This will be my final update for ~2 weeks, happy holidays to all.

Got Dangun Feveron in the mail yesterday, and wow, the keyboard was really holding me back. My score has gone up 70% now that I'm playing with Sat pads on the PCB. 3.8 mil so far and 1 credited about a third into 5. I can clear in 3 credits at the moment. Some people are saying the PCB is slower than MAME plays the game, I'm still not really sure.

Over the break I'll see where I can get in DDP DOJ, I left my PS2 at home so I couldn't play it. I don't really know if I should though as the chances of clearing the 1st loop in 6 days are extremely slim. If I don't do it there will be another 4 months of time off.

EDIT:

I'm starting to hate 5 level games. I find the first and sometimes second level pretty boring in many 5 levelers, so I really only get 3 good levels to play.

I'm having some thoughts about Cave. I play games for the challenge, not usually score and their games seems best suited to the obsessive score player. I play a more free style and hate mechanical memorization and milking play. Don't get me wrong, they are very impressive games, but I'm starting to question the "Cave challenge". I think I'll clear all my cave games by the summer and then be done with them as a company. So, look forward to a nice summer sale of my Cave PCBs and a lot of the "pile of shame".

I'm actually questioning this genre as a whole, I'm changing as a person and I'm not sure how much longer I will be a shmupper. They are not interesting me as much as they used to and I've played or cleared nearly all the shmups I've ever wanted to. Maybe I'm just babbling, but we'll see.