chum the bullet: January 2021

I'll do music and videogames this year again, but the music part will be mostly condensed. This year I focused on discovering albums released 2020. I listened to something like 560?-ish of them. Around 100 of them are great. It's been extremely easy to find good to great albums, in my experience. I'm also going to continue listening to more 2020 albums because I haven't had the time to listen to everything I wanted to listen to during the year. Basically, a lot of musicians I like have put out material in 2020. I was especially surprised to see a new album by the Sun Ra Arkestra, which includes a 96 year old Marshall Allen. It goes without saying that soulful music is the greatest artistic inspiration there is.

So, my top 50 of 2020 currently, at the start of the new year:

Of course, the order is pretty random, but I definitely consider the top 2 as my fav 2 albums of the year right now (again, the order between those 2 is random and doesn't matter). After that, though, don't mind the ordering. 25-50 could come in any order more or less.

I found this to be a great prolific year for metal and jazz in particular. I was a bit disappointed in the prog rock and folk side, comparatively. Improvised music, drone, and ambient all had its time to shine. The top 2 albums both being industrial also seems to be some kind of freak chance as I didn't actually find much industrial that seemed worthwhile this year. It's just those two albums happened to be the best of the year and industrial.

I spent considerably less time discovering non-2020 music during the year. That was my little project, but I did discover some incredible albums outside of 2020 this year as well. These would be the best of the best:

Through one way or another I've listened to some immaculate traditional music from Scandinavia and Ireland... practiced in Japan. Weebing it up, except not really... It's astounding how solid some of these albums are. Tiden i Skogen is a masterpiece, easily. That's about all I have to say about music in 2020. Hopefully 2021 will be as pleasant.

So, for the videogame section, which is primarily what this blog is about after all, it will mostly be about shmups, of course. Let's go through things in order.

The game I played the most this year was Shoot the Bullet. The scores I set were:

1-5. 243,440

A simplistic scene, mostly about zoom-frame timings. This score can be improved by 2 or 3k. Nothing special.

EX-3. 2,638,200

Still not that great. The basic strategy isn't too hard to get down, but it's hard hard to play it completely perfectly (this includes hitting the boss a few pixels upleft of it at the perfect frame). The five photos on this scene are all identical and are what I call 50/50s. For me at least, it ends up being a 50/50 since I can't consistently hit frame perfect timings. There is 0 RNG for score and In theory, the scene can score 2.65m. A photo that isn't frame perfect loses around 40k or so, so obviously that's just an instant reset.

9-6. 839,890

Watching Ia play this scene makes me feel so embarrassed, because I've put so much time into it and can't even get close to the scores he's getting regularly... Nonetheless, it's an improvement to what I had before. Still, I want to reach the high 800s some day. This scene is super fun.

7-6. 1,540,890

Definitely my best score of the year, and potentially my best score of all time. The crazy thing is I know I can still improve it... this scene is absurd. Absurdly hard to optimize and absurdly fun and random. I've had a lot of 1.5ms and far more 1.47-1.49s. Although I moved on, a score in the high 1.5s is reasonable; my best pace ever was 1.58m into the final photo, if I got my luckiest final photo ever on that run. Anyways, this 2 minute run took 150 hours to achieve and the gradual improvements at playing this scene was slow but always entertaining. Highly recommended this scene if you're a fan of RNG like me. It's incredible.

10-2. 1,074,090

A simplistic luck scene. Definitely one of the easiest scenes in the game to score in consistently since it is one of the few photo game scenes to not really have a timing element. Or rather, the timing element is pretty much random in itself, so you can't really control it. There's nothing else particularly hard about it either. I got a very lucky score that improved on my previous luck by around 5k.

