STG of the Month (July 2012) - Gunbird 2 and Sengeki Striker

[azinth]

daym, nice improvement!

Tavia's melee attack is enough to one-shot a frog. The way I do it is to destroy the left one as soon as they appear, then follow as closely as possible underneath the right one as it moves to take it out with my shot.

[Despatche]

yaaay chum did it

[Plasmo]

I was watching your stream chum and have to say that your dodging sills are quite awesome. I always thought improvising like this wouldn't be possible in a Psiyko shmup, but you've proven me wrong.

One big mistake you do, is not using enough melee attacks. You make the game so much harder than it actually is (which doesn't imply that it's easy at all). Use your melee on every midsize enemy and evry boss where it's possible. You can insta-kill a lot this way.

Oh, and try to destroy one of the red pods of the fifth boss to make it much easier during it's first phase.

I'm sure you'll 1cc this within the next days.

[chum]

chum - 1,030,400 - 2-1 - Tavia - MAME

daym, nice improvement!

Tavia's melee attack is enough to one-shot a frog. The way I do it is to destroy the left one as soon as they appear, then follow as closely as possible underneath the right one as it moves to take it out with my shot.

I read this and I tried it, but never really got it to work, thanks anyway though. Coming from you, I'm sure it's a reliable strategy and I was just off somewhere.

I was watching your stream chum and have to say that your dodging sills are quite awesome. I always thought improvising like this wouldn't be possible in a Psiyko shmup, but you've proven me wrong.

One big mistake you do, is not using enough melee attacks. You make the game so much harder than it actually is (which doesn't imply that it's easy at all). Use your melee on every midsize enemy and evry boss where it's possible. You can insta-kill a lot this way.

Oh, and try to destroy one of the red pods of the fifth boss to make it much easier during it's first phase.

I'm sure you'll 1cc this within the next days.

Thanks for the compliment I am unfortunately a pretty slow memorizer. About the melee attacks, I just found that Tavia's don't do a lot of damage, so I often use Charge Shots instead. This may not be the right strategy, but that's the reason. When I used Aine I used a lot more melee attacks and it's damn satisfying.

Will keep in mind to destroy one of the 5th bosses pods.

[Gus]

Nice, man. Go for the 2-ALL!

[Deca]

deca - 425,400 - 1-5 - Tavia - MAME

Might as well post something since I've been playing a little. I'm sure if I spend some time looking at replays I can improve this significantly, doesn't necessarily mean I'll find time to before the end of the month.

[Thanuris]

Thanuris - 701,500 - 1-6 - Tavia - MAME



I managed to get a 38 medal chain once and then i gameovered on 1-3

EDIT: Thanuris - 765.800 - 1-6 - Tavia - MAME



A lot of lame deaths and the 1-6 boss is an asshole

[azinth]

Gaybear 2



Azinth - 1,205,800 - 2-1 - mai husbando - MAME

[Nifty]

DoubleThink - 180,431,630 - Stage 4-2 - Japan - MAME - AF ON / 3

This game actually reminds me a bit of DonPachi (particularly the loop with its waves of suicide bullets), only with Cyvern lasers and somehow much easier to score in. Turns out the farther you get, the less essential the dropping trick becomes. In particular, I played ahead a bit and the final boss gives a time clear bonus that counts down from 200 million The 10/20 point bonus appears to happen when dropping a large ship through a hole in the terrain on a ground stage, such that its sprite 'folds over' on itself, and I might be missing something but it looks like the game starts using checkpoints only from stage 3 onwards?

Should probably open my Gunbird 2 account while I'm at it:
DoubleThink - 442,300 - 1-5 - Valpiro - MAME
Having one third of a loop score come from the final stage is a bit silly

[Despatche]

"silly" is getting 10M for a clear when you've gotten 1M over the course of 32 stages

there's a lot of points in gb2; these 1-4s should be more like 500k~600k, you can probably have 1M in 1-6, etc

[Nifty]

Mostly I'm used to Psikyo games dropping the extend somewhere more useful

Anyway, DoubleThink - 213,072,590 - Stage 5-2 - Japan - MAME - AF ON / 3

Now, if I can just get a run where I don't die twice on stage 2...

