How to make Pink Sweets playable

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the1truepickaxe
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How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by the1truepickaxe »

The game Pink Sweets is quite broken. Without any score based extends or controllable rank, the game is a mess that's very very hard to clear on one credit. However, I found a way to remedy these problems.

Note: This only applies to MAME and PCB versions. If you got the 360 version, you're better off playing v1.01 instead.

Step 1: Enable the Service Mode Dipswitch on the PCB/MAME menu.
Step 2: A menu should appear. Navigate to "Dip Switch Settings" and press button 1.
Step 3: Navigate to "Difficulty 1" and change it to "Easy". This makes the rank less harsh, and keeps things manageable.
Step 4: Navigate to "Difficulty 2" and change it to "Fast". This increases the speed of the projectiles so that they are not clumped together into undodgeable walls.
Step 5: Navigate to "Extends" and change it to "1000000 each". This adds score based extends to the game, giving a reason to shoot for high scores.
Step 6: Navigate to "Save Settings" and press start until it says "Saving..."
Step 7: Turn off the Service Mode Dipswitch and restart the game.

Congratulations, you have fixed Pink Sweets!

jk the game is broken and will never be playable no matter what you do so go jump in a ditch goodbye
Last edited by the1truepickaxe on Fri Mar 30, 2018 1:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
zakk
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by zakk »

Are you trying to kill Plasmo or what?
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by brentsg »

zakk wrote:Are you trying to kill Plasmo or what?
I would assume the post was intended for regular humans, so wouldn't offend Plasmo.
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by KAI »

10/10 - Better than that hacked pcb.
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guigui
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by guigui »

This is an actual good joke. Making popcorn for when the Cave hardcore fans come, hurry up boys !
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by charlie chong »

don't matter what settings you mess with pink sweets will never be playable
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Plasmo
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by Plasmo »

Pink Sweets is not broken and perfectly playable, albeit difficult. You can complain about most shmups being too difficult and turn on easier settings - which is totally fine. Or you can actually sit down and learn the game.

I can tell you a significant problem you will run into with your seven step plan. You will trigger infinite lives very early on in the game, probably by stage 3 or 4 at the latest. At ths point, the difficulty settings then do not matter anymore, because you can't game over anyway. Despite all the easier settings, your rank will be completely uncontrollable. You will reach max rank by stage 5 and it will not ever go down again.

In fact, you didn't change a lot of the original game at all. If you are good at Pink Sweets you want to trigger infinite lives around stage 5 as well and also play at max rank all the time.

The problem is not Pink Sweets, but the mindset people approach it with. PS is very different to other CAVE and even Yagawa games and can best be compared to Bakraid. The infinite lives make the game more feel like an extended Caravan mode.
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ArrogantBastard
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by ArrogantBastard »

look what you've done, the1truepickaxe
the1truepickaxe
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by the1truepickaxe »

Pink Sweets is not broken and perfectly playable, albeit difficult. You can complain about most shmups being too difficult and turn on easier settings - which is totally fine. Or you can actually sit down and learn the game.

I can tell you a significant problem you will run into with your seven step plan. You will trigger infinite lives very early on in the game, probably by stage 3 or 4 at the latest. At ths point, the difficulty settings then do not matter anymore, because you can't game over anyway. Despite all the easier settings, your rank will be completely uncontrollable. You will reach max rank by stage 5 and it will not ever go down again.

In fact, you didn't change a lot of the original game at all. If you are good at Pink Sweets you want to trigger infinite lives around stage 5 as well and also play at max rank all the time.

The problem is not Pink Sweets, but the mindset people approach it with. PS is very different to other CAVE and even Yagawa games and can best be compared to Bakraid. The infinite lives make the game more feel like an extended Caravan mode.
The version I got doesn't have infinite lives, because that's weak sauce
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by Plasmo »

Which version are you playing? The port? The ones on Mame should all (?) have infinite lives.

