New PCB: Air Gallet - Gazelle, high score #1

After playing the hell out of some Toaplan games recently, I started playing this a bit and really got to enjoy it. I got lucky and got a pcb stateside off a seller on ebay for pretty cheap.

For those who don't know, Gazelle was one of a few companies formed from the remains of Toaplan (with Cave and Takumi bring two others) and they only put out two games - Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon and Air Gallet. Both feature artwork from Joker Jun and he's on point with Air Gallet for sure.

The game itself is pretty hard and features some interesting reworked bits, like the "Game Over" text being exactly the same as Batsugun with a very similar status bar as well.

It plays like a cross between Batsugun and Twin Cobra with fast bullets. The first stage is pretty difficult and there is a slight ramp up in difficulty as the game goes on. There are numerous shot types and a cool medal bonus system that forces you to be really aggressive or extremely patient to score well.

I love the artwork and the soundtrack is really good as well. There are so many good graphical bits, like when two former bosses slam into each other before the last boss and destroy each other or when the bomb carrier ship destroys the building before the second boss. Fantastic.



Not the worst starting score, but the shmups board has like 55 scores taken for the game and this puts me pretty low indeed. No worries though as I am kind of hell bent on the 1cc here. Hopefully, I'll be able to hit 2 mil pretty soon. The extend at 1,5 mil will certainly help.

Armed Police Batrider Ver. B high score #1

I borrowed this pcb from my good friend gunbird18 after playing it at the CWC '09 and I think I may become a big Raizing fan.

The game itself plays a lot like Battle Garegga, with medal chaining, same types of power ups, but there's a whole lot more.

There are a ton of ships to choose from, various teams of three different ships and even team edit, where you can select three different ships to be on your team. There are a ton of hidden bosses, unlockable after the regular stage bosses, depending on who is left in your team or by some other stage based unlock.

It shares a lot of the look of Garegga, but it has a futuristic, almost cyberpunk feel to it. The music is awesome, a close second behind Garegga's fantastic tunes in Raizing's catalog. The sprites are bright and colorful and the backgrounds are as well.

I am really enjoying my time with it and this high score was set without any set strategy - except for limiting the power-up icon pick ups to try and control rank a bit. It feels a bit easier than Garegga and I made it to stage 4 with this credit, finally eating it on the Highway against that huge blue tank.

This pcb is now pretty high on my want list...

New PCB: Sky Shark - Toaplan, high score #1

Not actually new as I did get it from a seller on klov a while back, but I did finally get it working so that I could play it on my cab. It's a super fun, hardcore old school Toaplan STG that just really shines.

The sound effects, soundtrack and graphics are all excellent for 1987 and its such an easy game to get into the zone with that you find yourself just anticipating shots and flowing with the game in a sort of hypnotic rhythm.



I've spent a bit of time with it and finally made the loop this morning after a number of credits. It does get pretty brutal in the second loop as the bullets are faster and there are more of them, but it really is still a lot of fun. It can get kind of tough without autofire, but I seem to have developed a good tapping shot after playing so many Toaplan games recently.

Henry Hatsworth in The Puzzling Adventure - Nintendo DS

What started out as an enjoyable and fullfilling game, quickly turned into a trudge fest of epic proportions. I cannot think of another game ever that has been so promising and then such a letdown due to the extreme difficulty it transforms into.

For those of you who don't know, Henry Hatsworth (the awesomely stereotypically English gentleman above) engages in a typical platformer on the top screen of the DS while a match three puzzle scrolls by on the bottom. As enemies are killed on the top screen, they take the place of a colored block in the puzzle and then you need to transfer to the bottom screen (which pauses the upper screen platforming) and match three with the enemy as one of the three to get rid of him. Failure to do so will bring them back up to the top screen as a wickedly devious and hard to kill flying block. Think birds on Castlevania with an attitude and then you get the idea.

