Man, what a great shmup year it has been for me. It's quite neat having so many supposedly impossible challenges be utterly destroyed through practice and brain power! Holy shit lmao
(1) Personal Favourite Achievements of 2022:
-Chaos Field is undeniably my game of the year. Man, did I spend a ton of hours into it lmao. And I had no damn idea it was gonna end up like this when I picked it up to get a 1CC at the end of last year. Playing the game for Shmup Slam alongside Chinopolis was a crazy experience too and the run itself was very entertaining, but it's even crazier to think that was just the beginning for me.
Once you start looking for points, it's just so tempting to dive deeper and deeper in the rabbit hole. The scoring system is just that interesting to lab. My expectations have even been completely blown away as I ended up beating all three arcade records lol. Not just one character, but all three! And their playstyles have noticeable differences, so knowing the game inside out was necessary, and every new character brought its own lot of challenges and puzzles to solve, which was pretty cool.
To be fair, they are far from the most optimized records, but hey someone had to do it! Especially with the lack of replays out there, which means I almost always had to come up with the strats on my own. It was a real blast exploring this banger of a game.
-It's almost easy for me to forget but very early in the year, I actually got the Shiki3 Batu-2 9bil score goal I have been wanting for a very long time. Nabbing it without struggling as much as I thought I would is such a cool thing because I always assumed this would be "final boss"-tier score, but I actually blew way past it and landed at 9.5bil! That's huge! Now I sorta have my eyes on 10bil, for whenever I tackle the game again
-Dangun Feveron 1CC, probably the hardest 1CC I got ever since I started playing shmups. This specific game had me hooked years ago, but I never really went all the way to get that actual clear (while scoring along the way too) as I mostly played on and off. This is now fixed as I practiced the last stages and played more seriously in order to clear and without cheesing the last boss with a timeout!
-Plenty of other new clears too : Esp Ra De, Sanvein, Ikaruga, Cyvern 1-ALL, Progear 1-ALL, Leiria Stargazer Normal, Radirgy manpuku mode, Gekirindan, Bike Banditz, DDP II, Gun Frontier, also Dino Rex lmao. Always nice to add a few of them on the list, especially things like Esp Ra De and Ikaruga which I played a bunch years ago but kinda stopped before crossing the finish line.
-Participated in plenty of online shmup events this year : Pass the shmup, Score Art Online, Shoot the Baguette, Shmup Slam, Ultramania, Shmup Kumite, Metal Black Kumite, cameo in Takumi Festival too. Hosted a few as well like the Gun Frontier Kumite, Milestone Showcase, or LSPIRL on the French side. Damn that's a lot of events.
(2) Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2022:
-Not going to some IRL events in Spain and Germany. I wanted to but couldn't muster the motivation to actually travel and/or tried so late some transport prices became prohibitive. Goddamn it lol. Maybe another time!
-Some last second Chaos Field Ifumi and Hal fuckups. In both cases, I messed up right before the end of the final boss, either by dying or not keeping up the combo, costing me 45 million points every time lol. Thankfully I quickly bounced back and nailed another run later. There were also some Jinn last-second fails but it's not as silly so I wouldn't call them big screw-ups in the same vein.
(3) Favourite Achievements by Others of 2022:
-Qlex's Dangun PB and live performances. Very inspiring stuff without which I probably wouldn't have gotten my own Dangun clear. And it's such a crazy game to run live and yet the madman did it!
-MAZ's 34.9 mil in Ikaruga. The massive almost 1mil jump from almost 34mil to almost 35mil is impressive. His stage 3 grind for 8mil was also quite intense, with a few 7.9XXX close calls that didn't deter him!
-EmperorIng's rapid progress in Giga Wing 2 scoring, as well as his Psyvariar 2 Gluon clear. Both games are not played a ton but they do deserve the love and attention! It's especially cool here since Ing already liked those games in the past but never reached that level of skill on them until playing them even more seriously this year for rapid gains. Pretty inspiring story!