5-5. 317,010

Another luck scene, with little skill involved. If you are competent at dodging bullets, you should be able to clear a score run of this fairly consistently (not 100%, but you get the idea). The timing element is there, but the timings are relatively easy to hit. As a result, I am not dying or missing timings often on this scene and can focus on the luck. My score is still not on the godtier luck level which would get Colorful shots on 5 photos as opposed to the lucky 4. Unfortunately, getting the 5th colorful shot has maybe about a 2% chance of happening or around there. Meaning that on average you would complete 50 4 colorful shots before getting your 5th. So I just don't feel like grinding this ridiculous luck scene out for that... 4 Colorful shots can already take a good while to get lucky enough for.

7-4. 1,083,040

I was aiming for 1.1 million on this scene and managed to amass over 20k photos for it, so I spent a good while on this. The scene is very luckbased and very very difficult as well. But it's the kind of luck scene that is entertaining as you have to deal with the cards you're dealt organically; every run is a bit different from the next. It's a good score but I'd hesitate to call it great until I hit 1.1 million.

2-1. 124,740

A fairly simplistic scene, but you can adapt your scoring decision making based on subtle rng signs. This score is lucky but it could be luckier (126k is very possible).

1-3. 108,330

Max score on this seems to be 110k. I was aiming for 109k but it's very tough. I did get a completely absurd score pace once though (109,700 or 109,800 I think it was). Unfortunately I botched it.

9-1. 1,172,440

One of the hardest scenes in the game for sure. I managed to improve my score on this by a whooping 130k! I'd still like to get 1.2m, and my dream score for this is 1.25m. This scene is completely insane and I lose focus quickly when I play it, so I don't play it much.

3-5. 318,010

Spent a long long time on this scene, even though it isn't really all that fun, because I want 320k... but eh, I give up. 318k is good. It happens. I'll try a more fun scene for my next grind. At least I learned a lot of subtle details on this scene and experimented a lot with new strats to deal with not getting good rng. Unfortunately I found no real way to score high photos without ideal luck, so...

Next is Double Spoiler, which I haven't played this little in during a year ever since I started it, actually... It's not that I've forgotten it or anything. I'll be back. I mean, StB is similar anyway.

Most of the scores I set in Double Spoiler were during Shoot the Spoiler. I may as well mention it. Shoot the Spoiler was an event, or more like a competition that I started with help from Kirbycomment. We played 10 scenes (4 in STB, 6 in DS) for a month. These two games are pretty niché, so not many people joined, but more people joined than I anticipated and it's possible there will be another StS in 2021. I do have mixed feelings now on starting it since StS was the onset of a cyberstalker for me (who is still at it, half a year later)...

If I can manage to keep her out, then all is good, but the problem is that she has made an insane number of alts and puts these alts all over the internet, all kinds of websites, joining different discord servers with all of them, etc. and I just don't know if I have the energy to do StS again if I have to worry about stuff like this. So maybe there will be one, maybe there won't be one...

Anyway, Double spoiler scores:

7-1 (Aya) 1,063,063

I came up with an outrageous strategy for the last phase, and played this with Kirbycomment... I couldn't get a great score out, sadly. The last phase has one of the hardest photos to get down in the series, I think

10-8 (Hatate) 1,645,991

I struggle with this. 1.67m is ridiculous. You need fast reactions to seize opportunities in this.

10-8 (Aya) 1,322,399

No real comment... it's not a bad score I guess

8-6 (Aya) 881,554

Of course, I'm steadfast in doing the triple sun strategy, even on the last photo. It doesn't score much more, but it's enough of an average boost that I have to go for it, I think. This score is lucky, but someone has 900k (which is absurd) so. Basically, scoring in this scene is mostly a matter of luck, since composition/timing shouldn't lose much if you play competently.

9-6 (Aya) 2,250,491

Iirc this run lost 1 or 2 nice shots. I forget. Bottom line is, 2.4 million should be doable. It's a complex multiphase scene where the most troublesome phase is dividided into 4 sub phases, each with different timings and potential. This scene is obscenely luck based and is one of the most stalling-heavy things in all the photo games, so I struggle with keeping my patience on this and long to play another scene after so much stalling, waiting and gambling. So this score is not good yet. Maybe one day.