The game starts off easy - waaaaaaay easy - and introduces you to the cast of characters whom are all lovable and fun, including your nemesis Weaselby. You learn basic attacks and how the systems work. Then, somewhere around level three it starts to hate you. 3-6 (the boss of world 3) seems to be the breaking point for a lot of people, but I made it through ok, but I finished wondering just how hard world 4 was going to be.

Really, really hard as it turns out.

I played through the 4th world, stumbling here and there and got pissed at the DS a few times, slinging it into a corner, upsetting a few cups on my desk in the process. But it was the 4th world boss that took the cake. I must have played him 20-30 times, just brutally going forward, trying to beat it through sheer dogged determination, which frankly, did nothing. Then I studied his patterns, milked the puzzle for upgrades and eeked out a win. I was stoked and at that point, I knew that world 5 was the last level in the game and I was determined to beat it.

I played 5-1 another 20 or so times and eventually started only playing one life at a time due to the sheer level of frustration involved. It was beyond brutal, but I needed to pass 5-1. I eventually did, stopping frequently in the puzzle world to fully charge up my hearts, add bonuses and change into the powered-up robot which happens after connecting a number of three's in the puzzle world.

Somehow, I beat 5-2 in one shot and felt that maybe I could actually finish this game. I had read on a few forums that 5-1 and 5-2 were the hardest levels in the final world and that the last two were just really, really long, but not as hard. I set at 5-3, determined to make it through. Around two days into playing the world, my resolve was broken. I was back to playing a life at a time and the frustration was exceptional. I began to hate this game and decided that in order to preserve my mental health, I would sell it or trade it, which I ended up doing on Goozex.

It wasn't that the game needed just a high level of skill to beat it. There were so many cheap areas where you could only move a little forward, take out an enemy, then forward again to take out another one and so on. It wasn't like Mega Man, where you have really tough platforming with tricky enemy placement. It was like taking some average platforming and scattering a ton of enemies with a myriad of different attacks on them and then somehow trying to stay on said platforms while enemies were shooting, jumping and pounding the ground all around you. Not going to happen. The levels are designed ok, but its the enemies and enemy placement that really kills it. Typically, you'll slug through a number of them and then wait to use puzzle bonuses to power back up, but this takes alot of time and there are very infrequent checkpoints, making it very, very tedious to beat a level.

I'm not sure what the hell EA was thinking when they shipped the game with that kind of ramp up in difficulty. It obviously is targeted to casual players with the puzzle elements, but there is no way a casual player could beat this. Unless they could 1 life Castlevania III without trying.

New PCB: Batsugun - Normal & Special Ver. - Toaplan

At long last, I have a Batsugun pcb to call my very own!

I fell in love with this game after playing the hell out of it on the Saturn and just had to get the pcb after playing it at Dave_K's place.

I have played only a credit on it before my run this evening and I think I am going to switch back to Normal Version and try for the 1cc in that. I've made it to the last boss a few times, but never have beaten him. I know him well enough now that I don't think that will be much of a problem.

Now with Ketsui and Battle Garegga, I have my three favorite STG's. I'm very happy.

Summer Carnival '92 - Recca - Time Attack high score #2

Done. I'm not sure sub 4-minutes is possible. In order to get around 4:10, you'd have to have a perfect game and just demolish the bosses very very quickly. That's really the key from what I know.

Still happy with this score. Beats Dave's score from the CWC '09, so I'm happy.

Summer Carnival '92 - Recca - Score Attack high score #2 & Time Attack high score #1

Score Attack - 483,960



Time Attack - 4:18:26

Spent the better part of the morning platying Recca and trying to break 500K in Score Attack and ended up with this high score. The key is definitely to charge your bomb as much as possible to keep those points rolling in. It's a tough thing to work out, but as this score moves me up into third place after being bumped off the bottom of the table, I'd have to say I'm pretty happy with my progress.

The Time Attack score is sloppy, but I'm pretty happy with it. I know the first stage inside and out, but have no real patterns for the second stage, so I'm working on that. I think sub-4 minutes is very possible.