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.
2 comments:
Next you need to get Gamest Vol 43, which is the 2nd DDP superplay with higher scoring A-L. :)
Actually, I have a copy of that on the way - from a friend of yours, I do believe...
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