1-4 (Aya) 186,156

This scene is easy for DS and I didn't need to play it long to get an improvement. You have to stall for the rng, but then you can adapt to it a bit to optimize the photo (positioning inside the narrow safespot matters!)

I could see the score going up to 187k if someone truly cares.

3-8 (Hatate) 333,166

my 3-8 score with Aya is pretty old now, but when I got it it was a massive score to me! Still, I wanted to defeat the top score with Hatate and finally tried it in 2020... and well, I gave up. The luck needed isn't unreasonable, but it never seems to happen. This score is pretty okay, the luck is fantastic, but 340k+ with the added luck is reasonable (obviously).

Damn... that's a paltry list of DS scores this year...

Let's move on from photogames. I've been playing in silly arcade tournaments this year! Let's talk about those, because it's entertaining to play games I'm not good at alongside other people. I love joining these tournaments, as long as it's not too often (once or twice a year is perfect).

First is Yolympics... this is from earlier in the year. I already did this writeup before, so I'll just copy-paste it.

Winter Yolympics 2020

This tournament took place from Feb 01 to Mar 09 2020. We played 20 arcade games in different genres that were voted for in different time periods. It had 88 sign-ups and 83 participants. There were 4 teams, each with a captain, and a drafting system was used to choose the team members. Everyone must be in the discord server and each team also gets its own discord server.

My team, In Your Face Disgrace, won the tournament. My individual rank was 2nd place.

Specific rules:
All submissions must provide either an INP or link to a Twitch/YouTube stream highlight

Unless otherwise noted, games are to be played on default settings as determined by WolfMAME 0.183

No excessive leeching or glitch abuse. (personal note: this refers only to extreme examples such as exploits to reach infinite scores. Normally games with such problems are banned from the tournament.)

In-game/internal autofire is allowed if a game has it (enabled through hard or soft DIPs). External/MAME/cheat-based autofire is not allowed. (personal note: this is the main difference from the previous yolympics, which allowed autofire for 2 games. This tournament had a lot of games that players normally use autofire for, but it wasn't allowed for any of them.)

Scores must be submitted within 24 hours of achieving them.

Tournament Games:

Armed Police Batrider [Advanced or Normal Course]
My score: 14,567,070
Ranking: 1/51
I have a lot of past experience with this game so I didn't need to do anything special. My current PB with solo Car-Pet is 19.6 million.

Black Tiger
My score: 1,049,050 vs highest score 1,620,250
Ranking: 6/49
This wasn't quite my cup of tea, but I still tried my best. I learned every secret item on the first 7 stages (they usually have 3 of them). I learned most of dozens and dozens of rocks that fall out of nowhere and kill you instantly no matter how much health you have. I learned to reach the stage 3 rock milk with a lot of time for more score. I learned to milk another rock on stage 4, and to spend my lives milking skeletons on stage 7. All in all, I learned some stuff, my run was just rough with 4 accidental deaths that killed a lot of my potential.

Blazing Star
My score: 9,156,480 vs highest score 39,709,580
Ranking 5/55
Only 1 player was any good at this. I somehow got rank 5 despite only playing for 2 hours and learning a bit of scoring on the first 3 stages.

Bubbles
My score: 661,310 vs highest score 864,700
Ranking 2/48
It is outrageously difficult to control your bubble, to get the broom consistently, and just to do everything the game expects you to do to survive and optimize your score. This game has a skill ceiling. At first I hated it, but the more competent I got, the more it grew on me. Never played it before Yoly but it was a nice find.

DonPachi
My score: 13,217,510 vs highest score 14,667,500
Ranking 4/50
Just like last Yolympics, the choice of CAVE game is one I am neither good at nor particularly fond of. I find this game mostly easy so I got to 2-4 without really doing any scoring. The scoring system in this game is good, but the bosses are bad and survival gameplay dull.

