Shmup Related Questions That Don't Deserve a Thread

[Astraea FGA Mk. I]

It will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine.

[Metalsludge]

Pathetic question, but I want to know:
In a pcb kit, I know what the instruction strip, and flyer are for, as I see them placed in the display panels on cabs in arcades... But what is the big POP you see in, say, Cave kits, used by the arcade operator for? Some kind of advertising display? Another way to show the instructions for a new game in the arcade in the window or something? Just wondering, and search didn't seem to reveal answers readily.

[Skykid]

Pathetic question, but I want to know:
In a pcb kit, I know what the instruction strip, and flyer are for, as I see them placed in the display panels on cabs in arcades... But what is the big POP you see in, say, Cave kits, used by the arcade operator for? Some kind of advertising display? Another way to show the instructions for a new game in the arcade in the window or something? Just wondering, and search didn't seem to reveal answers readily.

Yes, that's it. It's meant to adorn the top of arcade cabinets, but they're an odd shape for the purpose - I'm not sure why Cave went with the tri-foldout. Only time I ever saw them successfully held atop a cab (in an arcade) was with a bunch of sticky tape.

[Bonus!]

There was a link on the Shmups tweet to this video some days ago:
https://vine.co/v/hM77B9AaPxw

Could anyone of you please tell me what game this is?
Thanks!

[Ghegs]

That's Viper Phase 1.

[Bonus!]

Thanks!

[Metalsludge]

Pathetic question, but I want to know:
In a pcb kit, I know what the instruction strip, and flyer are for, as I see them placed in the display panels on cabs in arcades... But what is the big POP you see in, say, Cave kits, used by the arcade operator for? Some kind of advertising display? Another way to show the instructions for a new game in the arcade in the window or something? Just wondering, and search didn't seem to reveal answers readily.

Yes, that's it. It's meant to adorn the top of arcade cabinets, but they're an odd shape for the purpose - I'm not sure why Cave went with the tri-foldout. Only time I ever saw them successfully held atop a cab (in an arcade) was with a bunch of sticky tape.

Thanks! I now know how to use the Cave triptics.

[ED-057]

um. hey guys, whatever happened to STGT 2013?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

So, I'm playing Formation Armed F, doing pretty good, got to stage 5 (the one after 'Different Stage'), and nomissed the stage the first time I tried (quite easy stage actually) but I died against the stage boss... only for the checkpoint to be AT THE START OF THE LEVEL?!

Gah, please tell me this is the final level. ;_; Please? It's the only place I've seen the checkpoint kick you to the start of the level.

Nope it's just me. It's just a long checkpoint away. The actual Final Stage comes after and tells you as such. Hrm.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

I managed to get to stage 5 in Guwange Arc for the first time, blew my load just before the extra lives pick ups. Scored 3,500,000

My original goal was a 1CC with 6,000,000 pt's to get me on the top 100 on XBLA and last place on the leaderboard here. But atm I'm wondering if that score is too low given how I dropped my chain quite early in that run. I was gonna go for all the achievements, but 30k chain and 25,000,000 looks way out of my league.

Anyway I wonder at what ballpark would my chain & score be if I didn't drop my chain until Stage 5 (no milking or other advanced scoring techniques)? Plus the last stage gives out aton of score. What is the rough minimum I need to have my chain at to get a healthy bonus from the red devils? Do I just kill them and collect gold or do I need to cancel bullets too?

[Erppo]

All I know is that it's pretty rare to have a clear scoring under 10M. Even if you're not really trying, the last boss gives a ton of free score and the end bonus is pretty significant.

[ACSeraph]

um. hey guys, whatever happened to STGT 2013?

I was also wondering about this...

[TrevHead (TVR)]

All I know is that it's pretty rare to have a clear scoring under 10M. Even if you're not really trying, the last boss gives a ton of free score and the end bonus is pretty significant.

That's quite a high score for whats on the XBLA leaderboards (5.700k is rank #100). The port must be even more unpopular than I thought.

I seem to have a habit of picking games and versions that aren't that popular.

[dark]

Not a question, but I just "developed" a new and stupid strategy in Ketsui, that doesn't deserve its own thread, but actually seems to work surprisingly well for survivability purposes.

Basically, I keep the ship about an "inch" or so from the bottom of the screen. And then ONLY move the ship to the left and right, usually in broad movements that make it go across the entire screen. This picture details my strategy. I am very surprised at how well it works so far. Haven't tested in the 5th stage.

http://i.imgur.com/m523z4o.jpg

[BIL]

If you mean tapping horizontally to herd bullets safely offscreen, that's a pretty fundamental technique actually. Also very useful in non-danmaku STGs like the original Raiden games, where you don't want to be changing direction haphazardly with a slow ship, big hitbox and fast aimed bullets. Surely a good sign that you've picked it up on your own, though.

[dark]

No, no tapping involved. Just a periodic smooth scroll to the right or the left, most of the time entirely across the screen. Obviously if there is a complicated pattern that I won't get through, I won't do the entire scroll, but here's basically what seems to happen.

