MOSQUITO FIGHTER wrote:Credit feeding Air Gallet. Whoever the sprite artist was at Gazelle is the man.
Joker Jun was the MAN in his prime. I'm also playing Akuu Gallet and I it is right up there with Ra.de and Batsugun in terms of style. I can also get to the section right before the final boss on 1 credit.
I'm also playing Raiden (US instant respawn version), and it's a humbling experience... I got to stage 6 once but I think it was a fluke.
"I've had quite a few pcbs of Fire Shark over time, and none of them cost me over £30 - so it won't break the bank by any standards." ~Malc
Just picked up Tatsujin Oh for my cab and been playing a lot of it - but ill be honest... I had to set that bitch to easy after a few days. Now it's much more enjoyable (and still challenging).
On a bit of a masochistic streak lately, lots of Compile and Yagawa.
My main beef with Compile games is that they're usually easy to the point of boredom for what seems like three hours or so, and then all of a sudden Gradius Syndrome kicks in. HARD. It takes so long to power back up because you have to wait for the right weapon to come up, and power is tied directly to health, so if you die you're going to die repeatedly.
And Yagawa... I still don't get those games. They're fun, but I don't really understand them on anything more than a superficial level. Me playing a Yagawa game is like a non-shmupper playing a Cave game. Still, though, they're pretty fun to play in a purely intuitive way, as if they were sane shooters (kill enemies, kill bosses, collect powerups). Also boss milking is against my religion.
I've started two new resolutions to improve my shmup play. One is to never, ever throw away a credit, even if I get killed by the first enemy; you never know what can happen. Another is to post my scores to RestartSyndrome religiously. Every single time I play a game for the first time, or if I beat a record, no matter how small or embarrassing, it goes up there.
I find that working my way up the leaderboards - no matter how slowly - gives me a good incentive to improve; the first game I ever played for score was Geometry Wars 2, partly because it showed your next-lowest friend's score right there on the HUD. Also, having a record of all of my scores allows me to watch my improvements as they happen.
(And if nothing else, I can serve as an inspiration to future shmuppers - hey, you may be a poor player, but at least you beat oboewan42!)
I think that, even more so than actually playing the games, I just love the genre. Such a rich genre with a lot of history, I keep finding new games that I like.
EDIT: holy fuck, my Garegga score is actually my best score in terms of leaderboard placement, and I only reach stage 2 (I've reached stage 3 before). How the hell did that happen? (answer: don't bomb until the flamingo tower)
Last edited by oboewan42 on Mon Mar 25, 2013 8:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I can never play one shmup for very long, even on a given day. The scoring mechanics usually irritate me and so I jump to the next one. I do this over and over again. It's quite odd. The mix has been this so far:
DDP (just started this up again yesterday)
Rtype I and II (the Xbox Live release, just started today)
Guwange (another one I plan on playing for a week or so)
All XOP Black games (favorite underground shmup(s) ever!)
DFK
DS
AK
Chronoblast
Raiden IV
I wouldn't suggest anybody do this if you're going for a 1cc. ha!
When I don't play games for awhile and I want a shmup fix it's either DDP or some iteration of XOP Black.
I noticed that Gundemonium is on sale on Steam, so I bought it. I've only tried Hitogata Happa so far, but I can already say this:
Never before have I been so immediately put off by a game's mechanics.
Mind you, I've played Treasure games, I've played Yagawa games, I've played some pretty bad Euroshmups, but I simply can't take this game. The movement is horrible, most of my deaths feel random, the shop system leaves a bad taste in my mouth... but nothing matches the sheer fucked-upness of the suicide bombing mechanic or the "time out the boss and you lose" thing.
Maybe I'll warm up to it eventually, but I'm really hoping the other two are better.
That being said, Hittogatta Happa will probably grow on you. It's more of a puzzle shmup/strategic game then anything, but once you get the hang of it, it can be mad fun.
The other two games still blow my socks off though.
RegalSin wrote:Japan an almost perfect society always threatened by outsiders....................
Instead I am stuck in the America's where women rule with an iron crotch, and a man could get arrested for sitting behind a computer too long.
My only problem with them so far is that they use too many goddamned buttons; sure, you could get by with only four by binding shot and slow to the same button like in the defaults, but then you lose the ability to shoot at a normal rate without slowing to a crawl or overheating your weapon. You could also lose a button by not binding autofire, but the autofire rate is too high (something like 10Hz according to what I've seen on other forums) not to bind a button to rapid fire. Add the flip button from the third game and suddenly you have a six-button shmup.
That is entirely too many buttons.
What I'm doing right now is using my thumb for bombing and flipping, but that's awkward and doesn't change the fact that six is too many buttons for a shmup.
Also, having multiple survival-oriented mechanics a la Espgaluda would be a better idea if the game wasn't so damn fast.
Still, though, they're good games. I like the fact that you can reduce rank by overheating your weapon.
The number of buttons doesn't bother me, my main problem is I keep mixing up the bomb and mana action buttons, getting one when I want the other. This is especially a problem if I just came from a game where bomb is mapped differently.
Sometimes I panic and hit both at the same time, which is hilarious because it results in a Demonic Shift in Recollection.
Still I love the games. Bullet design and overall pacing is great imo.
RegalSin wrote:Japan an almost perfect society always threatened by outsiders....................
Instead I am stuck in the America's where women rule with an iron crotch, and a man could get arrested for sitting behind a computer too long.
My Salamander Deluxe Pack came in the mail yesterday, so today's been my "get ass kicked by Konami" day!