-Eiden and GOTYO still at it on Karous setting new bonkers WR scores. Incredible scores that just keep climbing and climbing and climbing. When will they ever stop?? Will they ever stop???
-Some of mutmut02's tough clears like Gradius 4, Battle Garrega, or Gun Frontier. He's on a quest to clear the games he bought and boy is it going well for him!
-Prickly Angler's Darius 2 Hardest difficulty clear. The culmination of a long series of Darius 2 runs in various difficulties, modes, ports, etc.
-RZM's Cyvern progression. He really caught the bug when we all played the game in a month-long tourney and he might keep playing until he gets the 2-ALL. That would be awesome to see!
-Meriscan's Air Gallet score progress, live run + hardest difficulty clear. To me he is the Air Gallet guy haha, and his performance really reflects his appreciation for the game!
-Third_strike's hi scores in more obscure games such as Nebulas Ray, as well as the cool performance of playing it live at an event!
-Plasmo's Donpachi records which for some might be trainWRecks as he calls them but still very cool. It's specifically nice to have high level C-ship runs of this game with video footage given the history of this game's records and how unavailable some of their replays were. If you wanted to play this ship for score and were waiting for some public references, now you have them!
-CPS's impressive Gun Frontier live runs. I played alongside him and it was obvious he is on an entirely different level, as if unfazed by the game's chaos. A true cowboy.
-AlvaLynsis' Jamestown+ Super Gauntlet clear in the hardest difficulty. A very arduous challenge and also an interesting exploration of an indie shmup which doesn't happen ofte. We usually play games that werze also released in the arcades, or some older JP doujins. But it's neat seeing someone also push in a shmup from a different origin, and his video has plenty of annotations that reveal the plethora of tricks and techniques in his run
(4) Goals for 2023:
-Keep on having fun
-Return to Shiki 1 & 3
-Practice Illvelo to possibly get the other 9bil score that has been waiting for too long
-More Success gaming hopefully (Psyvariar/Sanvein/Cotton)
(BONUS) CHALLENGES TO OTHER PLAYERS:
-Have fun
-Play games you like
-Make science progress on some games that could appreciate it
Shmup goals 2023 - Off to a New Horizon
Re: Shmup goals 2023 - Off to a New Horizon
Remote Weapon GunFencer - My shmup projectRegalSin wrote: I think I have downloaded so much I am bored with downloading. No really I bored with downloading stuff I might consider moving to Canada or the pacific.
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EmperorIng
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Re: Shmup goals 2023 - Off to a New Horizon
(1) Personal Favourite Achievements of 2022:
2022 has been one of my better shmup years in some time, both in terms of quality and quantity. I kind of really dove into the genre this year, going between clearing dad games, championing newer releases (or trying to), and dedicating myself to clearing and excelling at games I had long been dreaming of overcoming.
Here are some of my favorite shmup accomplishments of the year:
-Strania 9DAN 1CC
I finally wanted to clear this game and set myself to practicing it towards the end of 2021, joining up in a shmup twitch relay hosted by a member of the shmup junkie discord server. I admit that at the start of serious practice I hated this game. I thought it was cheap, unfair, and full of random bullshit (the boss RNG still can be quite annoying, Normal mode is pointless). But I will say that over time, over practice, it really grew on me, and once I started going for a particular goal (max weapon ranks aka 9DAN), I found myself warming up to it quite a bit and really enjoying it. The culmination of this was the relay itself, which I had two hours (a generous slot) to show off a 1cc of the game. Each run ended late in the game, usually around the final stage. But the very last run of my timeslot, I pulled off the 9dan clear by the skin of my teeth.
