Shmup of the Month Club 2013 (Giga Wing)

[noiseredux]

Really confused by these 1ups. Has anyone else gotten one before?

I know I have, but can't remember which stage or where.

[pierrot]

Okay. At least it's not just something funky with my setup. I consistently found it in the same place when I was playing last year, but now I get the feeling it's just random.

[dsheinem]

I hit about 1.9m, but I'm not really liking this one a whole ton. I'm generally not a fan of checkpoint shmups, for one. The music is pretty shit also, which makes it less fun to play multiple runs in a row. I've not found the option for turning music off (but leaving effects on), so maybe if I do that and play something in the background, I'll enjoy it more...

[Spyke]

I sometimes get 1ups too. Sometimes from the boat in stage 3, sometimes from one of the carriers in stage 5. But how or why? I don't know that yet, and it's only occasionally.

Ant

[noiseredux]

I hit about 1.9m, but I'm not really liking this one a whole ton. I'm generally not a fan of checkpoint shmups, for one. The music is pretty shit also, which makes it less fun to play multiple runs in a row. I've not found the option for turning music off (but leaving effects on), so maybe if I do that and play something in the background, I'll enjoy it more...

wow. Really?

I don't like checkpoints either, but in general I've really enjoyed this game. It has a bit of a Psykio feel and also reminds me of Raiden quite a bit. I don't know, I'm obviously a much bigger fan of bullet hell, but this to me is one of those quality 'middle-era' shmups.

It is funny to see how diff all of our tastes in this thread can be though. Obviously we all overlap to some degree, but for instance I just could NOT get into that NES shmup we had played. Dragon Spirit was it?

RE: The music in Shienryu... shit? Really? A lot of it is pretty forgettable, but I find stage 1 pretty catchy.

[DocHauser]

I kinda like the echoey synth bit of Stage 1's music - it sounds a lot thinner in the PS1 version, though. Music from the later stages hasn't really grabbed me.

[pierrot]

I agree. I love starting out the game with the stage 1 music. It gets me pretty excited. I'm usually too focused on dodging shit, and whatever the particular brand of scoring is in a game to focus on the BGM past stage 1.

So, I have a theory about the 1up. I believe it might be triggered by a certain number of consecutive 5,000 point item bonuses. (ie. max power/speed up item bonus; same weapon item bonus.) This would at least make more sense in when and how I've found them, as I was initially playing while picking up every item in sight, and I know for certain that when I got the one in stage 3 most recently, I hadn't lost a ship, and stopped picking up the red power up icons.


EDIT: Well, forget that theory. I just got a 1up in just after re-spawning in the middle of stage 3, after having already died earlier in the stage. Very peculiar. I guess I'm going back to the "random" theory.

[noiseredux]

noiseredux - 4,120,000 - Stage 5-4 - Sat

[ExedExes]

Quick update --

Spyke - 5,140,630 - 6-2 - PS2
DocHauser - 4,205,420 - 5-5 - Shmupmame
noiseredux - 4,120,000 - 5-4 - Sat
ExedExes - 4,084,380 - 5-4 - MAME
pierrot - 3,661,250 - 4-6 - Saturn
hashiriya1 - 3,218,500 - 4-6 - Saturn
dsheinem - 1,768,240 - 3-3 - PS2

PS1:

DocHauser - 3,945,090 - 5-3 - PSP (PS1 version)
foxhound1022 - 3,434,760 - 5-5 - PS1

Now that I finally got my X-Arcade stick fixed, I will be using it on all these shmups again, and hopefully do better at them too.

[noiseredux]

patting myself on the back for hitting 4M finally, haha.

Loving Shienryu this month. I'm playing totally differently than most SOTM's though. *Usually* we'll be playing a game I'm not familiar with, but Shienryu is one I've been a fan of for a while and played quite a bit. So instead of sitting there doing run after run for hours trying to improve, instead I'll just do a single run a night. Either it's a good one or a bad one. But I just give myself one credit to see how I do. Sometimes I'm terrible, often I'm average (which for me is in the 3-3.5M range), but on those runs where there's actual improvement it feels so awesome.