Final Fight
My score: 1,098,410 vs highest score 3,714,970
Ranking 7/47
Sadly the only belt scroller in the tournament, but a very very hard one. Stage 2 is one of the hardet second stages I've ever seen, and most people couldn't get past it. Somehow I managed to get the best score out of everyone that wasn't already good at the game, with a run that got to stage 5. Good routing and understanding of each unique enemy AI is key. The top 5 spots for this game might be the toughest in the tournament.

Frogger
My score: 97,410 vs highest score 143,610
Ranking 7/57
Game seems decent on the surface but is absolutely full of bugs. These aren't the nice bugs that you can exploit to help you either, these are bugs that kill you out of nowhere. There's so damn many of them it's unbelievable and to be good at this game you have to start learning how to avoid getting killed by glitches. Man, how many stages did I do, 35-40? Game just takes forever...

Gradius
My score: 679,700 vs highest score 687,300
Ranking: 2/51
Not a fan of the first Gradius. At first I cleared the game and tried to get further into the 2nd loop, but then I found out how good the checkpoint milk on stage 6 is and did that.

Gyruss (special rules: Your credit ends after your 5th death no matter how many extra lives you have)
My score: 244,850 vs highest score 947,550
Ranking: 11/57
I couldn't stand playing this. Spawn kill every enemy so that they dont even do anything. Memorize tons of different patterns where you must be in advance to do this. All levels look the same. Nothing fun in here at all.

Hishou Zame
My score: 1,046,640 vs highest score 1,746,670
Ranking: 3/45
I've done 7 (I think) loops of this before, with autofire. The thing is that the game doesn't change after loop 3, so if you can play that far, you can play as long as you have endurance and time. I didn't relearn loop 3 strats though so I didn't even get first place... I prioritized other games.

Money Idol Exchanger [Solo mode]
My score: 2,916,012 vs highest score 9,999,999
Ranking: 2/46
One of my favourite games ever and one that kicked almost everyones asses. I love that this got in. Only 3 or so people are good enough to survive past lvl 19 (which happens at around 3-4 minutes, depends on how good you're doing). My credit laster 30 mins. A madlad counterstopped the whole game (he's done it before already). Boundless love for this game!

Mr. Driller [1000m mode]
My score: 862,265 vs highest score 899,855
Ranking: 2/50
Best discovery of the tournament. I had heard of this game before, but never played it. Once I played it I got hooked. Finished a run with 1 death, all capsules, in about 7 minutes. Getting all the capsules and finishing fast gives you a lot of score, so that was my priority, although I would've been about tied with first place if I could've also managed deathless.

Out Zone
My score: 2,539,290 vs highest score 2,636,190
Ranking: 2/58
Out Zone is a great game, but playing without autofire was physically painful and is probably impossible in some checkpoints in later loops. So I couldn't do very well by my standards.

Pac-Man Turbo
My score: 657,490 vs highest score 3,242,100
Ranking: 13/56
Worst game of the tournament. This is awful. There is only 1 map. The ghost AI has a very stupid element to it (the turns). Once you've played through some fairly easy content you get to the last level, which repeats until the game kill screens. The point of the last level is to do the same pattern over and over and over.... Just find something that works and learn that to perfection. If you play the level perfectly by getting both keys you'll get around 12k per level. Just do that level hundreds of times, bro! I played on my last life for around 25-30 levels... Starting a credit of this was daunting, but for all the wrong reasons.

Pang
My score: 2,597,200 vs highest score 3,355,480
Ranking: 5/52
I liked Pang. I also liked that I could spend all my lives humping the ceiling on stage 30-something instead of learning the last stages. Lot of levels to learn to 1cc this.