-Psyvariar 2 Shooting Type 1cc
This is actually one of the games that got me interested in bullet hells, thanks to those ancient videos of the Gluon tlb fight. Whoa, look at those patterns! I had always dreamed of one day being able to get to fight the boss myself. I finally put my mind to go and practice for not only the tlb clear but to go for the "top" score on the leaderboards as a further motivation. I quickly found out, especially in emulation, that the game is very exacting, and that a single death in the wrong spot can end the run. Speaking of emulation, the game in PCSX2 does operate under extra lag but has at least been rendered (imo) playable vs my ps2 copy on a crt. The tradeoff with that is that on a CRT the screen is ultimately pretty blurry and it's hard to see playing in yoko. Meanwhile, filter effects and upscaling can make the old game look quite nice! I had wanted to record a good-scoring 1cc not only for my benefit but also for posterity's sake, at least giving people in the future a chance to see the game in a resolution that is actually visible and maybe motivate them to try it out. Time will tell!
-Giga Wing 2 60 quadrilllion clears
This is the one that most people were paying attention to. And that makes sense, I think I have been playing this game, and nearly only this game, since May of 2022. I don't know what happened, I got OBSESSED with this game, more so than usual. It's been a game I loved since I first got my dreamcast about a decade ago when I was a younger lad, but despite my attempts I could never clear it. I used to watch Rob's superplay video a lot, and learn from it. It was mostly just a dream to compete with his and marus' scores while I worked on the 1cc. It would have come sooner had I just focused purely on survival but THAT IS NOT EXCITING FOR ANYONE. No score, no lief. I've seen people play Giga Wing 2 while ignoring score (see: Pearl). it sucks and is boring. YOU MUST reflect and reflect well, there is no substitute. That made the eventual 1cc all the sweeter. Switching to a new character turned out to be the biggest improvement to my score. The mystery of how the Neo Stranger is the best scoring ship really piqued my curiosity and has led me down quite the rabbit-hole. That being said last year, joining the small list of players who have gotten 60 quadrillion in the game is really quite something and the achievement I'm most proud of. But even that wasn't enough! I wanted to be the best (read below)...
(2) Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2022:
-Losing motivation for the 4 billion in Shikigami 2. By that time I had given myself wholly to Soyvariar 2 and Giga Wank 2.
-I had set a silly goal for myself in late December of beating marus' score by the end of 2022. I went on a mad schizo-grind during the week between Christmas and New Year's but it wasn't enough... I got the goal literally on January 1, 2023.
(3) Favourite Achievements by Others of 2022:
This is always the hardest. Hate to feel like I left people out.
-NTSC-J's muchi muchi pork wr and 2all. it's always great when a guy's love of a game pays off in big ways and I'm glad the arcade staff still have the pcb rattling around in their closet for when he comes over and crushes. Big GG!
-SPE's 80 quadrillion clears in Giga Wing 2. This is what pretty much got a few people interested in the game again, and having his runs and scoring available has cleared up so much mystery about the game's scoring (there are many mysteries left, however!).
-SmithRicardo's has-to-be-seen to-be-believed 23 million+ score in the mega drive port of Darius II, Sagaia. I didn't believe him, you didn't believe him, I'm sure his own dog didn't believe him, but the proof is in the pudding and by exploiting some ARKANE GLITCHEZ in the driosawm fight he jumped past every conceivable challenger to be ConKing (Console King). Also RIP to the sh[or]t-lived but much-loved SHT Show!
-RefKey's Detana Twinbee journey has been lots of fun to witness and its glimpse into the less-visible world of arcade shmupping in Korea. The game is so monumentally hard that I am impressed that he not only 2all'd it, but has continued to push the depraved insanity of juggling to heights not seen since the Great British Meltdown of 2020.
-iconoclast -yes you heard me, you might be surprised- played shmups in 2022! If that wasn't an achievement in and of itself, he came out with this lovely, much-recommended no-miss guide for the original Kiki Kaikai! His tutelage helped me get my own 2all in the game, so I highly respect the effort into making a video like this (and done so well).
