Strikers 1945 III / Strikers 1999

[RealBout c.f.]

Wow, thanks for the advice, now I know which detail I have missed.

Of course I will try to improve further, but the second loop is so different, so unpredictable, I really don't know how far I can push it.

In the meantime I toyed a bit around with one of my old favourites:

RealBout c.f. - 951,400 - 2-1 - F-4

Played solely for survival, so no TBs exept the first four.

Now back to the X...

[RealBout c.f.]

Didn't have much time to play because I'll be moving tomorrow and when I played my mind was somewhere else so I didn't achieve much, but I improved slightly nonetheless:

RealBout c.f. - 1,134,400 - 2-1 - X-36

I died about two seconds before I was able to TB the America boss.
Of the first four second round bosses all except Russia look manageable after a bit of observation and training. 

[Necronopticous]

Wow. I randomly threw in Strikers '99 today and no-missed to 2-7 then completely choked. Sort of makes me want to get serious again, but...all of my free time is eaten up by NetHack these days.

[RealBout c.f.]

Wow. I randomly threw in Strikers '99 today and no-missed to 2-7 then completely choked. Sort of makes me want to get serious again, but...all of my free time is eaten up by NetHack these days.

That's incredible, you just have to continue to claim the first place here.

[Necronopticous]

I almost beat my score this morning before work; my first time back to 2-8 in quite a while, and I've been going for medal chaining in the second loop a little more than I did in my previous attempts. When I was first going for the ALL I would pretty much just ignore chaining in the second loop since it would so often get me killed. Really what I need to do at this point is buckle down and start getting the ALL with lives and bombs in stock: the bonus is tremendous.

[Sapz]

SPZ - 1,092,700 - X-36 - 2-1

Game over on the 2-1 boss. Only a small improvement, but it bumps me up a couple of spots. Looking to make it a stage or two further soon.

There's a pretty brutal attack at the end of the 1-7 boss which has been killing me a lot recently, but curiously doesn't appear if you don't shoot it much and go for the tech bonus. Anyone got any advice for this, or should I just go for the tech bonus straight off?

[Necronopticous]

Go for the tech bonus. Shadow Blinder is actually fairly easy to tech bonus, so I wouldn't even waste time learning how to handle him any other way.

[Sapz]

SPZ - 1,191,400 - X-36 - 2-2

Followed your advice and learned the Shadow Blinder tech and came up with this. Deaths were a stupid screwup teching the 5th boss, failing that Chaos Queen attack (I'm sure you can guess which one), and the 2-1 (Australia) and 2-2 (Russia) bosses. The loop is intense! Lots of fun. Hoping I can make it further after cutting down on the first loop mistakes.

[Necronopticous]

You're doing awesome. Keep it up, man.

[RealBout c.f.]

Just a small update concerning my very slow but steady progress; I haven't quit, I iust played much less in the last week. However, I finally learned Shadow Blinder (although I often have problems flying around that randomly-looking small bullet pattern, need to figure the timing out), so the only thing left to learn is Chaos Queen's second to last form, other than that I feel quite comfortable in the first loop now.
I nearly reached 2-2 again, I iust died a very stupid death when I tried to TB the Japan boss. I also improved my score a bit.

All I have to do now is to finally make a good first loop run in which I put everything I am capable of.  

[Necronopticous]

I finally learned Shadow Blinder (although I often have problems flying around that randomly-looking small bullet pattern, need to figure the timing out)

Yeah. That pattern can be a pain. I think there is some pure randomness in it, and it will occasionally put one or two stray bullets far ahead of the spray which cause problems once you start getting up toward the top corners. With enough practice you should be able to get through fine even with a bad roll most of the time.

The other annoying Shadow Blinder pattern is the very last side-to-side column pattern he performs just before opening up for the tech bonus. I'm always at the far left at the start of this pattern, and there seems to be a 50% chance that he will start out by going left which makes dodging without the use of a bomb extremely difficult since it usually requires fitting your hit box into a tight column with maybe a 1-2 pixel allowance on either side. It's tempting to bomb out when this happens, but I'm rarely interested in taking the -10000 point hit so this remains one of the most common possibilities of death for me in the first loop.

[Sapz]

SPZ - 1,300,000 - X-36 - 2-2

1 miss for the first loop this time around, and just as I was feeling pleased with myself I got completely steamrolled by 2-1 Ground Skater, which killed me twice. Damn, that thing is nasty. Final death near the end of Thanatos so no survival progress yet, but the score improvement is nice. Confident about all first loop tech bonuses now. I'll probably be working on improving this right until STGT starts, it's such an excellent game.

[Necronopticous]

Surviving Ground Skater on loop 2, even with two deaths, is a huge accomplishment. He is the hardest foe in the game.

[RealBout c.f.]

