Topic: Arcade SHMUP High Score Thread

@GrailUK I'll have a look for you m8 next time I turn the ps4 on☺

@hybridseed Thanks mate

@sebasaturn Nice score and welcome. I've added you to the open leaderboard.

I'm thinking about joining up for Terra Cresta. Does it have TATE mode?

@Steveovig It does have TATE mode but it's not possible to play it that way during Caravan mode as the leaderboard sits at the side of the screen. I was playing the main game in TATE the other day with my TV turned on its side and it was glorious.

Hope you will join us

You know the jingle that plays before your last life, anyone else feel it's a nod to Moon Cresta's opening tune?

@GrailUK I don't know about that cue as a reference but I will say I like the catchy music in general. Again, reminds me of stuff like STAR FORCE in terms of being pretty instantly recognisable and iconic in its own way.

Moon Cresta

Terra Cresta Final Restart - 2:13

@GrailUK It seems that Terra Cresta on PSN has no Caravan Mode.. Out of the 7 ACA tities I own on ps4 only 4 of them have it!

I picked up Terra Cresta a little bit ago and got up to 35600 and #78. I had a real good run going, my dogs barked at something, I paused the game, and lost it, lol!

@hybridseed Oh. Maybe it was an early game or something. Thank you for looking though

@Steveovig Haha welcome aboard! That's the beauty of Caravan mode, no pauses or save state shenanigans...and the downside of dogs I guess lol.

@Steveovig Welcome and breaking the Top 100 on your first effort here. Not bad, not bad at all 👌

The Pinball FX 3 tournament is tight as can be in the top few places. Some great scores posted. Only 30k seperating me and @RetroGamerAndrew in 2nd and 3rd which is so tiny it's basically the difference of a single low scoring ball flip. I've come close to beating my own score a couple of times but fell a few thousand points short. Scoring 25 million in 5 minutes isn't easy. Yet @meppi64 pops in and scores over 27 million.

@OorWullie I haven't played it after setting that score to keep it more interesting.
I think it should be doable to score 30 million at the very least as I don't really know what I did special to get to 27.
The best way to improve on a table is to read up on the goals in the instructions and figure out the best approach from there. Which is also something I haven't looked at yet.
It's a good stepping stone to get people interested in pinball, that's for sure, but for me, my true love lies with digital recreations of real life tables. Well,since I have no way of playing the real deal.
I am hoping that one day, when the renovations on the house are all done, I'm able to save up and get an actual cabinet myself. No idea which one yet, but right now I'm heavily leaning towards a Ghostbusters machine.

@OorWullie I just downloaded FX Pinball. No idea what I'm doing but you guys have some stunning scores!

@GrailUK shoot for the blinky things!

@meppi64 Hahah, that's about technical as I can get with pinball

@GrailUK it was a sentence that Mark from Classic Game Room once said when reviewing one of the pinball machines on his channel and it always stuck with me. lol
But it does hold a lot of truth: when in doubt, shoot the blinky thing.

I said this before, but the real fun with pinball begins once you start to understand the rules of a certain table and so can start to link certain things together and go from one goal to the next to try and maximise the score. The more tables evolved, the more intricate these tules became and where we started seeing several layers being stacked upon each other.
Bit like shooting games. Give someone who has never played a shoot em up something like Ikaruga or Dodonpachi and they will likely go mad, or just put the game down and never bother with the genre again, thinking it's just not for them.

But when you started with games such as Xevious for instance and saw the genre evolve, through the Strikers, Raidens, Batsuguns and Layer Sections into bullet hell shooters, everything makes a lot more sense. And while those games are still tough as nails, it's easier to know what to do and understand where they are coming from.

To get into pinball can take quite a bit of time and dedication without a doubt.
But once it grabs you and you get to that moment where it really clicks, then you got yourself another genre of timeless classics that can be played for eternity, just like how we all love shoot em ups.
But it really does depend on the table and wether it clicks with you or not.

For instance, I have been trying this past month to get all the achievements in TPA on Xbox One, even though I generally don't care for those things.
It's only because I love pinball an the Pinball Arcade specifically so much, that I want to go for those.
And also because the ones in there force you to learn the tables due to having to unlock all the normal and wizard goals for all the tables.
For instance, I'm one high-score away from unlocking 2 achievements to complete season 1.
Both for the table Genie from Gottlieb. I need to score 2 and 3 million to get them both.
Now I have never played mug of Genie as it looks like a very basic table. And seeing how it's from 1979, that makes sense. I've been trying for over 2 weeks now, and close to 15 hours I think to get that 2 million one and failing. I hated it at first. It was so frustrating not being able to get even close.
Yet after all this time put into this simple table, compared to the 90's ones, I've come to really appreciate its layout and design.
Don't get me wrong, it's tough as nails, but it's also a fantastic table. Which is something I never expected.

Something similar happened with Ghostbusters at first.
I love the film. It's probably my favourite film of all time, so I was drawn to this table for sure. But it's really tough. The first couple of hours it was kicking my butt.
But after 5-6 hours I started to understand it a bit better and I wasn't losing my ball as much on simple stuff.
Yet it took another 6 hours for it to really click with me and get to a point where I felt I knew what I needed to do and I was starting to be able to do it somewha consistently.
After putting about 40 hours into it, it's become one of my favourite pinball tables ever even though I have still not been able to finish all the modes.

So yeah, it's one of these things that seems to cost a lot of money when you look at a 30€ season, but when you see how you can get hundreds or even thousands of hours out of a single table that costs 2-5€, it's easily one of the cheapest forms of entertainment out there.
No wonder I bought all the seasons so many times over on nearly all my devices now.

So just to be sure. Are we having an open season with every game from earlier weeks' + pinball? Are we using the 5 minute challenge mode in FX3 Pinball?

@Oorwullie
My weekend's result

@Zkibu Terra Cresta gets an extra week. Feel free to play for the open leader boards. OoWullie has started an FXPinball tournament (details are in the Leaderboard thread.)

Meanwhile, my rival has managed an amazing score. Back to second place I go!