What is the hardest or most impressive feat in SHMUPS?

[saucykobold]

If we're talking simply clears, Image Fight both loops via Penalty Zone. No cheating with autofire of course.

The second loop penalty area is amazingly difficult with autofire, but without auto, I have to wonder if it's feasible. I mean just look at it, aaaah (starts at 2:00). I'm having trouble even visualizing a winning route in which the player isn't able to kill anything.

Autofire use is one of the wider shmup community's house rules, more or less. You can argue that it's a bad house rule, but to brand it as "cheating" seems flatly wrong and a bit obnoxious.

[MathU]

Extreme autofire setups very greatly diminish the challenge of Image Fight and some other older shooters of that time frame. Maybe you don't like the design of them or think they're just plain unfair, but that doesn't change the fact that you're giving yourself an unintended advantage.

And maybe the Penalty Zone is still hard on the second loop even with it, but that is the difficulty IREM intended for it to have--it is called the 'Penalty Zone' after all. The trick to getting through the Penalty Zone on either loop (not to trivialize its difficulty in any way) by the way is not to obsess over killing enemies anyway. They put far more enemies with far more health than any player can hope to all destroy--it's a play on the previous part of the game where they wanted you to blow up as much as possible. There's not many you really have to destroy and trying to deal with too many makes you more vulnerable than staying alert and mobile.

[TheSyllogist]

Clear DOJ Death Label.

Are there World Records for this mode? I didn't see it in our STG hall of records.

[Illyrian]

Can we add Dimahoo counterstop to the list? I know Bananamatic probably mentioned the 2-all already

[Drachenherz]

Most impressive feet in SHMUPS:

/thread.

[TheSyllogist]

I wonder how many people have faced "Bloody Jitterbug" in Deathsmiles MBL lvl 999.

Here is a player named "Sinmoon" achieving it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxWY_59XAHA

[Drake]

Who is this player called "sinmoon", I have never heard of this mysterious man

I will watch this replay with much interest

[TheSyllogist]

Who is this player called "sinmoon", I have never heard of this mysterious man

I will watch this replay with much interest

I am fairly new to this genre. Is he a popular super player among shumpers?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I am fairly new to this genre. Is he a popular super player among shumpers?

Do a Youtube search for his name. Stuff like this pops up. That should answer your question.

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

He has a page of video downloads.
http://sinmoon.sakuraweb.com/movie.html

[NTSC-J]

Clear DOJ Death Label.

Are there World Records for this mode? I didn't see it in our STG hall of records.

The Hall of Records is for arcade scores, so we don't have listings for console-exclusive games or modes like DOJ Death Label. Not because there's anything wrong with console shooters, but its just really hard to get information on what the world records are.

[TheSyllogist]

Clear DOJ Death Label.

Are there World Records for this mode? I didn't see it in our STG hall of records.

The Hall of Records is for arcade scores, so we don't have listings for console-exclusive games or modes like DOJ Death Label. Not because there's anything wrong with console shooters, but its just really hard to get information on what the world records are.

Ah ok. Is there a World Record listed anywhere for DOJ DL?

[BIL]

Has anyone else even cleared Death Label since MON cracked it a couple years back?

I think I read that doj death label had been done by someone else after mon. Still only 2 or so people though.

I vaguely recall hearing something like that too...

[iconoclast]

There's another DOJ DL clear with B-L here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0s9oFoFVGg

[BIL]

Cool, thanks!

[TheSyllogist]

There's another DOJ DL clear with B-L here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0s9oFoFVGg

Awesome

[Hagane]

A NMNB of Dragon Blaze would rank pretty high.

[Squire Grooktook]

Autofire use is one of the wider shmup community's house rules, more or less. You can argue that it's a bad house rule, but to brand it as "cheating" seems flatly wrong and a bit obnoxious.

Extreme autofire setups very greatly diminish the challenge of Image Fight and some other older shooters of that time frame. Maybe you don't like the design of them or think they're just plain unfair, but that doesn't change the fact that you're giving yourself an unintended advantage.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it cheating, but I wouldn't call it a house rule either. I mean, you're using emulator only tool assistance to do something that wouldn't be possible in the arcades (and for the most part, the console ports as well) and on top of that, completely and utterly breaks the games play style and intended difficulty curb. It's the equivalent of going into a fighting game in emulator netplay and using custom macro's to perform infinites that wouldn't be possible otherwise, and breaks the game so hard that you question life itself.

Of course, it depends on the game. But it's especially bothersome in games that not only greatly enhance your fire power, but specialize in big beefy enemies that normally take a lot of punishment, since it allows you to roast them and "solve" stages in ways that the devs may never have intended to be possible.

[Erppo]

I wouldn't go so far as to call it cheating, but I wouldn't call it a house rule either. I mean, you're using emulator only tool assistance to do something that wouldn't be possible in the arcades (and for the most part, the console ports as well) and on top of that, completely and utterly breaks the games play style and intended difficulty curb.

Pretty much all official Japanese records were done with autofire in games where it's beneficial. Pretty much all scoreboards of this site allow autofire. How is that not a house rule?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Of course, it depends on the game. But it's especially bothersome in games that not only greatly enhance your fire power, but specialize in big beefy enemies that normally take a lot of punishment, since it allows you to roast them and "solve" stages in ways that the devs may never have intended to be possible.

