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I’ve long stopped playing both games I mentioned in my last post, but I intend to get back to at least one of them soon.
The truth is I can only play Solar Jetman if I know in advance I’m gonna have at least a full afternoon for myself. Things have been so hectic lately that’ I haven’t been able to do it in weeks – and Jetman definitely isn’t a game one can play in short bursts.
Meanwhile I was dedicating myself to other games, but mainly Espgaluda on the PS2. Unfortunately, I felt the need to relinquish the game in favor of another old school shooter: Parodius for the MSX, as presented in one of the Konami Antiques collections on the PS1. I guess the turbo controller helped me decide for the PS1 as opposed to the Saturn, which is where I practiced (and eventually gave up) the game months ago.
I felt compelled to post again just because I was finally able to loop it. That last stage is one of the meanest Gradius-like stages ever designed, especially the 2nd part, and in the end I came up with two main strategies to fight the evil space tapir. Either you need to get to him with 3 speed-ups or at least 2 speed-ups and a shield. And did I mention perfect weaving through the choppy cilinders or managing luck with the panic power-ups?
I don’t want to see another MSX shooter in front of me for a long while.
Been playing a shitload of Sin & Punishment: Star Successor. Been enjoying it but holy shit it is hard. As in, “it’s like an arcade rail shooter but way longer” hard.
Since I’m at a wall on the Stage 6 Infant Keeper boss, I’ve been doing random stage select BS. I can almost consistently 1CC Stage 1. Stage 2 is somewhat easier just because it doesn’t have a bitchy endboss like Stage 1.
Stage 3 is weird. I didn’t like sidescrollers with railgun aiming when I played S&P1 Stage 3-2, I don’t like it now. Then you go into a tunnel and it’s like those parts of StarBlade where you have to shoot doors, only you dodge doors instead of dodging them. I think I got to the endboss once, and timing counters is like trying to AAA something in IIDX.
I’ll probably finish the game the credit feeder way later.
Do you guys know medicalat? More or less a year or two ago I 1CC’ed it on Normal difficulty (it’s an easy game). It gave me a password, which I’ve kept next to my keyboard ever since. The main reason it’s stayed there is, I have no fucking idea what it could possibly be used for. This is a shmup. Why is there a password? A password for winning… I simply have no idea. For anyone who’s curious, the secret password is AEMDPLBK. There. Now at least I can throw out the paper towel I have it written on.
I haven’t been doing much gaming lately. What I have done is mostly… Tetris, and contemplating what fighting game I want to goof off in next.
In the (fighting game) news, we have Daigo Umehara losing to YHCMochi horribly. Daigo tried his usual tactics which weren’t so successful for more than HALF of the set. Then he finally tried something new, and was somewhat successful, but lost anyway, and to a double KO.
But what’s fascinating about this is that the Daigo apologetics were quick to defend him:
Man, if Daigo wins this hes undoubtedly the best in the universe, if he loses, as far as skill Daigo is better than mochi, by a good margin. Dhalsim to me has always been a bit broken, majority of his attacks take, but one button to keep u at bay. As where others have to be twice as fast to compete with him. I say Daigo was still the better player just a kinda cheap character he was fighting.
http://www.eventhubs.com/news/2010/jul/16/live-stream-godsgarden-daigo-yhc-mochi-ssf4-match/#c108661
Wow. At first I thought this was weeaboo-ism but then I realized that it might be worse. Far far worse. Either way, this is still the sort of thing coming from people who say that Melty Blood, a game that is about as Japanese as Street Fighter, somehow panders to weeaboos.
Got the clear! One death, but I can accept that since it was against the Stage 4 boss. All in all it was a very smooth run, things went pretty much as planned. Some fumbling with weapon changes here and there but luckily nothing fatal. Even managed to skip most of the refights against bosses before the final boss. I think those doors are semi-random, sometimes going through the same door gets me to the same place as last time, sometimes not. Ah well, I think I’m done with the game.
Video at my site and Youtube.
It’s high time I got around to telling you about Mario Kart Wii gambling. It’s been probably over a year now since I last played it and I’d certainly like to document the rules before they are completely forgotten. I will present to you the rules as they are actually played as opposed to my ideal version of the ruleset (which differs slightly). I hope I can express them sufficiently because it’s been VERY difficult to explain verbally in the past.
