Topic: Arcade SHMUP High Score Thread

@GrailUK Sweet! It's nice of them to confirm those deep down details. I didn't think the RNG would be tied to crediting the game and the clock, though. But I knew something was going on at the game over screen. Very interesting.

@RetroGamerAndrew I wanted Silver to be good, too (because I kinda like A-10's). But, I do have one Silver-specific startegy to try before I write him off for good. So far, the ninja actually gave me my best score, thanks to Stage 3. His low damage output can still get the job done with careful planning.

No more luck with me @meppi64. I was playing as the Ninja, instead of my usual Cindy Ellen, and I was getting to the jungle as my second stage but then Paris as my third. Paris is definitely the lowest scoring stage for this particular challenge.

@masterLEON FS-X is the winner in level 3, as long as you take care not to overdo. F14 is not that far behind really, and I have to say I slightly prefer F14 bomb... speaking of which I'm just thinking about a (quite risky) tactic for jungle that I'll try to exploit today on the train back home from work

I know it's a tiny bit off topic, but I just received through Kickstarter that volume 3 of The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers is finally available.

Since we all are shoot em up fans, this part jumped out to me.
From the email:

"Tecno Soft, Compile, Fupac, and 8ing chapter - 068
The biggest chapter in the book, covering no fewer than four major developers. Detailed examinations of the origin, workings, and closures of Tecno Soft, Compile, and Fupac, also with a look at Raizing / 8ing. Covering the origins of the survival horror and RTS genres, the evolution of shmups in Japan, the Zanac series, secret messages hidden in game code, the MSX range and Compile's Disc Station magazines, Compile's mascot Randar, how the company was developing an adaptation of The Last Starfighter movie, the Crush pinball series and Gunhed, Shadowrun on Mega CD, a face-off between the PC Engine and Famicom's sound capabilities, creation of Golvellius and how it was remade for use in a TV soap opera, PC-FX game development including Zeroigar, the only PC-FX shmup! There are also the design documents for MUSHA and Guardian Legend! Plus several unreleased games from across the years!"

As well as this one:

"Success Corporation chapter Takato YOSHINARI reveals incredible secrets about the arcade industry, the Sound Novel & Music & RPG Maker series, Psyvariar, Konami's patent trolling, plus his creation of the Simple and SuperLite budget series! A look at unreleased games Final Gate, Samurai Girl, OOParts, and DCon. Memorial for Masaya NAKAMURA. Second interview examines the Cotton series in depth. Third interview is all about the amazingly awesome Operation Darkness on X360. "

Nice to see Hamster putting some insight on how to make those stages stop giving us Paris! Damn you, Paris!!! I go to sleep at night screaming "Mais non!" because the loop takes me to Paris!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry for the offtopic gents, but this one is out today in Japan and wanted to make sure you knew about it.

@meppi64 Wow, that book sounds very thorough and atypically revealing of Japanese game development so often shrouded in mystery.

Continuing this vein, does anyone here read the Hardcore Gaming 101 books? I have their Data East Arcade Classics book as well as their books on Taito, Konami and Contra, Sega Arcade Vol. 1 etc.

However, I noticed they also have two dedicated shmup books. I'll try and get a link. One is exclusively about Konami shooters and the other has loads of games covered including PULSTAR, BLAZING STAR and LAST RESORT.

Konami Shooters: http://hg101.kontek.net/kshooterbook/kshooterbook.htm

Shmups Volume One: http://hg101.kontek.net/shooterbook/shooterbook.htm

We could even club together and buy the weekly challenge winners a copy of one of these?

@Shiryu
After watching the video, I'm actually a bit more apprehensive about grabbing the game, which is kinda weird as it should be right up my alley.
I know the whole thing is about getting 4 players together, but I'm wondering if it's actually balanced, or even possible to play it like a classic shooter with just one ship and no CPU players.
Still interested in it, but I'll need to hear some impressions first, I think.

