Radiant Silvergun - Gamest Vol. 44 VHS + T-3 0001 VHS superplays

Radiant Silvergun is a game that I have played a number of times, but almost like watching it more than playing it. It doesn't hurt that the soundtrack is just amazing - atmospheric, conjuring images of Tron and Blade Runner in equal measure.

The gameplay has been referred to as a puzzle shmup and that's pretty accurate. 6 shot types and three different colored enemies that will chain together for big bonuses if you only kill those of the same color. Your shot types also power up as you use them, so strategy is key to scoring and distance in this classic.

Both of these VHS tapes were recent buys in Japan and both were fairly inexpensive, with the Gamest tape around $40 and the T-3 one at $50. Both have been on my list for a while and showed up at almost the same time. The quality of the VHS tapes is excellent and the runs through the game are amazing as well with the Gamest run including the whole anime intro to the game.

The T-3 superplay is from T3-Wiz and he kills the game (stage 4) with a final score of 26,015,290. The Gamest tape is done by ECM-S.I, who finishes just shy of Wiz with 24,099,790 (also stage 4 route). Both runs are amazing to watch and though Wiz has since eclipsed this score in 2009 with a 27,550,780, which is the current WR.

It's also interesting to note that the Designer of the T-3 package was none other than C. Cat CHAKO, otherwise known as Curious Cat, who has done numerous doujin art books on ESPgaluda and ESPrade.

Ketsui - Game Inn Namiki DVD superplay - 3.7 mill 2-All with B-Type

Those of you familiar with some of Japan's more famous game centers may recognize the game center here - Game Inn Namiki, where a number of Japan's top STG players play.  For a time, they released their own superplay DVD's and this one is Namiki Vol. 4, which is a 2-All run of Ketsui.

It's only a 3.7 million run, which has been eclipsed by subsequent DVD's by a healthy amount, but this DVD was made when most were still learning the game and features some early paths through the game and runs that are not seen on later DVD's and makes for interesting watching if only for that reason alone.

It's presented with your choice of tate or hori viewing modes, which is pretty cool and has a fairly rudimentary title screen, but its a charming package nonetheless. The accompanying booklet is a commentary on the path through the game and all in Japanese, but still impressive. I'm still hunting down the other Namiki titles, but like most doujin releases, they are very hard to find.

Dodonpachi - Vol. 43 Gamest superplay VHS

This is the last of the Gamest DDP VHS's I needed for my collection. It covers the A-type and B-type ships on one VHS and has been totally elusive! I couldn't find one through YAJ or the shmups forum or Cave-STG. Bored one day at work, I checked through Amazon.co.jp and there it was - for 5000 yen!

rancor, my man in Japan, hooked it up for me and I got it in a two package lot with tons of superplays - which I will post up about here shortly. The copy looks brand new and plays perfectly, which for an old VHS is key. I have been silly lucky with the quality of the VHS stuff I have been buying - old anime (Dominion Tank Police, Kishin Corps, Bubblegum Crash, etc) and superplay stuff - and I hope it continues!

It's a great, super professional superplay which is something you can always expect with Gamest. The content has since been uploaded to youtube, superplay.co.uk and nicovideo and should be pretty easy to find.

Otogi Matsuri signed - Joker Jun + Btooom! rancor lot

Shmups forum gentleman rancor has become my go to guy in Japan and over the last few months I have been picking up superplays, games and other stuff to satiate my gaming palate. This lot of goodies arrived about a month or two ago and had rancor's trademark Japanese Kit-Kats and hand wipes from game centers in Japan. I finally got a copy of the official Akai Katana superplay by Cave and its pretty awesome- also pretty strange as they used the X360 port for all of the three versions of the game.

I also got the INH The Aces High Raiden superplay DVD, which is fantastic. It covers runs in Raiden, Raiden II and Raiden DX as well as having two CD's full of music from the series and "rare tracks".

But the cream of the crop out of this lot was the Joker Jun mangas. Now, I have just started in on reading a few series and I'm digging manga stuff a lot at the moment. Junya Inoue has to be one of my favorite game artists of all time and I decided to take a look at his manga work via some scanlations on the web and got totally sucked in. His Latest, Btooom! is like a combination of the series Lost and the game Halo and I won't say any more for fear of spoiling it. Check it out, really good stuff.

