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So after a few months’ hiatus, I’ve been getting back into DJMAX Trilogy, which isn’t really the revival of DJMAX Online so much as it is a PC port of DJMAX Portable. Go go recursive ports.
As before I use 6 key. 4 key feels too simple for me, 5 key is stupid (there’s 2 keys for it like DJMP, hence my mini-rant about this game being a recursive port), and 7 key with autocorrect is too idiotic to learn, and I have yet to unlock 8 key (which will probably be slightly less bogus than 7K). It’s certainly less stressful playing on a keyboard with six fingers than with my thumbs.
I’d bother with Fever if it weren’t for the silly way it was implemented in Trilogy; it now drains over notes rather than time, which means it’s easier to keep a fever chain going on easier sections instead of the other way around. While I like that this system encourages accuracy, it does it in a rather harsh way; get to a cluster of notes that you can’t 100% handle and you’ll lose your fever chain. Thus, I care not for score or the score-based grading system; I am a percent player.
I really hope that if Pentavision makes yet another DJMAX game, that they remove autocorrect or at least make it optional. If its implementation is over copyright crap, that’s a pretty stupid reason to implement it; making the game register a press of any key as correct as long as a note is hit doesn’t change the fact that it still looks a lot like Beatmania. Also, I’ve seen countless newbies and professional reviewers get thrown off by this feature when they got DJMAX Fever, thinking that now they don’t need to hit the right buttons. Way to be, Pentavision. I bet DJMAX Technika 2, if there ever is one, is gonna have this feature too.
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YouTube shmup superplays have got me thinking: are bullet hell shooters that much harder than shooters that don’t throw out 100,000,000 bullets? I’ve crossed four out of six stages on DoDonPachi, all of Touhou Komakyou: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil on Normal, 3 1/2 stages out of 5 of Mushihime-sama Futari ver 1.5 Maniac, and five stages out of six on Giga Wing. To compare, I can’t even clear the second stages of Raiden or Truxton II–you’d think that they’d be easier since they’re “ordinary” shooters, but you’d be dead wrong. Older games tend to rely on aimed “sniper” shots to kill you instead. Whereas bullet-dense shooters are about analyzing patterns and finding gaps in them, older shooters are about being alert at all times; blink and you’re very likely to get hit out of nowhere.
And with that said, I’ll probably get in a round of Raiden right now. (I’d try its sequel except that it’s impossible to “emoo”late.) Maybe it’s just me not getting enough practice in.
EDIT: Barely made it to stage 1-3. Now, in a ypical 6-stage “danmaku” shooter, stage 3 wouldn’t be too bad, but here, I’m already on edge when I get halfway through stage 1-2. It certainly doesn’t help that the player ship has a delayed-detonation bomb, as opposed to the instant-invincibility bombs of newer games.
So I ordered an FC Mobile II, which is essentially a portable NES, after having heard about it from a friend and reading up on it. I got it today.
At first it seemed like a pretty cool concept—being able to play NES games on the go, as well as being able to hook it up to a TV within 5 seconds (thanks to A/V connectivity). But as I gave this a shot, my opinion of it rapidly dwindled.
The screen’s 2.5″ across which is pretty small, especially for a system whose resolution is 256×224 (a bit larger than a single DS screen’s 256×192), but I could do with that. My main problem lies with the ergonomics. For one, the system is thick. I’ll excuse it somewhat since it needs that thickness to accomodate NES cartridges, but good God, five minutes of playing, say, Zanac has caused my hands (which are huge by the way; my right hand spans about 25-27cm from pinkie tip to thumb tip when spread out) to cramp. Even 7 hours after initial runs, my right hand still hurts.
Even without that issue, the D-pad feels cheap. For one, it’s a PlayStation-styled D-pad, and I greatly dislike those, preferring instead round Sega-style D-pads and Nintendo-style cross-shaped D-pads. Also, the D-pad piece is split in half diagonally. This has a habit of throwing me off, especially in games where there is plenty of action happening. On what little plus side it has, it allows me to press left and right at once to execute Zelda II‘s LINK DORIFUTO glitch.