-MKnight's World Record Triple Crown in Chaos Field. He seems to keep on finding more milestone games to crush beneath his shoe and this set is the most impressive yet. I honestly thought just getting one, with the underused Ifumi, would be enough, but not for him! I remember so many posts and chatter, here and elsewhere, that said "Hal is the only viable character, the only one scoring was designed around" and here he was to prove them all wrong. Congratulations!! Feast until your belly is heavy and full of the contentment that comes from being the Milestone King (note: whose name isn't GOTYO).
-chad CPS taking NO prisoners in both surviving, and surviving-with-style, in Raiden games, restoring interesting into the series once more!
-This happened at the VERY start of 2022, but wes' 2ALL of Under Defeat. There are so few 2alls outside of Japan for this game that it must be celebrated and mentioned. Go check out the replay!
-DMC's 30 million score in Soukyugurentai. A westie first!!! He's solidified himself as the master of the game. I want others to challenge him. Mednafen works well now. Emulate Souky TODAY.
-I know this happened just as 2023 started, but I felt like mentioning MAZ's 35+ million score in ikaruga. Take a watch of the video, it's a beauty to behold. No miss too?! How crazy. I will mention it again next thread. His progress to the very heights of this game has been great to watch, even if trying to chain it gives me aneurysms.
-Plasmo reasoning that if DonPachi world record replays don't exist he'll have to make them himself, but trickster that he is, (rightly) keeping the 71m away from the fakers and posers. Huge accomplishment!
-Meriscan's Strikers scores - in a world where 2alls are hard to come by, to do so with such high confidence, skill, double ko's, and zako milking was highly entertaining to watch. Fast bullets mean nothing to this man, I look forward to seeing future replays in Air Gallet and Batsugun
(4) Goals for 2023:
-Achieve the highest community score in Giga Wing 2 - ACHIEVED 1/1/2023
-Going even further beyond, I want to be the westie to break the 70 QUADRILLION barrier in Giga Wing 2 that has long separated scores from Japan. Can it be done?! No character restrictions, no limits, any way I can get it!
-A 4 billion score in any Castle Shikigami game. My money is on 2! (or is it?). I want to beat BER's long-standing Niigi community record in 2, specifically (3.95 billion).
-An Extreme clear of Shiki 2??
-Pushing for a higher score in Cotton Rock n Roll
-I probably ought to 1cc another cave game, it's been a while. Let's tell myself to clear ESPRaDe.
(BONUS) CHALLENGES TO OTHER PLAYERS:
Someone find out how to get a 400 million+ multiplier with Limi in stage 1 of Giga Wing 2, I'll give you money
Beyond that, try out a Takumi game, and Giga Wing 2 in particular.
marus, BEAT MY GW2 SCORE! I know you can do it, easily too.
2022 has been one of my better shmup years in some time, both in terms of quality and quantity. I kind of really dove into the genre this year, going between clearing dad games, championing newer releases (or trying to), and dedicating myself to clearing and excelling at games I had long been dreaming of overcoming.
Here are some of my favorite shmup accomplishments of the year:
-Strania 9DAN 1CC
I finally wanted to clear this game and set myself to practicing it towards the end of 2021, joining up in a shmup twitch relay hosted by a member of the shmup junkie discord server. I admit that at the start of serious practice I hated this game. I thought it was cheap, unfair, and full of random bullshit (the boss RNG still can be quite annoying, Normal mode is pointless). But I will say that over time, over practice, it really grew on me, and once I started going for a particular goal (max weapon ranks aka 9DAN), I found myself warming up to it quite a bit and really enjoying it. The culmination of this was the relay itself, which I had two hours (a generous slot) to show off a 1cc of the game. Each run ended late in the game, usually around the final stage. But the very last run of my timeslot, I pulled off the 9dan clear by the skin of my teeth.