And for whatever reason, I did pick up Ace of Seafood. lol
The Japanese guy doing the English explanation over the eshop trailer pushed me over the edge.
How can one not love just that! haha

@Lroy
I somehow missed out on the second book as I was in the middle of buying a new house, moving and all the worries that come with that. So I just ordered volume 2 and 3 from Amazon France, since it's quite a bit cheaper for me as I have a 30 day Prime trial there from the Switch adapter order.
Gonna have a ton of reading material to spend some nice quiet days in the garden this summer.

I bought the Taito one and the Shoot em up Guide here, quite a while ago: https://sellfy.com/kurtkalata
Had to actually redownload them there as I couldn't find the original files anywhere.

Really love the shoot em up one. Tons of great info in there.
it purposefully ignores the Cave games though as they stated that they would love to do special volumes about Cave, Raizing and Toaplan. But so far, I don't think anything has been released. Not even sure if they are still planning to as I would love to see those three especially.
I'm gonna pick up the Konami Shooter one as well I think.

The Taito one is very good as well, although it includes a couple of things I don't much care for so much.
But hey, that's how it goes. You can't love every game, right.

@meppi64 Despite the extra expense, I'm buying each one of the Hardcore Gaming 101 books as an actual book rather than digital. Always been bookish and love relaxing with a physical tome in my hands. I really enjoyed the Data East Arcade Classics one and am currently reading the Taito one. Making me want to play DARIUS on the original multi-monitor hardware.

I'll likely get the Shmup Volume One book next. And agree, would love to see more books like this on developers such as CAVE, CAPCOM et. al.

@Lroy I'd love to have all of these physically as well, but that gets rather pricey quickly.

Whilst we're veering slightly off-topic I wondered if anyone could recommend a really good dedicated arcade game podcast? I'm currently trying out TEN PENCE ARCADE and NO QUARTER but both tend to focus on older 'classic' games. That's all well and good but I'd really like to hear knowledgable people discuss late 80s and 90s arcade games too.

I was given a $100 Amazon gift card earlier and bought several high score chasing games.

Samurai Aces
Aqua Kitty DX
SkyForce Reloaded
Butcher (not sure if this has scoring?)
and Pacman DX 2 as soon as it's available.

I also bought Owlboy and Layers of Fear. That takes me up to 99 games, crazy.

@Lroy I'd love some of those too.
I listen to tons of podcasts while I work on restoring classic UK magazines, but as of late it seems really tough to find good quality gaming podcasts that don't stay positive and are knowledgable at the same time.

@OorWullie Butcher is actually quite fun.
It could use a bit more polish and variety, but it's really fun to play as is. Bit of like a side scrolling Doom 1 or 2, which was probably their goal.

Pacman is downloaded here and waiting to go.
Picked up Ace of Seafood as I love EDF and I've seen several people compare it a bit to the series.
As I mentioned before, this trailer pushed me over the edge. And it's quite cheap as well.

@meppi64 I listen to a lot of podcasts as well and whilst there seems to be loads that are console based it certainly seems as though arcade games conversation is more scarce. Surprising really, thought they'd be loads based in the UK let alone globally. I mean, arcade games of the late 80s and 90s have entire communities built up around them.

By the way, your job sounds awesome!

@OorWullie
You snagged some really good games! I'm a big fan of Aqua Kitty UDX, which btw could be the perfect playground with Infinite Espresso mode (it's basically a 1-life survival mode). I have nothing but good things to say about Sky Force Reloaded: there's some grinding involved, that's true, and it's not your classical SHMUP, but it has huge longevity, tons of unlockables and first class graphics. And I agree with meppi64 for Butcher, it's a good game! Owlboy & Layers of Fear, I have them both on steam. Maybe I'll double dip on the first once it goes retail.