That being said, PS is meant to be played with infinite lives and it's such an essential mechanic, that the game indeed appears to be broken without them. That's why the 360 port is barely playable.
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WarpZone
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by WarpZone »

Why would they have ever removed infinite lives if it's so central to how the game was balanced?
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Bananamatic
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by Bananamatic »

charlie chong wrote:don't matter what settings you mess with pink sweets will never be playable
based
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guigui
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by guigui »

ArrogantBastard wrote:look what you've done, the1truepickaxe
To me he did well, I so love your picture.
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chempop
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by chempop »

Plasmo wrote:...PS is meant to be played with infinite lives and it's such an essential mechanic, that the game indeed appears to be broken without them. That's why the 360 port is barely playable.
Well not all PCBs have it, which makes me think when CAVE found out about it, they removed it. Also why it's not in the port. We could ask EOJ now that he's back, I do recall him playing it a lot.
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by Jeneki »

Set different goals and work your way up. You don't have to 1cc every game to have fun with it. Personally I love how pissed off this game gets even if it results in my doom.
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by chempop »

Jeneki wrote:You don't have to 1cc every game to have fun with it.
Blasphemy! J/K, if I get to stage 5 in tatsujin-ou I consider it a victory :lol:
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the1truepickaxe
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by the1truepickaxe »

This game isn't meant to be beaten, it's meant to eat your quarters. Shinobu Yagawa doesn't design cave games, he designs credit feeders.
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by marus »

To be fair to the OP, I like 1.01 more than 1.00 also. The game is actually playable at max rank without infinite lives, and you don't automatically lose at the character select screen for not picking Lace. You can drop max medals to quickly drop the rank if you just want an easy clear, or you can keep the rank maxed so enemies shoot more bullets for you to absorb/cancel for score.
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by trap15 »

Infinite lives is definitely a bug, but not the only way to play the game even with default settings. There are several videos of runs with the whole game done without infinite lives or easier difficulty settings. Infinite lives is more "correct" than easier difficulty settings since it's a normal part of the game, however.
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by BulletMagnet »

trap15 wrote:Infinite lives is more "correct" than easier difficulty settings since it's a normal part of the game, however.
An unintentional, game-breaking bug is more "natural" than utilizing the options menu? Granted, any discussion along these lines is going to be inevitably heavy on the semantics and subjectivity fronts, but...
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by Shepardus »

Plasmo wrote:PS is very different to other CAVE and even Yagawa games and can best be compared to Bakraid.
It's not really like Bakraid either, unless you're talking about Pink Sweets Arrange... Mechanically it's most similar to Recca, but it doesn't quite feel like it.

Pink Sweets could have really used some extra time for tuning and polishing, but if developer interviews are anything to go by CAVE has never had enough time for that (with the notable exception of Dodonpachi). The fact that it's playable at all feels more like a happy accident than a deliberate act of balancing. Neat soundtrack, though.
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by trap15 »

BulletMagnet wrote:
trap15 wrote:Infinite lives is more "correct" than easier difficulty settings since it's a normal part of the game, however.
An unintentional, game-breaking bug is more "natural" than utilizing the options menu?
As a regular player of the game (that is, if you're playing it as intended -- in an arcade, paying 100JPY per play), you do not have access to changing the game settings, but you do have access to what the game normally provides you. Whether it's intended or not, it's part of the game, and it should be taken like that. The ability to change the game settings is not normally part of the game.
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by Xyga »

I don't know what the problem is, as trap says the game is clearable without infinite lives, just disgustingly hard.
I've seen a 1cc kasumi run by AZI that could pass for boring at first since it seems rank management heavy, but gets insanely intense survival-wise by 5.
The way I see it that game is not a bullet hell tailored for scoring masturbation, it's a very hard, walk-on-a-thread, force the barrages, manic shmup.
I know I can't do it but still love playing PS, I don't know why people find it weird though, it's excellent, only too hard.