Requirements:
1 Wii with internet connectivity
1 copy of Mario Kart Wii
2 willing participants
2 sets of controllers
1 sheet of paper
Introduction:
To understand WGA Mario Kart better, you must understand there are 3 sets of numbers kept at most times. They are Real Money/Debt, Chain Position, and The Stack. Real Money/Debt is the most simple number. It is simply the money that’s been won so far. At the beginning of the game it’s $0. As players win money from each other it would be something like “$15 bloocloud” if I was up $15 and used my online name in real life. At the beginning of the game, there is no Chain Position. ANY time there is no chain position, there is no Stack either. Chain Position(from here on out, just referred to as the Chain) and the stack go together hand and hand. You have a chain with an associated stack. As mentioned above, at the beginning of the game, there is no chain or stack. A stack is a dollar amount that is built up, but not won yet. Chain describes one player’s proximity to moving the money in the stack to their real money. The game can be ended by either player at any time that there is no current chain/stack or if the player with the current chain voluntarily chooses to forfeit his chain and end the game.
Main Rules:
Two players (together, locally on one wii) are to play an online game of Mario Kart Wii. That is, splitscreen and online with strangers. Whoever wins the first race begins a new chain and stack. All new stacks start off at $5 (without potential bonuses described later). The chain is a simple fraction 1/x, where x is the place the winning player (out of the two) came in the first online race. For instance, if Tim places 4th and Blobert places 7th, then Tim now has a stack of $5 and a chain of 1/4. This is what’s written on paper:
Real Money: $0
Tim 1/4 $5
There can only ever be one chain and one stack at a time. The current chain/stack is written down after each match. Now let’s say that Blobert places 3rd in the next race and Tim places 5th. Blobert has BROKEN Tim’s chain and simultaneously started his own chain. The $5 that Tim had in his stack is vanquished. The paper now looks like this:
Real Money: $0
Tim 1/4 $5
Blobert 1/3 $5
Again, the reason Blobert has $5 in his stack is because all new stacks start at $5. Now let’s say Blobert wins the next race, placing 4th. This advances him 1 position up the chain. It also adds $1 to his stack. The paper now looks like this:
Real Money: $0
Tim 1/4 $5
Blobert 1/3 $5
Blobert 2/3 $6
In the next race, Blolbert wins once again. This time placing 3rd. Again he advances 1 chain position and $1 on the stack. The paper now looks like this:
Real Money: $7 Blobert
Tim 1/4 $5
Blobert 1/3 $5
Blobert 2/3 $6
Blobert 3/3 $7(circled)
A few things happened here. Blobert has completed his chain (3/3). When a player completes a chain, the money in his stack is added to his real money (in other words, he won). At that point, the chain and the stack disappear (since they’ve been completed) and the game is at the same point that it was at the beginning, except of course for the fact that one player now owes the other player $7. Either player may choose to end the game at this point or continue. Although not required, it is polite to announce your intentions to quit the next time there’s no chain/stack ahead of time. This is the way the game is played. It’s a series of chains/stacks being built and destroyed until one player completes his chain, thus winning cash. This sequence is repeated as much as desired.
Auxiliary Rules:
Any time a player places BETTER than their current chain position, the chain is adjusted for best results. For example, if a player had a chain/stack of 1/6 $6 and then won 4th place in the next round, their new chain/stack would be 1/4 $7 (NOT 2/6 $7, which would be disadvantageous). So, any time a player who currently has a chain wins with a better position on his next round, his position becomes 1/x where x is his latest/best position. Any time a player with the chain places equal to or lower than his denominator wins, his numerator increases by 1. For instance, if you have 1/4 $7 and then win with 6th place, you now have 2/4 $8. Note that the stack is completely unaffected by this change, it always begins at $5 and increments by $1 with each win (barring bonuses explained later).
As you may have noticed already, that means a first place win would always be 1/1 or a completed chain. This is correct, although it’s actually recorded as 2/1 (to denote the bonus and for vestigial reasons). So to clarify: any player who has a chain and then places first place, immediately completes their chain and wins their stack. Should the player who doesn’t have a chain place first in the next race, they immediately break their opponent’s chain(never to return again) while immediately completing their own chain and winning a new stack. Any time there is no chain, the player who places first automatically creates and completes a new chain and, of course, wins the new stack. In addition, there is an extra $2 bonus for placing first place. However, this bonus is blocked should the losing player place 2nd. In that case, the chain is still complete and the stack won, only the extra $2 is not added to the stack (and the chain is recorded as 1/1). Any time a player without a chain wins first place and their opponent does not counter with a second place victory, that player wins $7 immediately. Any time a player with a chain wins first place and is not countered, they will have $3 added to their stack ($1 for winning + $2 bonus) then immediately complete their chain and receive real money. Under all circumstances(except for low-player games described below), a first place victory immediately wins money. Like all completed chains, the money in the stack is won and the chain/stack is wiped clean.