@meppi64 @Lroy
Seems like you guys are reading my mind, I was just thinking about grabbing a good book on SHMUP hystory and/or retro-gaming and you've just given me some great advices! Just to give my personal contribution to this discussion, I suggest you to check Read-Only Memory Publishing (https://readonlymemory.vg/) which seems to have some killer books on sega genesis and general 80' gaming.
On the website there's a superb brief on the history of speedruns: https://readonlymemory.vg/a-brief-history-of-speedrunning/

@Lroy
Just listened to this one about arcade machines repair:
https://podfanatic.com/podcast/weird-work/episode/i-repair-vi...
Sadly it's a one off episode as the podcast is about all kinds of "strange" jobs people do.

It was linked to by this site: https://arcadeblogger.com

My favourite non-gaming podcasts are certainly http://mysteriousuniverse.org/category/podcasts/
Always a lot of fun listening to these guys. Been a plus member there for quite a few years now as it's always entertaining and at times rather informative. Although, the last couple of years they tilt towards the entertainment part, which is a bit of a shame as they did some really good interviews in the past.

And The Dollop (https://itunes.apple.com/be/podcast/the-dollop-with-dave-anthony-and-gareth-reynolds/id643055307?mt=2&ign-itsct=643055307-643055307&ign-itscg=0176&ign-mpt=uo%3D4)
Two comedians who pick a story from US (or Australian as of late) history and go over all kinds of crazy things that happened. The Iraq War one (122) will probably make your head spin.

btw, it's not my actual job, but it takes up as much of my time as my regular job does.
Been at it for quite a few years now. My goal is to digitise and restore classic UK magazines back to their original state, which can be very tough at times due to all the damage time can do to them.
And they are getting harder and harder to find, so getting issues in good condition gets even tougher.

Here's an example of what I did earlier this year for issue 2 of the Club Nintendo magazine from back in 1989:

If you want to read old articles, or download the magazines in full at the highest quality, or small enough versions to fit on a tablet or phone, everything is free, without any ads or anything like that. It all comes out of my own pockets without any kind of crowdfunding or profiteering from it.
Oh and I've had the blessing of people such as Richard Leadbetter, Hugh Gollner amongst others in the past couple of years.
http://www.outofprintarchive.com/news.html

@RetroGamerAndrew I was a Sega kid through and through before adopting Nintendo as my true love in my early teens. The Sega Master System was the first games console I actually owned, quickly followed by the Sega Mega Drive when that launched. Sadly, once Street Fighter II hit the SNES I pretty much became a Nintendo guy. Having a particular fondness for the N64.

So, I'll definitely take a look at what Sega books they do.

Cheers.

By the way, are you dual heritage or native Italian (?) as your grasp of written English is outstanding. I'd love to be able to communicate in Italian but all I've managed to pick up are some lines from all the 70s Italian genre cinema I watch ☺️

@RetroGamerAndrew
Hmm, gonna have to check out Aqua Kitty and Sky Force it seems.
I have both on my Vita, but haven't put any real time into them since I'm pretty much Switch and retro systems only nowadays.

For another great book, the Console Wars one is really good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_Wars_(book)
I listened to the audiobook version of it last summer and it's a great insight of how Sega was run during the MegaDrive days. Highly recommended.

Already got he MegaDrive Collected Works from ROM. Actually I backed the second kickstarter for it as well and ended up with 2 copies as I've forgotten about the first one. lol

@RetroGamerAndrew Cheers pal, I'm not sure which one to start with. Think I'll probably give Aqua Kitty a go first.

@Lroy You can take a look at @meppi64 outstanding work here http://www.outofprintarchive.com
Last time I visited I was there for hours. I think I'll have a wee trip down memory lane again over the weekend.

Just sneaked into the top 20.Fairly content with my score but I think I'll give it one more push .I've just updated the leaderboard with the current standings.

The Nintendolife Leaderboards

@meppi64 Wow, so is this your website then? Very impressive. I've actually looked at a couple of articles on there in the past. Never realised you were behind it, lol! Much kudos to your work ethic and generosity.