December Together Retro: Shmuptacular

[noiseredux]

I'm still trying to make up my mind about which game I'll focus on this month. I'm somewhat leaning towards Gradius right now.

my hang up is that I'm not really in the mood to play something that I've already played a lot in the past. And I'm not looking to really spend much money buying a new game in December.

I'm considering grabbing Space Invaders Extreme for DS which I could nab w/ some store credit fairly cheap. I played a *bit* of it back when it first came out and remember liking it. Hmm.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Space Invaders Extreme is tremendous fun and pretty forgiving. Space Invaders Infinity Gene is another great choice.

[Nyukki]

My Flip Grip just arrived.

Where's the best place to buy a flip grip? Somehwere that posts to Beijing China.

[noiseredux]

I'm not sure dude. I got mine via the Kickstarter campaign.

[pierrot]

I was optimistically going to work on a few 1ccs that I was working on a couple months ago, but sort of ditched, for reasons: Gradius, Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius, Batsugun, and possibly Salamander.

I had a run that was extremely close to a 1cc in Gradius, when I last played it (because once one gets to the final boss, and knows what it does, it's extremely easy), but I haven't played it at all since. I'll probably make that the first goal, and then work on pushing through the last couple stages in either Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius, or Batsugun. Salamander will be an extra/alternate, depending on how things go.

[MrPopo]

Gradius is almost a game you have to 1cc because of how punishing the upgrade mechanic is when you die combined with the restart at checkpoint system.

[Tanooki]

I'm trying to setup a replacement core grafx 2 at the moment, my old one vaporized the other night. Found it was a band-aid job by a sneaky japanese ebay seller so now I've got like 25 games and nothing to put them into. >:\

Parodius, Gradius, Salamander, Twinbee and other goodies. What stings worse, died when I got Devils Crash and Time Cruise II in the mail, and almost did 2 weeks earlier when my everdrive arrived.

[pierrot]

Gradius is almost a game you have to 1cc because of how punishing the upgrade mechanic is when you die combined with the restart at checkpoint system.

Yeah, actually the Japanese arcade version, which is what I happen to be playing, doesn't even allow continues, but not everyone knows that, so--.

I mentioned this before in the shmups board, when I was last playing, but I actually feel a lot of the game is substantially easier with no/minimal power ups. The rank increases with full power make certain sections obscene, if any of the enemies get loose and start firing. The Moai's in particular are way easier to traverse at low power. I also find the stage 2 boss, before the big core, to be a bit less stressful at low power. The final stage is ridiculous regardless, mainly because there's almost no room to maneuver, and the powered up duckers on the ceiling take no prisoners. I 1CCed/beat the game on the PSP years ago, but I did it with the smaller hitbox option (and wider screen), so one of the main reasons I was revisiting it was to finish the game on stock arcade settings. Also, it's Gradius, which is just a fantastic game.

[noiseredux]

my copy of Space Invaders Extreme should be here Tuesday. I'm excited now. I feel like I found a game I'm pumped to play this month.

[MrPopo]

Gradius is almost a game you have to 1cc because of how punishing the upgrade mechanic is when you die combined with the restart at checkpoint system.

Yeah, actually the Japanese arcade version, which is what I happen to be playing, doesn't even allow continues, but not everyone knows that, so--.

I mentioned this before in the shmups board, when I was last playing, but I actually feel a lot of the game is substantially easier with no/minimal power ups. The rank increases with full power make certain sections obscene, if any of the enemies get loose and start firing. The Moai's in particular are way easier to traverse at low power. I also find the stage 2 boss, before the big core, to be a bit less stressful at low power. The final stage is ridiculous regardless, mainly because there's almost no room to maneuver, and the powered up duckers on the ceiling take no prisoners. I 1CCed/beat the game on the PSP years ago, but I did it with the smaller hitbox option (and wider screen), so one of the main reasons I was revisiting it was to finish the game on stock arcade settings. Also, it's Gradius, which is just a fantastic game.

Interesting; I wasn't aware of the rank effects. I did a 1cc on the NES version way back when we did a Gradius together retro (or maybe it was the month after, but TR got me playing it) and I found I was able to consistently do the Moais once I learned the right route to go through them.