Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

[JBC]

Vimana.

Wow... what a great looking game.

[ACSeraph]

Was thinking about picking up Infinite Burst actually. Is it region locked?

Just tested it for you on my US Xbox. It's unlocked.

[Squire Grooktook]

Was thinking about picking up Infinite Burst actually. Is it region locked?

Just tested it for you on my US Xbox. It's unlocked.

Thanks man

[pbsk8]

I just got my copy of ketsui for ps3 but it has sound issues.

Only BGM plays during the stages, any sound of shots or explosions doesnt happen.

Besides, I am using headphone gold wireless since I play on a monitor lcd screen.

ketsui does not support properly this sony headphone?

[EmperorIng]

Trying out Air Buster/Aero Blaster on the Genesis.

Pretty fun; I haven't made it to the infamous stages 4-5 yet, so that impression might change. I'm impressed with the lack of slowdown. Only mildly impressed that a Genesis cartridge has load times.

[BIL]

Only mildly impressed that a Genesis cartridge has load times.

It's got the REAL ARCADE FEEL! ;3

[Squire Grooktook]

Picked up Raiden IV: Overkill on the psn store last night and played a few casual credits today. Ended up no miss-1 bombing the stage 3 boss blind.

Overall, seems like a fairly fun game. Not entirely fond of the Raiden playstyle of bombarding you with "fast everything" and encouraging you to move as little as possible and just tap, but when you get into the groove of it, it's pretty intense. I'm glad at least that the game allows you the option to play as a ship that doesn't feel like a snail, unlike III.

[BIL]

Can you imagine an Elemental Master-style Raiden III hack where you play as an actual snail? I honestly think it'd be amazing. Blowing up crabs and sandflies and shit.

[Squire Grooktook]

Dimahoo got ya covered

[dink]

Cyvern

[Stevens]

I've been very aware to keep myself under control lately while playing and as a result I'm all zen and shit. I've made 2-5 with little trouble my last 5 or 6 plays. No missing until late into stage 4 (at a spot it is uncharacteristic of me to lose a ship) or stage 5. I just passed the 150 hour mark with this one.

Also continuing to monkey around with Futari maniac. I have a much better understanding of the scoring now, it's even more fun as a result.

[LordHypnos]

Still working on Under Defeat stage 3. In the area directly after the hilltop with the tanks, after that carrier enemy, but before the midboss, where it gets all hectic, I seem to be able to get through provided I hit my mark with all of my rockets, which is surprisingly difficult (I feel like Under Defeat should be described as an aim 'em up instead of a shoot 'em up). I usually end up getting killed by either the horizontal bullets or the spreadshots on the midboss. I get that you can tap out of the way of the spreads, but does anyone have any tips for the horizontal bullets (I'm talking about the ones that come out horizontally from the midboss' main cannon

[Jonst]

^ you could switch to the cannon for the beginning of stage 3 up to the the mid boss to make things easier and switch back to rocket for the mid boss. Dodging the horizontal bullets isn't too difficult just watch your rotor...

In the meantime, even though I cleared raiden fighters 2, I eint feel completely satisfied until I get and beat the true last boss... And with a half decent score!

[endoKarb]

Been playing Gunbird again. I've improved a lot since the last time I played it seriously. Despite this I have yet to beat my old score. This isn't very surprising considering how much can go wrong in a run.

To start with, 75% of the time you get the Train Stage in the second loop. The train stage is hell, and takes at the very least 5 bombs to clear with Marion, and most likely a precisely timed suicide toward the end. A no miss is technically doable but the very last phase of the boss is extremely hard and takes 2 bombs to die instead of 1 at max rank.
Clearing a stage with 5 bombs sounds easy, but it actually isn't at all because Marion bombs require very precise positioning to do any damage at all.

In addition to that, dying any time during the stage costs you your entire life and bomb stock at best or the whole run at worst (most of the time); that's because you power down on death and there are no power ups on the train so you're pretty much powerless to do anything, and because destroying the last train car without dying is very difficult even with the help of bombs.

