoint.
Manual: Three buttons - shot, missiles, and powerup. You must activate the powerups manually. Checkpoints are intact.

Powerup-system: You see a bar on the bottom of the screen. Everytime you collect an orange powerup item, the highlighted field on the bar moves one step to the right. Press the powerup button when the item you want is highlighted. Different characters have different powerup bars, so it's fun to experiment a bit.

Medal system: Chain yellow bells for increasing point values. Their value is reset if you let one escape. Bells of different colours give various wonky special powers for limited amounts of time.

[Sumez]

Doesn't the bell chain also break when you let a non-yellow bell go or even pick up a non-yellow one?

[Bananamatic]

Also, doesn't the supersize bell break the chain as you can't pick them up when the screen vertically moves?

[Chaos Phoenixma]

Trying to practice up on stuff with savestates before recording .inp runs.


Definitely a fun game, and an actual scoring system in one of these games. It's still way too easy to chain break. Knowing about the purple bells makes it something I should try to incorporate. I thought milking the first boss just involved killing the enemies a lot, but that bell milking is insane. Hopefully I can learn how to do that.


That boss based on Big Core Mk. III is so much harder than the one from Gradius III Arcade. I could see my best runs for the week ending on that. Not sure yet which character I'll stick with.

[Icarus]

Bell chain only breaks if you drop one, not if you pick up a colored one.

[Emuser]

DAMMIT Bizet get out of my head!

I've been practicing stage 1 exclusively since the STGT started to get tons of points on it, I'm finally getting the hang of it but now I'm hearing Bizet's Les Toreadors Carmen Suite 1(think thats what the specific piece is called at least that you hear on the stage 1 boss) in my head at work. I will honestly never be able to get the image of a dancing panda in a tutu vs the Vic Viper out of my head whenever I hear that piece ever again.

Regardless though, I can see myself getting about 1.2 Mil at the least by week's end once I can get at least 550,000 on the first two stages then play the rest of the game in a less extreme manner.

[Moniker]

As for autofire, I find it helpful to have one button set to auto and another set to normal for bell control (you can do this with custom buttons).

Edit: also, I believe that a given enemy will consistently yield up a bell or a powerup, unless you die. Not sure about the unless you die part, would have to do some testing. Eg. the second pink penguin on stage 1 always gives a bell.

[BulletMagnet]

Medal system: Chain yellow bells for increasing point values. Their value is reset if you let one escape. Bells of different colours give various wonky special powers for limited amounts of time.

Someone refresh my memory...does collecting certain "powerup" bells two times in a row (i.e., collecting a blue bell, then collecting another blue before you've used up the first one) give a load of points here, or does that only apply in Twinbee?

[saucykobold]

That boss based on Big Core Mk. III is so much harder than the one from Gradius III Arcade. I could see my best runs for the week ending on that.

Here's a method I tried earlier today. Keep a bell cluster going until you reach the pre-boss clearing, then get a red bell. Just before the face opens up, move directly in front of it and fire a Kiku Beam. Back off and avoid his attack, repeat as needed. Made pretty short work of him.

The reason the arcadia record with koitsu is 6M is due to the fact they play with 2loop settings.

Interesting, didn't know that. Now I'm kinda curious as to whether they used two loop settings for other games that defaulted to a single loop.

And yeah, the Xexex replay incident wasn't especially classy. I've recanted my hard-line stance against sharing videos with other teams, ha ha.

[Aliquantic]

The reason the arcadia record with koitsu is 6M is due to the fact they play with 2loop settings. For STGT, we are only doing 1loop.

Very interesting indeed, thanks! We were wondering how on Earth it was possible to get that high... by the way do you happen to have a recent list of Arcadia records? Plasmo's forums got wiped out a while ago

Unrelated but I've tried one credit without autofire and I cannot imagine getting anywhere in that game without it... but I'm no expert obviously :s

[Sumez]

Edit: also, I believe that a given enemy will consistently yield up a bell or a powerup, unless you die. Not sure about the unless you die part, would have to do some testing. Eg. the second pink penguin on stage 1 always gives a bell.

Well as long as you kill all powerup enemies.
Eg. the second bald eagle in the intro of the first stage will normally give you a bunch of bells, but not if you miss an enemy formation before it.

[Kollision]

For STGT, we are only doing 1loop.

Hmmm.... This should be made clear in the 1st post of the HS thread then.

[RNGmaster]

Hmmm.... This should be made clear in the 1st post of the HS thread then.

No need. gokuparo.zip only has one loop.

[MauJustice]

I swear I have the worst luck with purple bells. I finally get them to purple and there aren't any enemies on screen to use it...

[ColonelFatso]

Yeah, correctly whoring the purple bells takes a lot of planning.

If it helps at all, the bells cycle through the same order every time (i.e. if it's white now, the next colour after gold will always be red, and after red is purple, etc.)