Another existing bonus is that in any race with a minimum of 7 players, any player who places last and/or does not cross the finish line before being timed out has an extra $1 added to his opponent’s stack. If neither player crosses the finish line before timing out, the round is disregarded and not recorded.
Any round with 4 or less total players (including the 2 participating players) does NOT affect the chain. No bonuses are awarded in such low-player races. The only affect low-player races have is that $1 dollar is added or subtracted to the current player’s stack depending on who wins. Chains are not affected and so cannot be broken in low-player matches.
Low-player (4 or less total) example:
Real Money $10 Tim
Tim 1/3 $5
Should Tim win the low-player round, the paper now reads “Tim 1/3 $6″. Should Blobert win the low-player round, the paper would read “Tim 1/3 $4″.
This means that low-player races when there is no current chain/stack cannot possibly have any effect.
Stages are always kept Random, except for when a player opts to buy a choice. For $1 of real money (not stack), a player can buy 2 choices to be used any time during the current session. Choices can be bought at any time.
Conclusion:
I hope I’m not forgetting any minor caveats, I will certainly update this post should I remember anything else. I also hope I was clear in my explanation. I kept the examples sparse, but I think that it’s a lot easier to understand when read than heard. All characters/vehicles are legal; there are no non-monetary house rules applied. At times it is a bit of a grind, with stacks being built and destroyed, built and destroyed, and very infrequently any money is won. At other times, it can go fast and furious, especially with lots of first place wins. This has been played many, many times and seems to work pretty well as a system and, yes, sessions have hit triple digits a couple of times. So, that should do it. Please let me know if anything needs further explanation and please especially let me know should anyone decide to adopt this gambling system! Some day, not soon, I will explain Wii Golf Gambling which, believe it or not, is much more complicated.
Nothing elates the crowd like a matter of fact rundown. Prepare for scintillation as I list.
Here’s the reality of Mega Man Powered Up: not every character has moves as cool as Cut Man’s walljump. Or more accurately, none do. Fire Man’s gimmick is pretty limited, but they get a few cool challenges out of it. When his headfire is doused by water, his only attack is a small fire aura. So to hit anything, he has to jump right up against it. Less of the platforming, more of the killing dudes. Ok, I think I mentioned this was pretty limited. Up to Fire 9 now.
I did peak ahead and take a look at the final set of 10 challenges. Those are the Wily challenges – various boss mixes which can be played with any character. This culminates in having to beat all bosses consecutively on Hard, which is a fairly horrifying prospect.
We’ve established a running theme that 1CCs mean nothing in a vacuum. Our next entry in the series is Deathsmiles, which I cleared within my first five plays. Scoreplay, however. I’m up to 60M now, which means that I’m not really getting any decent activations other than the one on C-2. I suck at recharging after an activation, I can’t play the Gorge and oh yeah, I still die to Jitterbug sometimes.
So I got (the North American release of) DeathSmiles last week and since then it’s been about the only Cave shooter I’ve been playing.
I’ve been working mainly in 360 mode, using Broken-Tier Slut Rosa. Unlike many other bullet hell shooters, 360 and Arcade modes are less harsh on mistakes. Whereas Espgaluda II is almost as restart-y as Raiden Fighters Aces, and bombspamming your counter away Mushihime-sama Futari Original can make your face turn beet red (you throw the stick against the ground and start swearin’), vanilla DS allows you to make some errors and still keep raising your score at the same rate. DS’s scoring system may come off as totally dumbshit to people who like their games DOJ-strict or Garegga-strict, but you still need to survive if you want to get far enough to reach your goals.
Up until now I’ve mainly done level 3 only four times to avoid Death Mode, so I can see the entire game. However, I’ve started experimenting with Death Mode, in order to train myself to tame those damned suicide bullets. Having suicide bullets to eat changes the game up quite a bit, forcing you to herd the bullets so you don’t trap yourself into an “IMA DA, HIROW!” situation, while using your familiar to suck up the bullets, which like skulls and crowns add to the counter. If I can master Death Mode, I can turn out much higher scores than I’m capable of without it.
