Worlds best shmup player?

[emphatic]

I wonder if any of the big players have their scores on XBL leaderboards...

SinMoon does. Not always with a replay though.

[DEL]

I saw the name Dame K.K. a lot in Gemant's WR listings. ISO too and LAOS Osada Senin held 12+WRs a few years ago.
Archer's practice replay of high rank Ibara ST6 shows his mad skillz. I guess all the characters named by Icarus, moozooh, zlk and Sasupoika above.

[RNGmaster]

Archer's practice replay of high rank Ibara ST6 shows his mad skillz.

If you can get V million points in any game, you deserve a great deal of respect.
Dame K.K has counterstopped Mushi Futari Ultra, and he's got a video where he flawlessly dodges Hibachi's final in DFK. I also want to give kudos to ISO for getting as close to a Hibachi (DOJ) perfect as a human being ever can.

[doctorx0079]

tviks chews up Gradius games.

[esreveR]

Whatever happened to SOF-WTN's DDP Campaign Version machine, anyway? We could sure use that being emulated (But only if no one gets pissed off about it...which is likely to never be the case).

[sikraiken]

Whatever happened to SOF-WTN's DDP Campaign Version machine, anyway? We could sure use that being emulated (But only if no one gets pissed off about it...which is likely to never be the case).

You'll never see it.

[tinotormed]

There is no answer. Given any superplayer, there's only so many shmups that they're proficient in--there will be shmups where, if you watched them play via captured video, you'd probably be forgiven for thinking they are new to the genre.

Every superplayer is great at some shmup or two or three, but no such player is good enough such that they cannot be eclipsed at any game.

I agree with gs68, why? You do not need to be the best in every shmup to be the best shmup player.

[BulletMagnet]

tviks chews up Gradius games.

Heh, yeah, his "let's make the most impossible checkpoints ten loops in with no powerups look easy, just because we can" shenanigans always made me particularly jealous.

[tinotormed]

tviks chews up Gradius games.

Not only that, there were some people who really liked some of the games in particular, and they dominate mostly 1st place in this forum...

- tviks is SO into both Gradius and R-Type, as he only liked these two series.
- Luciole likes to gnaw every single Caravan modes.
- Heartbeam really digs the Touhou series.
- ThunderForce 222 really takes his skill in the Thunder Force series.
- third_strike beats most of the Shikigami series.

Well, those are what I knew so far, but NOT for long until some people like us can prove them all wrong.

[emphatic]

tviks chews up Gradius games.

Heh, yeah, his "let's make the most impossible checkpoints ten loops in with no powerups look easy, just because we can" shenanigans always made me particularly jealous.

WOW! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an0qDwbv ... re=related

[Shatterhand]

tviks chews up Gradius games.

Heh, yeah, his "let's make the most impossible checkpoints ten loops in with no powerups look easy, just because we can" shenanigans always made me particularly jealous.

Aren't you guys sure tviks uses save-states and TAS stuff? I remember someone once asked something about one of his videos, and he said "Of course I am using save states!". I always thought his videos were TAS-videos , until I noticed most people worshipping him as a god of Gradius games.

Not that TAS videos doesn't take skill to make, but it's a different kind of skill.

Of course, I am not accusing Tviks of anything, I am not point fingers and calling "cheater!", it's just that this was never very clear to me. Maybe he could post here and clear-up things.

[Despatche]

Hmm...is there a street fighter 2 of shmups? Seems like there are many great shmups but no AMAZING shmup... One game that everyone whould compete in...that whould draw attention and perhaps sharpen skills?

Batsugun. Even has that "move on already, this game isn't very good" quality.

Every superplayer is great at some shmup or two or three, but no such player is good enough such that they cannot be eclipsed at any game.

I agree with gs68, why? You do not need to be the best in every shmup to be the best shmup player.

If you were the best in every shmup, you would be the best shmup player. The idea that one really cannot be so was gs68's point.

[sikraiken]

tviks chews up Gradius games.

Heh, yeah, his "let's make the most impossible checkpoints ten loops in with no powerups look easy, just because we can" shenanigans always made me particularly jealous.

Aren't you guys sure tviks uses save-states and TAS stuff? I remember someone once asked something about one of his videos, and he said "Of course I am using save states!". I always thought his videos were TAS-videos , until I noticed most people worshipping him as a god of Gradius games.

Not that TAS videos doesn't take skill to make, but it's a different kind of skill.

Of course, I am not accusing Tviks of anything, I am not point fingers and calling "cheater!", it's just that this was never very clear to me. Maybe he could post here and clear-up things.

I know he's made some TAS stuff (and also stated it was TAS), but his actual scores for games aren't TAS in any way.

[ArrogantBastard]

I know he's made some TAS stuff (and also stated it was TAS), but his actual scores for games aren't TAS in any way.

Correct.

[moozooh]

Aren't you guys sure tviks uses save-states and TAS stuff?

