Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu, my new crack.

[Skykid]

'm just defending saying it's the best thing IGS has ever made by a mile.

I know, but that's the part I don't agree with. If you said it's your favourite IGS game by a mile, that would be a more realistic statement.

People over there could just have shit tastes.

Wow, no way. The level of taste in these arcades is the highest I've ever witnessed. Chinese people will ignore any game that doesn't cut it, no matter how new or current, and it's eventually whisked away to leave a largely fat free gaming venue. IGS do well because their games are genuinely good!

Obviously the Valor and Oriental Legend series have appeal to this particular ethnic group, but they happen to be really solid.

They entered the beatemup genre after it died and the mechanics frankly, unless you are doing something deep and fresh and fun it's not going to be interesting to me. It's repetitive and mundane - kind of like Metal Slug games. By the time you get to the end it just feels like "ok that's enough of that, time to shelve it for another year". The graphics might be 10/10 but the gameplay is not addictive to me. Coming up with some fresh and fun mechanics like Viewtiful Joe would have been one thing. What they did is make poor man's Capcom CPS2 beatemups and get decently received because there was virtually no arcade competition.

Dunno... Martial Masters is a very old game, I'm sure Sammy was releasing 2D beat em ups like Rumble Fish, KOF and Hokuto no Ken and Guilty Gear years after PGM1.

The point is, IGS have made a lot of good games. Obviously no-one outside of Asia will ever get to play their latest arcade racing games, so just take it from me that they're awesome. But the old PGM stuff was really quite good, to the point where I'd argue they refined their game design quite a bit after Bee Storm, which is a fun spin-off but in a sort of fake cheesy, largely unbalanced way. Titles like Demon Front etc. are really tight.

Anyway, here's the racing series, Speed Driver, the fourth instalment just hit every arcade in the vicinity a couple of months ago:

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

I should have said favorite I guess but I don't consider fighting games to be the same genre as beatemups so those Sammy games don't count. 1 on 1 fighters are totally different from beatemups. I definitely didn't know IGS had started making racing games though the backbone of their income is probably still shitty gamblers.

[Skykid]

I should have said favorite I guess but I don't consider fighting games to be the same genre as beatemups so those Sammy games don't count. 1 on 1 fighters are totally different from beatemups. I definitely didn't know IGS had started making racing games though the backbone of their income is probably still shitty gamblers.

They make eeeeeverything! Man, I should do a round up one day. You'd be surprised.

I'm not sure what 'shitty gamblers' you're referring to though, as gambling is illegal in China.

I've seen some redemption machines and puzzle game thingys that might resemble some sort of gambling machine - but they don't pay out.

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

Their exports are apparently different. They have long since been one of the kings of gamblers here. I'd definitely check out a post with all their current China gaming info.

[jasoncslaughter]

I realize I'm a little late to the discussion, but I think Daifukkatsu is a great game. I enjoy Black Label significantly more, though, and I think that if anyone's looking to play the game, this is definitely the version to try. The autobomb complaints I think are a bit overstated, as you don't have to play bomb style (or you could just turn the autobomb off). I do admit the laser wheels in stage 5 are the worst, and the chaining in 1.5 makes little sense to me, but I still think this is a quality game. Maybe if it wasn't a DDP game, opinions would be different. Maybe not.

[blackoak]

Its funny how the laser wheels seem to be almost universally reviled. They largely ruin the game for me too. I've never seen Cave acknowledge them as a bad or botched idea, though...

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

Quite the opposite, they put them on a t-shirt.

[trap15]

I need to get that shirt asap

[Erppo]

Its funny how the laser wheels seem to be almost universally reviled. They largely ruin the game for me too. I've never seen Cave acknowledge them as a bad or botched idea, though...

Now this is just getting ridiculous.

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

I need to get that shirt asap

It was last seen going pretty cheap.

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 00#p906400

Middle pic bottom left, black with silver shitwheels.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

Loop 1 laser wheels are fine. It's the loop 2 ones that completely screwed me up, but that's supposed to be very hard.

[ptoing]

Its funny how the laser wheels seem to be almost universally reviled. They largely ruin the game for me too. I've never seen Cave acknowledge them as a bad or botched idea, though...

Now this is just getting ridiculous.

I don't think they have to appologise or anything, but it still is bad design, and I hope someone involved in doing it does notice that now.

When I was talking to Udderdude about it he was joking they might have put it in as a last ditch effort so that not every noob will 1CC it super fast. If it was not for the wheels DFK 1.5 would be the easiest Cave STG to play for survival, imo, what with autobombs (unless Power Mode), as well as gratuitous bullet cancelling.

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

An easier and quicker last ditch effort would have been to simply lower the amount of bombs you get / lower the max stock numbers.

[ptoing]

Or do the autobomb like in SDOJ.

[system11]

I realize I'm a little late to the discussion, but I think Daifukkatsu is a great game. I enjoy Black Label significantly more, though, and I think that if anyone's looking to play the game, this is definitely the version to try. The autobomb complaints I think are a bit overstated, as you don't have to play bomb style (or you could just turn the autobomb off). I do admit the laser wheels in stage 5 are the worst, and the chaining in 1.5 makes little sense to me, but I still think this is a quality game. Maybe if it wasn't a DDP game, opinions would be different. Maybe not.

On a vanilla DFK PCB, you can't turn it off.

[Jaimers]

If Laser Wheels are such bad and unfun design than I wonder why variations of it constantly keep popping up in various doujin shmups.

Laser Wheels are one of the best and most fun obstacles ever made to dodge.
Just take one look at a replay to see how they're supposed to be dodged and you're set. I've also heard that this method works wonders for pretty much anything in this genre!