As for game compatibility, it seems to work fine with most of my games, except Castlevania III (which already has issues with other NES clones anyway).
I thought the wired controllers would solve my problem and essentially turn the FCM2 into a battery-operated NES that I can hook up to a TV in 5 seconds. As wireless devices, they’re okay, just as long as neither of the IR ports are blocked. My main beef is, again, the D-pad. Whereas the D-pad on the FCM2 itself feels like a PSP-100x D-pad (poor manueverability), these are the inverse, feeling more like 360 D-pads: tendency to press the wrong direction. Great. I get not one, but two shitty input devices. It’s like deciding between burning to death or freezing to death.
The A/V cables are okay too. No annoying humming like on my NES, but I’ve noticed that The Legend Of Zelda, for instance, has jerky scrolling going up or down.
Overall, I kinda regret wasting $60 on this piece of crap, and I kinda want to punch my friends in the face for somehow not noticing these shortcomings. It’s similar to the disappointment I had with Ketsui Death Label (portable Bullet Hell game? Sounds good. Boss Game with odd scoring system? Eww.) I think I’ll stick to firing up the old NES if I wanna play my NES carts.
I’ve been taking a break from Mushihime-sama Futari to work on RFJ, however prone to restart syndrome it may be.
I’ve been practicing to the point where I can consistently get out of Sim 01 with gold medals enabled. Sim 05 is okay I guess, getting more comfy with the turret Micluses, but I still need to practice my DX Bonuses. And then after that, it all goes downhill:
Sim 15: I get into the habit of dropping bombs once I’m past the waves of quick-shot bombers, lest I die and all 7 of my bombs go to waste. Regardless, there’s usually a random death here or there.
Sim 20: Many opportunities for DESTROYED AT A TIME! bonuses, and there’s a lot of medals here. There’s a Miclus here, I’m guessing, since this is a ground stage, but I don’t know where it is.
Sim 30: In RF, my rule with high-speed sky stages is: FUCK THEM. The clouds and the enemies that swoop in fast and their explosions make the bullets particularly hard to see, so if I don’t die in Sim 15 and thus make it here, I die here instead.
Sim 40: More QUICK SHOT! goodness, and more bombspam. I usually end up here on account of being an idiot.
Sim 45: Rarely do I get here so I can’t really discuss it
Real Battle: MORE SKY STAGE, MORE FAST PLANES + BULLETS. I always die in RB1, not that it matters because I’ll be dead either at the boss or a little into RB2 anyway.
My record so far is 65 million, with Ixion Slave. I try to do some runs with Judge Spear’s slave, but I end up fucking up for unrelated reasons, and I try using the Flying Ray or the Ixion but I can never be bothered to make serious runs with them.
I’ve also been doing score attack. Thankfully, I can trigger more than 1 Miclus on Sim 01, so I can finish the stage with a higher score. I always manage to miss a turret Miclus or two in Sim 05, drastically reducing the extra time I can get from getting gold medals. Since I’m out of time by the time I hit the Sim 05 boss, I just bombspam it in hopes of stopping the timer and taking my stage bonus. Current record is 22 million; hoping to one day get into the first page of the leaderboards.
On a somewhat-unrelated note, I’ve recently learned to take apart the stick part of my FSTE. Seimitsu LS-32-01 replacement to follow as soon as Lizard Lick has it in stock again.
It’s 2019, marking not just a new year but (depending on your perception on when decades, centuries, etc. begin) a new decade as well.
I came up with a variety of new year’s resolutions for my gaming endeavors:
Tetris: The Grand Master
- TGM1: Reach GM
- TGM2+: [Master] Reach S4, [T.A. Death] Reach 500 regardless of time
- TGM3 and TGM clones that simulate it: I think I stopped caring for Ti modes.