Well, at least he destroyed Gradius V before it was even playable in PCSX2.

[harrihaffi]

Hmm...is there a street fighter 2 of shmups? Seems like there are many great shmups but no AMAZING shmup... One game that everyone whould compete in...that whould draw attention and perhaps sharpen skills?

Batsugun. Even has that "move on already, this game isn't very good" quality.

Are people competing in Batsugun? Are there tournaments? Where can I read more about this?

MVHH

[Plasmo]

Turn on your Saturn and the tournament will start.

[Hair]

First loop of Ketsui is piss-easy. I actually had a hard time getting killed, and this is on Very Hard too.

[TarkanX]

Thanks to all the replies, they were very informative.

I took a look at some of the players and the Gamest Arcadia records they have, and I made a count. here are the results (note, only counted individual game scores):

Yusemi SWY - 10
KDK-Takeyuki - 9
Dame K.K - 8
Sengokunin - 8
GFA2-ISO - 7
Clover-TAC - 6
D.I - 5
SOF-WTN - 5
T3-CYR-WIZ - 5
G.M.C. .Z. - 4
Hattori - 4
KTL-NAL - 4
SIN - 4
10 Tied - 3

And for the Shmups Forum scores, I got this count (note that I only counted scores for games with at least 10 entries):

MrMonkeyMan - 8
Icarus - 7
Rob - 7
Third_strike - 7
Tviks - 7
Heartbeam - 6
Luciole - 6
Smraedis - 6
Saucykobold - 5
Shoe-sama - 5
Gwyrgyn - 4
Javel - 4
Plasmo - 4
SFKhoa - 4

I'm not saying that this is an end all list, as some games have more competition than others, which would skew things, but it definitely shows how diverse some are over others and are still able to maintain great play.

[DEL]

How about Sikraiken? Surely he has lots of arcade board 1st places on this forum?

[tinotormed]

Me either, but not counting mine.

[DEL]

^I think he's only quoting number of 1st places in current arcade board titles.

In which case,
9 1sts
21 top 3s
29 top 5s
plus 5 more 1sts and 2nds not submitted on titles like Gradius/Nemesis, Lightning Fighters, Vimana

[TarkanX]

How about Sikraiken? Surely he has lots of arcade board 1st places on this forum?

Me either, but not counting mine.

^I think he's only quoting number of 1st places in current arcade board titles.

For the Shmup Forum scores, I only counted first place for games with 10 or more entries. There were quite a few regulars that had 3 1st places for games with over 10 entries, and there were players that had many 1st places for games with less than 10 entries. I'm sure if I included games with less than 10 entries, you would probably see more of the regulars (DJ Incompitent, BenShinobi, etc...).

I'm sure I made a few errors in terms of counting, but I think it looks okay (for the most part).

[sikraiken]

How about anything from STGT? : )

[DEL]

For the Shmup Forum scores, I only counted first place for games with 10 or more entries.

Thats one way of tackling it, but the scores on this forum represent the highest scores posted by Western players over the last 30 years, be they 10+ entries or just 3. If the rankings with less than 10 entries have scores that have not been beaten by anyone else, does that make them less impressive or more impressive, because no-one has toppled them.

EDIT:- Let's clarify my point. You are ignoring 1st place scores that have less than 10 entries. You are basically saying that these 1st place Western arcade scores, some of which have stood for more than 20 years, are not worthy of listing as 1st place achievements.
So let's take one shall we.
Let's take Fire Shark (Arcade) with less than 10 entries.
1st place is Mills with 100,000,000+ score and more than ten loops that get more and more difficult to the point where the 10th loop onwards stops awarding bombs.
According to you, this score is not worth listing in your post above.
Can you beat it? Can any Westerner beat it?
Then there's Mills's Raiden II, Raiden DX, Strikers 1945 and Truxton scores, all very close to the WRs. World Records not Western Records.

[sikraiken]

Those easy loop games...

A lot of the Arcadia records for infinite loop games aren't really "world records" - Arcadia makes a cutoff. Arcadia record doesn't necessarily mean world record, either. ;)

[Icarus]

There are a lot of Western players who aren't listed that have high level scores elsewhere (like EOJ, Mills, and DEL), and even more scores that aren't submitted to the main tables (my Space Invaders Extreme 2 and Zanac Neo scores would be top of these boards, and SiK killed my RF2 record ages ago). Probably the same deal for the Japanese players list, and for more obscure/not popular games.
Therefore that count, while interesting, isn't completely accurate.

[captpain]

I AM THE WORLDS GREATEST EVERYTHING

[RNGmaster]

Those easy loop games...

ARE YOU DICKING ME

[doctorx0079]

Thanks to all the replies, they were very informative.

I took a look at some of the players and the world records they have, and I made a count.

Another possible improvement is to at least attempt to take Guinness and TG into account.