Shmups

[Stanshall]

Merriweather and Person Pitch go together very well. If one doesn't hit then the other may well do.

[clippa]

Cheers, I'll add it to the shopping list.

[Stanshall]

Best thread ever? Probley.

[ratsoalbion]

A friend, with whose tastes my own often coincided, foisted Merriweather Post Pavilion on me back at the time, and I found it one of the most intensely annoying listening experiences ever.

[Stanshall]

Hahaha. I can understand. AC are a particular taste.

[clippa]

Look what I found in the downstairs desk drawer!
Before it all went wrong.

(redacted)

That bells and coke did the most damage, it must be like my inverse portrait of dorian grey because I've got one in my hand right now and it still doesn't look a day over eight years old.

(gentle piano music) clippa died a month later, he farted his liver out of his fat arse and it ended up dangling over a tacky carriage clock on the mantelpiece until someone from social services came around and elbowed it into a bin-liner.

There was one with my mam and dad in as well but I thought I'd best protect the innocent.

If you're wanting a photo of me all fat and knackered, you can whistle. Fortieth birthday coming up in a few months, if I'm clean and serene, noodle thin and looking halfway passable, you might get a picture of my pert arse this time next year, something for you all to look forward to, isn't it?

edit: this is just a support group now, rather than the shmups thread, isn't it? I'm not misjudging this?

[clippa]

Hahaha. I can understand. AC are a particular taste.

Imagine if you were stone cold sober, if some owl blind-sided you.
"Here, clippa, what's that band you like and that defines you entirely and that we can all dismiss in one sentence?"
I suppose I had it as an avatar like some wide eyed, desperate 14 year old wearing a t-shirt thinking it'd make a good stand in for a personality, so it's my fault really.

"I suppose it's ... music". Stoopid owl, it's bestest moosic!

Cwoar, Summertime Clothes, that's a banger!
Do you dig early mercury rev before they kicked out David Baker for being too "artistic"?
I'm getting tripping daisy vibes as well, though all of the above is probably just me hearing an american accent and thinking I'm on to something.

I'm only joking ksub, everyone hates cardiacs, they stink to high heaven.

[Chopper]

[clippa]

Point taken.

Meth of a rockette's kick before we all splutter out

[KSubzero1000]

Imagine if you were stone cold sober, if some owl blind-sided you.

Really sorry about that man. I'm the complete opposite of an authority on anything rock / metal / "bands", etc... I don't listen to any of that stuff by myself and I can't for the life of me figure out the differences between all the various styles and sub-genres. Cardiacs could be God's gift to the music world and I wouldn't be able to tell, I'm afraid.

this is just a support group now, rather than the shmups thread, isn't it? I'm not misjudging this?

I think you might be misjudging a lot of things, for better or for worse. At least you know how to put the "pic" in "off-topic".

[clippa]

I was only messing, honestly, nobody likes them.

I think you might be misjudging a lot of things

Oh my god, I'm getting pre-emptive beer fear shivers from that. Love you all, night.

[hazeredmist]

No no no! Immense enjoyment from each and every page here there is no need for beer fear your post was great, IMO. As was the class throwback toon top. I sometimes wonder if you’re my real dad, but the revelation you’re only 3 years ahead of me probably puts the brakes on that. Mind you, it probably wouldn’t be the first time in this neck of the woods.

Broke my “less internet while on holiday” rule to post this. Don’t change, clippa

In other news, Shikhondo is quite tough on handheld isn’t it? It’s ludicrously cheap right now, £3 something. It seems to have genuine mechanics I’m going to have to learn outside of “shoot and bomb now and again”. Which is good! Doesn’t seem to be a Tate mode though, I was gonna try that if so.

[ThirdDrawing]

Has anyone else picked up RXN Raijin?

I think it's available digitally overseas. I've been picking up more shooters here......trying to get better and mostly failing.

[clippa]

Don’t change, clippa

Thanks man, I'll maybe try to post a little less self indulgent, off topic crap when I'm tired and emotional though, that seems like it would be a nice balance
No idea why I thought you'd all want to see that photo I found. Sorry everyone. Normal service has been resumed.

I think in Shikhondo you just graze bullets to charge your super attack and then use that for a big score bump.
Huge difficulty spike on the final boss, good luck with that, it stumped me.

[Stanshall]

Has anyone else picked up RXN Raijin?

I think it's available digitally overseas. I've been picking up more shooters here......trying to get better and mostly failing.

I played and completed it but it took absolutely ages. It's more story driven than most shmups. It has about fifty stages and you'll be repeating the them to grind and level up to get past humongous difficulty spikes. There's nothing to them besides your attack doing negligible damage until you level up. That's pretty annoying. It's once spent forty five minutes chipping away at a boss I'd pretty much learned inside out and still only took off half his health before dying of the boredom. That's antithetical to a good shmup in my opinion, it's more like a JRPG but only in that sense. There's no customisation or anything. It's a strange old game but the basic shooting gameplay is decent. I'm absolutely knackered so might be slightly more harsh on it than I would otherwise be.

