Very late to the party but since I hadn't visited the farm in a long while I thought I might as well take the time to answer this thread and say where I'm at atm in terms of shmups.
WARNING !! A huge Battle ship 'WALL OF TEXT" is approaching fast
(1) Personal Favourite Achievements of 2023:
- One of my biggest shmupping achievments done this year is to have participated in a easthetics seminar where I did a talk about speed in shoot'em ups. As an philosophy and aesthetics student it's fairly disappointing that there's not a lot of academic papers, conferences, etc. about our most beloved genre (compared to say walking sims or elda to name a few exemples), and it was pretty satisfying to have my first post-master's degree academic contribution in that field (big thanks to Plasmo for being there to support). The article should be published later this year (in French).
- All the work done on the shmupwiki video index (the
Darius ones in particular), participating in the sissy series, STG Weekly, and other shows/live demonstrations, writing more commentaries on my yt channel, and doing lots of IRL (small or big those were always fun).
- Clearing more games in co-op with M.Knight and other players. Along with M.Knight we have now cleared six different shmups by the end of 2003, and I got to clear at least one shmup with eight different players in total. I feel that no matter how hard or easy the game is it's always an achievement to have two different players reach the end without continuing.
- Doing 10 1CC this year, and reaching 30 Arcade 1CCs in total. I am not really a 1CC chaser and most of those games are on the easier side, but it is more than any other year before so it's satisfying enough to me
.
- Getting back the community record on
Darius II 2-screen and getting the one on the 3-screen version as well (Still have room for improvements).
- Getting the top french score in
Pulstar and beating my master SGN who thaught me how to play this game. The score in itself is not much to write home about since the stages are far from perfect and I was never interested in the final boss milk, what I'm extremely satisfied though is to have showcased some scoring techniques that had never been seen in video until now and that should help anyone trying to improve their scores.
- No-missing QUZ with Gaiden ship in
Dariusburst ACEX, which is my biggest performance in this game that I didn't use to like a few years ago.
- Getting to try out and clear
Gradius with maximum speed, and clearing the game on the original Bubble System (A moment filled with emotions, many thanks to Rocco for making this happen)
- (2) Personal Biggest Screw-ups of 2023: Did a Power-up carrier pick you off or ram into you and ruin the GOD RUN? Whatever comedies/tragedies pop up most clearly to mind go here! These don't have to be specific occurrences but can be generalities as well in your gaming endeavors :
- My biggest screw-up of 2023 without any doubt is failing to do a fully optimized speedrun of
Pulstar despite working on it for so long and it being my main objective for 2023. One of the reasons for this is that we're talking about my hardest shmup performance ever to be (much harder to me than clearing
Darius II in very hard or getting high scores even though difficulty is always tricky to compare) since I optimized pretty much every section close to perfection. The only places where I deliberately lose time are two sections where the ennemies come out from all directions on which I prefer to play safe than to risk a reset for one or two seconds, but aside from that 100% of my decisions are time-based, dismiss survival consistency, and have been carefully studied over the course of 100+ hours of savestate training. Another reason to my faillure is maybe that is maybe my most personnal gameplay performance ever crafted, one that started out as a gimmick at Shoot the Baguette in 2020, that I decided to take extremely seriously as I realized both : 1) how much speed could be won in that game 2) how intense, fun, and innovative it was, and very far from the "bomb the bosses" stg speedrun trope/strawman we so often hear. This is the only game for which I elaborated every single strategy by myself, and thus sort of feel it is something I need to prove to the world. It’s a niche performance for which I haven't received much support from other players, who more than often than not wondered why the hell I'd even consider doing something like that, which lead me to explain the basics of my runs countless times and eventually spend some energy there. All this is absolutely normal, it's expected that ppl will wonder if you talk about speedrunning an auto-scroller (because it goes against common sense), and won't be as supportive as if yougo
Ketsui omote or ura clear for instance, but because of all this I sort of feel my "legitimacy" as a player is involved which brings extra pressure to the run (I know it's dumb but can't help it). The last reason, which is tied to the last one in a way, is that I don't have much motivation to get a run done now that I found out every possible way to gain speed. Of course I'd never be satisfied with a non single-segment run or consider it "legitimate", but all this comes down to me proving I can do all my crazy time strats (which involves at least one frame perfect trick). I know I can do it, but don't feel a crazy urge to prove it to myself I can do it either, and there's no "demand" out there for me to prove it either.
