I DID IT! Share your latest 1CCs/other triumphs here...

[chempop]

Congrats! I know what you mean about the P-38 over the Bf-109 which has such long charge time and a very weak bomb, I'm surprised it by far the most popular ship. Gunbird is a little easier I think, when you have a hankering for more Psikyo I highly recommend it.

[Harpuia]

Thanks. And yeah, I feel a bit more confident with Psikyo games now if Strikers 1945 is generally considered one of their harder games.

[Zaarock]

Ibara 1CC & letter score in a week after first playing the game :3
Really fun, will keep going.

[chempop]

Nice Zaarock! Very fast progress, congrats. I too cleared it very quickly, but not with a letter score, that took a bit more work!

[OmKol]

Gyruss FDS. Easy. Still nice and original.

[Perikles]

Gyruss FDS. Easy. Still nice and original.

It's all about higher loops, bosses get quite mean from loop 2 onwards. Superb little game, I even prefer it over the splendid Gradius port.

Your post also reminds me of the outrageous fact that the Gyruss score board here still hasn't been updated. Deeeeeespatche!

[Perikles]

I was born out of the greediness of mankind - while men exist, so will I! Uuuuuuuurgh!






I still don't believe it. I remember watching Seahawk's run when he uploaded it several years back, thinking to myself I'd never be able to do that. I got myself the PSP Gradius Collection five years ago and gave up after a while since it was way too hard for me. And now this... I'm so blissful right now. Will upload the run as soon as possible, of course!

Would anyone be interested in annotations for this game? I'm probably not able to fit all of it in the video description, so I'd add it in another post here.

[EmperorIng]

Making shmups great again.

I would love to see a video. I wouldn't mind annotations making it easier for me to steal strategies, but that's understandably a lot of work.

[Shepardus]

Incredible, Perikles! Looking forward to seeing the video of that! I agree with EmperorIng that annotations would be cool, but if it's too much work then don't feel pressured to do it. I doubt I'll be tackling Gradius III anytime soon anyway (there are plenty of easier Gradius games, after all).

[Perikles]

Video is up and running! Couldn't even fit all of the general rambling in there, here's the rest:

Spoiler

The option thief cannot be avoided in this episode, I'm afraid. He'll show up at set intervals depending on how many options you have and when you activated them. He can be zapped with the "!" symbol after he grabbed one of your options, that's usually not what you want to have selected, though. Considering that you have to survive during most of the game (in other words: most checkpoints are nigh impossible) to stand a chance he'll only bother you in a few selected spots, however, so it's not all that problematic to deal with him in this game (although I still hate him with a passion, particularly during the crystal stage!).

I'll go into more detail later on, but I wanted to address one thing that happened during the actual run right now: I did NOT mean to select the Force Field during the boss rush, I merely was too nervous and didn't pay close attention to the power-up bar. You ideally want at least three options before activating the Force Field, the best defense in this game is a strong offense. There's no point in increasing the rank by selecting a protective tool if you could kill your enemies instead. It worked out in the end but I could've had a significantly easier time with another option during the fortress.

Also Jesus Christ that was close at the end of the lava stage, that last bullet was one pixel off or something. I was also rather surprised by the absence of slowdown during the transformation of the boss, hence my flailing around. 's all good, though.

And I probably should've phrased it differently when I said that I'd add annotations, I just meant another wall of text that explains the stages in more detail, I've never tinkered around with the actual annotation feature in YT. I might look into that as well one day, though.

Also thanks for the kind words!

[BIL]

Goddamn, you look away for a second and he's done it again. Helluva milestone, that - will enjoy watching the run later on!

[chempop]

Got 4 more Strikers 1-Alls, 2 more times with P-51, once with Bf-109, and once with P-38.

Three ships down, three to go!

[edit]
aaaand 1-All with Zero. Got close with spitfire.

[gimebe]

Omote 2-ALL on stream.

[Perikles]

Here're my assorted notes for the stages in Gradius III. I also put the three paragraphs from the last post there just to have it all in one place.