Basically 3 out of every 4 times you come out of the first loop in good shape, that's where you game over.

After that, if everything goes well with the random stages, you get to 2-4. The first part is easy enough, then the stage rapidly gets more technical until the boss.

Marion has a lot of problems with the ship boss of the fourth stage because her weapon are really weak for destroying the various cannons and turrets on it. You can bomb, you definitely want to bomb, but the bomb isn't much good for that either.

The loop version of the ship doubles up the challenge with randomly spawning, suicide bullet spawning zakos which make it impossible to plot a precise path beforehand. You can die on this boss, which makes everything much more manageable, but you need to die at right time and use the invincibility frames to launch a perfectly placed bomb or to point-blank the boss's second form, else your just going to die again a few seconds later while the boss laughs at your foolishness.

Compared to the madness that are the first four stages everything after that is relatively trivial. 2-6 poses some problems, and mistakes there can be costly, but thanks to how easy 2-5 and 2-7 are, bombing generously is a definite possibility. A safe strategy would involve 3 bombs, one somewhere during the first half, one at the random boss and one for the dragon.

I'm beginning to consider the possibility of suiciding before entering the second loop. I always find myself with more bombs than I need, I think I would probably rather have lower rank.
That would mean no space at all for mistakes all the way to the end, but it's not like there's much space in there anyway. With lower rank you can actually "seal" the randomly spawning zako bullets by staying at the top of the screen, which comes in handy during the first section of the train. Not sure if a suicide during 1-5 or so would be enough of a rank drop for that, and suiciding any later would leave me without enough bombs I think.

Rank is pretty brutal in this game. The bullets go faster, and all the enemies have more health, but how long you stay fully powered up is greatly reduced at high rank (particularly problematic in 2-4). Tetsu for one can actually manage the whole loop at max rank with enough skill, but for the other character that's not always possible.

I think I can definitely manage a 2-ALL with enough practice, but I can be pretty fickle so who knows whether I'll actually end up doing it. I would also like to go and fully route the loop with the other character at some point. If I actually end up doing that it would probably be a good idea putting together a guide or something like that for the strategy section.

For the time being, clearing the game consistently with no more than 3 credits and refining my paths further will suffice as goals.

[dink]

Metal Black, wow - what a masterpiece of a game this one is. It starts off kinda more like an ambient trip through space than a shooter, though

[Stevens]

Still working on that 2nd loop. Credits are going well as all of them now are ending somewhere on 2-5. The opening of the stage used to be a 1-2 bomb affair, but I took to practice mode yesterday and found a path that I either don't bomb or bomb once.

Last night I also played some Mars Matrix. I had forgotten a lot - but was still able to 2 credit my way to the final boss twice. And by the 2nd run a lot that I had forgotten came back to me.

[SycoAlexio]

I am enjoying the hell out of Donpachi....I can't help but come back to it time and time again...dat soundtrack XD
Love this site, I feel so at home reading all your guys' threads.

[copy-paster]

I am enjoying the hell out of Donpachi....I can't help but come back to it time and time again...dat soundtrack XD
Love this site, I feel so at home reading all your guys' threads.

I also replaying Donpachi one hour ago, this game took me 3 Credits to beat ( I'm try to 1CCed this but the difficulity gets ramped up to stage 4-5 ). Maybe I'll tried to 1CCing soon coz this game is easiest in the series.....

And yes that 'military' style soundtrack fits perfectly for each stage

[SycoAlexio]

I am enjoying the hell out of Donpachi....I can't help but come back to it time and time again...dat soundtrack XD
Love this site, I feel so at home reading all your guys' threads.

I also replaying Donpachi one hour ago, this game took me 3 Credits to beat ( I'm try to 1CCed this but the difficulity gets ramped up to stage 4-5 ). Maybe I'll tried to 1CCing soon coz this game is easiest in the series.....

