I'll say it again, the only one who was offensive and rude to you was me, when you weren't a member of this forum. What I said was based upon your behaviour at EAB.... and I keep what I've said based upon your behaviour here.
BEFORE you signed up here, you even had some fans here. Someone even called you "The best games journalist" or something to that effect.
You are making a great job in losing any respect you may had among the users here. If I ever had any respect for you, it's because at some time you were connected to Sensible Software, which stands as one of the most amazing softwarehouses ever. I wonder if Chris Chapman and Jon Hare were as annoying as you are. Other than that, I still think that you are a shithead, as I said in the other thread (And like I said, you've been keep on proving my point). Many users here DIDN'T think of you like that, though you are making a great job of changing this.
I am NOT the whole forum. I am just a single user here, my opinion do NOT reflect the opinion of all the others users here. Of course, if you could register here, chat about shmups in a civilized way, and show that you are NOT a troll, my opinion about you could have changed.
How can you say Elvis was rude to you? He didn't say anything rude to you, not even when you directly attacked and offended him. I still haven't see anyone else attacking or being rude to you, EVEN when attacked by you.
Now, if you want to go on and direspect everyone else, go ahead and see if you can make anything useful out of. If you have a problem with me, take it to PMs, talk to another mod about that, or even talk directly to me, but do not attack everyone in a forum because of what I think of you.
Thunder Force has already warned you. That's the last time I'll talk openly about your conduct. If you want to openly express your opinion about me, so you can "get even", do it, then shut up. If not, then respect the forum rules or leave. Your behaviour is already way out of what's tolerated here.
About Compile... I have never played Borderline... I've been looking for the MSX version for a while without luck... I've been thinking about looking for the SG-1000 version, as they both should be identica, but the SG-1000 version seems to be more popularl. Now Borderline was developed under the Sega belt (Like Gulkave was). I really find hard to believe this game already had some kind of rank system on it... this was their FIRST game ever, as far as I know. Anyway, I'll do some research on this.
Anyway, Exa Innova is a vere early shmup from them which came after borderline, and it doesn't have any rank feature - or at least I've never noticed (But it does have lots of features that would become common in their later shmups)
So what we're saying is, Gradius simultaneously pioneered the idea of adding lots of powerups onto your ship, and the idea of making those powerups completely pointless by increasing the difficulty when you get them...?
It's not pointless. The idea is indeed to balance the game, but if you power up your ship, you have bigger chances to score but as a payoff you also have a bigger chance to die. As an example, the "semi-boss" of level 2 is a lot easier if you have just your pea-shooter than if you have laser and 4 options, but as there are more enemies to shoot, you make more points. And this is in Gradius... in modern games the system is often much more complex.
That's the idea in nearly all shmups that do have a rank system... if you want to score well, you have to take the game at its most furious difficulty level.
Zaphod knows, i remember him mentioning a Compile title of 1983, when mentioning the first appearance of rank. If this is not the case ( i can't access any Compile title, personally), then Xevious should be the first title with rank. 
), Icarus: do you know, by chance, who introduced the term around these parts?