Initial impressions:
Salamander: really cool; love instant respawns in a Gradius-style game; love instant power-ups in a Gradius-style game; stage 4 is brutal and the backgrounds seem to kill me without me knowing it
Life Force: Kind of like Gradius now; like the recoloring of the sprites
Salamander 2: omg this game is amazing - it's like a bigger better everything. I guiltily credit-fed my way through for shits and giggles, but I will definitely try to loop this sucker in time.
I've had it for less than a day now, but I can get to stage 4 in Salamander on one set of lives.
It's really weird, because my only prior Konami experience is Sexy Parodius (which is balls-hard), and Gradius III and IV (need I say more), so I am not used to making it past the second level in a Konami game.
You should try Axelay or Thunder Cross, Ing, if you haven't had much experience with Konami shmups. They have that same awesome design style that is shared between their shmups, but still flips the Gradius Syndrome on its head.
RegalSin wrote:Japan an almost perfect society always threatened by outsiders....................
Instead I am stuck in the America's where women rule with an iron crotch, and a man could get arrested for sitting behind a computer too long.
Starting to play Fossil Maiden for score. actually really fun, it's very straight forward to raise enemies score values with the sword (ridiculous scores on 3L easily) and the charged laser is great for finishing stuff off Forgot how fun the game was even though I played it a lot (four years ago). Going to have to get consistent for those big no-miss bonuses.
Playing with solidstate (multiple autobombs) feels sorta dirty but can't really compete without it.
Spent the most time with Gaiden [mostly because you can rearrange the power-up bar to a more reasonable order, and because it has the Lord British], diddled around with the other 4 games, spent the longest after that on 1 and 4. I know it's one of the defining shmups of history, but Gradius 1's starting ship speed is horrifying.
Come check out my website, I guess. Random stuff I've worked on over the last two decades.
Akai Katana's Origin Mode (my monitor the Xbox is hooked up to is only 4:3). Love it as much as when I first got it, trying to beat the game without using the Summon ability at all. Very tough (as you can barely earn the first extend by St4 due to how hard it is to acquire point items, pretty much only from lasers), but I am happy I discovered something new: when you're hit by an enemy laser, the bullets around you actually dissipate. I actually avoided a few deaths by being hit by lasers right before a bullet hit.
EmperorIng wrote:My Salamander Deluxe Pack came in the mail yesterday, so today's been my "get ass kicked by Konami" day!
Initial impressions:
Salamander: really cool; love instant respawns in a Gradius-style game; love instant power-ups in a Gradius-style game; stage 4 is brutal and the backgrounds seem to kill me without me knowing it
Life Force: Kind of like Gradius now; like the recoloring of the sprites
Salamander 2: omg this game is amazing - it's like a bigger better everything. I guiltily credit-fed my way through for shits and giggles, but I will definitely try to loop this sucker in time.
I've had it for less than a day now, but I can get to stage 4 in Salamander on one set of lives.
It's really weird, because my only prior Konami experience is Sexy Parodius (which is balls-hard), and Gradius III and IV (need I say more), so I am not used to making it past the second level in a Konami game.
Been playing Salamander Portable [PSP], got it just for Xexex, but was pleasantly surprised at how much I like Salamander 1 and 2. Not so much like for Life Force just because it has Gradius-style powerups.
Been having less luck with Salamander, namely because if I accidentally die on the first boss, all my speedups are gone, so I'm way slower than seems reasonable for the next stage... cue repeated deaths.
and losing your options because you were on the left side of the screen feels spiteful
So glad Salamander 2 has them bounce around. I haven't played it as much as Xexex or Salamander though.
Come check out my website, I guess. Random stuff I've worked on over the last two decades.
You know that feeling? When you've pretty much completely memorized how something works... and proceed to royally fuck up repeatedly, despite it. There is no reason for me to die on Stage 1. Especially not to the piss-easy boss. Especially not twice. Just, damnit.
Also, I think I like this game more than R-Type, especially since you always have your "force" [so you're never naked, a welcome change from Konami's other efforts, nothing like playing Gradius, riding high, and being back to basic, way too slow ship, no firepower, no shield, here you at least get a shield and your main shot isn't ass, and you can charge it up, and your starting speed isn't ass], and it's a fair bit more versatile too.
Come check out my website, I guess. Random stuff I've worked on over the last two decades.
Just got my copy of Futari. Cleared Novice Original, Novice Maniac and Arrange Original in the span of three credits, so that's nice... now on to the real stuff.
I love Arrange mode. It's so over-the-top and crazy (I haven't seen that much firepower coming out of a player ship since the last time I played Batsugun), it's easy to clear (I cleared it on my first try and I'm horrible at shmups) and most importantly, I can already see buttloads of room for improvement score-wise.
Protip for anyone who has DOJBL on the 360: turn auto-save off. It gets rid of the long and annoying load when you choose to reset the game from the pause menu (it's best to reset because using quick restart prevents you from uploading replays).
Maybe everybody already knew that, but I was watching a live stream and was wondering why this guy's game was loading instantly...
I'm actually seriously working on Akuu Gallet - I'm actually doing pretty well against the bosses now, it's just stupid midstage deaths that usually screw me (generally in stage 4 or smacking a heli early in stage 1, which I do surprisingly/embarrassingly often).
iconoclast wrote:Protip for anyone who has DOJBL on the 360: turn auto-save off. It gets rid of the long and annoying load when you choose to reset the game from the pause menu (it's best to reset because using quick restart prevents you from uploading replays).
Maybe everybody already knew that, but I was watching a live stream and was wondering why this guy's game was loading instantly...
Thanks man! I didn't know that.
As for what I'm playing - Ginga Force - Score Attack (Hard) - Type C
Forgot how fun the game was even though I played it a lot (four years ago). Going to have to get consistent for those big no-miss bonuses. 