- TGM4: Play it.
Shmups
- Mushihime-sama Futari: [1.5 Original, Maniac; BL Original, Maniac] 1CC, [BL Original] Exceed 400 million.
- Truxton II: Reach Stage 4.
- Gradius Gaiden: 2nd loop 1CC.
- Thunder Force VI: FUCK THIS GAME
- TH06 – Embodiment of Scarlet Devil: [Normal] 1CC, [Hard] 1CC.
- TH9.5 – Shoot the Bullet: Clear all stages.
Rhythm Games:
- Pop’n Music: Clear a level 38.
- DJMAX Technika: Clear Customizer.
Other Games:
- Shin Megami Tensei – Devil Survivor: Clear it, any route.
- Mother 2 / Earthbound: Clear it.
- Mother 3: Clear it.
I’ve also ordered an FC Mobile II with my Christmas money; hope to play some NES cartridges on the go and at a particular place I normally hang out at soon.
As of about 2 hours ago, it is Christmas here on the Pacific Coast, so Merry Christmas to all.
I went out and bought a VGA cable for my 360, looking to put my nearly-3-year-old secondary monitor, an Envision H170L with a native resolution of 1280×1024, to good use. After a little setup, I decided to use Mushihime-sama Futari as a guinea pig. Even in yoko mode, playing Futari in 360 mode was mindblowing–everything looks much clearer.
And, I can more easily tell the difference between the pixel hell that is Arcade mode and 360 mode (or as I like to call it, Futari HD) than I can on a horizontal CRT.
I’d like to put the LCD in a vertical position and experience true vert awesomeness, but I have no easy way of doing it at the moment, and I bought my monitor with no regard to tate. *sigh*
In the midst of playing around with my new setup, I, about an hour ago as of this writing, decided to kick off Christmas by taking a 1CC on Black Label’s Original mode, using Palm; I’ve always been more of a fan of fast movement coupled with concentrated firepower than slower movement with a wider spread.
I could’ve easily no-bombed Stage 5 (Cave, I’m really happy for you, I’ma let you finish, but Raiden had some of the best fast bullets of all time!) up to the indoor area like on a previous run, but I have trouble replicating the lines I made that made bombing unnecessary. This was also the run where I finally had the scoring system under control (A-shot with blue counter, and C shot with green counter); I was able to pick up two extends (and the Stage 5 1-up) and finish with a little under 210 million and a life left (lol, Larsa bomb spam).
Next up: Figuring out how to make playing for survival and playing for score go hand in hand in BL Maniac. And maybe more 1.5 because it’s starting to collect digital dust.
p.s. The record for Rez HD Area 5 is 9 million. I have the replay file, and it clocks at over 99’59″999 and I stopped watching about 1 boss form in, so maybe it’s not really a falsificare so much as GOOD OLD FASHIONED HOURS LONG MILKING geez fuck this game
But a little thing, but a little thing…
So after a nearly-four-week wait, DJMAX Portable Clazziquai Edition arrives at my doorstep.
Right away I get into the “campaign” mode of the game, Club Tour mode. Okay, tutorial thing, skip. Proceeded to go into music clubs to unlock songs, while dealing with mission clubs that have Thunder Force III-easy missions and repetitive repertory clubs that just aren’t fun.
The mission clubs made me lol. Nearly all of them were percent missions, with maybe a scoring mission or combo mission here and there. But the game wasn’t about to let me steamroll through the missions. No sir, there’s a hidden requirement to challenge each opponent: the difference between my rank and the opponent’s rank must be less than 30. So while I didn’t need to defeat every opponent in a mission club to move on to the next club or area, I more or less had to eventually, unless I wanted to bore myself so hard from grinding 1 rank at a time on already-beaten opponents (vs. beating new opponents for 2-5 rank) that I wanted to kill myself. This is particularly bad in the last mission club, the Maximum Club: 21 opponents, 11 of which must be defeated, but due to the <30-rank-difference requirement it took me a long time (must’ve been 2-3 hours total) to eventually go through enough opponents to make it to the next area (which thankfully is just one club: a music club consisting solely of songs by Clazziquai).