Otogi Matsuri was Joker's first manga, and it has a lot of characters from ESPrade and Guwange and is about teenagers saving the world from traditional Japanese evil spirits and I dig it. The art, of course, is fantastic. This issue I got has been signed by Joker Jun himself and has one of the characters from the series exclaiming "Fight" - which is pretty bad ass. It's a welcome addition to my collection and at somepoint here, I have to frame it and give it the treatment it deserves.

Big thanks to rancor!

Guwange - HDK's Factory 01 VHS - Yusemi-SWY

I had a copy of this VHS, but as the actual VHS tape had Macrovision copy protection, it was refilmed with a camera filming the TV and while its not an actually bad way to do it, I put it on my list of VHS tapes to hunt for. I got it off shmups from snkpowa, right before I bought the DDP Professional lot from sven666.

This was HDK Factory's first release and this tape is the current world record with Yusemi-SWY counter-stopping Guwange. It is an fantastic performance and a pretty amazing accomplishment. Since this is now an XBox Live Arcade download, there are quite a few videos up on youtube for the game, the best of which is Prometheus's Western record at 49 million+. This run basically milks the bosses more effectively and makes for a longer recording, but good watching nonetheless - and the quality of this tape is excellent.

The Blue Label or Matsuri version of the roms are supposed to balance the game better, making it easier to chain gold and making it way harder to gain valuable points from milking the bosses. I did already purchase a set of the Blue Label roms and will hopefully have a Guwange board on its way shortly.

Toaplan Shooting Chronicle DVD superplay

Recently, there was a Toaplan Shooting Chronicle CD + DVD set which collected all the Toaplan OST's and a superplay DVD and it went for something like $190. I couldn't talk myself into buying it as I do not collect shmup OST's and I wasn't going to pay $190 just to watch one DVD.

Luckily, there was a seller on eBay who just had the DVD for sale and I pounced on it. It's three superplays on one DVD - the 4th loop in Kyūkyoku Tiger, a first loop clear of Tatsujin and a first loop clear of the 'Development Version' of Same! Same! Same!.


The quality of the DVD is pretty mediocre and the graphics turn out a bit fuzzy, even on a really good CRT. However, its a cool collection of superplays and the Kyūkyoku Tiger run is stunning, but not without mistakes, which some how makes it all the more interesting.

The 'Development Version' of Same! x3 is pretty much the production version of Same!, but with the first level Tatsujin theme and sound effects, which is pretty weird, but cool nonetheless. All are played through with autofire, which is kind of a bummer, but really, how else are you gonna take down Toaplan bosses without first developing massive forearms?!?

It's a good snapshot of Toaplan's best games - V-V and Batsugun not withstanding - and a cool document to come out 20-years after Toaplan shut their doors.

Battle Garegga T3-Kamui VHS Superplay

What is this obsession I have with dead formats? I think it has something to do with the fact that since they are no longer producing massive quantities of VHS tapes or records or cassette tapes, I know that whatever is left in the world is pretty much all there will ever be and sooner or later, more will be lost to the ravages of time.

What ever the reason, I have been on a tear buying up all the VHS stuff I wanted superplay wise and converting them to DVD. So far, I have been lucky in getting great copies of great runs and this tape is no exception.


It's a super nice Doujin release by T3 Kamui, who is the current WR holder with Gain, a score just north of this playthrough (J111,620 -> K,720,100).

It's still a great run and has a good intro playing over the arrange OST. It's also the one that was on Superplay.co.uk and the footage is as grainy as that tape shows as well, leading me to believe that the transfer was just rough or the tape itself was a bit worn before they did the transfer. Bought from rancor over at shmups and my new favorite guy in Japan. And the green tea Kit-Kats he sent along with were so good, I ordered a case of them and a few other flavors from Asian Grocer.com

Superplay lot - DDP Professional Series 1, 2 and 3, DDP Gamest Vol. 39, R-Type GSV, Psyvariar Doujin and Dragon Blaze Doujin

Last year, there was an auction lot of superplay VHS's that sold on Yahoo Japan Auctions for about 75,000 Yen, which at the time was a bit over 800 dollars. The lot contained all of the HDK Factory releases, a number of CKDF Doujin releases and all three DDP Professional tapes, which I had been looking for for about five years.

