Fire Shark - Toaplan - high score #1

A while back, gunbird18 loaned me his Fire Shark pcb, a stellar and brutally difficult Toaplan title and the sequel to Sky Shark. It's super fun, but demanding and you do have to do a lot of memorizing, more so than Sky Shark.

It does not have side-fields, which is unusual for a Toaplan title, so what is on screen is all there is. Which somehow sounds like it's easier to deal with but trust me - it isn't. The enemies, popcorn or large are all very tricky and the first few time you play this game you will take a shot or to to the face when you thought you would be within distance to seal bullets from the enemy ships.

The music is very cool and it has a bit of the same feel of Sky Shark, but not as good. I only think of the stage one music when I think of this game and I cannot even remember what the later stages sound like, but maybe that's because the game gets silly hard really quick.

The difficultly lies in two places in this game - the usual shot-dodging and anticipation mechanic of most Toaplan titles and dodging unwanted power-ups. Yup - dodging power-ups.

At first, you'd think that you'd want to snag a few and change shot types, but you really only want to stick with the standard blue spread shot, a carry over from Sky Shark or the red fire laser, which is stellar for bosses. The green shot sucks and should be avoided at all costs. The problem lies in that the power ups bounce around the screen from top to bottom, side to side in an almost random pattern. Unlike Twin Cobra where the power ups stay in the middle of the screen for the most part.

The other downer is that there are a lot of power ups that appear throughout the game and in some places, there may be 5-6 item carriers and the screen quickly becomes filled with a ton of power ups. Ugh.

Besides that, the game is awesome. The ship controls like the Sky Shark ship and you get the same satisfaction of killing scads of popcorn enemies when you use the spread shot and taking down bosses are sweet tapping fests that feel like real accomplishments when you take them out.



I set this high score after bringing the pcb out again after a number of months on my first credit, finally making it past the 4th stage which had been giving me trouble earlier.

Big thanks to gunbird18 for the long term loaner!

DDP high score #6: 48,704,340 - 1-All

So, I kinda missed updating this blog with this score as it was a while back, shortly after the Mid-Missouri Shmup Meet at 48,704,340, with C-S and a (low) max hit of 303. I think at the time I was so close to the second loop, I didn't think to update the blog with this score.

I did think enough of it to update the thread on shmups with the score though. I only caught it as I was taking over the DDP high score thread over on Cave-STG and knew my score hadn't been right there for a while.

I'm in the process of wiping and reformatting my MAME box as it kinda crapped out on me and then getting back to this bad boy. One of the few games - along with Sky Shark and Castlevania - that I can play anytime and enjoy it.

Dodonpachi DFK for X360

Looks fantastic and I am really sorry that I do not own an XBox yet! Ketsui, Mushi Futari, Deathsmiles, Guwange and now DFK. Yup, it's about time to own one...

I have never been a big fan of console ports, but this system is really making me change my mind! After playing Ketsui at gunbird18's meet a while back, I was impressed by how true to the pcb it was. And seeing as how I can't just go out and buy DFK, Deathsmiles and Mushi Futari, never mind shelling out a healthy chunk for Ketsui, I might be tempted to pick up a 360 and go with the flow. Cave certainly seems to be very interested in pushing the colsole port format. Some have even said that it looks like they are using the arcade to test for the home market.

In any case, it's hard to argue that a $200 system and $60-$80 games are a bad choice when pcb's are easily double or triple the cost of the system + game in any instance.

Ys Books 1 & 2 - PCE Duo-R - Review

There are so many great RPG's out there and quite a few I have never played but very much wanted to, namely the Legend of Mana series and Ys. Ys definitely has its fans and after the DS remake of the game, I felt I needed to hunt down a copy and give it a shot. I zipped over to People Play Games on Clark and grabbed a copy, feeling pretty lucky the actually had one there!

I cleaned off the PCE and fired it up when I got home, eager to see what the hullabaloo was about. First of all, because its a CD game, the audio is of stellar quality, but also some of the best RPG music I have heard in a long time. Fantastic.

The game itself is almost like a cross between Dragon Warrior and Zelda - Dragon Warrior for its level-grinding and Zelda for its action-based gameplay. In Ys, you don't have random battles or cut scenes for the actual batttles - you just run into enemies the appear on the field. Yup - you just run into them. Which at first, I thought was kinda lame, but after playing for a while, really, really started to enjoy. It makes level grinding waaaaaaay easier and really speeds up the game. Especially since you have no magic to use in the first game.

The game follows the whole overworld/dungeon mechanic with the last level being a giant tower that is much longer than any other dungeon in the game. I did find it kinda funny that I maxed my gold out halfway through the tower where I could never seem to have enough to buy the stuff you need early in the game, but whatever.