-Psyvariar 2 Shooting Type 1cc
This is actually one of the games that got me interested in bullet hells, thanks to those ancient videos of the Gluon tlb fight. Whoa, look at those patterns! I had always dreamed of one day being able to get to fight the boss myself. I finally put my mind to go and practice for not only the tlb clear but to go for the "top" score on the leaderboards as a further motivation. I quickly found out, especially in emulation, that the game is very exacting, and that a single death in the wrong spot can end the run. Speaking of emulation, the game in PCSX2 does operate under extra lag but has at least been rendered (imo) playable vs my ps2 copy on a crt. The tradeoff with that is that on a CRT the screen is ultimately pretty blurry and it's hard to see playing in yoko. Meanwhile, filter effects and upscaling can make the old game look quite nice! I had wanted to record a good-scoring 1cc not only for my benefit but also for posterity's sake, at least giving people in the future a chance to see the game in a resolution that is actually visible and maybe motivate them to try it out. Time will tell!
-Giga Wing 2 60 quadrilllion clears
This is the one that most people were paying attention to. And that makes sense, I think I have been playing this game, and nearly only this game, since May of 2022. I don't know what happened, I got OBSESSED with this game, more so than usual. It's been a game I loved since I first got my dreamcast about a decade ago when I was a younger lad, but despite my attempts I could never clear it. I used to watch Rob's superplay video a lot, and learn from it. It was mostly just a dream to compete with his and marus' scores while I worked on the 1cc. It would have come sooner had I just focused purely on survival but THAT IS NOT EXCITING FOR ANYONE. No score, no lief. I've seen people play Giga Wing 2 while ignoring score (see: Pearl). it sucks and is boring. YOU MUST reflect and reflect well, there is no substitute. That made the eventual 1cc all the sweeter. Switching to a new character turned out to be the biggest improvement to my score. The mystery of how the Neo Stranger is the best scoring ship really piqued my curiosity and has led me down quite the rabbit-hole. That being said last year, joining the small list of players who have gotten 60 quadrillion in the game is really quite something and the achievement I'm most proud of. But even that wasn't enough! I wanted to be the best (read below)...
(2) Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2022:
-Losing motivation for the 4 billion in Shikigami 2. By that time I had given myself wholly to Soyvariar 2 and Giga Wank 2.
-I had set a silly goal for myself in late December of beating marus' score by the end of 2022. I went on a mad schizo-grind during the week between Christmas and New Year's but it wasn't enough... I got the goal literally on January 1, 2023.
(3) Favourite Achievements by Others of 2022:
This is always the hardest. Hate to feel like I left people out.
-NTSC-J's muchi muchi pork wr and 2all. it's always great when a guy's love of a game pays off in big ways and I'm glad the arcade staff still have the pcb rattling around in their closet for when he comes over and crushes. Big GG!
-SPE's 80 quadrillion clears in Giga Wing 2. This is what pretty much got a few people interested in the game again, and having his runs and scoring available has cleared up so much mystery about the game's scoring (there are many mysteries left, however!).
-SmithRicardo's has-to-be-seen to-be-believed 23 million+ score in the mega drive port of Darius II, Sagaia. I didn't believe him, you didn't believe him, I'm sure his own dog didn't believe him, but the proof is in the pudding and by exploiting some ARKANE GLITCHEZ in the driosawm fight he jumped past every conceivable challenger to be ConKing (Console King). Also RIP to the sh[or]t-lived but much-loved SHT Show!
-RefKey's Detana Twinbee journey has been lots of fun to witness and its glimpse into the less-visible world of arcade shmupping in Korea. The game is so monumentally hard that I am impressed that he not only 2all'd it, but has continued to push the depraved insanity of juggling to heights not seen since the Great British Meltdown of 2020.
-iconoclast -yes you heard me, you might be surprised- played shmups in 2022! If that wasn't an achievement in and of itself, he came out with this lovely, much-recommended no-miss guide for the original Kiki Kaikai! His tutelage helped me get my own 2all in the game, so I highly respect the effort into making a video like this (and done so well).