The DDP Professional series takes up where DDP Gamest Vol. 39 VHS leaves off, with ZBL-NAI recording a better C-S run than that VHS and releasing it himself as "DDP Professional Vol. 1: Dodonpachi Part 2" It came in just a slipcase with a printed manilla folder with an insert that looks to chronicle his passage through that run. There's no fancy title screens or intro, just a capture of him wrecking DDP with slightly wavery footage. I have seen two seperate recordings of this and both tapes had the waveryness - I think it was just some sync issue and hell,it was his first effort. It bettered the C-S score by over 100 million on the Gamest VHS and started the Professional series.

The third volume is of DDP DOJ BL, with first a B-Type ship 2-All and then the A-Type 2-All as well. I have yet to watch the whole run, but it's not a perfect run by any means - there are a few places with a dropped chain and a few deaths, but it make for good watching, even taking into account the later Nakano DVD of HFD's near-perfect runs through the game.


It's the second volume that I really wanted, one I lusted after and searched for damn near everywhere. It's a run through of Dodonpachi Campaign Edition, or DDP Blue Label, a special version of DDP that was playable at an early Cave Matsuri and given to the winner of a DDP scoring contest on the Saturn when that port came out. It's a legendary game, and served as the prototype for DOJ with an early hyper mechanic. There are enemies added in to make it much more hectic and the first loop is much more difficult, with way harder bullet patterns. After the contest, ZBL-NAI was given a copy and the other copy was supposedly said to be held by Cave, but they have already gone on record saying it doesn't exist and that they have lost the code for the game, making NAI's copy the only one known to exist.

This VHS is a 2-All run through of the game by SOF-WTN and is just facinating to watch, moreso that its the most rare Cave pcb of them all. I had watched a rough uploaded copy of two actual runs - one not so good one and then the one here on this tape, but the footage is pretty grainy and pixelated. It does provide a good look at the game, but I needed to find the original - I wasn't satisfied with the low-res footage.



I do tend to get obsessive about things and started looking for this VHS about five years ago, watching YAJ auctions like crazy, trying to find one for sale. Only one came up that I saw, in a massive lot described earlier and I couldn't possibly pay the nearly 1K it would take to have bought the lot and have it shipped from Japan.

Fast forward to last week. I finally decide to put up a WTB post on shmups for this VHS series and in a day's time, sven666 from the forums gets back to me with a short list of VHS's he has for sale and in the lot are all three DDP Professional tapes. Witht their original paperwork. Holy shit.

I flipped and emailed immediately, we worked out a deal for five tapes and just yesterday, they showed up. We had agreed on a price for the three DDP Professional Series, the R-Type VHS and a Psyvariar Doujin and he threw in the DDP Gamest Vol. 39 and a VHS which he didn't know what it was that turned out to be a Dragon Blaze doujin release, a Psykio game I have been meaning to check out.


I hunted around work for a VCR, even tearing apart an old cabint in a dusty corner of a conference room to find one, to no avail. I did find a Super 8mm player, which I may try and snag, just cause its ridiculous. Sven had mentioned that the footage should be fine, but he probably hadn't watched it for at least five years, so he didn't really know what condition they would be in. I was very eager to find out to say the least.

Time went SLOW but when I got home, I started checking out each tape one by one, ending with DDP Professional 2 and lo and behold, the footage and condition of the tape is perfect. It's awesome. The picture is crystal clear and sound is perfect. I am super stoked! It's amazing to have such a great condition tape of such a rare game, offering an uncompromised look at its gameplay.

BIG Thanks to sven666 for letting go of such a rare series for another collector. This was my holy grail of VHS tapes and I got them all, in mint shape in one shot. Unreal.

Recca VHS superplay

As i am a huge fan of this game, I have wanted to see this superplay VHS for quite some time. I know that there was one copy in someone's hands on shmups but the chances of getting it were slim.

So I practially jumped at the chance to get a DVD copy from cstarflare on Cave-STG (Yagawa game - Cave employee). Not only is the copy totally flawless, but he mailed it without charge. Awesome!

The superplay is without fanfare and hoopla, no intro screen, just the game's title screen as if you had just popped in the cart. The player plays through Normal Mode in a no-miss 1CC, then plays through the Harder mode you unlock by beating normal mode as a no-miss, 1CC, which is followed by the Score Attack mode. He hits the mil in 3:47 - very impressive, never once dropping his medal chain.

There are a ton of good strats on the DVD and some pretty impressive playing. It's a super daunting game, but oh-so beautiful in its 8-bit near-bullet hell glory.

INH The Madness Battle Garegga DVD + Booklet, Espgaluda II Official Cave DVD + booklet, Progear CKDF vhs + booklet

Picked up a bundle of stuff from Japan recently which included all three of these superplays.