Well I suppose grinding is better than missions that are stupidly hard and throw all notions of game pacing out the window.
The songlist is pretty nice I guess, a good intro to Clazziquai; I may use whatever Christmas money I get to get one of their albums. Charts are very easy but then again this is a game geared towards beginners, not assholes like me who want songs in the level 9-13 range, though the Extended patch fixes this by giving songs some more difficult charts. However, a major reason I came to buy this game was it’s the last DJMAX game with no autocorrect! I don’t need an un-disableable feature that hits the right notes for me; even non-beginner modes of Guitar Hero and Rock Band don’t do that! Pentavision just keeps making stupider game design decisions with each new DJMAX game, from autocorrect in Black Square to DJMAX Trilogy‘s new Fever system and timing window-changing equipment.
Speaking of Christmas money, I might get pop’n 11 and hold out onRaiden IV since PS2 Pop’n versions are becoming increasingly harder to find and more expensive to purchase; I just went on Play-Asia and YesAsia and neither of those sites have copies of any PS2 Pop’n in stock. Plus I’ve neglected my Desktop Arcade controller for a while and hopefully a new Pop’n game will breathe some life back into it. Pop’n 13′s unlock method is silly; I don’t want to complete some irrelevant minigames to unlock new songs and harder charts. Raiden IV‘s US version is still relatively new, so I’ll be able to find new copies for a while. Or I’ll wait for someone who bought it and got fed up with it because “durrr it’s only 30 minutes this game is ghey” to trade it in at a GameStop so I can get it for reduced price and show that idiot the meaning of replay value.
admittedly, i’m getting pop’n 11 because it has alphonse michel in it
So this past week two of the three games I’ve ordered online have arrived: Mushihime-sama Futari Ver 1.5 and Thunder Force VI. (DJMAX Portable Clazziquai Edition appears to be nowhere in sight.)
Mushihime-sama Futari – TFB means “True Final Boss”
I’ve been whoring out Futari (known by casual players and non-players of Cave shooters as “that game with the really hard final boss”) whenever I can (in fact, last night, I was up at 4:30AM playing this game right before going to bed, because dammit, TFVI left a sour taste in my mouth).
I mainly use Palm-Abnormal. Reco-Normal is great for hitting all over the place, but feels a bit slow. I refuse to use Reco-Abnormal on the basis of her hold-down speed being faster than her normal speed, which goes against bullet hell tradition. Palm-Normal is okay I guess, but his (Dear character designers, please refrain from giving male characters breast tubes. It makes him look a little too trappy for my tastes.) hold-down shot is hard to control (move up to spread out his lasers…eww). Palm-Abnormal feels just right, somewhat like Ship A-* from DoDonPachi and Ruby from Giga Wing–concentrated shots and reasonably fast movement.
My progress reports:
1.5 -> Original: Up to Stage 4. Since the scoring in this mode is simple, I can simply focus on scooping up gold and blowing shit up. I start to choke around Stage 3, where I sometimes fail to quickly destroy a bullet-canceling enemy and have to fire a bomb to escape out of a snag. This is also where I start to make idiotic deaths with 2-3 bombs left.
1.5 -> Maniac: Stage 2 or 3, I think? Take my Stage 3 stupidity from 1.5 -> Original and apply it to Stage 2, and you have how well I’m doing in this mode. Just now started to learn the difference between killing a large enemy with hold shot and killing it with tap shot.
1.5 -> Ultra: I got to the warning screen that asks if I’m ready to die, then picked “いいえ” (“no”). Does that count?