Working on this speedrun made me realize how fun labbing a game could be (I guess I understood it could be fun before that but never experienced it for myself), usually I tend to see practice sessions as a sore, and even though I definetely use savestate practice if a port allows me to and feel like it, I'd rather just play the game. For the first time it felt extremely satisfying to come back to game practice and see how many seconds I could still save, etc. Boss strategies are the best exemple of this : the speedrun strats are brainless easy to execute (aside from one boss that requires a frame perfect trick), but spending hours and hours working on how to save every possible second was very fun.
Looking at the bright side though this year was the opportunity to improve strats even more, get more concrecte practice (the few runs I made at the end of 2022 were disastrous) and get "a feel" of the full speedrun. In case anyone’s curious here’s the best attempt I did, which showcases the optimal strategies for stages 4-7 and the beginning of the final stage
https://youtu.be/M3uKGDcm8l8
- My other screw-up was to fail to clear
Gradius II with Type 2 (the hardest type to use). I was asked to do a commentary on
Gradius II and thought it’d be a good idea to revisit the game with another type. Cleared with Type 1 relatively fast and thought it’d be a nice opportunity to clear with every ship type as a side goal, but then struggled in the last stage over and over (despite having practiced with savestate). I remember one stream when I tried to recover at Crab checkpoint for an hour and never managed to do it, felt pretty bad.
(3) Favourite Achievements by Others of 2023: Whether it's a long-time goal achieved by a close friend or a new WR set in one of your favourite games (or both at the same time!), you can post whatever stuff you enjoyed seeing other people do this year here!
Will mostly mention performances that haven’t been mentionned yet, and a few I particularly enjoyed :
- ksg22’s insane research output on every arcade version of
Darius II and
Sagaia. That is one insane fisherman that will definitely go down in the Darius superplay history. Not only an insanely good player and explorer but also always keen on helping other players to understand
Darius II. Definetely check out his blog (
https://mdrksg22c.livedoor.blog/archives/13083271.html) and social media (
https://twitter.com/mdrksg22c)
- Juju Kenobi’s
Sengoku Blade ALL with Hagane. I always like to see Juju getting to play a new game seriously and dissecting it, you can always be sure something interesting will come out of it. The routing was really superb, and quite inspirationnal for when I’ll tackle the 2nd loop.
- DMC’s 80M+ commentary for
Great Mahou Daisakusen, insane game, insane performance, insane player, always a treat. And overall all the activity around this game, from Feedbacker still at it, AndrewR98’s superb wiki editing, clears from toimine and Chinopolis with different characters, the Calice competition, and to the new mame overlay by bad and olifante. 2023 was definetely a great year for this game.
- BOS always doing commentaries and working out on new games. Always great to see.
- Lerebours’s contributions, whether it’s a new article, or a new performance it’s always great to see his personnal touch.
- Lyv’s Sengoku Ace ALL with Jane. I know he’s not that much motivated for shmuping these days but it was great to see him come back to a serious goal after a few years break.
(4) Goals for 2024: What do you have your eyes set on achieving next year? List all the clears, scores, and crazy challenges you want to achieve next year here. Be ambitious!
First I’d like to work on some past goals I set myself to do before but didn’t get to do. Without any pressure, and at the pace I feel like :
-
Pulstar optimized speedrun obviously comes to mind, but maybe I should settle for something less optimized and get an official world record as an intermediate goal. There’s a lot of time to save in stage 8 but it’s also where it’s the most risky so it could play safer there and still have a very decent time.
- Play more Saturn games, in particular
Guardian Force,
Cotton Boomerang, and
Salamander 2. Aside from
Darius Gaiden abnormal mode and Salamander/Life Force I didn’t get to play it much last year.
- Getting back to score
Darius II/
Sagaia arcade.
- Playing at least some
Darius Gaiden and work on some goals for the 30th anniversary.
- Get to at least try the tate Saturn shmups I have with a CRT at my parents’ house.
- Clearing
Soukyugurentai with S.O.Q 010 (challenge accepted DMC, this one was actually on my goal list for last year)
.
- Play more Konami games (starting with the ones I own).
- Play more
Darius console games.
- Getting to buy and repair some console and controllers (starting with the Saturn ones to get to enjoy more shmups).
- Be more active on forums and maybe even wiki as they are public and benefit more people than chats.
(BONUS) CHALLENGES TO OTHER PLAYERS: The fun one. Throw down the gauntlet and challenge someone else to something! This might be to beat one of your scores, or a race to a certain clear, or whatever you like. Remember to keep it a little friendly, but on the other hand, go totally nuts!
Same as last time : why not try something new ? Shmups come in different forms and getting out of the confort zone (wether it’s trying a different ship, mode, game mechanic, controller, etc.) can lead to many good surprizes. At least it was for me