The INH Battle Garegga DVD is just sooooooooo awesome. gunbird18 let me borrow his copy a while back and I watched it a ton, which is pretty much what stoked me on this game. It's impressive that there are four seperate runs on it - Gain, Myamoto and two of the regular ships. The booklet is filled with some good info, showing what your shot looks like in each powered up state for each ship and other goodies. It's isn't in color, though and lacks any impressive artwork like the Ketsui and DOJ BL booklets.

I also picked up the Espgaluda II DVD set and just as you would imagine, its awesome. Cave goes all out when they put out their DVD sets and this one is no exception. Tons of good art in the book, three DVD's worth of material and great production.

Besides official DVD's, there are a number of different doujin releases out there that are actually pretty good, many using the same top tier Japanese players seen in the official releases. The CKDF Progear VHS is no exception. The player is Clover-TAC, who also destroys Mushihimesama Futari Maniac on the official Cave DVD set. It's an great run and the quality of the VHS is pretty amazing. The booklet is just a stapled together, mostly text run through of the game, so nothing I can sink my teeth into, but the VHS tape is so impressive, I could care less.

Battle Garegga & DDP Gamest Video VHS, Vols. 27 & 39

I have this thing for superplays. I love watching them. I must have watched the DDP DOJ BL DVD about 50 times and the Ketsui INH DVD close to as many times. It's not about learning the 'best' path through a game or even uncovering some of the better scoring techniques, but just watching someone one with crazy skills tear through a game is so much fun to me.

I have a number of the recent DVD releases, but I wanted to find some earlier stuff, namely the Gamest Video releases. Gamest, if you don't know, was a Japanese magazine that focused on the arcade scene much like Arcadia does now and they released VHS tapes of superplays of fighting games and STG's with other stuff in between.

The DDP volume that I have is Vol. 39, the one that has a C-S 600+ mil run. Just seeing a superplay with C-S is amazing and this run is fantastic. It's almost 100 mil off the world record at this point as the VHS was recorded in 1997, but it's fantastic nonetheless. It's set up like a modern superplay, with a long(ish) intro and opening montage of gameplay.

The game footage is shown like most modern superplays - the screen is on the left and the status bar is on the right with the score, hit counter, etc. Amazingly, the resolution is still crisp and this tape was taken care of well. I already converted it to DVD for posterity, just in case something ever happens.

The run is completely amazing, really fantastic stuff from ZBL-NAI, but he does drop his chain a few times which really kills his score. The patterns and skill are crazy and it's hella fun to watch.

The Battle Garegga Gamest vid on the other hand is downright crazy. First of all, it comes with the Battle Garegga OST, which, of course, is fantastic, but it's in this huge case with amazing artwork.

The DVD starts with an opening montage, but instead of clips of gameplay footage, its clips of sprites in the test menu being animated, all set to Garegga's soundtrack and it's really pretty cool. Very different.

There's a short bit before the gameplay footage of all of the characters you can play in the game and then it's time for the run.

The one full run of the game is done with Golden Bat, which is pretty cool since I have seen no real footage with some playing seriously with Golden Bat, aside from a few things on Nico video. The run is fantastic and he ends with a killer score, but nothing approaching the current world record. As kind of a bonus, on the status bar on the right, whenever the player is going to trigger something secret a flashing green box with "Special Bonus" or something appears on the right. Similarly, whenever the player is going to suicide, a red box pops up and flashes "Dead Point". Pretty weird, but you get use to it pretty quick and its an interesting change from standard fare.

During boss battles, their stats roll up on the right, showing points values for all their destructable sections. Pretty cool, even if I can't read Japanese.

After the run, there is a "Miyamoto and Gain Review" with a few minutes of each ship running through the game and where their weapons are the most effective, like Gain's multiple weapon hits on the flamingos and Miyamoto's weapons hits on some of the bosses. Pretty interesting for sure.

At the very end there is a "History of Raizing" section showing the games they had developed up to the time this VHS was released, ending with a lot of footage of Soukugurentai and the words 'Comming Soon' following it. Totally puts the time frame this tape was released into perspective. At that point, Raizing had only done three games, Mahou Daisakusen, Shippu Mahou Daisakusen and Battle Garegga. Wow.

I'm not much of a collector - I tend to get stuff I really like and will play - or in this case, watch - and these VHS tapes are perfect.