New PCB - Raiden II (Seibu Kaihatsu, 1990)

After playing this for about a month solid, I feel it's fair to say it might be my favorite old school Toaplan-style shmup. There's so much it does right - game play and pacing, soundtrack, sound effects, simple scoring - and so very little it does wrong! It can be hard and getting sniped in the later stages is brutal, but when you get in the zone, it's super satisfying in a way very few Shmups can be.

I picked up the pcb after deciding to let go of Ghosts and Goblins, because even the thought of trying to get the 1 loop clear is unappealing, two years after I stopped playing it. 

Raiden II is just so enjoyable, so fulfilling when you get it right, that i just don't want to take it out of the cab for any reason. 

I'm shooting for the 1cc and my skills with old school games is such that I can see it happening, but really, only time will tell. High score right now is a paltry 871,630, but progress is coming swiftly. 

Ketsui 1-All - finally!! :) 108,108,293

I'm literally tingling all over right now. Finally, after working on it for the last two weeks, I get the 1-all! It wasn't pretty and it wasn't my highest scoring game ever, using all my lives and going through a bunch of bombs in the stage 5 boss battle, but I'm super stoked I made it.

I started stage 5 with 4 lives in reserve and lost two pretty quickly, foolish mistakes, but totally maximized the next two and got the extra life from the Panzer Jaeger. Once I hit the halfway mark, I lost another life cause I was trying to horde some bombs and got into a bad spot. 

The end boss battle wasn't much to speak of - some decent dodging and some luck, but definitely some seat of the pants moves that surprised even myself. I finished the battle with no bombs or lives left.

When that boss went down, I stood up, incredulous that I did it, shouted a frankly scary YEAH! and sat down to watch the ending of my favorite game. The surge of emotion at the 1-all surprised me. 

So many times I watched superplays and thought to myself that I would probably never see the end of the game or hear that awesome closing track as a result of my own play, but I did. 

Not sure if I will attack this seriously now or if I'll take a little break and try something else like Guwange, but beating Ketsui feels so good it's hard to describe. Like some sort of life goal or something. In stoked beyond comprehension. :) 

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.