Cause of death : Reversed into bullet

[MovingTarget]

So your reasons of death can mostly fall into these categories...

Loss of concentration, thinking about next level or whats for tea etc.

Overwhelmed by bullets, too many too fast

Hit by bullet coming from unexpected direction, I really hope a student studying forensics finds this thread in a google search....

Cockiness, goin for score etc

Which of the above affects you the most and how have you improved at it over the years? Is one of them still keeping you back more than the rest?

Loss of concentration is the most frustrating for me, its the one thing which I wonder about whether I'll ever be able to nail down Coping with masses of bullets slowly(very slowly) but surely gets easier with plenty practice at least. As does your peripheral awareness I suppose...

Feel free to chat about death

[Fighter17]

So your reasons of death can mostly fall into these categories...

Loss of concentration, thinking about next level or whats for tea etc.

Overwhelmed by bullets, too many too fast

Hit by bullet coming from unexpected direction, I really hope a student studying forensics finds this thread in a google search....

Cockiness, goin for score etc

Which of the above affects you the most and how have you improved at it over the years? Is one of them still keeping you back more than the rest?

Loss of concentration is the most frustrating for me, its the one thing which I wonder about whether I'll ever be able to nail down Coping with masses of bullets slowly(very slowly) but surely gets easier with plenty practice at least. As does your peripheral awareness I suppose...

Feel free to chat about death

All of them!!!! I die by all of these reasons!!!

[JBC]

I find it difficult to hit my bomb button at the right moment - i'm always a split second to late. I just can't mentally let it go that i HAVE to use that bomb to survive - I HAVE to. By the time this sinks in and i've smacked the button i'm already dead. I hesitate out of hard-headedness.

[MovingTarget]

All of them!!!! I die by all of these reasons!!!

Fine, ignore all my interesting questions then

I find it difficult to hit my bomb button at the right moment - i'm always a split second to late. I just can't mentally let it go that i HAVE to use that bomb to survive - I HAVE to. By the time this sinks in and i've smacked the button i'm already dead. I hesitate out of hard-headedness.

I do that a lot too, expecially if I'm going for score. If I'm going for survival then I use em up too fast!

[Dandy J]

The 2 worst are the topic or colliding with a powerup ship that fires no bullets.

[JBC]

Oh, yeah - i've done that a-many time too. I'm like 'Little red ship! Little red... ... shit!!!!'

[Fighter17]

All of them!!!! I die by all of these reasons!!!

Fine, ignore all my interesting questions then

My answer, all of them, because it always happens to me all the time. I can't press the bomb at the right second, too many fast bullets, don't know where that bullet came from, and more.

[Dave_K.]

In Battle Bakraid, I find myself backing into bullets I already dodged all the time. Maybe its the ship I use? but it seems the up/down motion is faster than side to side.

[sven666]

going for score!

im such a medal-whore its not even funny.

medal <- certain death <- sven -> survival

i always go for the damn medal

[kidneythief]

I find it difficult to hit my bomb button at the right moment - i'm always a split second to late. I just can't mentally let it go that i HAVE to use that bomb to survive - I HAVE to. By the time this sinks in and i've smacked the button i'm already dead. I hesitate out of hard-headedness.

signed

[BulletMagnet]

Bomb hoarding is a constant peril for me...I know that I CAN make it out of that pattern without using one, but I never actually do so. Yet I keep trying...and dying...

Then there's dying as a result of a slow fire rate, I tend to do that a lot, especially on Gradius...when only 2 of your bullets or so are allowed onscreen at once, you'll be sitting there in front of an approaching mid-size enemy, blasting away as fast as you can, but you don't pump enough ammo into him before he reaches you and kills you. Or, alternately, there are lots of small pesky enemies around, and as you try to swerve in front of one to pick it off, your two-bullt limit is already onscreen from a previous kill attempt, and you're unable to fire as it happily barrels into you.

Though I'm surprised no one has mentioned "Invisible Bullet Syndrome" yet, though that one's obviously only present in certain games.

[MovingTarget]

Flew straight into the first bullet of the first stage in dodonpachi last week. My very first action was flying straight into it. I didnt mind as it made me laugh

Losing your concentration in early stages and fuckin up is so damn annoying though, I know this is stupid, but yet I still sometimes slack off on the first stages. So on later stages when you have a few less lives than you should its all the more annoying.... Yet almost equally annoying is flying through all the stages then loosing 2 or more lives in quick succession, its like the first death throws you off balance losing you your concentration causing more mistakes... Then wasting all the bombs you'd saved up!

[Vexorg]

You missed one:

Forgot to get out of the way while the boss was charging up the giant laser'o'doom(TM).

[Thunder Force]

Add to the list my most frequent cause of death:

Repetitive stage injury (RSI); usually my initial one or two attempts of play on any given day will be my best performance, as subsequent attempts on the same day will cause a numb death-causing boredom to set in as I see the same stages and enemies over and over again. It's a habit from my 80s arcade origins with these games, where I would usually play only one credit per day on a game and then walk over to another machine in the arcade. The next day I'd be ready for another go. Two credits per day, tops.

