I played a few hours of Ketsui in the Bay Area shmupmeet, and I have lots to discuss. First, I will evaluate the effectiveness of the bomb distribution that I brought to the meet, and second, I will give my impressions about the game. Overall, I had fun with the game—I nearly made it to stage 5—but I'll stick to mastering DoDonPachi.

Did the bomb distribution work?

Dave K. wasn't kidding when he said that Ketsui is difficult. My bomb distribution alleviated the difficulty only a little. On my first few tries, I lost all of my lives in stage 2 or stage 3. Obviously, I thought that I won't able to clear the game that afternoon, so I calculated the number of bombs available to me in the first three stages (it was 14). A few more tries later, I did clear it, so I calculated this number for the first four stages (it was 18). I knew where to place 14 of them, but I didn't know where to place the other 4. So I simply used them for emergency evasion.

But Ketsui gave me barely any time to stop and think. I never stopped to figure out how many surplus bombs I had in any given moment, and usually, it killed me. For example, when I was battling the second form of the mid-boss in stage 4, I had three bombs. I was scared of this enemy's bullet barrages, but I never planned to use a bomb here, so I tried to dodge. And then I ran into a bullet somewhere. There went three surplus bombs.

Ultimately, I learned that a bomb distribution is effective only if you set reasonable goals. Clearing the first round wasn't reasonable. But clearing stage 4 was—I almost cleared it! But I didn't know what to do with the four surplus bombs, so I didn't maximize the effectiveness of the bomb distribution tool. Next time, I should ask for a bomb distribution for clearing the intermediate stages. I need to take those baby steps.

(Also, it helps to have more than one afternoon, but I was somewhat surprised at what I accomplished that afternoon anyway.)

Do I want to give up DoDonPachi for this?

Okay, so I reached the third form of the boss in stage 4, but was it fun getting there? Indeed, it was, but I barely know how to describe it—maybe it was exhilarating to make so many successful cutbacks (the technique used to dodge aimed bullets around the lower corners of the screen).

But the one thing that bothered me was that I felt I needed to point-blank large enemies just to survive. I think this is how the lock-on mechanism works: the closer you are to the enemy, the faster the options lock onto it. I prefer to keep my distance from enemies, especially because they fire as soon as they appear on screen, and I didn't even know what they fire. So my options took forever to fully lock-on to an enemy. And the enemies lingered on the screen forever. I couldn't stand that! So yeah, Dave K. wasn't kidding again when he said that this game rewards you for playing aggressively. But it rewards more than just a couple of points; it can reward in quicker destruction.

So do I want to switch to Ketsui? Not yet, but I will consider it. I think there are many more ways to beat the Ketsui records than to beat the DoDonPachi, and that motivates me to switch. But right now, I don't have a record-setting video, and the game isn't playable on any emulator, so I don't have any good resources to master the game. They might appear in a couple of years, though. So if these resources appear and my progress has peaked with DoDonPachi, I would switch to Ketsui. But for now, I'll stick with DoDonPachi.

I experienced more in the shmupmeet than just playing Ketsui, but I'll discuss the experience later.