Spoiler

The option thief cannot be avoided in this episode, I'm afraid. He'll show up at set intervals depending on how many options you have and when you activated them. He can be zapped with the "!" symbol after he grabbed one of your options, that's usually not what you want to have selected, though. Considering that you have to survive during most of the game (in other words: most checkpoints are nigh impossible) to stand a chance he'll only bother you in a few selected spots, however, so it's not all that problematic to deal with him in this game (although I still hate him with a passion, particularly during the crystal stage!).

I'll go into more detail later on, but I wanted to address one thing that happened during the actual run right now: I did NOT mean to select the Force Field during the boss rush, I merely was too nervous and didn't pay close attention to the power-up bar. You ideally want at least three options before activating the Force Field, the best defense in this game is a strong offense. There's no point in increasing the rank by selecting a protective tool if you could kill your enemies instead. It worked out in the end but I could've had a significantly easier time with another option during the fortress.

Also Jesus Christ that was close at the end of the lava stage, that last bullet was one pixel off or something. I was also rather surprised by the absence of slowdown during the transformation of the boss, hence my flailing around. 's all good, though.



Stage rundown:

First level is fairly easy for as long as you take out the duckers from above. These are by far the most agile and aggressive enemies in this stage, so try to lure them into sitting on top of a dune so that you get a clear line of sight. Try to destroy the sand dragons rather soon, otherwise they'll end up covering other enemies.

The bubble stage is also nothing to write home about. If you have three options, laser and bombs equipped you'll end up destroying most threats almost automatically. Just be careful for the enemies that come from behind. Also don't trap yourself at the part with the bubbles and the hatch on the ceiling. It is necessary to move out of the bosses' way when the fights begins, you cannot damage him enough to immediately create an adequate opening.

Third stage is the first one to require actual strategy. It is crucial to position the options in a way that allow them to take out most of the hatches during the opening part. The little fighter crafts will align with your vertical position on the screen and then chase after you which enables you to tap out of their way, it won't work if there's too many of them, though. It is much harder to cover the entire screen height with just two speed-ups, hence why I recommend to activate the third one in this stage. Be very wary of the shaking slabs in the ceiling: everyone's first instinct would be to bait them by moving a good way in before retracting, they get provoked by little action, though, and you'll almost certainly die if you get to cheeky. The cavern part is quite trivial, the most dangerous thing is the interlink between the first maze and the section with all the dirt and indestructable stones since the slowdown suddenly ceases, leading into ugly ceiling slammin' if one is not attentive. Try to position your options at the back of the screen to wipe out the hopping drones in a timely manner. It's also possible to play this segment with double, but then the part with the dirt takes even longer. The boss will go berserk if you take out the upper and the lower core, it's much safer to time him out. He always shoots in the same pattern, it's best to simply remember it.

Don't crash into the walls in the fourth stage. Even I can beat a rail stage with an objective like that!

Moai stage can mostly be dealt with by improvisation. Double is imperative to deal with the ion rings from behind. The moai faces that are spat out by the huge heads don't seem to possess active hitboxes while in the air for some reason, but I get out of their way, anyway, just to be safe. This is another stage where it can be easy to park the Vic in terrain when trying to take out turrets. The mini-boss always moves in the same way, providing the player a gap to fly over or under him, respectively. The actual boss fight requires a precise approach for it is nigh impossible to survive the inflatable moai heads and their criminally large hitboxes if too many of their progenitors are active at the same time. They'll always open their mouths in the same sequence, so try to take out the ones in the corners as soon as possible. It is crucial to eradicate at least the two specimens on the far left as it is very difficult to kill them when their brethrens are pestering you at the same time.

The cell stage features the archetypical regenerating walls that were already a major hassle in Salamander. It is absolutely imperative to not deal too much damage to multiple parts in the walls. Normally, the parts that were damaged first will heal first, too. But if too many segments are missing already it'll respawn in a seemingly arbitrary order, killing you almost guaranteed if you try to get past it. Try to manipulate the tentacles of the brains into moving away from you, then quickly move up and fire with all your options to clear one path. Just tank a few hits with the Force Field if you have to, but don't make a mess out of the walls. If you don't distract the tentacles first they might just block your path which would be disastrous, too. The boss is not much of a threat, just move vertically when you see him stopping for a second because he's going to launch one of his arms at your current position when he's doing that.