[Specineff]

Arrogance. Meaning, not bombing when I can, trying to get slick and navigate a clump of bullets I have little chance of avoiding.

[landshark]

Bomb hoarding is a constant peril for me...I know that I CAN make it out of that pattern without using one, but I never actually do so. Yet I keep trying...and dying...

+1 to bomb hoarding. Kills me allllll the time. I keep trying for the bomb free run of round 1 Strikers 1999 and always get tagged as a result.

[D]

Tanks or planes that come from behind and shoot at you.
harrrr.

I find that on arcade cabs (that don't have auto fire, you don't have enough time to go for th bomb button whereas on consoles you can allready get one of your fingers closer to the bomb button.

Or maybe I have to practise more but when you are button mashing to shoot it's hard to keep another finger steady near the bomb button

[sjewkestheloon]

rsi is most definatel;y the main factor for me also. i've very recently picked up strikers 1945 again and i can easily get to 1-6, and almost to 1-7 in my first two or three tries, each time getting a palpabale sense of progress. from then on, however, i just die randomly on the first 4 stages. i enev die twice quickly for no reason. i think i'm going to restrict myself to this one game for a while to try and break this stupidity. i want to 1cc a damn psikyo game goddamnit *grummble*

[Pingu]

I often die from not getting directly into the system stright on when I change game. Like bombing when things get hairy only to see the bomb explode (and take out the boss or something) a second or so after you've already died or remebering that the hitbox is the whole ship and not a bloody pixel in the middle of it.

[PepsimanVsJoe]

I like it when bosses kill me AFTER they die(Hello Raizing!)
Also I suck at bombing. I'd have a full stock of bombs in Souky and simply fail to use them when they are needed(And I also fall into that ridiculous losing multiple lives in one stage..I 1-lifed to stage 5 and managed to lose THREE IN A ROW.. I stabbed myself.)

[JBC]

Have any of you guys ever 1cc'd Einhander? I did. I never played the game again. I think i did it to earn that crap police car or maybe the prototype.

I hate Einhander now.

I remember i'd always make it right to the last level before you fight the mech and i'd get blasted by something from behind me that i never ever saw. Like one tiny, pebble sized little piece of shit bullet that would come from a centimeter behind my ship and blow me to smithereens.

Einhander is a gay barnacle.

[captain ahar]

Einhander is a gay barnacle.

i have no idea what this means, but it is hilarious.

anyway, all of the above get me all the time. i think, as a whole, my lack of focus screws me with shmups. that can be lack of focus in game (phony dodge, bomb hoarding, etc) or lack of focus as a whole (such as not playing battle garegga enough to actually get competent. and i love it, but i don't seem to play it ).

also, i think its funny how one of these topics appears every couple weeks or so. people post on it, it stays alive for a bit, and then wastes away and is forgotten. nobody wants to talk about their stupid mistakes... for a few days, and then the phoenix rises.

[Diabollokus]

well for me it varies.

in manics, I've run out of bombs or ran out of room for dodging these bloody bullet things that keep coming towards me.

The fast bullets, Ones that my ship isn't fast enough to dodge.

Loss of concentration normally end up thinking about some girls boy friend I'd like to punch in the guts for getting their first.

I hate it when I ram into a bullet I've already dodged like moving left right then left again, maybe my control sucks.

[landshark]

Einhander is a gay barnacle.

i have no idea what this means, but it is hilarious.

That made me laugh too.

[pixelcorps]

funnily enough, i do better when I concentrate less, letting my mind drift about stuff while playing really helps.

[shiftace]

Outside distractions: 2%
Sensory overload: 3%
Single stray bullets: 5%
Arrogance: 90%

The above figures are not scientific.

[Leeram]

I think you've all missed one. The most annoying death for me..ever.. is when you chase a bullet half way across the screen and crash yourself into it, like it's pulling you with a magnet or something. I'm sure my brain is thinking it can head on over that way and not crash into it, but every time, bang I'm dead. There's no reason to chase the bullet and no reason to keep chasing it when you know you're on a collision course, but still it happens.



Cheers

Leeram

[extrarice]

The worst death for me is when I'm in the groove, peripheral vision getting me out of all sorts of scrapes, zipping through walls of bullets, diving in and out of waves of enemies...and I run into a wall I didn't see.

Concentration breaker.
Usually takes me two or three more ships to get back in the zone.

[Icarus]

Y'know, if you die by backing into or chasing bullets, then you should put down the joypad and take a break ^_-

(And for the record, I die more often than not from misjudging the size of my hitbox. "I think I can make it through that gap" often turns into *ship blowing up into a hail of shrapnel* because of that.)

[zaphod]

With some games you HAVE to concentrate. they are actually very easy as long as you can keep your concentration up. Gyruss (original) is one such game. Pretty much every death in that game is a stupid death. it's easy to get lulled ito a false sense of security, and then you lose your concentration and a meteor or stray shot or ship runs into you when you could have easily dodged it.

Others it's better to be in "the zone" and not concentrating.