[Giest118]

Gunbird 2

Giest118 - 477,200 - 1-5 - Marion - MAME

If I can get my timing on the coin collection more consistent, I could improve this a lot. On the plus side though, finally made it past 1-4.

[Vamos]

clp - 184,427,570 - 4-3 - JP - MAME



Actually starting to enjoy this one takes a little getting used to though with the huge sprite and tiny hitbox .
Edit* Jesus christ stage 5 is brutal asteroid storm + bullet hell .

[Jaimers]

Jaimers - 295,516,010 - 5-2 - JP - MAME

5-1 is the worst thing.

EDIT:



Jaimers - 464,759,870 - 7-4 - JP - MAME

Might as well get the 1-ALL after last run.

[Deca]

deca - 165,396,490 - 3-2 - JP - MAME

What the hell am I even playing.

[Vamos]

Jaimers awesome work , any chance you can make an inp for some tips on the later brutal stages ?

[CptRansom]

Updated. Please make sure I didn't leave anyone out. =)

[Naut]

Sengeki Striker
Naut - 335,965,980 - 6-4 - JP - ShmupMAME 2.2

...

Edit: Here's a different run that (unsurprisingly) ended up scoring higher...

[Chaos Phoenixma]

How many stages are there in Sengeki Striker, and what's with the stage numbering?

[Jaimers]

Jaimers awesome work , any chance you can make an inp for some tips on the later brutal stages ?

Yeah I was trying to make an inp but apparently it doesn't work in shmupmame 3.0b with this particular game for some reason.
But anyway my general strategy was just to spam the homing shot as it kills everything. I think you also want to speedkill the final boss.

How many stages are there in Sengeki Striker, and what's with the stage numbering?

Ten. Five every loop.
The second number is just the part of the stage you reached.

[Naut]

Sengeki Striker
Naut - 506,903,550 - 6-4 - JP - ShmupMAME 2.2



I've got a few strategies down now, really interesting scoring system. I keep wanting the power of the Valcan to kill off enemies quickly to survive but I also want the precision of the Laser to control flying planes into valuable ground targets. Survival is a bit on the backburner until I'm happy with my strategies for scoring. It's kind of a guilty pleasure, controlling planes towards a collision course with other enemies... It's also really dumb and I can't believe I enjoy doing it.

[Thanuris]

Thanuris - 834,400 - 1-6 - Tavia - MAME



Now i only need to learn how to handle the 1-6 boss properly (at least i managed to get a better medal chain route now)

[2D•TRON]

Hello

I would like to take part in posting my high scores.
What difficulty settings do other gamers choose?
Sorry if there is a thread for this.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

Like for every other game, just don't touch the settings. So whatever the default difficulty is.

[CptRansom]

Updated.

[CptRansom]

Due to STGT, there will be no STG of the month next month.

[Eno]

Oh well, baby's first high-score submission.

Eno - 342,900 - 1-4 - Tavia - MAME

Hopefully I'll achieve 1-5 before the month ends, and a run without silly misses.

[Deca]

EDIT:

deca - 530,600 - 1-5 - Aine - MAME

I am terrible at Psikyo. Should have just run through and savestated every boss first thing, only really practiced the 1-4 boss :/

[ED-057]

ED-057 - 314,400 - 1-4 - Valpiro - MAME

I am even worse at Gunbird 2 than I am at Gunbird 1.

UPDATE:
ED-057 - 346,800 - 1-4 - Valpiro - MAME

[Nifty]

DoubleThink - 235,516,400 - Stage 5-2 - Japan - MAME - AF ON / 3

Got this ages ago and could never settle back into a rhythm :\ I am developing a really bad habit of reaching the final stage of games and then spending the same amount of time again trying to beat them. This was easier than Donpachi so I should have cleared it. Oh well, I'll probably come back to it eventually.

I also noticed a couple of other things I probably should have picked up on earlier. The 2x bonus is given for enemies killed with the options, not specifically the charge shot, and bullets are actually colour-coded according to their speed (in order blue -> orange -> pink). The latter is actually really neat and makes me wish more games did it. I ended up really enjoying playing this, and I probably wouldn't have spent nearly this much time on it if it hadn't been picked this month