It's a splendid game. Feels unique. I can't think of another game quite like it; even the sequels which went a bit more manic and introduced a health bar system to replace lives.

Back at Raiden III

Got a run to level 7 tonight (last level) and got deep into it. Scored just over 13m.

Got to level 6 with 2 lives. Lost a life but then I got the 1UP just before the level 6 boss. Screwed up on the first pattern of the boss which I still can't master and lost a life so hit level 7 with 1 life. I know I probably need to get there with 2 lives minimum for the 1CC and getting to the boss with no life loss.

Also scored 259K on 1942 in work today.

Getting closer.

Got another run to level 7 this evening. 12m score.

Silly mistakes on the level 5 boss are hampering progress. Need to tighten up on that.

That gives me kittens just watching it - that level of bullet hell is just insane

Had a mini shmup festival in work these last few days courtesy of MAME.

1942 ended today with my rival busting 300K with more or less his last game. He was 500pts off my 299K score on the level 8 boss and got hit - thinking it was game over - but had another life. Went on to hit 360K.

But we also had some R-Type and Phoenix. With a side order of Snow Bros for a change of genre.

Yeah. The great players hardly move their ship around at all. All tiny adjustments. Rarely you will get a continuous sweeping movement in a superplay. I find it mesmerising to see a level of skill like that.

My issue is figuring out exactly where to look. I guess it's the same for most people.

Oh, is it out?! WHERE?!

OMG ordered THANKS!

WWWHHHOOOOO!!!!

The basic idea is to hit enemies with the burst fire, which produces lingering explosions, then finish them off with the autofire.  You'll then get a multiplier equal to the number of burst-fire explosions touching the enemy +1 (up to 16x) which lasts a short time and applies to both kills and item pickups.  The multiplier time can be extended by collecting items.
Once you hit the item limit, if your bomb meter is not full the number will start counting down and any enemies you kill before it hits zero will drop bomb refills.  The item limit starts at 200 then increases by 100 each time you do this but it's pretty easy to hit it.  Seems like a pretty low cost to bombing, I think you just miss out on the item drops on anything you kill.

Here's some helpful stuff from the shmups forum I have bookmarked:

Scoring thread
Menu Translations
World of Arcades:  see the links at the bottom for scoring and secrets.

Caved in and bought DDP DFK on Steam . Pun unintended. Less than £10 in the sale so can't be bad.

I'm really only getting the BL Arrange mode as I aready have this for 360 which bafflingly doesn't have that mode.

Interesting to see how it runs on my wheezy PC - seems OK as long as it runs windowed.

Original Mushi is a bit chuggy full screen too - maybe there are tweaks I need to do.

I do need to get a new PC though.

edit: added the FPS display and it looks like I get 60FPS running in a window.

Dubs wrote:

A 1cc seems doable, just got to get used to bombing.

Figured it out lads.  No need to learn the end boss if you have a million bombs:

Bomb bonus is a million for a full bar, apparently, I assume it's proportionate to how much bar you have left.  There are no loops but there are higher difficulties available in the Custom mode.  You can also switch the order of the first three stages around in any mode so there are harder and easier versions of each.
It's definitely an easier one to 1CC, no real routing needed until stage 5 where some of the big enemies can cause problems.

Played some caravan games on my SNES last night. Was trialling my new RGB SCART cable with SNES and CRT.

The game is called Caravan Shooting Collection from Hudson and it features 3 shmups that were used by them in national high score competitions in Japan in the 80s. These are the games that were used in the '85, '86 and '87 competitions.

Starforce, Star Soldier and Hector '87.

8 bit graphics with a slight touch up on the sound. Feels like a solid version of the NES originals as flicker is gone etc.

Hector '87 is the only game with actual caravan modes with 2 and 5 min options. Had some fun playing that - got to the boss in 2min mode but can't put it away before I time out. Will have another go tonight.

It's interesting to see how the games developed over the period of 85-87.

I love the fact that Samsung have finally caught up with what we all really want

Speaking of Futari - Futari 1.01 Ultra got played at GDQ this year.

Still looking for the footage - can only find reaction videos.  There were some moaning about shmups not being speedrun games.

Has to be good though - TGM got a lot of interest after its demonstration. TGM is a timed game though.