-I am stationary on one side of the screen, so a dense chunk of the bullets is headed my way to this one side
-wait a little bit, then dash to other side of screen with one smooth movement, thereby dodging all bullets that were coming to the one side, and easily navigating through the non-dense bullets that were in the middle/other side
-moving on the X while the sparse bullets come down the Y axis also seems to me like an efficient way to limit the average probability of the ship's hitbox being hit. The only thing better is moving the ship down and away from the bullet, but then you have to spend an equal amount of time moving the ship back up towards bullets, increasing the chances of being hit.

Basically, the only time I am not moving is if I am on one side of the screen. Otherwise I am constantly moving to the left or the right (while firing the rapid fire bullets). No tapping involved. I feel really stupid doing this, especially while I artificially limit myself from moving up/down on the "y" axis. Give it a try?

[BIL]

Sounds similar to bullet herding in principle, but generally you'll notice players breaking up the sweep into smaller increments, to draw out the process and misdirect as many bullets as possible before the screen edge is reached. If bullets are absolutely hurtling down on your position, a continuous sweep will indeed be a better idea. Vertical movement or any other variation of X and Y will work too - as long as bullets are targeting where you were a short time ago and you've got a clear path forward, basically.

Nothing to feel stupid about, it's just simple misdirection and something you should work into your game plan. Works in other genres too!

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Reminds me of this.

But yeah, I agree with BIL, it's just a form of bullet herding. I guess if not worrying about vertical movement makes it easier, okay, but I find making U shaped sweeps for bullet misdirection work well. Ketsui really motivates you to move around the screen a lot in order to take advantage of the lockshot, as opposed to other shmups where if a large enemy comes onscreen, you generally focus the damage on it before moving on to another enemy. Ketsui's lockshot's strong enough to let you move to the next target while still killing whatever you've locked on to in a timely fashion, usually.

[emphatic]

Reminds me of this.

How about this?

[BIL]

Fuuuck... Ketsui is the best racing game ever. Cloudphobia what? Shippu Mahou who? Armed Police Unit GTFO!

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

What the hell does Andro Dunos mean? It sounds like it might be derived from Latin or something.

Did Blast Wind have an arcade version?

[BIL]

I hear Andro Dunos is English for "Operation Ragnarok."

Did Blast Wind have an arcade version?

Yes, but unreleased, it seems. Interesting post on it and other Tecno Soft PCBs by shou here at gamengai.

On the back cover of Thunder Force Gold Pack 2's manual, there's a screenshot of Blast Wind running in full TATE glory instead of the serviceable yoko mode the Saturn port uses. I wonder why they didn't include it... just like Hyper Duel's brilliant Saturn port, the options menu even has graphical DIP switches. Tecno Soft you prickteases

[EmperorIng]

They probably realized after the relative obscurity of Hyper Duel that another arcade release really wouldn't be worth it.

Is there ever a good reason NOT to have shot and missiles mapped to the same button in any Konami game (and 'rapid' at that)? It seems that after a few Darius games, Taito realized that everyone just shot both at the same time anyways. Or is that just a holdover from its innovative "3-button" set-up?

[BIL]

Is there ever a good reason NOT to have shot and missiles mapped to the same button in any Konami game (and 'rapid' at that)?

Technically not a Konami game, but in Gradius V's higher loops, it's useful to have the option of not hitting given enemies due to suicide bullets. Say, if you're stuck in a tight space with a bunch of turrets and want to shoot some far-off flying popcorns. Can't recall if the earlier games also have suicide bullets.

[saucykobold]

In the Parodiuses, missile activates any stored blue or red bell powers, so having a dedicated missile button effectively lets you hang onto these for trouble spots. This is handy since each Paro typically has a few sections that are reeeally hard without a saved blue or red bell.

If you're using spread bombs in GIII arcade, separate buttons are good for the lava stage. Just blithely holding down missile can obscure a lot of fire spam.

Oh, separate buttons also let you milk popcorn dispensers, this is absolutely essential.

Can't recall if the earlier games also have suicide bullets.

Yup, they're in all of them. Even the older games have a couple spots in later loops that are best pacifisted.

[BIL]

Thanks for the confirmation, I was 99% sure but with my frantic attempts to survive Gradius I & II loops I don't have the clearest recollection of what was firing at me.

[ratikal]

In all Dodonpachi games, but mainly Saidaioujou, do you do more damage the closer you are to the enemy WITHOUT being in aura range? Or are there only two types of damages, normal and aura damage?

[trap15]

There are only those two types of damage, but oftentimes you'll get better damage output when you're close because there won't be gaps in your firing stream.

[chempop]

You can also do more damage with rapid fire if you tap-tap-tap-THEN hold rather than just holding.

[cave hermit]

1. I heard that there are quite a few 360 cave games that let you mix and match the ingame soundtrack using both the normal soundtrack and arrange soundtrack; which 360 ports let you do that, and how would you go about doing so?

2. In Saidaioujou you can access the game config menu even while in Score attack; does changing anything here simply not affect score attack? What does turning off replay upload do exactly, and does that affect score attack?