edit: wrote 'hard' three times. not enough.
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by Bananamatic »

trap15 wrote:As a regular player of the game (that is, if you're playing it as intended -- in an arcade, paying 100JPY per play), you do not have access to changing the game settings, but you do have access to what the game normally provides you. Whether it's intended or not, it's part of the game, and it should be taken like that. The ability to change the game settings is not normally part of the game.
another thing you have access to in an arcade is games that don't suck ass
which is why no one plays this abomination
it's not too hard, it's too shit
like most of yagawa's output
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Plasmo
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by Plasmo »

chempop wrote:
Plasmo wrote:...PS is meant to be played with infinite lives and it's such an essential mechanic, that the game indeed appears to be broken without them. That's why the 360 port is barely playable.
Well not all PCBs have it, which makes me think when CAVE found out about it, they removed it. Also why it's not in the port. We could ask EOJ now that he's back, I do recall him playing it a lot.
Since the last official PCB revision that had everything fixed and was the final version CAVE would convert to, when you would send your board in, had the infinite lives, EOJ concluded - and I can only agree with him on that - that it is an intended gameplay feature.

I have no idea why they took it away in the port, but perhaps YGW wasn't involved too much (or didn't care?) and the people being in charge of it, did mistake the infinite lives for a bug.

Shepardus wrote:
Plasmo wrote:PS is very different to other CAVE and even Yagawa games and can best be compared to Bakraid.
It's not really like Bakraid either, unless you're talking about Pink Sweets Arrange... Mechanically it's most similar to Recca, but it doesn't quite feel like it.
The similarity between PS and Bakraid lies in the fact that your lives are used as a direct resource for scoring in both games. This mechanic is already hinted at in e.g. Garegga, and is much more evident in Bakraid and even more so in PS. The amazing thing with Yagawa games is the fact, that they think a lot outside of the box and make you use resources, that you normally use differently in other games. It started with the active use of bombs used for scoring (rather than survival bombs) in Garegga and consequently reached the use of lives in Bakraid. PS is the final conclusion and just gives you an infinite amount of it to be used at will.

Some older shmups had a limited amount of ammo for your main shot or had a more complex power up system. Nowadays, limited ammo in shmups is never part of the gameplay anymore and many titles let you start at full power even. Think of YGW as an alternate, parallel development to this, but in a much more extreme way, not only "going all the way" with your main shot, but with virtually everything you have. Keep in mind that PS does not only have infinite lives but also infinite bombs. And infinite fun.

It's certainly not for everyone and I see a lot of flaws with the game (infinite lives is not one of them), but I can appreciate just how different the approach of PS is, compared to other CAVE games, that were afraid of any progress whatsoever and eventually killed the genre by stagnation.

Pink Sweets is the free jazz of shmups. It's not always pleasant, mostly weird and chances are high that people will dislike it for its disharmony and complete chaos. But hot damn, is it interesting!
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by Shepardus »

Does dying actually give you any benefits in Pink Sweets? Most of what I know about Pink Sweets comes from watching Icarus play it, and I never saw him dying intentionally (granted, he was playing the 360 version where there is no infinite lives). It's not like it gives you bombs like in Garegga and Batrider since you have unlimited bombs anyway.

The way infinite lives is "implemented" really makes it seem like a bug to me - there would be much less "hacky" ways of implementing it if it were actually intentional. Not that its existence is necessarily a bad thing - like you said, it can be thought of as kind of like a caravan game in that sense, though it's rather lengthy for that sort of gameplay (and there's an actual score attack mode in the game).
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the1truepickaxe
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by the1truepickaxe »

Someone ought to make a ROM hack with the following things:

1) Rank gets cut in half when you die, to keep things from getting too crazy
2) Score based extends every 1,000,000 points by default instead of through dipswitch manipulation
3) Enemies destroyed with options reward points, instead of their value being cut to zero

These things should make pink sweets a much more playable game.
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Despatche
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by Despatche »

Instead of trying to make PinkSweets "better", maybe that brainstorming could be used to make a new game?

PS is a good game, and does not need your sympathy. The people that like it do so and that should be good enough for anyone.
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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by Oniros »

Which one of you heathens requested this?

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Re: How to make Pink Sweets playable

Post by Plasmo »

Where is the connection to this topic?
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