Bombjack Twin highscore

NMK really upped the speed (and thus difficulty) in Bombjack Twin, making average game play times in the single digit minutes. This game is not for casual play, unless you like being stuffed by round 3 all the time. But there is definitely a pattern that can be found, where memorizing paths, and timing when the P icon comes out (which freeze the screen), can really help to finish off stages quickly. Each round has 3 stages, and after two completed rounds a special bonus round contributes to a majority of your score. Thus my highscore table below shows some big jumps after stage 3 and 6. I believe I got an extend icon by round 4 or 5.

DJK - 766,420 7-1

Rapid Hero highscore

I finally spent some quality time with Rapid Hero this Saturday, racking up a decent score, with plenty of room for improvement. In this run, I died twice in a row on stage 5, and was about to restart the game, but decided to stick it out to see how far I could get with 1 ship remaining. I got a 1UP in stage 6, and finally died part way into stage 7.

Overall, I'd say Rapid Hero is pretty easy up until stage 5, making this a pure joy to pickup and play without any prior practicing. Nothing beats ripping through waves of popcorn enemy, and collecting 10000 bonus chips. Stage 5 and onward has lots of scoring potential with strategies for positioning your ship for maximum amount of enemy destruction, while weaving through slow moving bullets that get left behind. There is really only 1 boss of the game, who keeps running away at the end of each level after taking a beating, but comes back with bigger and badder armor and attachments next time.

I'm pretty confident I could 1CC this soon, but now I need to prepare for next weekend's shmupmeet!


DJK - 2,102,030 - Stage 7 [Score Update!]

Ketsui Highscore

I've never given Ketsui a lot of attention since my last high score, only playing it on random occasions. In fact I'd almost call it casual play, since I have no strategy, other than trying to get as many 5 chips as possible. I think I decided to bomb more often in this run, and it paid off, getting me almost halfway into stage 5.

DJK - 95,357,314 - Stage 5 - Tiger Schwert

I'd really like to clear this before the port comes out for xbox360...but seems unlikely without some serious time and attention.

Cyvern The Dragon Weapons

Cyvern is an exceptional Kaneko game on the Super Nova motherboard system. I bought this awhile ago, and don't see it come up for sale often anymore. I started playing this today after watching NRKCFK's 27M superplay (and 41M Cyvern Plus superplay). As seen in the videos, using a 30hz rapid fire on the C button can recharge your banish shot a lot faster!

*Updated* with my newly aquired artwork, and score from STGT'10 Cyvern competition.

DJK - 5,193,250 1-4

Galmedes

Galmedes is one of those hidden gems you don't hear much about, most likely because it was designed to eat credits. The level of difficulty is quite steep from the very start, adding another credit to continue does not reset your score, and there is no way to disable continues. Outside of these deficiencies, I'm finding the game quite addictive, and surprisingly similar to Dangun Feveron with respect to ship speed, and charge shot types. Did I mention this was produced 6 years before Dangun?

I found it strange that Galmedes was produced on Taito hardware, yet no mention or credits of Taito in the game.

I had play tested this in Mame, and never made it past the first stage, so I was quite pleased with this accomplishment, making it well into stage 3, using a rapid fire board.

DJK - 572,200 - Stage 3

[update]I had a heck of time trying to figure out why the game had no sound on my Astro City 2 or New Astro City cabs, but worked fine in the Windy or original Astro City cabs. Turns out Galmedes, being an old Taito board, requires -5V for the sound to function.[/update]

Espgaluda Arrange 104M

Finally broke 100M in Espgaluda Arrange today, which is a big up from my last score (64M). Takes me about 20 minutes of warmup before I'm comfortable with the 4 button layout.


DJK. - 104,364,082 - 4 - Black (Arrange)

Planet Harriers Highscore

Beat my last highscore by a little over 100K. This time you can see how armed to the teeth I was when I hit the midpoint Star Shop on Stage 4.

