Topic: Arcade SHMUP High Score Thread

I’ll state again the SNES 8 bit do controllers are great. If you played SF on an SNES, as a kid you cannot lose with those. I’d highly recommend them.

@Zkibu @Agent721 @hybridseed @oorwullie @wasilewski I'm happy to make SFII Collection a weekly Games Night. Just pick a day. Not Mon/Thurs.

I started off with Space Invaders as you know, then Asteroids, Galaxian, Galaga, Gaplus, Time Pilot, Xevious, Gyruss, etc. shoot em ups are basically part of my DNA at this point thanks to growing up at that small pub with all those arcade cabinets and pinball games.

I know what you mean. My collection started somewhere in my teens (I'm 42 this year), with the SNES as I sold my NES, Game Boy and Mega Drive before that. But since I got my SNES, I bought those back in the years following as I missed them so much and have hardly sold anything since.
I only just put my Master System collection up for sale since I had no nostalgia for it for the most part. Although I couldn't part with certain games like Ys, Wonder Boy 1 and III, Bubble Bobble, Power Strike, Golden Axe Warrior and Phantasy Star. I also sold my Game & Watch collection, which I do miss if I'm honest, but with the tons of money needed on the home renovations, it was better to go that way.
Just put my 3rd Party PS3 and 4 games up for sale to focus on Xbox instead since they are doing such a great job with backwards compatibility. So I feel safer with them and the way they are building their eco system.

Ah yes, Lik-Sang...
Any serious importer from back in the day remember that one I think. Such a kick in the nuts.
They literally sued them to the point where Lik-Sang could no longer pay the lawyer fees and had to file for bankruptcy. Sony can be such a disgusting company at times...

I know what you mean about worrying about hardware issues and the system no longer being available, especially with portables where one broken button can mean a worthless system.
That's why I have 6 Vita's believe it or not... and 8 PSPs... Those should last me till my last days.
This is also why I have 3 PAL 360's and 2 Japanese ones. hehe. Gotta make sure I can play my favourite games.
Really want to pick up Street Fighter Collection as well, but I'm in the middle of getting a new heating/airco system installed, so I'm trying to save up a little money...

Thank you!
The ones I'm most proud of personally are my Sega Saturn, Dreamcast, PC-Engine and Neo-Geo sets.
Although I adore my Mega Drive and Game Boy ones as well.

Edit: BTW Lost Sphear is now 22€ at Base.com for anyone interested.

@Lroy

I come in from my work lunch hour to join up, so I’ll let those who are already home on the other side of the Atlantic pick the day, as it’s all the same for me.

Hopefully some N American players can join up...that lag! @Mauhlin12 is the only N American player besides me I think?

@Lroy Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday are all good for me.

@Zkibu @Lroy Think I'll stick to my Pro Controller (my only other option right now is Joycon anywayz!), and I played the games so much on SNES back in the day anything other than a dpad feels unnatural to me!

And @Lroy, any night you choose is fine by me m8, I'll try to jump in with you guys more on Splatoon and Mario Kart too☺what time do you usually start your sessions? Because of my wife's hours we usually eat between 8 and 9 p.m, back gaming at 10ish most nights!

@Agent721 Look forward to it! Gonna put it on shortly, will play some single player for a while but hopefully we'll get some matches in over the weekend and beyond☺

@meppi64 I have one PSP and it is completely broken, 2 Vita's, my original from the UK the right stick is broken so I use that for my Japanese acc. And an orange one from Japan which is used for my main account.

Funny though, I have 5 3ds's - 3 from the UK, original model, XL and New XL, and 2 from Japan, LL and New LL, and I've literally had one of them crash, once!!! I powered it down and it was fine!

My old SNES, GBA, N64 and Game Cube all still work perfectly too, Nintendo build their machines to last😁

I think there has been talk in the past and often brought up again about making the weekend at dedicated SPLATOON 2 night (either the Sat or Sun). It just has never been organised yet. @naviandmii correct?

So I suggest we go for Tuesday. Does that suit everyone else interested in SF 30TH ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION?

Going forward I'll be using the Adult Switch Gamers thread as that's what we agreed would be the Games Night organising thread. Cool. See you all over there.

@Lroy Seems I accidentally ordered the US version (it was cheaper than the UK!) so waiting for it to arrive. Grrr. Anyhoo. As soon as it arrives, I'll happily kick ass on Tuesdays.

Just noticed Sine Mora Ex is half price in EU eShop. Id held off because I had it on vita but at this price well worth double dipping. Nowhere near as well designed as Ikaruga but feels like a good companion game... looks bloody gorgeous on the Switch.

Anyone else forget to show their Vita/3ds/other portable love since getting the switch?

@GrailUK I noticed that this site's review linked to the U.S version on Amazon U.K on their review page!

@Daftbomb Sine More EX is the first shooter I played on Switch, I agree it looks gorgeous! And yeah, other than turning my old one on yesterday to share some pics, my Vita's have been packed away for a while, and done a few levels on Fire Emblem Echoes but not played much 3ds for a while either.. I must get back on them!

I did some Ikaruga runs "for fun" yesterday (still not participating in the challenge!) and I'm starting to get this love/hate relationship to it. In this one, I guess it would have been better just to take time and play it for fun/survival and not thinking about the score at all. The scoring in so unforgiving that single very very small mistake you get exponentially lower score and it's kinda impossible to regroup from it. This leads to much worse restart syndrome than in the most other shmups. Also, if you are aiming for score, there is kinda no point of even trying to get further in the game before start to get decent score from the earlier levels. So for me, it became this grinding first level (or even just part of it) again and again almost immediately and I'm kinda stuck mentally in that loop now.