Lava stage should be exploited to the fullest in my opinion. It's definitely much easier if you constantly try to induce slowdown by shooting both with the laser and the missiles, but you might want to stop launching bombs for a few seconds if you're uncertain where the lava "splinters" went. It's also significant to note that the jaggedly shaped enemies will just leave the screen whereas the round ones will chase after you if you don't kill them right away. There's seems to be a maximum of sprites for any given time which is why you'll see some of them just disappear. About the time when you see both of the roughly triangular stone formations at once the slowdown will subside for a while, correspondingly, it's a good idea to use missiles to counteract. The metamorphosis of the dragon sometimes goes by really fast as can be seen in this video, I'm not entirely sure what causes it.

Plant stage is a breather. Be cautious of the erratic framerate and don't attempt to shoot single turrets on the ceiling and you should be fine. For some reason it is perplexingly tough to avoid the suck-in ability of the boss if you're not roughly on the same level as its "head", so do just that.

Crystal stage will decide whether you have the nerves to get past this game or not. It is possible to learn all of the possible patterns of the cube rush, but there's always at least a little element of randomness to them which in turn snowballs in disheartening fashion. First off, you need to kill the little turrets below as they have no shame in shooting you right in the back. Sometimes a well-placed spread bomb will take them out but it's safer to preemptively move to their spawning positions. Next you'll want to hover directly over the speed-up bar. Depending on which cube pattern was picked you hopefully get one of these bad boys to land right in front of you (make sure to dodge well in advance, those hitboxes are huge), functioning as your foundation for a little fortress. There are a few patterns where you might want to go out of your cover to lure a few cubes away from you (otherwise they might drop right on your head), I found that to be as equally as dangerous as sitting still, so I don't bother. The edifying news is that this is one of the few stages where you actually can recover from. You need to learn the exact positions of all the enemies in the beginning in order to get powered up in time, but it's consistently doable. The option thief will always appear if you recover in this stage, he'll come right before the rush if you only got one option and during the middle of the stage in case you organized yourself a second one. Try your best to deal with this heinous foe (I didn't do a stellar job, unfortunately) and plan your way around the stage accordingly, you don't want to deal with the regular enemies and this guy at once. Probably everyone who got up to this point lost entire credits here, occasionally you'll lose 10+ lives in a row without much of a choice. It's frustrating, but what can you do? For the boss you want to stay close to the arms as that will prevent them from shooting you, yet don't collide into them, either. It's quite nail-biting to say the least, especially since you have to switch positions every so often to prevent getting cornered.

Boss rush poses no danger with the exception of the last one. For him you want to use a specific pattern of your own. He'll always try to slam into you if he cannot hit you with his lasers, and he'll always shoot at you if you are in sight of his lasers. Thus, if you bring him all the way down you can safely damage him for a few seconds instead of having to dodge some ridiculous patterns with absurdly big hitboxes (those things cover a lot of space behind them!). Rinse and repeat. Note that the actual crater parts will not destroy your Force Field, but the rough ground will. That's why I moved a bit upwards instead of pressing down-left there.

The fortress is a ton of fun once you figured it out, and I don't mean that ironically. It coerces the player to use the options wisely, as it should be. You definitely want to destroy the very first hatch by placing one option there well in advance, and it is highly advised to take out at least three hatches out of the formation of four shortly thereafter. You want your double at this part, so plan around this fact. You can get up to five power-up capsules at the beginning, four is more realistic, however, one of the little crawlers will probably die somewhere off-screen. Don't try to get a Force Field or even an option here if you cannot get the double afterwards, it won't end well for ya. Watch out for the tiles, their hitboxes are active even when they're still part of the background. I thought quite a while about how I wanted to tackle the little maze with all the laser-spewing drones; I eventually discarded the lower path even though there are less enemies to deal with here. There's a weird occurence where one part of the solid ground will sometimes block a laser blast and sometimes it doesn't. There's an almost pixel-perfect spot to prevent both the laser and the descending enemy from above from destroying the Vic, it's far too stressful for my personal taste, nonetheless. You want to have a Force Field ready once you reach the end of the maze for absorbing the upcoming bullets. It's not essential, but it makes life substantially easier for the next part with the shifting walls.