Didn't help me much as the second set of enemy after the midpoint are the suiciding turtles, that you need to shoot down + extreme dodge all within 1 second of spotting them on the screen or its an instant hit taking 1 full heart. I think I must have gotten down to the last turtle that nailed me here giving me this 571K score.

DJK - 571,939 - Stage 4 (Lavaa)

Muchi Muchi Pork - 59M

I died foolishly with one bomb in stock that could have easily gotten me past the 60M extend.


DJK - 59,809,530 - Stage 4 - Momo

Mushihimesama (Maniac Mode) - 54M

I know I suck at Mushihimesama, but played a single credit today out of the blue and made it midway through Stage 5.


DJK - 54,903,067 - Stage 5 - W-Power

In Rank We Trust

Getting back into some Raizing goodness takes a bit of getting used to, as noted in my Ibara post last month. Confronting rank is like running into a brick wall at 100 miles an hour. You think you can bash straight through it, only to have your ass handed back to you just as quick. This is what makes Raizing games so much fun to play, as you really need to plan your objectives, be that 1CC with low rank, or scoring with high rank, or in some cases - a very fine line in between. Yagawa is a master at making this all too apparent with his games.

So this weekend I focused some time on Battle Bakraid, the arcade only successor to Battle Garegga, with some interesting differences in rank based scoring. I won't detail the differences in this post, but point out that in Bakraid you can actually ignore rank if you are not gunning for high scores, and focus solely on the 1CC in Normal mode. Combining this with an auto-bombing Training mode, makes the game accessible to beginners.

So where is the rank? Well if you want to play for score, you better get ready for some very unorthodox style of play. Imagine a game were bombing and committing suicide with your ship every 10-15 seconds is required to score high! Quite the opposite of Cave (and any other) style shmup, yet Yagawa's genius shines through. Even in Battle Garegga, where players were first exposed to suicide techniques to lower/tame rank, Bakraid takes this to the extreme with a 64x multiplier leading to amazing scores, amazing amounts of extends (extra ships), and an amazing amount of rank. Some people might think this "breaks" the game, and that such an unorthadox style of play must not have been intentional. The same thing was said years later of Yagawa's Pink Sweets. All I can say is that Yagawa's games truely innovate outside the norm of repetitive Cave style shooters, causing the player to plan/think rather then simply react with twitch reflexes.

And with that, I give you my latest Normal and Advanced course scores. Basically I temped fate by scoring large in the first two stages, and then play it safe from there on out. I've been able to 1CC Normal mode before but with only a 5M to 6M score. With this in-between strategy, I've been able to double my score, and still complete the 1CC. I tried the same technique in Advanced mode, only to learn that once you get 4 ships in stock, the rank gets so pissed, that there is now way in hell you will get past stage 6. I literally had a chain of missiles heading for me that I could not shoot down fast enough, even with forward facing options pointed straight at them.

My scores below are ranked #3 on my PCB, since I didn't bother resetting Rastan78's scores the last time he was over (a real master at this game). The last screenshot is the special Boss only mode, where I made it to the second form of Gollum.

DJK - 12,390,280 - Saber Tiger [C] - ALL - Normal (SE)
DJK - 12,416,350 - Saber Tiger [C] - Stage 6 - Advanced (SE)
DJK - 10,832,250 - Flame Viper [C] - Gollum - Boss

Vimana highscore

:P

DJK - 582,868 - 66%

Shienryu highscore

DJK - 4,568,990 - 5-7

Bee Storm: DoDonPachi II highscore

Bee Storm: DoDonPachi II gets little respect due to it not being made by Cave, but rather licensed for use by IGS to attempt their own arrange version to the seminal DoDonPachi. Trying to compare the two, as any sane game reviewer might, would make Bee Storm look like a complete piece of crap. You've got the same graphics, sounds and stage layouts, which make it appear like DoDonPachi, but thats where the similarity stops. Kaneda/NTSC-J had written an excellent review long ago on the clickstick forum, which unfortunately was lost when the site was deleted. Since the IGS hardware Bee Storm runs on is still not fully emulated, due to security encryption which has still not been cracked, it may be awhile before another review comes out.