Rally-X Arrangement
My score: 511,820 vs highest score 563,000
Ranking: 2/51
This Yolympics also had a Rally-X game, and I actually kinda liked it. It's extremely unfair but the last levels are definitely exciting. You get 100k per life when you clear, other than that the score is all about luck and I got very unlucky, worst score I've ever had starting the last stage even though I perfected 2 bonus stages and did generally well. I was also 1 millimeter away from the finish line when a car rammed me so I was as close to 611k as you can get...

Street Fighter III: Third Strike
My score: 3,365,300 vs highest score 4,920,100
Ranking: 6/46
This was the game I was most afraid of, since I suck at fighters, I've never played this game before, and Street Fighter 2 was a disaster in the last Yoly. However little did I know that I could actually do decently this time. Maybe It's because this game was more fun that I could be more persistent this time, but I think also the gameplay was easier for me to understand how to do well with than SF2. I dunno, in SF2 I found it harder to exploit the AI whereas I found easier solutions here. Still kind of blowna way I got 6th place, I guess very few people in Yoly's play fighters since I'm as bad as they come.

Strikers 1945 II
My score: 1,476,800
Ranking: 1/51
It's a Strikers game and that means I don't have to try hard to get a good rank. Big fan of this series. Credit ended on 2-3.

Willow
My score: 1,442,600
Ranking: 1/46
Willow is a pretty easy 1cc imo (My last few runs I was consistently no-missing the game) but somehow only 3 other people cleared it. From what I've observed, most people disliked this game and/or called bullshit on stage 2. I don't think stage 2 is as hard as people claim though, I think they just aren't playing it right. Willow is a great game and I was trying to get a frame perfect Dobule KO on the last boss for an extra million but never pulled it off in a real run. I attempted it 23 times in total in tournament credits. To put it in perspective, in practice I have never failed it 23 times in a row (maybe half of that at most) and I practiced it hundreds of times. There are other interesting ways to gain score. Speedrunning is one, as many stages have huge time bonuses. Avoiding taking hits is another big score boost. The final stage with Madmartigan also allows you to replay it a couple of times if you enter every door, which gives some extra points, too. Speedrunning+low-hits+goldfarming is an interesting combination in the gameplay.

Zoo Keeper
My score: 2,846,850 vs highest score 22,158,550
Ranking: 7/49
Played this the most of all the games, but I could never really get the run I was after. I was quite particular with my strategies too, so It's kind of insane I only got rank 7... Oh well. Just watching the replay tells me it could've easily been twice as high if only the game had let it happen...

Probably played Yolympics around 100-150 hours (somewhere in there). It was fun!

Next, Calice Cup. Again, I already did the write-up before, so I can just copy-paste it!

Calice Cup 3

La Calice Cup 3

This tournament took place from April 10th to May 10th, 2020. We played 10 shmup games. The voting process was that there were 8 pairs of games handpicked by the organizer, and the rest of us vote for 1 game per pair. Then there were 2 more bonus games randomly chosen between several handpicked games. This one had 114 sign ups and 106 participants, but the competitive level was arguably even higher than last time. There were 6 teams, each with a captain, and a drafting system was used to choose the team members. Same as last time.

My team, Replay Yakuza, got 1st place by a significant amount. My individual rank was 5th place.

Specific rules:
You may use any emulator, as long as it's not too archaic and it runs the roms properly

Default settings unless specified, Dip Switches default unless specified, Autofire allowed unless specified, C button allowed when available through service menu.

Games and Rules found in their respective Discord channel on this server and the La Calice Cup website are the only official ones. If they somehow differ from Games and Rules listed anywhere else, the official lists prevail.

Screenshot mandatory (or video). Video footage required ONLY for top 3 scores. Youtube link (unlisted is fine) or Twitch highlight.

It's accepted to submit a Top 3 score with a screenshot and an INP. But the player will have one week to change the INP for a Youtube link if his score is still top 3.
Of course, this is different in the last week of the tourney. The player will have one day to change the INP for a Youtube link during the last week of the tourney.

