I do now. Half the battle.

Grind , grind, grind.

level 7 runs. losing lives with bomb stocks from silly mistakes.

grind , grind, grind.

Was tired last night. Booted up Dreamcast Gigawing for old time's sake. Got to level 5 which is bonkers and needs a really tight path but I was pleased with that. I really should get back to the 1CC of that when I do Raiden III. I had a TLB run before I gave up after breaking my joystick......then my Asteroids Dx cabinet arrived which distracted me.

Heh. Only had time for one run last night but it was a weird one. I should have recorded level 6 - the game gives you the option of saving a replay of each level at the end of level bonus tally screen.

I pranged on the level 2 boss but decided to continue as time was tight. I got to level 6 with no further mishap and I had managed to amass a stack of bombs on my current life.

Half way through level 6 I screwed up - picked up a power up icon just as it turned blue - so my wideshot which deals with the huge amount of sniping popcorn enemies was gone. I told myself no way I was going to lose this life and all those bombs.

So I used my bombs - but the thing with bombing is it that once I do it I find myself getting a bomb hair trigger. You also lose your timing and any sense of routing so I ended using too many. 

So I was down to 1 on the final stretch of the level just before the boss. It's a tricky sequence - there are 3 large ring shaped structures to shoot away. Do that and you get a 1UP. While you are trying to do this you get light popcorn but a sequence of 4 bullet vomiting enemies that you have to take out quickly. The rings themselves generate bullets - your firepower cancels them but it's extremely offputting as they are mixed with the deadly bullets from the enemy ships.

The 2nd ring is the one I have problems with as it generates two tracks of lethal non-cancelable lasers that herds you in - I usually have to bomb to deal with that.

The rings take a lot of damage. The wide shot can do it but having the laser at this sequence is optimal because of the relatively light popcorn snipers. A powerup appears at the start of the sequence. Its purpose is to give you a chance of picking up the laser - but the thing with powerup tokens in this game is that they hang around changing colour for an age. So it's best to pick it up when you can to prevent any mistakes resulting in a weapon change.

Ballsed up - lost life trying to pick it up. 

When you lose a life your new ship powers down and reverts to wideshot. That's usually OK - but not when you need a laser which is when I am fighting bosses or dealing with this 3 ring section as they take a pile of damage.

Was able to get myself a laser again but now it's underpowered. There's a fairy that appears after a life loss that drops more powerups when you shoot it  - giving you a chance to recover your firepower - but it's a nightmare to wrangle and you end up using bombs to give you time to pick them up. It's what makes this game so hard - losing a life usually results in another life loss as you scramble for power ups or using bombs up at best.

Ended up screwing up the rings and not getting the 1UP. Then lost a life on the boss.

Into level 7 with 1 life. End of run.

Holy moley.

No-missed up to the level 6 boss last night. Sitting with 5 lives. I only had one bomb in hand but that should have been enough to dispatch the boss.

So into level 7 with 4 lives.

Still screwed up . Even messed up on the earlier section which I am familiar with.

The main issue was that my wideshot wasn't at full strength because of the life loss and my subsequent screw up gathering powerups.

In levels 6 & 7 the amount of sniping popcorn is very high. So if your shot isn't a full width then too many get past  - then they are behind you and it's a nightmare because they hang around firing single shots making a a nuisance of themselves. Even with full strength/width you can't move too far from the central area of the screen otherwise popcorn gets past on the far side.

Need to grind level 7 more - I want to be prepared for the next chance.

Joystick is knackered.

It is anchored in place using 4 plastic keepers attached to the base of the stick. The stick assembly is screwed to that but all 4 keepers have broken. It might explain why it has been temperamental - perhaps only one or two were intact. I could try super gluing the keepers but I can't see that working for too long. It was a ropey old ascii stick - actually for the PS1 I picked up in Cash Converters but it served me reasonably well - any old stick does with me as long it's clicky.

Have ordered a cheap HORI stick but in the meantime I am playing with the PS2 pad which is far from optimal given its crap dpad.

First run got to the level 6 boss which wasn't bad. Have been cramming level 7 practice. Getting better. The boss is still a bomb sponge though....

Dubs wrote:

Try not to punch this stick so much.

 

I punched it only when it stuck in a direction....number of times it cost me lives...…  

Anyhow - will go easier on this one...

hahaha, for some reason the Dont; Panic got me thinking of this, and remembering the very moment the penny dropped whilst playing and I twigged what utter genius Kenta Cho was



admittedly being as this guy is so good it's harder to see what's happening under the hood

Got my new pc up and running.


Steam mushi and ddp dfk running buttery smooth full screen and tated.

Keeping myself warm with raiden iii using the pad. Stick should be here Saturday....

Steam Raiden III then.

It's an older game on PC so you have to configure the controller settings to get it to work with a modern controller (I use a 360 Hori stick on PC). The in-game config doesn't detect the 360 stick.

A bit of messing about got me there. (Hint : right click on the game in the steam library listing and then select manage-> controller - you can then map controller buttons to keyboard buttons and keep the game itself working off keyboard). There seemed to be a lot of frustration in the forum about it - I might post my solution there.

If you run it full screen it fills a widescreen monitor TATEd. So this isn't original res - though it doesn't look stretched. It doesn't fill the screen horizontally TATE'd on the PS2's "arcade-A" setting. The PS2 port has an arcade-B setting which does but I suspect that is stretched horizontally and cut vertically - so maybe this is close enough to original res.

It does feel faster - but that could be just the rescaling or the fact that I'm playing on a slightly bigger screen and sitting a bit closer (my CRT is 21" rotated - and my monitor is a bit bigger than that). The bullets feel faster but so does your ship movement -  it feels like playing the PS2 port slightly boosted - but I would need to return to the PS2 to compare.

Nice for £1...… ran to level 6 first go. Not sure what I'll do - but I might stick with this until the PS stick arrives.

Raiden IV is less than £2 this week too. Picked that up for future.

Look at this ickle thing. 




Solid little thing. Really heavy and feels dependable.

Only £20. Think there's a few more on eBay similar price.

The hori stick doesnt work with the ps2 slim....

Works with the phat and jp slim. Very odd.

Had to swap my phat and slim around which is a minor annoyance.

Nice stick. It has more resistance than im used to but i like it. Buttons are nice and smooth. Id like it to be a tiny bit bigger but im pretty happy. Definitely a step up from what i had.

Patchy day. Getting used to the Hori stick and tidying up the game room. A few level 7 runs that made it onto the high score table but not much else.

Yeah Deathtiny's great for that stuff.  You can have up to 30 save states for each mode and they can be loaded at the touch of a button.  There's a brilliant training mode as well but the save states are more useful for grinding out boss patterns or bits with bonus enemies.