It's obviously not unreasonable in games where there's a hard cap on firing rate that's easily achievable by normal tapping like Akuu Gallet, Cyvern or Giga Wing (which has an autofire button in its console port), so in those cases autofire is more of a convenience tool so that you don't hurt your finger unnecessarily, makes it more accessible for people with arthritis, etc. Really, it's equivalent to turning on C button autofire in a Cave game.

But then you've got games like Darius, Salamander, Blazing Star or Sine Mora where autofire makes a massive impact on damage impact to the point where it seriously changes the game and your damage output. I still wouldn't want to play without autofire though, because tapping one button constantly throughout the entire game, especially in a game where faster = stronger, gets really damn tiresome.

I think I remember reading some people who play Darius use autofire, but at a 'reasonable' tapping speed that's achievable normally, instead of as fast as possible so as to avoid completely breaking things.

[Squire Grooktook]

I wouldn't go so far as to call it cheating, but I wouldn't call it a house rule either. I mean, you're using emulator only tool assistance to do something that wouldn't be possible in the arcades (and for the most part, the console ports as well) and on top of that, completely and utterly breaks the games play style and intended difficulty curb.

Pretty much all official Japanese records were done with autofire in games where it's beneficial. Pretty much all scoreboards of this site allow autofire. How is that not a house rule?

I thought we were talking about it being a house rule not to use it?

snip

Yeah I agree, I was mostly referring to the actual game breaking at work. Using it to avoid finger breaking is fine, just as long as it's not venturing into the territory of "I can speed kill the final boss by holding down one button before he even gets a chance to use his last pattern."

[Drake]

I wouldn't go so far as to call it cheating, but I wouldn't call it a house rule either

I thought we were talking about it being a house rule not to use it?

??????
If you were talking about the rule being not using it then why would you say you wouldn't call it cheating?

It's the equivalent of going into a fighting game in emulator netplay and using custom macro's to perform infinites that wouldn't be possible otherwise, and breaks the game so hard that you question life itself.

what no it isn't

Seriously I don't think there's much to be said here. It's a matter of "did the devs actually have half a brain to set a limit on how fast a person can tap the button". If so, autofire is such a natural consequence that it's almost weird not to have an option enabling it. If not, using autofire probably makes a significant impact on the game and generally shouldn't be done in this case, even if it's the devs' fault for being dumb.

[Squire Grooktook]

I wouldn't go so far as to call it cheating, but I wouldn't call it a house rule either

I thought we were talking about it being a house rule not to use it?

??????
If you were talking about the rule being not using it then why would you say you wouldn't call it cheating?

Because cheating is a very harsh word lol.

To me, in the extreme cases of the game being broken by it, it's more like playing an arrange mode. The game is different, the difficulty is different, the play style is different.

what no it isn't

I think it is, because you're basically doing something that can be done on emulators only that the devs never intended, even if it was there own fault. You don't even need to use complex macro's in some fighters, just mapping all 3 punches to a single button in any of the older Marvel Vs Capcom games let's you do air dash infinites that are nearly impossible in arcades.

Seriously I don't think there's much to be said here. It's a matter of "did the devs actually have half a brain to set a limit on how fast a person can tap the button". If so, autofire is such a natural consequence that it's almost weird not to have an option enabling it. If not, using autofire probably makes a significant impact on the game and generally shouldn't be done in this case, even if it's the devs' fault for being dumb.

I agree. Anyway, I'm sure that this topic has already been discussed several times over, so I think maybe we should just drop it now before the thread gets completely derailed.

[Jaimers]

There's another DOJ DL clear with B-L here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0s9oFoFVGg

There is also another A-L clear and an A-S clear here and here by the same guy.

But yeah I don't really think a 5-minute game with a few hard parts is really the hardest thing ever.

[Ghegs]

what no it isn't

I think it is, because you're basically doing something that can be done on emulators only that the devs never intended, even if it was there own fault.

Except that most home ports of shmups (at least from PS1/SAT era and onwards) have autofire options, including ones like Raiden DX, Image Fight and Salamander. If my memory serves, Raiden DX even lets you set the autofire rate exactly to what you want. Clearly the devs intended for these to be used.

[trap15]

doing something that can be done on emulators only

There are very simple circuits you can make which would perform autofire on a cab.

[NTSC-J]

doing something that can be done on emulators only

There are very simple circuits you can make which would perform autofire on a cab.

And there are many arcades in Japan that have autofire setups. Some even go so far as to adjust them for each specific game, like here for Battle Garegga:

[BareKnuckleRoo]

doing something that can be done on emulators only

There are very simple circuits you can make which would perform autofire on a cab.

The ones I've seen set button 1 to autofire. Is there any way of setting button 3 to autofire as button 1 (for 2-button games where you'd still like to have non-autofire for a charge shot, etc)? I haven't seen any diagrams for such a thing.

[Ghegs]

I use modded Saturn pads with my CMVS and Supergun, those have two Button 1's and one of them does autofire. You'd have to ask RGB about the specifics though, he built them for me.

[TheSyllogist]

What defines autofire? Is it just holding the fire button in? Because I would think everyone does that as tapping the fire button for 20 min+ would be bad for the fingers.

Is it when tapping the fire button faster produces a stronger shot and setting up autofire gives the player an unfair advantage over the system of the game? Or even making the game fire faster than programmed to? How would these be set up on a cab?