Novice -> Ultra: WHEEEEEEEEEEEEE. I normally have an aversion to easy modes, but Novice actually makes them fun. I’ve only given Novice -> Ultra a serious shot so far. You get thick bullet patterns (thicker than 1.5 -> Original, maybe as thick as 1.5 -> Maniac), but they either have very visible patterns or are conveniently placed around a bullet-canceling enemy. And just to make life easier, it has auto-bomb. 1CC’d twice, second try being 5 lives left. Maybe I should bring some lesser-skilled friends over (or bring my copy to campus, where I have a couple friends with 360s) and have them give Novice a shot.
Now, me lacking common sense, I’ve been neglecting Futari a bit to play…
Thunder Force VI – TFB means “Thunder Force bullshit”
Got this two days after getting Futari. I’m not sure why I bothered to order this, knowing that this game would be disappointing. Perhaps it’s the soundtrack?
At any rate, Normal is a joke. 1CC’d it with Phoenix and Rynex-R. Phoenix and Syrinx violate Thunder Force tradition by having all weapons available right away and not taking away any of them when you die. Rynex-R has a broken Twin Shot Over Weapon (hi, I give bosses like five seconds to live) and Syrinx has the same Wave shot from TFV only stronger (hi, I cancel lots of bullets and eat everything in front of me for dinner).
I do like some of the stages, however. Stage 2 plays similarly to Thunder Force III‘s Gorgon stage, but with a little twist: some of the tunnels will abruptly and and you shift from one tunnel to one running roughly parallel to it. Stage 4 drops you into the midst of a battle between the Federation and the ORN Forces, then takes you into a city. Stage 5 is like R-Type‘s stage 3 Thunder Force III‘s Cerberus stage, only in three dimensions, sadly followed by a so-so encounter with ORN Faust and a 3-part Vasteel Nocht battle that would be awesome if it weren’t for the clones of Styx, Rynex, and Gauntlet going down pretty fast (RYNEX-R. TWIN SHOT OVER WEAPON.).
But stage 6?
“So with all the cool stages in Thunder Force history, you pick this piece of crap? You kiddin’ me? This is the final stage, this is what you’re buildin’ up to? Thunder Force V‘s grimey box factory? I don’t think so!“
–xoxak, Thunder Force VI PRO REVIEW
also lol @ final boss
Last time, I was working on Hard difficulty. Syrinx = easy 1CC. But Rynex-R? Game actually getting frustrating + me being pissed that I can’t beat an easy shooting game = RAGEQUIT.
Dear Futari, sorry I cheated on you with the cheap whore that is TFVI. Love, Ray.
So yesterday, I turned 21. Having never drunk before, I decided to destabilize myself a bit and play Imperishable Night and Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, in that order. Somehow alcohol fails to make me do better or have fun– stage 3 deaths and ragequitting against Keine in IN stage 3, and stupid deaths as early as partway through stage 3 in EoSD, and I didn’t even make it to stage 5 (where I usually start to really have trouble). It didn’t help that drinking had made me feel drowsy, so I couldn’t focus as well.
And on another note, Eversion HD!
Don’t click if you haven’t cleared the whole game.
If you haven’t played all the way through Eversion, and do not wish to be spoiled, stop reading, now. You have 20 lines.
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With Zaratustra’s release of Eversion HD, and my curiosity for what changes are made to a game when it is updated, I forced myself to revisit the nightmare.
After donating 5 USD to get my copy, the first new thing I notice is, of course, the pretty 640×480 graphics. There are actual backgrounds now, though oddly enough the new World x-1 is darker, especially in contrast to the new x-2. And this being Eversion, my paranoia for what lies ahead came back. When I evert to a lower level, what new horrors await me? How fucked up can the backgrounds get? Is there a new hazard, such a new giant hand, right ahead?