The best advice I can give for the section where you have to hide in the small niches of the ceiling while the indestructible spiders crawl by is to wait for them to end their movement cycle and then to simply press down instead of down-right. The latter might result into collision with the ceiling more often than not. Also don't select a new Force Field while in one of those recesses, the spiders will just destroy them immediately. The final stretch with all the laser barriers is not too dangerous, but if you didn't die before another option thief will try to ruin your day here. The biggest hazard are the zubs, their hitbox actives menacingly fast. Gun wall doesn't do terribly frightening things, just keep your calm. The walker afterwards on the other hand demands a fairly strict approach. Its legs have odd properties, the hitboxes are sometimes completely deactivated, allowing the player to harmlessly fly through them, I wouldn't suggest taking advantage of that unless you perfectly know what you're doing, though. It's better to treat him like the spiders before. There is one extremely important maneuver during this entire operation (you can see it at around the 52:07 mark in the video) you want to pull off: make sure to assemble your options as far as back as you can there. Reason being the one orange ducker that is coming from behind - he will happily run into you if you don't position your options like that. The ensuing segment with the cell walls is another example of unintuitive traits in this game. Those damn tumours have gigantic hitboxes, don't even think trying to squeeze between them and the cell walls for more than a split-second. You want to slowly move through the walls, staying in there for as long as you can. I charge out of the last section when I see the second barrage of bullets, poking my nose in the middle (you get more of a leeway on the front than on the back with these guys) before moving up. If you try doing that before the screen is farther out you'll die right away, there's not enough space to fit in. The final escape sequence is not that hard if you constantly move away from the front walls while proceeding vertically, nerves might catch up to you, though.

Also great job, gimebe! That's mighty impressive.

[chempop]

Ahhhh YYeeahhh 1-Alled Strikers 1945 pt1 with the sixth and final ship, Spitfire. I am happy!
This was on PCB, I learned 1 dodge from a replay (the top section of that cargo missile thingy in stage 6), but otherwise created my routes from scratch. All the ships are good and fun to use, not sure what my favorite is yet.
I'd like to break 1 mil with a less popular ship now that I know how to use them all somewhat effectively.

[Shepardus]

Congratulations gimebe, good to see all your effort finally pay off! Go for the Ura 2-ALL!

Nice one chempop! Which ships would you say are your favorites, and/or the easiest if that's a different answer?

I've been trying to 1-ALL Dragon Blaze with all four characters, and just got a 1-ALL with Quaid while streaming. Last attempt is always the charm!

I've previously 1-ALL'd with Rob and Sonia, but Quaid was the hardest so far thanks to his utter lack of spread attacks, which is problematic in many places but especially stages 6 and 7. Now I've just got Ian left - initial impressions are that he's a lot harder to handle than Quaid thanks to his super fast speed, but he does better damage and his homing subshots are more useful than Quaid's straight subshots (though sometimes they kill enemies you're trying to dragon-shot).

[chempop]

Nice one chempop! Which ships would you say are your favorites, and/or the easiest if that's a different answer?

I did P-51 Mustang first because I relied on the shield before I knew how to deal with the hard patterns. Then I did P-38 and BF-109 because they are probably the most popular and easiest to use once you know the stages. Followed that with Zero who I really like, especially that electricity bomb animation (but isn't too powerful), Zero's charge shot is very good though. Thought I'd struggle with the Shinden since the charge shot takes more planning and the regular shot is very narrow, but the bomb takes down the bosses like nothing else and I probably did the least overall number attempts before getting to the loop with Shinden. Did the Spitfire last, was the best for score but kinda difficult due to thinking the bomb did more damage than it really does, I'd think I finished off a boss but not quite --errgh.

