STGT '12 Week 3 discussion (Salamander 2)

[Aquas]

Get ready to play the best shoot'em'up in existence. Salamander 2! Your jaw will gape at the lasers on a space horizon by dragons, armadas and cores about! Beyond your FIRST MISSION is your SECOND MISSION where lies exciting challenge and more Fresh, HARDCORE musical jams including your favorites from Salamander 1 (the previous contender for BEST STGT OF ALL TIME.) AND MORA.

Use your brain and KILL the brain! Shoot it in the eye! GO UP! GO RIGHT! INFILTRATE ENEMY BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS !!

Brave on Viper!!

You WILL be sweating bullets, ROOKIE! OR DIE TRYING! (to lower the rank.)

[azinth]

you forgot to mention how the final boss will SCARE YOU LIKE YOU'VE NEVER BEEN SCARED BEFORE!!!

[Moniker]

So I presume the PSP version is permissable? AFAICT, it's a straight port. (Medium difficulty, yes?)

[SuperSoaker360]

you forgot to mention how the final boss will SCARE YOU LIKE YOU'VE NEVER BEEN SCARED BEFORE!!!

We shall see.

[Deca]

I can only get ver AAB running in 2.2. I have no idea what the differences are or which we're supposed to be playing, is this acceptable?

[Nifty]

I'm going to do what all the cool kids do and quote Rob:

Salamander 2 is some miserable mediocre shit.

Apparently two years of Konami rubbish wasn't enough for the majority

[TenshiP]

I can only get ver AAB running in 2.2. I have no idea what the differences are or which we're supposed to be playing, is this acceptable?

This.

[Ed Oscuro]

I'm going to do what all the cool kids do and quote Rob:

Salamander 2 is some miserable mediocre shit.

Apparently two years of Konami rubbish wasn't enough for the majority

Hey, Thunder Cross or even Space Manbow would've been okay. I'd rather be subjected to Space Manbow checkpoint exploits (I believe there may be one in one of the very late stages, possibly stage 7) than play this game's stage 1 again and get subjected to GBA-level visuals (not diggin' that backdrop for the boss fight).

This game still has some pointless milking in the form of the first stage's fake miniboss (oups, spoilers). Dynamic autofire rates get!
Also has wrasslin' game-like boss attack telegraphing, which I suppose isn't objectively bad; it is something outside of my experience, so I'll just deal with it a bit. Seeing one boss get munched by another boss isn't as entertaining as it was intended to be, really.

Sorry for all the folks who can't get it running at 100%, but...why didn't you vote for Leo?

[Despatche]

mame team broke it for some stupid reason, just use shmupmame 3.0 or some other version of mame 0.99/0.106, or some port of course

[shmuppyLove]

No problems here running either version in MAMEUI32 143u9, though you get the nasty red box saying sound and graphics aren't emulated properly, even though they look pretty fine to me.

YOU CAN'T BE ME NEVER!

I like the attract sequence, it's like:

"FUCK YOU I'M A SPACE DRAGON!"
"FUCK YOU I'M THE VIC VIPER!"

<PCEFX mode>
During the attract mode for Konami's second game in the Gradius spin-off series Salamander, the two player ships the Vic Viper (P1) and Lord British (P2) are fully controllable! Yes, similar to the glitch for Galaga, you can actually play the game for free! However, it was intentionally included in Salamander 2, and is not a bug like it was in Galaga, so it is time-limited, and will not cause the game to crash or reset.
</PCEFC mode>

shmuppyLove! ^_~

[Illyrian]

Just run it in shmupmame 2.2, it seems completely okay in that one.

Drop me a PM if you don't have it and want the .exe

[noiseredux]

I saw a couple people ask in the hi-scores thread, but I haven't seen a response: Are the PS1, Saturn and PSP versions acceptable?

[dsheinem]

I saw a couple people ask in the hi-scores thread, but I haven't seen a response: Are the PS1, Saturn and PSP versions acceptable?

There are grouped in PS1/SAT/MAME scores on the tables here it seems: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=5877

Normal difficulty = Arcade based on that.

But...they split the PSP version out. I'm not sure why, as I thought it was supposed to be the same. Can someone familiar with the versions weigh in? I am actually planning to play the PSP port somewhat if it is permissible.

[noiseredux]

I'm planning to play the PS1 version as long as the score will be acceptable.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

Is there a difference between ver JAA and ver AAB?

If so, which should I be using?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

In future, to avoid this sort of thing, I think it'd be wise to post exactly what versions/ports count as valid to post scores with for each game?

Also, how the hell do you get shield items to drop? I've gotten a shield item in stage 1 maybe twice ever. :/

[Bananamatic]

another kuso week

[Chaos Phoenixma]

It'd probably be a bit more enjoyable if you actually give it a try. You can pick up the options after a death, so you have some hope of recovery. Though you do still get your other stuff taken away. And no checkpoints.

[1up]

This game is a ressource hog.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Oh geez, rank is a bitch. Arrive with a full set of weaponry on the stage 4 boss and the little ships that pop out fire tight spreads all around. Die once and they're down to small 3-way shots. Ugh, do I pretty much have to dodge powerups too to control the rank? :/

[BIL]

I seem to recall ditching options via option-bombing will lower the rank a bit.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I seem to recall ditching options via option-bombing will lower the rank a bit.

You have to use them more for bombing and less hang on to them for shot power? Hrm, guess I'll just have to bomb away whenever bosses show and see how that goes.

[Drum]

I will go to bat for Sally 2: I like how you can use your options as homing missiles. That's pretty much it.

[Aettaa]

This game seems fun, but why do I suck at it so much?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Interestingly, Twin Laser appears to be stronger than the standard laser, especially when pointblanking. How do you kill the Brain Golem at the start of stage 1 reliably (the one the boss normally eats if you let it wander offscreen)? I've only killed it once when a Twin Laser happened to drop at the start of the stage, and it drops a massive amount of points. I never seem to do enough damage to it, even if I try option bombing it.

Edit: It seems you need to deal enough damage before it moves too far to the right. If you get two fully powered options (by killing the second option-dropping enemy before grabbing an R/L/T powerup so it drops a large option instead of an option seed) and then plant them both in the Brain Golem ASAP it dies, even if you're using a weaker weapon like Ripple.

except fuck random drops, if the last set of enemies before the brain golem drops speedup shit instead of a second option you lose that 100k, yay restarting stage 1 over and over

[trap15]

I believe the drops are based on position/timing like in Xexex.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

so you have to figure out what position etc drops what and replicate that exactly if you want the same drops, basically pseudorandom ;___;

At least there's some enemies that seem to have guaranteed drops all the time. I just wish I didn't have to play 'avoid the powerup!' to not pick up too many speedups or a missile item at an unwanted time, etc.

[Zengeku3]

Both SuperSoaker and I are missing a 300a01.34k file and I can't seem to find anywhere to download it other than some website offering me an exe. of it that doesn't seem to work.

Given that I'm a newb at all PC I have no idea what to do. How do you make this work?

[sikraiken]

Are you missing the konamigx bios? Make sure you have that zip too.

[Hagane]

How does rank work, besides the option thing mentioned before? Power-up pickups? I was doing pretty well until 1-4 and then I got destroyed by 1-5, where the game suddenly turned into a bullet hell with a Konami hitbox.