RealBout c.f. - 1,200,800 - 2-2 - X-36

So close to the top 10.  :(

Has anyone of you seen this superplay?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLifPq7g ... ata_player
It has obviously been recorded in an arcade so it has a special atmosphere, but furthermore the player totally owns the game and employs much different strategies than most other players.
 

[Sapz]

Yeah, that's a really, really awesome run. It's been my main reference so far. The real clincher in the run, I think, is how he ever so casually waits around the 2-8 boss for the medals to flash.

A little practice with the second loop later:

SPZ - 1,422,000 - X-36 - 2-3

Got all first loop techs as well as 2-1 USA boss tech and 2-2 Thanatos tech, game over just before Ground Skater on 2-3. The loop is still scary, but it seems more manageable every time I play.

[Necronopticous]

SPZ - 1,422,000 - X-36 - 2-3

Welcome to the top 5, man. Keep going.

Has anyone of you seen this superplay?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLifPq7g ... ata_player
It has obviously been recorded in an arcade so it has a special atmosphere, but furthermore the player totally owns the game and employs much different strategies than most other players.
 

The craziest thing about that video is how far away he still is from the WR. If you hadn't seen a much higher scoring run, it would look like practically perfect play, but there are still nearly a million points to be earned.

I love how he handles loop 2 Ground Skater. I never thought of going between the slow pattern...

[Sapz]

Thanks, man.

... People have gotten over 4m? Where in the world do the extra points come from? As you said, it looked like near-perfect play to me.

[sikraiken]

Arcadia record was around 3.5M last I remember.

[Necronopticous]

Ah, I was mistaken. For some reason I was thinking the WR was 4.1M...Maybe I'm thinking of another game? What's the Dragon Blaze WR? cowboy.ikaruga bbs is down.

Anyway, the only ways I know of to squeeze more points out of the run in the video would be all double techs (30,000 x 6 = 180,000 extra points possible), a couple missed medal chains (at least 1,200 points each), accidental power down on loop 1 Chaos Queen (4,000 points), and waiting for more of the timed popcorn formations in a few places (600 points each). Now that I really think about it, 4M seems higher than the maximum possible score.

[sikraiken]

Dragon Blaze is around 4.15M. I'm not too familiar with all the scoring possibilities in S1999, but it seems like the circles of medals at the end of the game could net quite a few points if you can chain all of them over and over. I'm not sure how many times they are released.

[Sapz]

I remember reading somewhere that the final form releases five rings of medals before timing out. I imagine if you got all of them it'd be somewhere around 150-200k... having said that it'd require pretty incredible timing to get them more efficiently than the dude in that video, I think.

[RNGmaster]

Ah, I was mistaken. For some reason I was thinking the WR was 4.1M...Maybe I'm thinking of another game? What's the Dragon Blaze WR? cowboy.ikaruga bbs is down.

Anyway, the only ways I know of to squeeze more points out of the run in the video would be all double techs (30,000 x 6 = 180,000 extra points possible), a couple missed medal chains (at least 1,200 points each), accidental power down on loop 1 Chaos Queen (4,000 points), and waiting for more of the timed popcorn formations in a few places (600 points each). Now that I really think about it, 4M seems higher than the maximum possible score.

Dragon Blaze world record... hold on, I have a .avi of it. It's 4,103,000.

[sikraiken]

Arcadia record is at least 4,153,000 by CYS-SAK.

[RealBout c.f.]

RealBout c.f. - 1,213,400 - 2-2 - X-36

This run wasn't too great, but it finally puts me into the top 10 as desired. To be continued.

[RealBout c.f.]

RealBout c.f. - 1,285,000 - 2-2 - X-36

No-missed the first loop for the first time. Died at 2-2 Ground Skater.

[Necronopticous]

Congrats on hitting the top ten!

[Enhasa]

Enhasa - 1,068,200 - 1-8 - X-36

Score from 2010. I got my revenge from being truncated I guess, lol.

[Necronopticous]

Nice. Where is your score from 2011? Get in there!

[Sapz]

STGT is over, so I can start playing this again!



SPZ - 1,503,800 - 2-4 - X-36

Lesson learned: don't restart runs. I died on the 1-6 boss and the 1-7 boss here and was pretty much ready to give up, and then this came out of nowhere, haha. The third death was on 2-1 Ground Skater, after which was 2-2 America and 2-3 Australia, with a game over near the start of 2-4 Japan. Nice to finally break 1.5m. I'll keep working on this.

[azinth]

Azinth - 1,251,500 - 2-2 - X-36

Played this some more at Sapz's request

That break I took seems to have helped, because I got a few 1-Alls and my consistency overall has improved greatly. This run I no-missed the first loop with all TBs and got Russia as 2-1. Ground Skater is kinda hard LOL