Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

[Nasirosuchus]

Just got the 1CC for In The Hunt.

Right now, I'm just messing around with the several hundred shmups in my library to see which one I want to get into next.

[O. Van Bruce]

PLaying some Aero Fighters SNES version to remember my childhood.

Damm, was it really that hard?

[fogelmir]

Akai Katana US port. 2 1cc's and A score run of over 1,300,000,000. Now working on increasing my score. Fun has now become work.

Sometimes working on Silvergun too.

[ChainsawGuitarSP]

PLaying some Aero Fighters SNES version to remember my childhood.

Damm, was it really that hard?

>Playing Aero Fighters in childhood
>Playing Touhou now, in adulthood

Such a typical fall from grace...

[Meseki]

Finally 1CC'd Crimson Clover Simple mode today, though my score was only 4088万6550, less than 2/3rds my best (which is the lowest on the scoreboard on Restart Syndrome). It was really close, as I was getting close to needing a bomb I didn't have on my last life. I also got gyped out of the extra life bonus, since it's given to you at the same time as the Stage Clear bonus, which had given me an extra life. Now I need to play Original mode a whole lot to get the ~2.65 million more Item Points I need to buy Type Z.
That's also my 4th 1CC on PC STG's aside from the TWINS series and a few Touhou games, after Genetos (was it the second difficulty?), RefRain ~prism memories~ (Normal, with Tee), and Blue Wish Resurrection Plus (Original, Auto Guard/Wait On).

Also, I played some of the Hitogata Happa demo again on Steam, raising my score on Euridice difficulty to a little over 20 million, placing me in 15th on the demo's leaderboard. Then again, most people probably didn't play the demo for very long, especially considering the price. However, I have like no money, so I'll probably be stuck with the demo even though the game's on sale.

[null1024]

Triggerheart Exelica [DC].

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. I should probably just let all those shiny medals go byebye and fight the easy forms of bosses... -_-
But then I would feel like a total wuss.

[blackoak]

goddamn batrider. 8mil going in to stage 7, kept medal chain all the way to end of st6 (stupid miss too), went to get extend... and missed it because of that stupid grate. it was just malicious of the developers to put that there. how do players handle this? point blank the zako? dont shoot? l2p?

and the letter score was in sight...

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

Finally got around to buying Akai Katana, so I've been playing that.

[neorichieb1971]

Raiden DX.

As its 2p and the wife has actually started to join in. She's crap, but she enjoys it none the less. We play until all my lives run out on 1 credit. By which time she has run out of Yen to feed the machine lol.

[RNGmaster]

It's been real odd to watch the Dragon Blaze 2-ALL by that french guy BOS. Some of his tricks for difficult sections are ones I haven't thought of, and using them is really improving my consistency, but there are just so many sections where I feel like he's doing something really inefficient or wasting a bomb on a section that I've found a really easy workaround for. I'm sure he'd say the same for my latest replays (if they didn't desync, aaaaaargh)

Both of us have pretty much been playing on our own and making up our own routes based on experimentation and successful improvisation. These routes are successful, but I can't help but think that both BOS and I would have much higher scores if we lived closer and were in regular communication, maybe went to the same arcade. It's like we both have a piece to the puzzle, but we can't put it together because we're in two different buildings (that is a retarded metaphor). There may be some credence here to the theory that the arcade environment more than anything else is responsible for Japanese players being better than Western players.

Basically, I'm starting to learn from experience the benefits of using replays. Each replay you watch and each section you figure out on your own give you a piece of the puzzle, but there are some sections that you simply can't find a solution to on your own. I used to rankle at the idea of using replays, thinking I was just cribbing off other players, but if you ever want to be able to play a game well, you can't rely on the inefficient homegrown paths you've made through trial and error.

I know none of you care but here's my DB 2-ALL progress:

I've finished working on paths for 2-4 and 2-5 for a while - got them down to 1 or 2 bombs per stage which is ideal. Now it's on to 2-6, where I will need every single bit of help I can get. The 2-all is not very far away, but I don't know when it will happen because the difficulty of 2-6 and 2-7 are unknown factors.

Current plan is to review each stage up to and including 2-5 and see if I can no-miss them consistently. In the last few days before STGT I'll try a few runs and see if I can beat my last personal record.

[EmperorIng]

do you have some form of savestates you're working off of, or are you getting to these levels manually, each and every time?

[RNGmaster]

Uh, I heavily use savestates for practice. I'm not superhuman, come on :V I haven't even gotten to 2-5 in a real run.

Every single letter and number key on my keyboard has a savestate tied to it. 0-9 and q-r cover the start of each stage, and the remainder are bosses, particularly tough loop sections, the 1-7 midboss, etc. One of the biggest dilemmas I have while practicing is getting to a new area and having to decide which savestate I have to write over to make room for the new one. It's real damn disorganized and messy but it does a good job of fulfilling the ultimate goal.

It also takes the stress out of practice in addition to saving a buttload of time - I don't feel so bad about getting hit if I can just try again. Sometimes, while I'm trying to improvise my way through a difficult section and play reactively, I hit on a really cool technique that makes survival that much easier. If I was just doing full runs and bombing everything that looked dangerous, I might not have found out that I could do that, you know?

I would say savestates are not necessary for 1-all practice though they do help, but for 2-ALL practice not using savestates is pretty much guaranteed to destroy your sanity.