Fortunately (for my sanity) none of the stages changed in layout. My one complaint is the new World x-8 background. The old x-8 was significantly creepier due to its design, or rather, lack of design–black nothingness for foreground textures, and purple nothingness (similar to the Dark Link area in Zelda II) for the background–one kind of nothingness against another. It succeeded in making x-8 the epitome of the game’s creepiness. The new one adds a detailed background (in keeping in theme with the rest), which takes away from the atmosphere and makes it look less like a special layer.
So after clearing out all 8 worlds, time attack mode opened up as usual. World 5 in particular is bugging me due to a couple of particularly tricky jumps towards the end of the stage, and I’m not a big fan of World 6′s limited forward visibility. World 3 is kinda fun because the first 1/4 of the stage involves some intricate key presses that feel really nice when pulled off right, but may trigger restart syndrome if done improperly. World 8 as usual is a puzzle to figure out which permutation of eversions will yield the shortest path. Which may or may not have to do with shortest-path problems.
I need to put up more time attack videos.
After buying a stick, the next step is to get the feel of it and master it, if you don’t know what I mean. On some shmups (rRootage, Parsec47, NOIZ2SA) I tend to fare better, but on some others (the Garegga spirital trilogy, and maybe RFA) I tend to do worse.
I did, however, execute a 1CC on Thunder Force AC, two days after 1CC’ing Thunder Force III a second time. I’ve found that using A/X/Y, with thumb allocated to changing speed, is more comfortable than X/Y/RB. Same goes with Gradius, which puts the powerup button on button 1 rather than 3. AC is a fairly good port, but is graphically weaker in some spots. I did like Haides [AC/TS], however, and Ellis [AC/TS], despite being the mutant lovechild of Thunder Force II Stage 3-2 and Stage 5-2 4-2, is actually a challenge and isn’t a bland diagonal-scrolling stage where barely anything interesting happens. Only thing really hurting it is a lack of autofire, though various versions of MAME, controller-provided autofire, and the Saturn port fix that.
Thunder Spirits sucks. Still no autofire (inexcusable considering the overrated-as-hell SNES controller’s buttons), worse music in some spots, and when I use external autofire (generated by my stick), the game slows down Gradius III style. There’s two stages unique to this; I kinda like the new Stage 8, but Stage 6? Cerberus [Spirits] looks even more boring than Cerberus [III/AC]. This is a textbook example of why I don’t think SNES completely trumps the Genesis: SNES may have the higher color capacity and all the Mode 7 fancy-shmanciness, but it lacks the power needed to keep a game like Thunder Force III running at 100% most of the time. And even with the higher palette, Spirits somehow manages to look WORSE on the SNES, partly due to the SNES outputting 64 less vertical lines and thus necessitating smaller sprites.
Well, enough console ranting. I’ve also been using the stick for Tetris: The Grand Master. To play TGM on a stick properly, one must switch the restrictor from its square 8-way position to the diamond-like 4-way position.
This is easy to do on my FSTE, it just takes a lot of time, as mentioned before. On TGM2 and clones of TGM3, I can easily do the up-down motion necessary to do a firm drop, but I still have issues with the current piece shifting left or right slightly by accident. I also have to relearn some of the techniques I use to efficiently get pieces into tricky spots. This is made tricky by how I play on a keyboard: arrow keys for up/down/left/right, A for CCW rotate, S for CW rotate, and D for secondary CCW rotate. This means my hands’ roles are reversed. My hands, on a stick, will attempt to do a technique, but fumble with it. I have, however, noticed more consistency when playing on a stick: in T.A. Death mode, I can consistently break into the mid-200 range, whereas on a keyboard I have some bullcrap rounds where I don’t even hit 170.
However, there are tricks that I find easier on a stick: Zangi-moves are easier and feel more graceful on a stick, for instance. In instances where I need to perform a Zangi-move and rotate, I can more confidently move while rotating at the same time.
I may make a more long-term switch to 4-way in the winter, when I go to do some intensive TGM training. Heck, I may even use it in Blockbox League season 4.
Dan Haigh
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Ray "Ayanami"
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