Final Fantasy V - GBA

After the meet, I am ususally a bit burned out by STG's, so I tend to play RPG's for a while after it ends, getting my drive back. This year, I decided to pick up FFV for the GBA - a game I have had in the collection for a while, but haven't played.

It usually takes alot to keep me going nowadays in an RPG and I find myself tending towards the Shin Megami Tensei RPG's and their difficult battle system and dark story, rather than FF titles, but FFV has got me hooked.

The job system is excellent, letting you level up jobs for each character to get specific abilities that transfer to another job class once you have learned them. So, you can have a white mage who also can fight two-handed or a black mage who can use a dragoon's jumping attack. The amount of different jobs is impressive and enjoyable to work with in the confines of traditional FF RPG.

The story is typical FF fare, with crystal shards that need to be gathered to topple the big boss, Exdeath. However, this takes place between two different worlds, with a quick real time battle system and a fun - if incredibly melodramatic - story.

I find myself playing it like I did FFI back in the day - staring at the screen for hours, saying, I'll turn it off right after the next battle, and then staying on it for an hour more. Really enjoyable and a good distraction from STG's for sure.

Chicagoland Winter Carnival 2011 - March 4-6th - event recap

Everytime I do one of these get togethers, I am reminded of Stephen Fatsis's "Word Freak", a novel about the world of competitive Scrabble playing and the intense people involved. It's the level of competition and dedication that always blows me away in that novel and here at these meets.

I always learn so much while simultaneously being pushed to work harder and be better. Which is evidenced by the fact that at each meet, I have set new personal bests on games I work on - Sky Shark, Batsugun, Dodonpachi and for this meet, Raiden and Ketsui.



Raiden, I cannot seem to get away from it. I've never been a huge fan of the game but for some reason, I am compelled to keep playing it. I'm sure it has to do something with Seibu's love for Toaplan, but the point blanking from the side fields still sucks. I did happen to get to the 4th stage - something which I have never done before - and now I think I kinda like it.


I posted a 78,220,694 score for Ketsui, ending at 1-5 and during the run, I made some impressive moves which I probably shouldn't have gotten away with, but I did. Awesome. My patterns for 4 are coming along, but I really need to start working on five as I can get there often enough that I need to do something other than bomb.

And as usual, I'm always impressed by the level of respect everyone brings - nothing was broken, stolen or even left dirty, save for some glasses. This is a great community.


As for the meet itself, Zerst killed everything. He made a 523,160 score on Nexzr Special 2-Minute Mode and pretty much led from the beginning of the competition. He also destroyed the Super Secret Midnight Scoring Competition, which was Zoo Keeper this year. He posted a crazy 3+ mil score and I don't think anyone even went near the machine after that.


We did Livestream the event, which was very cool and pretty fun. Next meet, we'll do the same. We started around 2pm and showed the Nexzr competition and then some DDP, Twinkle Star Sprites, Ketsuipachi and Zoo Keeper. It was cool to see people watching and being down for staying signed in the whole time.

Andi was pretty much the MC of the event, getting people organized at dinner and corralling people for events. Big thanks to you homeboy.

Thanks again for everyone who attended and I look forward to doing another this fall!

Chicagoland Winter Carnival 2011 - March 4-6th

Although I expect everyone who reads this blog that finds it through Cave-STG and some of the other shmup forums I am on is well aware of this, I though it was worth mentioning and reminind those of you hoping to attend.

The Chicagoland Winter Carnival 2011 will be held this weekend at my place, here in Chicago, IL. Details are on the shmups forum under Shmupmeets here:
http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=24367

Please pm me though shmups for my address and vitals if you haven't already. I will be live streaming at the event under www.livestream.com/suicidebullets on Saturday, pretty much all day. Dave K. is also holding his meet and will be streaming it as well. Pretty cool.

New PCB: Ketsui - Cave 2002 (again!)

This is a game I should have probably never sold, but - thanks to Dave - its back in my stable! This PCB was originally MrMonkeyMan's on which he set the western record, which is a cool plus, but really, I'm just so stoked to have a Ketsui PCB back in the house!

It's fun playing this in MAME, but its justy not the same as playing it on a cab. It's such a fun game and my Saturn pad, while awesome for some shmups, just doesn't work for me on Ketsui.

Its pretty cool that my first post on this very blog was about first getting this PCB (http://suicidebullets.blogspot.com/2008/01/ketsui-arrives.html) and I feel just as stoked to own it again.

I hope to laydown a new high score soon and see just how far my skill set has come in the last few years since owning this beauty. I think I have the skills to finally nail the 1CC with some work. I was amazed when I got MAME to work with Ketsui just how much I remembered in terms of enemy placement and timing.

I'm ver happy to have this back in the stable and it's going to take quite a lot to get me to part with it again! Thanks, Dave.

Thunder Dragon 2 high score #2

Well, I'm back to playing this mess. For some reason, I cannot stop playing it - and I don't even think its that great a game. I tried explaining why I like to play it to gunbird18 tonight, and I couldn't come up with a good reason, I think its because its hard and badly designed - I play because I want to find out where the patterns and fluidity are in this thing.

For whatever reason, I would like to 1cc this, but I don't think it'll happen any time soon. The rank can get brutal and I have no rank management strategies at all. For now, It's a good game to waste my time with while I take a break from DP and DDP, before my new pcb acquisition arrives next week...

Ketsuipachi - Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu Black Label Ketsui Arrange - Stages 1 & 2 - XBox 360

If you haven't been paying attention, Cave, somehow, for some awesome reason, decided to release a stand alone disc release of Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu Black Label Arrange mode, which players are referring to as Ketsuipachi. It's a mix of DFK and Ketsui, using the a-type ship with 6 (!) options, an arrange soundtrack and 1/2/3/4/5/10 chips though the same mechanics as Ketsui.

Unbelieveable.

I have been putting off getting a Japanese XBox 360, but it's time to pony up and go for it. This game looks damn near orgasmic.

New PCB: Dodonpachi Daioujou pcb + arts, Cave 2002

Not exactly a new pcb, but I finally got the art work for the game from Dave and shot this photo as I am currently looking to swap my vanilla pcb and arts for a Black Label one. It just looked too nice to not post it up!

I did get a chance to check out Black Label as it is now fully emulated in MAME (along with Ketsui and Espgaluda) - which seems totally bananas. It is a lot of fun, very, very similar to the original but the frequency of hypers does make it quite a bit more fun. The 1 or 2 loop choice is very cool, as is the option of choosing Black Label or the original version when you power up the pcb.

Now that I have 1cc'd Donpachi and Dodonpachi, maybe this one is next...