I’ll probably delve into Mega Black Label another time. As for Ver 1.1 (both vanilla and MBL), if I want to be able to easily move my familiar without risking slamming into a bullet (which I’m guessing makes up a majority of the gameplay), I have to ditch my Seimitsu’d FSTE in favor of a 360 controller. And I don’t like using the 360 controllers for shmups. FML.
Didn’t even realize it before I started thinking about what I’ve been playing lately, but I’ve been focusing on, semi-seriously, several run ‘n guns.
Contra (Arcade)
Bought it on XBLA when it was on sale because it’s Contra and I’m stupid like that. The fact that I already had the game in a technically better form for PS2 in Hamster’s Oretachi Geasen Zoku Sono 16-release just accentuates my twisted loveaffair with Contra.
How did Konami ever think that a game scrolling mostly horizontally but using a vertically-oriented monitor was a good idea? It’s such a clumsy game compared to the NES port. And a bit shorter at ~10 minutes and maybe even a bit easier. Already 1CCed it a few times on PS2, might as well try for a no-miss. Basic Contra-strategy applies: Get spreadshot and don’t lose it. Oddly random at times, sometimes you get certain power-ups (like the invulnerability one), sometimes you don’t.
Neo Contra
Already have the S-rank clear. But I had to restart a stage or two for it, and like in Shattered Soldier the game doesn’t care whether restarts were used or not. I do care, so it doesn’t count. Unlike in SS, you can actually die or miss an enemy and still get an S-rank clear. While in SS the requirement for S-rank was 100% in Neo it’s 98%. And each death just penalizes you for %1. So it’s possible to die twice in a stage and still get the best possible grade.
I’m aiming for a 100% S-rank clear. With no retries, obviously. I’ve already got 100% in each individual stage in practice. Doing it all in a single run is made more difficult annoying by some stupid design decisions. Sometimes the camera angle just gets in the way and you get hit by something you didn’t think was a threat. To balance this there’s the invulnerability-granting spin move. But really, the designers should’ve seen that if they need to include such a thing, something more fundamental is wrong with the game.
That said, there are only few troublesome spots left. There’s the Lucia boss battle during which the camera is at 30-40 degree angle behind you. Easy to get accidentally hit there. And then there’s Stage 6′s boss’ second attack pattern, where he throws his sword around and it’s pretty tricky to dodge. The last boss is easier, all his attacks either have safespots or are pretty clearly telegraphed.
Cyber-Lip
The pre-Metal Slug Neo Geo run ‘n gun. It’s rough around the edges but has a nice charm to it. I like being able to select the weapon to use at any time. And most of them even get used at some point.
Like some parts of arcade Contra, it’s just so random. Like the stage 3 boss (which reminds me of Stage 5′s boss in Shattered Soldier, actually) which sometimes just decides to ram up at you, and unless you’re in a position where he can’t hit you before he starts the attack, you will get hit. Even after checking my replay footage I’ve been unable to find any hints that tell the attack is coming. Best bet is to just kill the boss as fast as possible (and he can’t be hurt by the most powerful weapon, weird bug?) and hope for the best.
Between certain stages you have to decide whether to go up or down an elevator. Which choice is the correct one is random each game. Getting it wrong puts into you a small ministage (three different ones, picked at random) before you can proceed to the actual stage. Not very hard, just odd ‘n random.
Stage 5 boss is the hardest boss by far. Rock-spewing alien ballsacks at top, alien head at right which also spawns lil’ facehuggers. Destroying the leftmost ballsack makes the battle far easier, problem is doing it. Probably going to lose a life or two here.
The last boss is a total pushover. Not once when I’ve practiced the game by creditfeeding have I died to him. A small unknown factor is the room before him, where there are several doors which you can go through. Most doors lead to fighting the previous bosses, one or two to an ammo room and one to the last boss. I actually think these aren’t randomized, which would make the whole thing quite simple. And silly. Gotta doublecheck that.
I don’t think I’ll aim for a no-miss in this one but a 1CC should be within reach.
And lastly, I went and picked up Sin & Punishment 2 for the Wii. Seems pretty fun but I need to play it more. Very chaotic at times. I think it’s too long to bother with a proper arcade-style one-sitting playthrough but score attacking individual stages might be fun. Scoring seems to be governed by the multiplyer which increases as you destroy enemies and lowers when you get hit yourself. Simple enough, probably some tricks in there with the melee attack and deflecting enemy shots back at them.
Dan Haigh
Ghegs
[DRZ] OTL-TIW
sikraiken
Alice
victoly
plasm0
Aquas
Raydere
szycag
BDA
bloocloud
Kollision