Ketsui high score #12 - breaking the 100 mil barrier!

Holy shit - yeah! Broke 100 mill, a goal I have had forever on this game. Super stoked and an incredible run for me. 

No-missed up until the stage 4 boss and then entered stage 5 with ~87 million. My early stage patterns are pretty good now, but my second half is weak! I lost three lives in stupid fashion - and let the 1up dropped by the Panzer Jäger drift off the bottom of the screen! If I had bombed smartly, this could have very easily been a 1cc of this monster title. 

It's cool though, cause I'm plowing through and headed for that 1cc like a freight train from hell. I really still love this game - which blows me away. It is so demanding on your ability to adapt and to control your own aggressive tendencies that when you start to push it to get a few more five chips, it can turn brutally unfriendly in a split second. When I have a bad run of games, I always find myself pushing too hard and I have to remind myself to lay back and chill and play within myself. 

Ketsui high score # 11 - 97,985,343, 1-5 boss!

Oh man - so close to the 1cc, so close to 100 million! Played about 5-6 games today and was sucking pretty hard trying to better some of my existing patterns for points, so I went back to old patterns and just went for it and two credits later, I make it to the stage 5 last boss for the first time on one credit. 

It him down to a bit less than half health and ate it after using up all my bombs. 

I'm crazy stoked. It's been a goal of mine since I got Ketsui to 1cc it. I absolutely love this game - it's totally made for my play style - aggressive and without stage long DDP style chains, rewards no death/no bomb highly and the music, graphics and design just totally does it for me. Really if I had one wish it would be that Cave does Ketsui II with the same type of attention try crafted SDOJ with. That would be a day one kit purchase, no question.

Ketsui high score #10 - 84,022,646

I've been playing Armed Police Batrider for the past two weeks and feel like I haven't gotten anywhere. Earlier today I just bummed out on it, and popped in Ketsui, which I had been putting off playing till I had the drive to finally go for 100 mil+ and a 1-loop clear. Second game of the day and I best my old high score by some 10 million points.

I started working on stage 5 after a few games as I don't have a ton of patterns for it, but stage 4 is pretty solid now, which was my stumbling block previously. 

I'm hopeful for the 1-loop clear and 100 million seems right in my wheelhouse now...

Out Zone high score #4 - 3,190,400 - third loop!

Made the third loop! Besides Batsugun, this is te first Toaplan game I have been able to loop twice, which feels pretty sweet. The third loop is pretty brutal, but even though I didn't make it past the early stages, I think it's doable with most of the same patterns from loop two. 

I think I'll probably give this a rest now and work on Same Same Same as I have my autofire pcb back and after play a few games late last night, feel myself getting sucked in...

Fire Shark high score #2 - 1,252,270

I attended my first Colorado Shmup meet at Jon eXidy's place and what an arcade!

I knew his collection was massive after years of being on KLOV and Shmups, but man, it's just awesome.

When I got there, Fire Shark and Raiden DX were in the vertical cabs and I tore into both, playing the Training course in DX and going for distance in Fire Shark. Amazingly, I remembered a lot of the game from my many runs through a few years back and just kept plowing through to eventually get to 10-1 after a good dozen credits - which totally surprised me as I made it through stage 8 and 9 without ever having played them. 

I threw in the towel after my 10-1 run, partially because I was kind of monopolizing the cab and mostly because without autofire, it's a bit tiring. 

Out Zone high score #3 - 1,703,900 area 134

Didn't expect to loop this without auto fire, but I did! Pretty impressed with myself, but really, I was just as surprised to make the loop. Cannot wait to try the second loop with autofire!

New PCB (kinda) - Out Zone (Toaplan, 1990)

I never did a new PCB post for this even though I got it a while back, so here's a belated one!

Out Zone is a game I absolutely love, one of the best run and gun Shmups ever and one of my favorite Toaplan games. Prices on this PCB have steadily gone up and much like Donpachi and Dodonpachi, which could be had on the cheap five years ago (still remember a Fujita price list where DP was 8900 yen and DDP was 12500 yen), it's started to climb in price as the majority of PCB's are ending up in collectors hands. 

The game is an excellent combination of old school Shmup and great run and gun with good shot types and great power ups. It's a blast zipping through each level and does not really take long to get good at. You have a ten-count bomb stock and can blast through most levels with some creative bombing and speed. 

The graphics and music are excellent for the era and get me stoked whenever I hear them! 

Autofire is pretty much a must for this one, as your hand and arm will get super sore if you are not a tapping madman. As it is, I played a few credits today waiting for my autofire PCB to come back from Zespy and made it pretty far - 6th stage I think and te first time I got there! I practice the last stage a bunch, but it looks like there are a TON of mandatory bombing spots. 

Still, I bested my old high score by quite a bit and when my autofire PCB gets here, I'll be tackling this one looking for the loop.