[shmuppyLove]

Paperboy

[O. Van Bruce]

PLaying some Aero Fighters SNES version to remember my childhood.

Damm, was it really that hard?

>Playing Aero Fighters in childhood
>Playing Touhou now, in adulthood

Such a typical fall from grace...

Awww... don't be so harsh with me. I haven't been playing shmups for 10 years when I rediscovered then through Touhou.

Anyway, there are some good Touhous, right?

[trap15]

Anyway, there are some good Touhous, right?

No.

[O. Van Bruce]

Anyway, there are some good Touhous, right?

No.

Not even Perfect Chery Blossom and Imperishable Night?

I can understand there are very unforgivable flaws on the ohers but these 2 are superior to most of the doujin shmups and even some comercial ones.

Why would you say these 2 are bad?

[trap15]

Why would you say these 2 are bad?

Because they're Toho.

[chum]

Do you not have any arguments at all? Opinions aren't worth jack shit if you can't even argue your point.

[trap15]

[O. Van Bruce]

He just avoids the question... well, nothing less from the internet...

[trap15]

stillnotgettingit.jpeg

[exquisite_torture]

stillnotgettingit.jpeg

Pretty much.

[O. Van Bruce]

stillnotgettingit.jpeg

Like I should...

[Meseki]

For the first time, I actually used a Practice Mode seriously today. I wanted to clear TWilight INSanity (on Easy with the Hoshimi twins) on the B route, and after an attempt to get on 6-B again, I found that 5-B was raising my P-Rate too high, so I proceeded to practice it. I formed a vague route through the stage and found where I needed to bomb. When watching the replay again, I found that not only did I no-miss the stage, but I also only bombed after obtaining an extra bomb, so my route even works if I come into the stage with no bombs. I then improved my route some and found some spots in the bosses' patterns to bomb in order to make things easier, and made a better reference replay.
Since I was going for a clear as opposed to scoring, and my reference replay left room for some mistakes, I decided to go for a full run after practicing 6-B once. However, I found that I was choosing the wrong option on 5-B to go to 6-B, so I had to try again after I had gotten everything right. That choice also slightly affected how I fought the boss.

When I chose the right option on 5-B and then got the Maiha-B ending (with a score of 67mil compared to my previous ~53mil), I found what the translator meant when they said "the A endings (for poor play/choices) are all happier than the B endings". Then again, I guess it's kind of an incentive to get the C ending, since the B route doesn't really leave too many questions unanswered like the A route does (at least with the Hoshimi twins).

[EmperorIng]

Uh, I heavily use savestates for practice. I'm not superhuman, come on :V I haven't even gotten to 2-5 in a real run.

Every single letter and number key on my keyboard has a savestate tied to it. 0-9 and q-r cover the start of each stage, and the remainder are bosses, particularly tough loop sections, the 1-7 midboss, etc. One of the biggest dilemmas I have while practicing is getting to a new area and having to decide which savestate I have to write over to make room for the new one. It's real damn disorganized and messy but it does a good job of fulfilling the ultimate goal.

It also takes the stress out of practice in addition to saving a buttload of time - I don't feel so bad about getting hit if I can just try again. Sometimes, while I'm trying to improvise my way through a difficult section and play reactively, I hit on a really cool technique that makes survival that much easier. If I was just doing full runs and bombing everything that looked dangerous, I might not have found out that I could do that, you know?

I would say savestates are not necessary for 1-all practice though they do help, but for 2-ALL practice not using savestates is pretty much guaranteed to destroy your sanity.

sorry for the silly question.

It's just that I didn't even know MAME had savestates as an option.
Unless you're going by the PS2 release!

[azinth]

sorry for the silly question.

It's just that I didn't even know MAME had savestates as an option.

And now that you do know, go and 1cc everything.

[Klatrymadon]

Revisiting Pulstar at the moment. Got the first 3 stages down, and most of the fourth. Might attempt a 1CC, but I'm playing this with a pad, and it's giving me a fair amount of pain, for some reason. Possibly the constant switching between charging and tapping is making me press too hard, but I don't have this problem with R-Type games at all...

[BPzeBanshee]

Akai Katana! It finally arrived!

Ironically, in direct contrast to everyone else in the AK thread saying Zetsu/Shin (the ones that aren't Origin in RSG's release) I'm actually finding that the Arcade mode makes more sense to me. Playing that in Novice mode got me to the final stage and with my first score to actually beat the 50mil default.

Also, it fits on my screen perfectly. And ironically (again) it looks better when stretched to 16:9 on a widescreen LCD TV than the other modes do because they still have black bars on top/bottom! To the 'little things that annoy the hell out of you' thread!

[Kiken]

Also, it fits on my screen perfectly. And ironically (again) it looks better when stretched to 16:9 on a widescreen LCD TV than the other modes do because they still have black bars on top/bottom! To the 'little things that annoy the hell out of you' thread!

If there's any visible frame when playing the two 16:9 modes then adjust the overscan in the Options menu. If they still aren't displaying correctly then it's an overscan issue with your TV (you should be able to adjust that in your TV's sub menus).

As for me, it's back to Mushi Futari 1.5 Maniac... still trying to get up to that 500 million goal with Ab Parm, but I just have no consistency at all at the moment.

[soupbones]

Truxton.

God damn, that area 108 boss is impossible without fully powered up lightning.