[hazeredmist]

To be honest, I'd never thought the designs in Shikhondo were dodgy in that moe way

Me either - played through the lot last night in novice mode, it does depend what your boundaries are but personally I saw nothing problematic or embarrassing to be playing at all. Two bosses had prominent boobies in their first phase but not fully exposed and barely on screen long. I’d go as far as saying something like Super Street Fighter 2 is more of a concern if you’re offended by objectifying game artwork (never mind something like DOA!). Horses for courses though!

The game itself is very enjoyable to play, the grazing mechanics are fun - I enjoyed working with it once I’d sussed how to charge the meter for the soul collect stuff. The art in general is pretty stunning I think, the backgrounds in particular. The bullet patterns are a lot of fun to navigate. Started it again in normal and got through a few stages, the life / soul decision at the end of a stage is a nice strategic touch. The lass with the homing shots seems the best to play with, so I’m using her now - though I finished easy mode with the other one.

[KSubzero1000]

Well, good to know I'm the only one who has any objection to Shikhondo's design choices, then! It really comes down to personal boundaries, after all.


Anyway, I was getting really confused with some of the difficulty options in SaiDaiOuJou when playing yesterday and I was hoping the one or other expert could shed some light on things.

The different game modes are fairly basic (Xbox 360, Arcade, 1.5 and Novice), although I still don't quite understand the differences between Arcade and 1.5, for example.

Then, the costume / "Dress" system apparently plays a crucial role. Not only does it change the attack properties of your ship, the third one ("Expert") jacks up the difficulty and enemy patterns quite a bit.

Then, and this is the part that leaves me totally confused because I haven't seen it mentioned in any of the FAQs / guides I've consulted so far, the game also has a hidden difficulty selection feature under "Option > Game Config > Difficulty (Easy/Normal/Hard/Very Hard)". Except that one never seems to be mentioned on any of the leaderboards and replay data!

So between, say, Novice - Shot - Very Hard and 1.5 - Laser - Normal and Arcade - Expert - Easy, which one is more difficult?

Futari is very basic and easily understandable in comparison - You select which mode you want to play (1.5, Arrange or Black Label), and then either Original, Maniac or Ultra / God, which are fairly self-explanatory difficulty settings. The ship / character selection afterwards only comes down to personal preference.

I'm totally confused with how SaiDaiOuJou handles this.

??

[clippa]

Some bits did make me go "hmmmm".
The faces of the characters are quite childlike and demure, the japanese do this a lot, great big honking knockers and then a kids head balanced on top.
They at least looked like teenagers in this though, which is progress of soughts.

I thought the jugs on that upside down beast/witch monster thing didn't feel out of place, it felt quite bestial, it didn't feel sexual.
I can't remember any other boobies. 12 year old me can't believe how much I've changed.

I can't help with sdoj, never played it, but those difficulty options hidden away in the options menu will probably just be the difficulty options you get in service mode on the pcbs so greedy arcade operators could turn the game into a coin gobbling money pit. Just leave that on normal.

Arcade mode in cave ports is usually a direct port of the arcade game whereas the other modes will have the tarted up HD graphics and the like. Looks like the arcade mode is HD from a quick google, so it's probably just version 1.0, the original arcade before it got the 1.5 update, it's there for folk who prefer it.

Ooh, here's a biggun, you looked through that yet? - http://www.slateman.net/faqs/ddp-sdoj.txt

I'll get rid of my stupid face, I think you've all suffered enough.

[KSubzero1000]

Ooh, here's a biggun, you looked through that yet? - http://www.slateman.net/faqs/ddp-sdoj.txt

Yeah, that's the FAQ I had consulted before - it makes no mention of the menu-based difficulty settings. It's very strange.
I'll just leave it on normal and hope for the best.


Anyway, status update:

The Espgaluda 2 and SaiDaiOuJou covers have slowly but surely attained the rank of "Passable" after one week of repeated cleaning and drying. The replacement Xbox game cases arrived today. The only remaining issue were the fetid instruction manuals, so I decided it was time to get serious.

Slid some dryer sheets in-between the pages, threw them into the ziploc bag, and poured a fat dose of baking soda on top just to be sure. When in doubt, go old-school. We'll see if they're in a more cooperative mood after a night or two in the freezer.


Also, my mate helped me make a JPN PSN account, which means that I am now the proud owner of Einhänder, Zanac x Zanac, RayStorm, RayCrisis, and most importantly, DonPachi & DoDonPachi over on my PS3. The technology of the last decade bringing the games of the last century into my living room. Impeccable.

Will report back. In due time.

[Stanshall]

^ Very exciting stuff! Dodonpachi and Einhander are especially brilliant.

And in some exciting news for me, I came in from a twelve hour day after about four hours sleep, had a nice dinner, sat down with a cup of tea and got a 1CC on Futari Black Label.



I don't think I used more than two or three bombs and had no deaths before stage 5. Easily the best I've ever done. Picked up the 1-Up, got the extend and arrived at Larsa with three lives and three bombs. After my painful failure the other week, I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice. Some steady dodging of the straightforward stuff but mostly bombed my way through every pattern knowing I had it in the bank.

Absolutely buzzing, I've got to say. I bloody love this game. So thrilled to have my first Cave 1CC and on my favourite game.