Tournament Games:

Darius Gaiden
My score: 11,583,090 vs highest score 12,383,740
Ranking: 3/106
We voted between Vanilla DG and Darius Gaiden Extra as player 2. So we voted between picking a 7 stage route in the regular game, and playing a mode where you play every possible stage in the game, which would've extended the playtime & content by about 4 times, as well as making the game much more difficult and giving players more to learn. I voted for Extra, but sadly, Extra would only "win" if 60%+ wanted it. So DG Vanilla won. Still, that's not to say there's anything wrong with Vanilla DG. I picked the tried and true ABDGLQV route. The two players above me picked the slightly higher scoring ACEHLQV route. Nobody aimed for a super high score by doing the ludicrous 'Z final boss milk, which has something like 2 million higher score potential than any routes ending with V. This game was one of the most competitive, with around half the players 1ccing, and a lot of players even No-miss, no-bombing the game (me included). A whooping 14 players scoring 11 million or more. I'm glad I still managed to score ahead of most of these 11m+ runs, and think of this as one of my most satisfying scores for Calice. I also love the game to bits, due to its artistic and creative qualities. It is full of awe-inspiring content and is easily one of the most impressive games of all time on an artistic level. Unfortunately, it isn't the most interesting experience to high score chase the game, despite that.

Frog & Spiders
My score: 58,580 vs highest score 124,210
Ranking: 3/104
Yes, someone actually scored over 100k points. Even though that is definitely ridiculous, there is something important to understand about this game. There are 3 stages. After 3 stages, it loops. The difficulty always goes up on stage 2 each loop. After the 4th loop, the difficulty resets back to the 1st loop. So there are "superloops" consisting of 4 loops each. So the biggest struggle, is making it through loop 4, then loop 8, etc etc. This is a big part of why score disparities can be so colossal in this.
Anyway, about the game. I had never heard of it before, but apparently it had made an entry in Crap Mame tournament 11, getting a modest high score of 28k and gathering some fans of this obscure, seemingly crappy game. As it turns out, the game is actually not that bad (although it was very divisive in Calice...) once you start strategizing it. Each level has its own important strategies to adhere to, and there are multiple techniques you can use to boost your score, while minding the risks of doing so. The game is very random, however, and only gives 1 extend throughout the game, meaning that you will get unlucky and run out of lives eventually no matter how good you're playing. The game does have an infinite, but it was banned and obviously nobody used it in their replays, so we can only hope nobody without replays abused it. (their loss if so, since it is a very, very time consuming infinite...)

G.I. Joe
My score: 3,275 vs highest score 3,387
Ranking: 5/104
Another game that was new to me and another gallery shooting type game like the previous Nam-1975. What's really amazing to me is that despite this being far from what players in this tournament specialize in, it was probably the most competitive game in the whole tournament. At first, players were impressed by the few that could even 1cc the game, those few players had scores between 2.7k and 2.9k. Over time, strategies got more refined and eventually several people were scoring 3.2-3.3k. Which is huge, since you only get scores from killing things in this game... So the strategy is to try to kill as much as you can, simply put. A rather enjoyable game, marred by a boring 3rd stage (stage 1-3, to be precise) and some lengthy kind of boring boss fights (the first 3 bosses, especially). However, for all its faults, I liked this a lot, and put a lot of time into improving my score in it. Mastering the usage of missiles for ground targets and precisely hitting the fast moving air targets, without getting hit, falling behind or running out of missiles, is not easy. You also only get 1 extra life (2 whole lives) for the whole game. No extends, no nothing. That does make it quite a tough 1cc since there's multiple spots where living is difficult.

