Raiden high score #4

Yeah man! Now this is a breakthrough game. Went right from playing Raiden II this morning and getting virtually nowhere to playing this and on my first credit, got about halfway through stage 7 before getting totally wiped out. I beat stage 6 without much fuss - which surprised me as I had never played it before. I dropped two bombs on the boss and blasted my way through to finish the stage.

If you have never seen stage 6, you start off after 5, landing back on the carrier from the beginning of the game and then taking off for space. Its a very cool moment and a nice break in the game. If the first 5 stages are a tribute to Toaplan's Sky Shark/Twin Cobra feeling titles, stages 6 and 7 are their take on a Tatsujin-like space stage - with a very similar midboss to one of the Tatsujin ones - a four-ship cluster that moves in a square pattern.

I'm not really sure how hard its gonna be to push through and get to the end of this one - pretty sure that's gonna take some time. I really should have practiced stage 7 with a few continues to see what's happening there, but there's time enough for that later.

Raiden high score #3

I use to think Seibu just put out some pretty blah stuff - especially compared to later Toaplan and early Cave, but this is yet anopther company that has snuck up on me and I find myself really, really digging their back catalog.

Raiden is pretty much a tribute to Sky Shark with about double the difficulty and double the cheapness of side field point blanking. There are quite a few frustrating moments where you are in the zone, feeling the flow of the game and whap - bullet from behind.

But I still can't get enough of this game. It's the intenseness of the stages and toughness of the game from early on. I find myself being able to glide through stages 1 and 2 most times, but from stage 3 on, it gets intense. As it stands right now, stage 5 is my sticking point. This score at 755,470 feels pretty good as I had near perfect runs of the first three stages, but 4 and 5 need a lot more practice!

Omega Fighter high score #3 - and second loop!

Man, I'm on a roll! After I finish got to the second lop in DDP, I popped on Sky Shark for a bit, got bored of it and popped in Omega Fighter Special and tried to up my high score. I hit 5.9 and 6.2 million and got so close to completing the loop - making it to the end of stage 8 a few times - I knew if I kept on it, I'd make it. Well, about 30 credits later, I did it! 7,370,700.

The last three stages are damn near impossibly with out being powered up but in stage 8, you get a chance to earn powerups - something you cannot do in stage 7, so if you can survive till the last stage and hold a red bomb heading into the boss - you got it made!

I made it about a stage and a half into the loop as the bullets are much faster and much harder to dodge - especially from the turrets. I also noticed I didn't have any lives left after suiciding on the stage 1 boss for the million bonus, so that might have been a dumb move.

Omega Fighter Special is such a great game, one of only two proximity scoring games I can think of, with Ketsui being the other. UPL's best by far.

Dodonpachi - high score #8 - 67,086,640 - and second loop!

Finally! After a few dozen runs over the last month, I finally made the second loop! I'm super stoked. The run was far from perfect and did have me playing just for the loop rather than pushing score (though I was hoping for 70 mill), but it all came together. I finished the first loop with over 50 mill and a 386 max hit count, which felt awesome.

The loop is pretty wild in terms of bullet count, but it also does allow for a longer timer on the hit meter, so chaining is easier - if you can avoid all the masses of bullets. I made it to 2-3, losing my last life right before the carrier with the 1-up. I literally died right at the last part of the ship that houses it and I was a bit bummed, but I'm pretty sure things would not have gone well against the stage 3 boss in the second loop. As it was, the stage 2 boss ended in a bomb fest - that tank gets brutal!

I'm not sure if I will go right back to this or not right now as this was my long term goal. I'd like to break 100 mill at some point, but that means chaining or building the multiplier and my chains need a lot of work. Working the multiplier will be a lot harder as it means very selective bombing to keep the multiplier up - and most likely a no-miss, no-hit run up through 1-5.

Think I'm gonna go celebrate!

Dodonpachi - progress for that second loop!

Man, I wish I had more time to work on this! I have been pretty busy socially lately and haven't been able to devote much time to DDP, but the time I have devoted has not been in vain.

Numerous times, I have made the requirements for the second loop, only to have the wheels come off and lose like say, three lives on the third stage end boss or something equally silly. I have scored over 50 mil a few times now, gotten over 350 hits many times and I just need to have a day I can run through the game a few times in a row and make it happen!

I am still suprised at the fact that I still enjoy the hell out of this game after so many credits on it. I usually get fairly bored after a while and move on, but I cannot get this out of the cab!

Tatsujin high score #2

Man, now that I have an autofire circuit with a split autofire (A with autofire and regular A) wiring harness, I can finally attack this board with some seriousness. I finally blew past my old sticking point around area 90 and though I didn't make it much farther, progress is coming fast. It's brutal and fun at the same time, a great Toaplan title, but I already feel the pull of DDP after getting very close to the second loop a few weeks ago at caldwerts.

1942 high score #1 (and final) NES

This past weekend I was at caldwert's place in St. Louis and while the meet was totally fun, Friday night was all about this marathon score of 1942, a game I played a bunch as a kid and constantly lost after like 3-4 stages. I think my best was stage 27 back in the day.

Like Castlevania, I thought it was an impossible game to beat. I mean, 32 stages? Too daunting for a kid.

At caldwert's on Friday, we were going through a massive box of Famicom games he just picked up and checking them out and ran across this, laughed and put it in, remembering my dissapointment as a kid.

I died a few times in the first few stages, coming precipitously close to a game over and then - I kind of got the hang of it. I plower through to the 20's, with Bob coming by every few minutes to check on my progress. I wfoulnd the bosses along the way who fired small bullet spreads and got their pattern down and plowed on. I made it into the teens, then declared if I rolled the counter, I would stop playing as it was taking some serious time away from enjoying other great games in the pile.

I counter stopped it and decided to go on and beat the game, seeing the ending screen on my first try of the game in 20 years and man, it was satisfying. The ending screen was short with simple "Congratulation" and some text and then a game over. I finished with 10 lives (which I think is the max) and a big smile. I love taking down games from my childhood.