Not sure if it makes sense, but perhaps it would be better in general not to select games for challenge immediately when they are released so people would have more time to acquire them and just play for fun a bit before it get's "serious" ?

@GFoyle I've had a few goes over the last few days but I just can't get anywhere, the fact that I've had a rough week with very little sleep most nights probably isn't helping but the last few times I've played I can't even keep the chain going through the opening sequence!

I may try to better my score as I think the challenge is extended until a week today? But I think I just don't enjoy the mechanics of the game, never played it before the Switch release and find it very hard!

I'd have to look for my original Japanese PSP as I'm not sure where it is.
As long as my battery doesn't explode, which is a thing with PSPs, well at least bulk up and leak, it should still be in working order. But besides the first year, I didn't play it much. Tons of WipEout Pure, Ridge Racers and Lumines that year though.
But the DS started going crazy with tons of incredible games that seemed to be made with me in mind and thus the PSP was shelved as I could barely keep up with DS and Wii releases. Such a crazy time. Bit like the Switch now.

It wasn't till 2014 when I bought another PSP and started buying up tons of games that I missed out on. I still haven't played most till this day.
That was a year after I got my first Vita. That system solidified my love for portable gaming once more after the somewhat disappointing DS successor, the 3DS, at least the first year or so.

I'm still lucky that most of my systems work, but the build quality on Sony systems certainly isn't on par with Nintendo, nor Sega for that matter.
My original Sega Saturn still works perfectly till this day, while my PS1 and PS2 broke down after about 3 years.
Already exchanged my PS3 3 times before it could break down on me and I switched my PS4 for a Pro, just for that reason.

Not sure who asked this a bit ago, might have been you, but I'm also in the same boat as him when it comes to ignoring pretty much my Vita and 3DS since getting a Switch.
Although I've played my 3DS at least a bit when Metroid came out and since Picross 2 is nowhere to be seen on Switch and I perfected the original one, I went back to 3DS for that every night and I'm working my way through Picross e8. Just perfected the last 2 puzzles of normal mode last night in bed and now I can move on to mega Picross.

@hybridseed I can't decide how much I like it (or not). The scoring and survival are a bit too separate for my tastes, getting far does't mean <censored> for score perspective.

I think I would have enjoyed this game more if I would have started focusing on survival and started thinking about the score much much later. Now I cannot get rid of the score mindset.

@meppi64

Is the love of the PSP just because of the games? I have one and recently tried to played it first time in 10 years or so (my game saves were from 2007-2009!) and I found the ergonomic aspect horrible (especially using analog stick when I tried god of war) as well as loading times (I was mainly playing Jeanne d'Arc). I think it was fun back then, but I can't say I enjoy playing with it now.

@GFoyle Ergonomically it's indeed a bit of a nightmare, especially on long play sessions.
The Vita was much, much better in that regard. At the time it was okay I think, since we weren't used to much better, although I found the GBA SP and even the DSLite to be superior in every way. But it might depend on the size of your hands.
The loading times are indeed one of the worst aspects of the system, especially for a portable.
Truth be told, I soft-modded my system early on since WipEout Pure had quite a few performance hiccups with the system being clocked to 222MHz, while it could actually do 333MHz. Due to wanting to advertise better battery life they down-clocked the system...yeah...
So softmodding (which is super easy to do) it and running the game from the extremely expensive memory cards (hello Vita!) at the time, you could run the games at 333MHz with much better frame rates, although some screen tearing was added in WipEout, not to mention drastically lower the loading times. (and a really good Capcom CPS1-2 emulator for games that never came home: Cadillacs & Dinosaurs and Progear no Arashi for instance)
I still really like the system, but it's best for games that only use the d-pad and 4 buttons. The shoulder buttons are not only hard to use at times, they are also rather unresponsive and don't register every time you push them. :-/

So yeah, the "system" is a brilliant little handheld, purely on the merit of it's incredible catalogue of games.
It was a bit of a technological marvel when it came out, but not really the most user friendly.

One stupid question...

What’s the point of playing Zerodiv games (like Tengai) for high scores when it scores same points on Monkey difficulty as on Very hard difficulty. I mean.. I could say here I scored xxx xxx xxx on very high difficulty setting but in real was playing monkey difficulty. Or am I missing something here?!

Tengai is my first Psikyo game on Switch because no online leaderboards and other games I have on iPhone where there are actual leaderboards for easy, normal and hard difficulty.

When I look on Nicalis release of Ikaruga and all that leaderboards and downloadable replays... Zerodiv team looks like a joke!

Edit:
Furthermore.. I could set infinite continues and 9 lives and even that doesn’t matter on Tengai local scoreboard! LOL

@CroRock I guess we're just an honest group of players and just have to trust each other in the Psikyo challenges!

You should notice though, the last number of your score shows how many credits you used!

@CroRock yeah thats put me right off buying any others (I got strikers 1945 II which has separate leaderboards). I seem to remember one of you guys saying Zero Gunner 2 also has separate leaderboards....

Steredenn is worth a shout since it has online leaderboards, not sure of any other shmups on switch that do... Sine Mora maybe but not played it much yet

@hybridseed thats a cool piece of trivia! I like that...