Game collecting is not what it once was

[Gunstar Green]

Beating a shmup on one credit = beating an RPG

If the amount of effort required by these two things can be equated then boy do I suck at shmups.

[mjmjr25]

This debate is silly.

No it isn't!

[dsheinem]

I did once count games as beaten when I credit fed, but a few years ago I stopped doing that if I believed the game was designed to be "reasonably" 1cc'd. As has been mentioned, it comes down to what you can glean about the design principles behind the game.

The telling moment for me was in a conversation I had with Eugene Jarvis. He told me that he was shocked when someone on the staff at Midway actually 1cc'ed Smash TV. He told me that the game was designed to munch quarters and to try to find the right balance between gameplay time/success and quarter feeding. Some shmups and many run-n-gun or beat em ups take this same philosophy and are not designed to be beaten on a quarter.

Other shmups, run-n-guns, and beat-em-ups are made for 1cc runs. Cave shmups, specifically, are designed to be 1cc'd. That said, some of my favorite shumps are those on home consoles that give you a finite number of credits - a designer had to decide that X number of credits was reasonable to beat the game. Sometimes, if the port is close to the arcade version, I translate that to my arcade experience ("ok, it is reasonable to beat this game on 3 credits"). It has to do with what I feel is defensible, and is a case-by-case thing.

RPGs are designed with save points and built in resurrection spells and what not. The "perfect run" RPG without dying is not the same, because that is playing the game beyond how it was designed to be played.

[dunpeal2064]

Great post. I especially liked this part.

Cave shmups, specifically, are designed to be 1cc'd.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Moving on, I ultimately find these "but shmups must be 1CC'ed!" discussions rather silly because, simply put, the games aren't designed that way.

As far as Cave games go, Yes they are. They are absolutely designed to be 1cc'd. There is a ton of proof that they are, and no proof that they aren't.

Again, why would there be TWO completely different loops in Ketsui, that both change the gameplay entirely from the first loop, both of which are inaccessible if you continue. Thats 2/3 of the game that yo uwill never, ever see if you insert a credit.

I'd say that these games are designed so that they can - and yes a competitive person could argue that they are "to be" - beaten on one credit, and that there's tremendous incentive to do so. But - literally speaking - they aren't designed so that they must be 1CC'ed as the game is programmed with continues as an option. Contrast this to, say, Firepower 2000 which kicks the player back to the title screen as soon as Game Over hits.

It shouldn't make you sick. It's an opinion on what beating a game means.

If someone warps on Mario Bros and "beats the game" in 10 minutes by skipping some of the harder levels - did they really beat the game? I don't think so, nor do I think they experienced the game.

Opinions are cool. I just think it crosses the line when someone attempts to tell another "you didn't really beat ________ because you didn't do it the way I would."

As for beating Mario with warp zones? Sure, why not? It's one way to get to the game's ending. It's not my preferred way, and I certainly wouldn't add it to my Games Beaten list if it was the only way I could complete the game, but I see no issue with another person simply using "sees the ending screen" as Beaten criteria.

My personal criteria is to see an ending screen with default difficulty, no save states (I play on a Retron 5 where that's an option), no "turbo" type controller functions, no egregious credit-feeding... But again, that's just me.

[TSTR]

i use strategy guides to help me find warp zones in shmups while i jizz credits like Peter North and use autofire Game Genie cheats

i beat all the games and i am better than you

[dunpeal2064]

@Bone: I disagree that they are designed so that they can be 1cc'd. All of the effort in balancing and making the game interesting goes into it with the idea that the player is using one credit. Every amount of effort in development has gone into the game with it being played on one credit.

They give you the option to continue for two reasons. 1) Practice. Games are hard, and sometimes you just want to work on Stage 4 without sticking to your route for the first 3 stages. 2). Money. Of course they want it. The game is designed to take your money because its hard but fair, and you want to keep trying, but if you are willing to just dump coins in it... well, they are an arcade developer, they need to sell their board.

Can you imagine Cave selling a $2000 board and telling the arcade operator "yeah, you can't use continues in this game, and its hard as balls, so it should make you money for.. I dunno, a month?"

Its a necessity, but it doesn't reflect the design decisions whatsoever. Not one point in developing a Cave game did they make balance checks or design anything around a player using credits.

[Gunstar Green]

I used to be anti-turbo but if the game just ends up being totally not enjoyable without an auto-fire I'll make an exception. Turbo just breaks some games however, so it's a case by case basis for me.

[Exhuminator]

If someone warps on Mario Bros and "beats the game" in 10 minutes by skipping some of the harder levels - did they really beat the game?

Howabout defining exactly what "beat the game" means to you, mjmjr25.

The "perfect run" RPG without dying is not the same, because that is playing the game beyond how it was designed to be played.

Then why compare RPGs to 1cc shmups? It's not a proper analog. Why not compare RPGs to modern shooters like FPS and cover shooters that have checkpoints, savepoints, weapon upgrades, and restorative health items? Oh because that would be a much fairer more objective comparison, instead of an extreme outlier strawman argument.

You guys!

This is so funny to me because I never said shmups in my original post about RPGs versus shooters insofar as time to beat. I said shooters. In this day and age that terminology means Call of Duty or Gears of War, that sort of thing. For real my face is serious I was under the impression folks who loved arcade shmups called them exactly that. I mean.

[Ack]

What I've discovered is that a large part of the community here doesn't want me to actually enjoy games unless I "beat" them their way.