elbarto

I keep finding new ways to die in Gradius II. This time it was during possibly my best run to date. 1-lifed to the final stage, breezing past all my usual choke points, and then it happened.. In the second room, with the enemies that suddenly appear, my brain switched off, I forgot the pattern and one appeared on top of my ship.. aargh. Couldn't recover from there, and annoyingly finished just short of a new high score.

Sexy Parodius saw a better run though, albeit an unexpected one. I'd given up on the scoring attempts for the day, and was just trying out a couple of ideas, as well as the Auto power up system. New high score followed, as well as my first 1 credit clear of the game.. go figure. No special stage though, as I'd failed two stages.

It is possible to time out the bosses in the Sexy Paro Boss Rush stage. Obviously it's not recommended if you're chasing points, but it is handy if you have problems with that stage. You'll fail the stage, but at least you keep your powerups, and don't lose a life.

Wow.. can't believe I've let it slide for so long without writing here (last post Oct 2004) >_<

Played Parodius Da! for the first time in ages today, in an attempt to clear it with Pentarou. Wasn't expecting anything fantastic, given how long it had been, so was a bit shocked to beat my old score and reclaim top spot on the shmups.com scoreboard.

Lost two lives on the first round - at the puffer fish (expected, as it is evil at high rank), and at the "shower" on the final stage (slightly less expected).

Score of 2,224,000. Given that I managed to keep the bell chain going until I died, unless I can either pass the puffer fish, or improve at the second round, I don't see that score improving in the near future.

I've also been playing the Salamander and Thunder Cross series, and the Pang series to mix it up a bit, but I'll write more about them in the next few days.

Whilst searching for some more Famicom games worth buying, I came across Over Horizon, a shooter I'd not heard of before. 24 hours and about 5 or so attempts later, and it's been cleared.

Pretty cool shooter with quite a few Gradius influences, as well as some nice touches of its own.

While looking for something totally unrelated, I managed to find a cheap complete copy of Gameboy Nemesis on ebay recently . Turns out it was well worth the 3 quid, as Konami once again decided against attempting a straight port and changed a whole load of stuff around. As with Over Horizon, the clear came after a few attempts, but this time I managed to do it on a single life.

Round 2 adds more enemies as well as the suicide bullets, not to mention the increased bullet count on the bosses. Stage 2-4 Boss proved to be the sticking point, the mass of bullets took me by surprise and I couldn't recover. ~_~;

Back on the shmups board now, if anyone cares ^_-

Playstation Parodius Da! was cleared yesterday, in a nice tense run that saw the last two stages done on my final life. Not much margin for error there.

Figured out a couple of decent ways of dealing with the Stage 8 shoals of suicide bullet firing fish, assuming that you aren't good enough to just shoot 'em all and dodge all the bullets, or don't have a handy stock of 2 Blue bell bombs.

Assuming you're not going to shoot them all, you can just squeeze through above them, but you still have to shoot to take out the penguins stationed at the top of the screen.

So, either..

• Power down at the start of the stage and don't collect missiles
• Set Shot and Missile to seperate buttons (like in the arcade)

Best not to let your options touch the fish as well, they seem to trigger them >_<

That only leaves the Arcade, X68000 and Mobile phone versions left to do, none of which I think will be done soon for varying reasons (fairly obvious for the last 2). Time to shift my focus to Goku and Sexy Paro..

Still no access to shmups forum btw, so I hope nobody wanted the Gradius V table updated any time soon. I can't email any other mods, as you have to be logged in to use the "email to" links.. nice piece of design there ;)

Cleared Famicom Parodius on Normal difficulty now, and on a single life too. Labyrinth (stage 4) is the hardest stage in this version, once I got past that without taking a cheap/stupid hit, I knew I'd be able to do it.

1-lifed the Super Fami version of Goku Paro as well this week. It was using Ebisumaru though, with the reduce shield making things much easier than they could have been, heh. No joy on the Special stage as usual, the "spelling" section after the Gradius III bubbles kills me every time.

It's good to see the shmups forum back up, but a shame that I can't login. It tells me it's emailed me a new password, but it hasn't. Oh well, I've contacted Malc, hopefully he or one of the other mods can help me out soon.