And yes that 'military' style soundtrack fits perfectly for each stage

Sweet deal! I still can't 1CC it, or much else for that matter, with the exception of some PSX shmups. I'm an amateur, but trying to get better. Shmups are definitely the most rewarding games I have ever played, and the most fun.

[Gamer707b]

Im playing R Type Final on OG hardware. Loving it!! I have so many shooters that I sorta just go back and forth .I hate it when I start to get burned out on a game. Gotta change it up.

[cave hermit]

I have suddenly become hopelessly obsessed with Darius, and I've been playing Darius 1,2, gaiden, and burst constantly for the past few days.

Darius 1 is a bit barebones, and the levels are somewhat drawn out, yet there's something very relaxing and satisfying about playing it; as such I think I may have played this one the most out of all the Darius games in the past few days. I've also been toying around with the port for the PC engine, and I quite like that one as well, although it's a bit easier and the levels seem even further drawn out for whatever reason.

Also fuck Fatty Glutton.

I haven't played too much Darius 2 actually, but I can say that it gets balls to the wall hard really quickly. (Also, does anyone know which audio channel to turn down in MAME to get rid of the loud rumbling noise in stage 1?)

Darius Gaiden is fantastic, and that's all that needs to be said, but strangely I haven't played it as much compared to Darius 1 in the past few days.

Darius Burst actually feels a bit closer to Darius 1 in some respects, but it is much easier in the earlier stages, which makes it a bit boring until you get to the harder stages.

I'm actually thinking of ordering a used copy of Taito Legends 2 off of Amazon to try out G-Darius; sure I could try it in MAME, but without the music it might as well not be Darius.

[Gamer707b]

Hey cave hermit, as far as Darius Gaiden goes , do u play with auto fire on ? Its an amazing game, but mashing the buttons just tires my fingers. As a result I tend to not play it as much. I may just play with the auto fire on and just say, 'the hell with it!!'. The whole point is to have fun right? Just curious how others play this game.

[cave hermit]

Personally I just hold down the button and use the game's default auto-fire rate; it seems effective enough to me, and apparently the game is balanced around the default rate.

[Squire Grooktook]

Some people complain that some bits are slightly harder/take too long if you don't use the suped up emulator autofire, but IMO a few bosses going on a little longer is better than the completely broken game destroying bullshit of suped up autofire. Default autofire rate for holding down the button isn't perfect, but it's overall pretty good and balanced IMO.

[Shepardus]

I haven't played too much Darius 2 actually, but I can say that it gets balls to the wall hard really quickly. (Also, does anyone know which audio channel to turn down in MAME to get rid of the loud rumbling noise in stage 1?)

Under slider controls, turn down both "':ymsnd' Ch. 0" volumes:


And I thought G.Darius in MAME does have music?

[cave hermit]

wait, g-darius does have music in mame? Can somebody verify this? I thought I read somewhere here that it didn't...

edit: I tried it out, and honestly, I can't tell if the music is working properly: most of stage 1 seems to have no music whatsoever, although near the end of the stage I can hear some faint music; does the music not really start until a few levels in or something?

[Shepardus]

I think it's just like that. You can compare it to the PS2 version here.

[Stevens]

Getting close on the 2nd loop.

Made 2-5 with no misses and no bombs (meaning I had none left:). Died once where I though I would at the start (after the monster tanks where all the smaller tanks are) and then proceeded to die AGAIN within 10 seconds. Which sucked because I wound up no missing everything else to phase 2 of the boss.

Also played some more Mars Matrix. Nothing to write home about, but it is fun to be playing it again. I love playing games after a clear. Zero pressure.

And it is an awesome game.

[dink]

Explosive Breaker - played about half way through tonight
Xexex (Japan version) - finished

[CaptainBadAss]

I've been trying to learn Sidearms for the Turbografx16 but it was frustrating me so I've been switching between that and Raystorm (Taito Classics 2) on PS2.