[Skykid]

If Laser Wheels are such bad and unfun design than I wonder why variations of it constantly keep popping up in various doujin shmups.

Laser Wheels are one of the best and most fun obstacles ever made to dodge.
Just take one look at a replay to see how they're supposed to be dodged and you're set. I've also heard that this method works wonders for pretty much anything in this genre!

Is studying replays to decipher a singular section of a game really preferable to being able to organically tackle it in an enjoyable and progressive fashion during repeat play? I think not. The laser wheels must be hella fun once you got your route, but I've been on this in the arcade for ages, and without running off to study replays and grid coordinates, I've found the wheels to be a simply terrible design invention that sucks the fucking life out of your run every time you reach them. Each time I get there I'm none the wiser either.

[ptoing]

The bad design bit is mainly due to the fact that they are the only thing in the entire game which is not destructable, and as such it introduces a new game element at the very end. This is not a good practise generally.

Just because a lot of people doing something does not mean it is good design. Most games which have lives (such as all super mario games after SMB2 (the japanese one)) arguably do not need lives (or score for that matter). In those cases it just does not manifest as something potentially annoying.

Also what Skykid said.

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

It's a bad design because it gets more complaints than anything else about the game. So how is it good design if so many people hate it.

[Bananamatic]

It's a bad design because it gets more complaints than anything else about the game. So how is it good design if so many people hate it.

complaints from people who think "playing shmups" means "jacking off to my $300 scanline generator"

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

I don't see the connection. I've always thought those scanline generators were lame and used real crt monitors and I'm also a laser carousel hater.

It's like one minute you're playing a Cave shooting game and the next a monster truck shows up and runs over your body. Then it keeps coming back. Those tires.

[blackoak]

Is studying replays to decipher a singular section of a game really preferable to being able to organically tackle it in an enjoyable and progressive fashion during repeat play?

This gets to the heart of it for me. I like looking at replays for optimization and taking things further, but when it feels like I need to do it just to get past a section its frustrating.

It seems no DFK thread can dodge the laserz either.

[trap15]

So how is it good design if so many people hate it.

That's argumentum ad populum, but it's still right :V

[Bananamatic]

first set: have a hyper ready(there is a bee top right if you aren't full+2 after the descent on Ura route), rush top right through both wheels(make sure you destroy the tanks in the middle when you hyper), then slowly descend down
when the other 2 wheels come from top right, just stay on the right and keep going left, when the hyper ends rush through the wheel that starts closing in and destroy the tanks inside, then go back down in the middle, to the left and up while hugging the left side to get out of the last wheel(then immediately go right to avoid the next wave)

second set: clear out the left and center side, when the wheel starts going away through the right side dodge the next waves to the right(the circular blue bullet spammers/blue walls) and hugging the left side go maybe 3/4 up the screen - once the laser wheel comes out from the left side, descend into it(only popcorns shoot at you after the circular tanks), out of it through the bottom/right, then enter the wheel on the right, make a sharp turn right and go slowly get out of it through the left.

third set: make sure to kill the popcorn helis on the left, then hyper and clear out the top of the screen(especially the tanks)(possible without a hyper but this is safer). Then stay right above the top wheel and descend along with it while dodging the blue walls. You should be dodging between the 2 wheels, the second one comes from the top right. When you're dodging, make sure to dodge in the bottom right corner to kill all the tanks that appear there. Then dodge through all the wheels and you should be inside the final one, just go right and through the top, the popcorns stop firing eventually.

if I can do it easily after not playing DFK for 7 months while playing with a Bomb ship, you can do it easily too

tl;dr: the real threat during the wheels are the popcorns because the wheels block your shots, if you do the stuff above almost no popcorns should shoot you during the wheels ever and you can easily dodge everything

[Aleksei]

I have to agree with the post above me, its not the wheels that get me, its the tank shots if I don't get rid of them properly. What would make the wheels a nightmare if there were more of them and they spun around faster.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

There's already some pretty tight squeezes as is with the laser wheels. Them being faster might make it not possible to get through. But then when i was playing this, I did the section without Hyper for the extra multiplier.

Which actually involves one of my complaints about the game. What I liked about the DOJ and will like about SDOJ is that you want to hyper for the scoring, and make the game harder. While in DFK you only want to do it early and then no hyper which keeps rank low.


Arrange A could have been ridiculously awesome, but they screwed with the patterns too much forcing the bullet cancelling. And 1.51 requires lots of Hypers, but also has issues. Both of those versions had potential, but things just didn't play right.

[Cagar]

Is studying replays to decipher a singular section of a game really preferable to being able to organically tackle it in an enjoyable and progressive fashion during repeat play? I think not. The laser wheels must be hella fun once you got your route, but I've been on this in the arcade for ages, and without running off to study replays and grid coordinates, I've found the wheels to be a simply terrible design invention that sucks the fucking life out of your run every time you reach them. Each time I get there I'm none the wiser either.

100% Agreed.
I have a chaining route for laser rings, they don't cause me any trouble, but I still think that they suck ass and don't belong in that game. I know that they feel completely out-of-place brick wall bullshit for beginners, definitely bad design and difficulty balance.
..Which is only one part of the "DFK imbalance" trilogy

[Aleksei]

speaking of crack, I don't know how I got this score for the first level of arrange A, is there a WR replay somewhere? kuchiniko's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nFRY1vW ... e=youtu.be

[Giest118]

speaking of crack, I don't know how I got this score for the first level of arrange A

You got an obscene number of hits (easy to do) and then collected bees while they were flashing.

The bees are worth an AWESOME number of points if you have a high hit count and get them while flashing.

[Aleksei]

I haven't figured out how to get a high hit count consistently then, what are the best ways fore lvl one and in general?