I think the zero was most fun because deploying that charge shot reminded me of the seeking options in Garegga I don't think I can say what was easiest because my skill and knowledge of the game kept increasing.

[horaceappleton]

Some really great work on this page. Big congratulations to all!

The infodump on Gradius III AC was a fun read; as for incorporating it into an annotated video, I don't think any of them exist for Gradius III yet! It'd be delightful to see one, especially with all the subtle, unintuitive stuff going on in that game.

[Perikles]

It took forever and a half to upload, but now the Twin Cobra 2-ALL is finally up. I hope to find a better solution mid-term, my glacial internet connection makes it impossible for me to grant the videos a better treatment as far as the quality is concerned for now, this one took some 20 hours to upload as is. Anyway, my favourite part in that run is the stretch from circa 51:30 to 51:56, several superbly flashy luck dodges in a row only to get shot in the face by one angry little chopper, sums up the game quite nicely.

Also got my quick Air Buster clear ready. It still has some mean streaks in it, but if you're familiar with the devious PCE port you'll trash this one in no time. I also enjoy the soundtrack in both 16-bit ports more than in this one to be frank. Still a fun little game.

[Jeneki]

Also got my quick Air Buster clear ready. It still has some mean streaks in it, but if you're familiar with the devious PCE port you'll trash this one in no time. I also enjoy the soundtrack in both 16-bit ports more than in this one to be frank. Still a fun little game.

Awesome job. I love that game. I use a lot of 6-way so it's interesting to see some different strategies.

Since you mention the PCE port, have you gone much into the second loop in that version?

[Perikles]

Thank you! When I first played the ports I experimented a lot with the sub-weapons; I really like the green homing missiles, but I ultimately decided to stick to the little pods for protection (for most of the game, anyway), they are great against the materializing globes and the glut of missiles in the final stage among other things.

I miraculously managed to get to 2-4 in the PCE port on the one credit where I finally managed to clear it, but there was no way to get past the nigh invincible enemies in that stage, at least for me. I would imagine that 2-5 might be equally worse, depending on which foes got the durability treatment, whereas the final stage should be almost identical unless the final onslaught of ships received a boost in stamina. It's a cruel joke either way, though, the first loop is already one of the hardest 16-bit clears out there in my opinion. Rabio Lepus Special also has a second loop with highly resilient opponents, didn't even manage to get past 2-1 there. And I honestly don't think the programmers really tested them that much although it is probably somehow feasible with a lot of proper practice and a highly specific approach.

[Stevens]

Perikles gets clears like I change socks.

Almost daily:D

[Harpuia]

Got my Daioujou Black Label 1-ALL just earlier. Not my hardest CAVE clear, that goes to Guwange, but still a challenge. The scoring in this game is so hard, but unlike Dodonpachi I have to put some kind of focus on it just because that second extend is harder to get but so important to surviving.

[chempop]

^Very nice! B-shot was also my first 1-all in DOJ. I highly recommend A-Exy.

[KoopaTGR]

I actually preferred A-Shot during my time with DOJBL, possibly because of the faster speed.

[Shepardus]

Congrats on the DOJBL 1-ALL! I used A-L because I hate the shot-type laser (its laser movement speed is slower than w/ laser or expert) and Leinyan is cuter than Shotia and Exy. B-L might have also worked for me but I got used to A-L's movement speed.

[Harpuia]

Thanks guys! C-S is my ship of choice in Dodonpachi, so in DOJ B-S was just a natural pick for me. I'll probably experiment with others now that I've got the 1-ALL, and A-E definitely sounds fun to use.

[SMC]

Leinyan is cuter than Shotia

Factually wrong.

[descriptive]

Got the ddpdoj WL all！
I didn't have a nice score but 1cc the 2nd loop(Hibachi used 3miss)

[CStarFlare]

DOJ's been seeing a lot of activity lately - well done!