I think this game is extremely fun, and pretty damn hard even on the "combat" (normal) setting. If I can 1CC combat mode, I may try writing a review. Until then, I've only made it to the 4th boss, which has the coolest intro music ever.


DJK - 367,326,600 - Stage 4 - Combat - Energy

Rayforce highscore

I can't believe Rayforce was released in 1993. I mean, this game is in a league of its own in terms of advanced visuals and tremendous soundtrack, and thats not even mentioning the ground breaking mechanics of shooter and layer lock-on system. To bad I really stink at it. Best I've been able to do is finally reach area 4.


DJK - 1,274,400 - Area 4

Double Wings highscore

Double Wings is a Raiden clone, but with ships that move at modern shmup speeds. This makes the game a lot easier, and (in my opinon) more fun. As such, it only took a couple days to clear the first loop (with the aid of an autofire board). The second loop contains a strange combination of the same levels plus some new sections if you do not die. The moment you die, the rest of the level returns to the same as the first loop.

Here is my best score, the star indications second loop, stage 3 section 2 (there are 4 sections to each stage).



DJK - 1,857,100 3-2 (2nd loop)

Mushihimesama ALL (original mode)

Done (for now). No bombs left, and two lives in stock to get this score.


DJK - 30,229,811 - ALL - S-Power - Bx0 Lx2

First Espgaluda II high score

Please excuse the low score first attempt. :(

ESPGaluda 1CC

Finally! I 1CC'd (one credit completed) ESPGaluda tonight. For one of Cave's reportedly "easeist shmup", it took me about two months of playing it seriously, around 3 times a week, to complete with a single quarter run. I'm fairly sure I was able to 1-ALL DoDonPachi faster than this. Anyway, now I'll have no guilty conscience moving onto ESPGaluda II.

My final score was 35,219,710 using Ageha.

What rank control?

I've been playing Pink Sweets on and off for about two months now, and have run into a brick wall in Stage 4. The game just gets too difficult, and I wasn't able to break the 4M score barrier. For those that know Raizing type shmups, rank control is a vital strategy to completeing (1CCing) the game. What rank does, is increase the difficulty in direct proportion to how well you are playing/scoring.

Score too good in early levels (by medaling and picking up weapon options) and the game bitch slaps you in later levels. If you don't medal, or avoid options, and even suicide your ship (if you have extra ones), the rank drops or maintains, giving you a chance to reach the later levels, and thus potential for obtaining a higher overall score. Very ingenious play mechanics like this make it fun to figure out which parts of the game give higher score potentials but minimal rank increases.

Anyway, since I've only started playing this, I've been ignoring the rank side of the game, happily picking up options, medals, and milking bosses for all the points they are worth. So I've reached that inevitable brick wall and need to start strategizing.

Tonight, I was able to finally break 4M, again ignoring rank, but only by picking up two extends (extra ships) in Stage 3 using a "super power up" option, which in turn made the game quite pissed. I then proceeded to loose two spare ships on the Stage 3 endboss and two more at the begining of Stage 4. I think I could have avoided these losses, and gotten about 500K more in score, if I reach the Stage 4 endboss. Maybe then I'll begin a rank strategy.

4,091,030 - Lace - Stage 4 - DJK

DDP 2nd Loop

I started playing DoDonPachi again, and finally made it to the 2nd loop with the >50M requirement! I nobomb nomiss'ed up to the end of 1-4. Finished the 1st loop at 52M with 2 ships in stock. Finally died at area 2-3 with a score of 61,891,740 (max hit of 279).

I posted my last highscore back in December.

6/9/06 Score update: just made it to level 2-4 with 74,010,010.