The inventory screens are simple to navigate and you don't have to do the sell something to get a stronger weapon mechanic - you can keep all of the weapons you buy or find in the entire game and never run out of room. The items in the game are also easy to find uses for - there are no cryptic puzzles or adventure-game style item matching components in the game.


The story itself is good and simple and there are areas of the game with voice overs and very nicely drawn anime-style sprites to represent the characters talking to you, which adds a kind of dreamy quality to the game as for most of the game you are blasting through enemies and running from place to place on kinda of a rampant tear and they are the few moments where you get to sit and chill for a moment.

I beat the first Book of Ys in about a day and a half, maybe 8-10 hours of game time and its excellent. Lots of fun and something I will definitely play through again. I have started on Ys Book II and I'm about four or five hours into it and it's also excellent. They didn't really mess with the formula too much, adding magic spells, which you can shoot, which is very cool. The two games tie into each other back-to-back, so that in the first game when you finish collecting all the Books of Ys and kill Dark Fact, you start the second game needing to replace the Books on the statues that correspond with on a floating continent. Very cool and a lot of fun for sure.

Akai Katana - Cave - 2010 - Preview

For those of you that haven't seen it yet, here is a 15-minute long video of Cave's newest effort Akai Katana.

The almost decade old Military-style of graphics come back, with no lolis in sight. It's a horizontal prospective, much like Progear with graphics similar to that of Ketsui. The scoring system still seems a bit tough to pick up - at least from this video. It looks like a bullet deflecting/absorbing into gold kinda thing. Could be pretty addictive. I'm just stoked on the graphics! The bullet spreads are similiar to Futari and Guwange, a pretty cool mix, with some of the organic-ness of Ketsui.

I'm pretty excited to see more videos of this, but reports from Japan say most op's are waiting for the 1.5 or BL version as seems customary with Cave's newer efforts.

Mega Man 3 - NES and update

Damn - a month and a half between posts. That's waaaaaay too long! It's not that I haven't been gaming, but I have been doing a lot of stuff in my free time - namely playing guitar and riding - and just haven't updated.

Gaming wise, I have been playing Mega Man 3 - the stellar NES title that introduced so many things to the Mega Man franchise like Rush and Protoman. It's not harder than Mega Man 2, but I find myself struggling with it from time to time as I really want it to have a Castlevania-like fluidity and Mega Man has a very stop-and-shoot mechanic that can wear on you as you kill something, run forward a few steps, pause and kill something else. Not that it always is like that, but unless you want a swarm of enemies or want to run into a storm of bullets, you'd be wise to move slowly.

Along with Mega Man, I have been playing Twin Hawk and damn if I can't break 150k. There is a two-tank boss that absolutely owns me everytime and I really just have to keep practicing it. It's a pretty fun but also pretty brutal. I certainly wish I had an autofire pcb.



Along with those few games, I have been playing a ton of guitar and am trying to get two bands off the ground right now - which is mostly have been so slow to update. It'll be the first time in quite a few years I have played in a band. I spent most of my teen years and college years in different punk bands and had a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to playing out again and having that energy that a loud amp and a live show can provide.

I'll be back to updating more frequently in the next few weeks - especially after I borrow Golvellius from Andi and get some Master Syetem goodness in the house.

New PCB: Twin Hawk - Toaplan - 1989

A few weeks ago, KLOV member Braido shot me a pm about his Twin Hawk ocb, saying he found an earlier WTB post I made on KLOV. He asked if I'd like to buy it and to shoot him an offer. Unfortunately, I was saving every penny I had for a new amplifier and had to pas, sorry, but I could link your sales post over to shmups. He offered to just sent it to me anyway and I excitedly and politely accepted!

It arrived while I was in Seattle and it was waiting for me on my desk at work when I got back. As soon as I got home, I fired it up and went to town. It's an old school Toaplan style game, even for 1989, much like Hishouzame/Sky Shark, but with a twist. Your bombs are actually a swarm of planes that cover the bottom of the screen and fire up at the same rate you do. They can take enemy fire and go down, but if you stay near the top of the screen they tend not to get hit. If you tap the b button once, the planes appear at the bottom, but if you tap it twice before they get into formation, a bomb drops right in front of your ship of pretty impressive power. You can also tap the bomb button once after the planes have formed up and they will all dive bomb into the nearest objects.

The game required some new types of strategy besides the shoot, dodge and bomb standard for older Toaplan titles. It seems that the most effective way to play is to stay in the top 1/3 of the screen and take out large enemies very quickly and allow the drones to take out all of the popcorn enemies.


I set this first high score at 198,700 at area 33 after the third mid-boss/boss and I have trouble with him ever since. It's a pretty tough game but massively enjoyable and it has a very unique mellow, soundtrack, which I quite enjoy. I played the first night for about three hours, trading off playing time for time with my new amp - a gorgeous Orange AD30R and my new guitar - an ebony black 1981 Gibson Firebrand SG.


Big, big thanks to Braido for the pcb!