-MKnight's World Record Triple Crown in Chaos Field. He seems to keep on finding more milestone games to crush beneath his shoe and this set is the most impressive yet. I honestly thought just getting one, with the underused Ifumi, would be enough, but not for him! I remember so many posts and chatter, here and elsewhere, that said "Hal is the only viable character, the only one scoring was designed around" and here he was to prove them all wrong. Congratulations!! Feast until your belly is heavy and full of the contentment that comes from being the Milestone King (note: whose name isn't GOTYO).
-chad CPS taking NO prisoners in both surviving, and surviving-with-style, in Raiden games, restoring interesting into the series once more!
-This happened at the VERY start of 2022, but wes' 2ALL of Under Defeat. There are so few 2alls outside of Japan for this game that it must be celebrated and mentioned. Go check out the replay!
-DMC's 30 million score in Soukyugurentai. A westie first!!! He's solidified himself as the master of the game. I want others to challenge him. Mednafen works well now. Emulate Souky TODAY.
-I know this happened just as 2023 started, but I felt like mentioning MAZ's 35+ million score in ikaruga. Take a watch of the video, it's a beauty to behold. No miss too?! How crazy. I will mention it again next thread. His progress to the very heights of this game has been great to watch, even if trying to chain it gives me aneurysms.
-Plasmo reasoning that if DonPachi world record replays don't exist he'll have to make them himself, but trickster that he is, (rightly) keeping the 71m away from the fakers and posers. Huge accomplishment!
-Meriscan's Strikers scores - in a world where 2alls are hard to come by, to do so with such high confidence, skill, double ko's, and zako milking was highly entertaining to watch. Fast bullets mean nothing to this man, I look forward to seeing future replays in Air Gallet and Batsugun
(4) Goals for 2023:
-Achieve the highest community score in Giga Wing 2 - ACHIEVED 1/1/2023
-Going even further beyond, I want to be the westie to break the 70 QUADRILLION barrier in Giga Wing 2 that has long separated scores from Japan. Can it be done?! No character restrictions, no limits, any way I can get it!
-A 4 billion score in any Castle Shikigami game. My money is on 2! (or is it?). I want to beat BER's long-standing Niigi community record in 2, specifically (3.95 billion).
-An Extreme clear of Shiki 2??
-Pushing for a higher score in Cotton Rock n Roll
-I probably ought to 1cc another cave game, it's been a while. Let's tell myself to clear ESPRaDe.
(BONUS) CHALLENGES TO OTHER PLAYERS:
Someone find out how to get a 400 million+ multiplier with Limi in stage 1 of Giga Wing 2, I'll give you money
Beyond that, try out a Takumi game, and Giga Wing 2 in particular.
marus, BEAT MY GW2 SCORE! I know you can do it, easily too.
DEMON'S TILT [bullet hell pinball] - Music Composer || EC2151 ~ My FM/YM2612 music & more! || 1CC List || PCE-CD: The Search for Quality
Re: Shmup goals 2023 - Off to a New Horizon
I got back into shmups last year after a seven year hiatus. I had to sell my cab back in 2015 and I didn't even have a CRT with me when I moved and that was that.
I've got my old scratch built supergun running on a CRT and it's time. Goal for 2023 would be I'd like to get back to my old form with Ketsui ( 1 all, 127 mil I think) as it's been years since I've been able to clear it. I've also never played DDP DOJ Black label, only vanilla. I would love to be able score well enough to get the 2nd extend and 1-all that as well. That may be the cap on my current skill set.
I have Ibara coming soon as well. I'm convinced I will never be able to clear it but I miss it so much.
I've got my old scratch built supergun running on a CRT and it's time. Goal for 2023 would be I'd like to get back to my old form with Ketsui ( 1 all, 127 mil I think) as it's been years since I've been able to clear it. I've also never played DDP DOJ Black label, only vanilla. I would love to be able score well enough to get the 2nd extend and 1-all that as well. That may be the cap on my current skill set.
I have Ibara coming soon as well. I'm convinced I will never be able to clear it but I miss it so much.