Game Tengoku
My score: 17,860,970 vs highest score 37,116,700
Ranking: 5/104
There was 1 pro at this that schooled everyone else with a high scoring 2-loop clear. As for me, I was one of several players that focused on scoring in loop 1, only to croak in loop 2. This game has an interesting scoring system involving chaining jellybean items, but the stage, boss design and visual clarity is at best, unprofessional, and at worst simply awful. While I do have mixed feelings on this title, I can't deny that it is an interesting game with enjoyable moments, and that it is actually not as hard as it appears at first. Memorization, baby.

Hacha Mecha Fighter
My score: 16,610,140 vs highest score 26,747,680
Ranking: 2/105
A cute, but very difficult and unfair game. Once you get to stage 6, shit gets real and the game outright demands you bomb over and over and over, since there is simply no other solution. This means that it's almost impossible to 1cc without dying at least 2 times on stage 6, and you only get to die 3 whole times, and there are 8 stages (although the 8th stages should be a free clear with the right plan). I kept getting halfway through stage 7 over and over only to make run ending mistakes, so sadly, I didn't clear the game and lost that juicy, juicy clear bonus. However, I take solace in getting the highest score out of all the non-clears for the game. Loop 2 is especially stupid and impossible once you get to stage 4, since the HP for all enemies is 4x more than in loop 1. So at times, you can even spam bombs over and over, only for enemies to never die and just stay all over the screen, making it impossible to do anything but die once you're out of bombs. The game is full of dead air, repeats bosses, has nonsense boss design, a bad scoring system (you gain score by HOLDING RIGHT at the right side of the screen! seriously!) and is just overall a very, very flawed game. Even with the soft spot I have for this disaster of a game, I couldn't follow my goal and 1cc it in the end since it was just getting depressing after too many failures.

Ketsui: Kizuna Jigoku Tachi
My score: 132,534,039 vs highest score 308,735,671
Ranking: 8/104
I like this game a lot. It's one of the best games in this tournament, for sure. I was a bit disappointed in myself though since I didn't manage to loop it, despite having done it at least 2 times prior. In order to reach Omote loop, you have to 1cc with at most 6 bombs/Deaths used (combined). While I got some decent scoring done, I didn't actually manage to do this during the tournament, which sucked, since 5 other players did reach Omote and 1 player even 2-alled. I would've loved to be the 6th (I also wanted to 2-all since I've never done that, but decided to use my time more evenly across the games.)
This game is fascinating and entertaining, but I don't think I ever want to score it seriously.

Raiden Fighters Jet
My score: 67,505,842 vs highest score 134,255,400
Ranking: 13/103
Another really great game, but it was my weakest performance. For whatever reason, I played this one less than all the others and by the end, I had mentally given up since I couldn't get 1st place on the global leaderboard anymore and was starting to get hand problems, so I left it at this shoddy 67m and quit playing the tournament. I was intending to save this game for last but oh well... I could've rather easily gotten 3rd place with 90m+, since only the top 2 was kinda good for this, but shit happens.
Scoring in this game is scary, but I like how much shit you have to juggle to make it all work, and it is fast with some cool boss patterns (especially on the last 2 stages). Great game, poor performance by me.

Strikers 1999
My score: 1,998,300 vs highest score 2,453,900
Ranking: 4/104
Arguably the best Strikers game. I was quite disappointed in my perforamnce on this, since I've 2-alled this many times before. I relearned it for Calice specifically, pre-gaming before the tournament started in order to prepare to 2-all it again. Unfortunately, I game overed on the final boss on loop 2 and decided it was time to chase points in other games since gaining 1 or 2 placements in this wouldn't really do much. 3 players 2-alled this, and I definitely could've been another one, but whatever. Highest non-clear score and I did my part helping my team mates on this by creating video guides.

Tenkomori Shooting - MEDIUM difficulty
My score: 1,905,410 vs highest score 1,929,970
Ranking: 2/100
What the hell is Tenkomori Shooting? I had no idea, but turns out it's a kind of minigame thing, not all the minigames are shmup-based but they're all based on shooting something. In one minigame you're shooting hearts at a sweetheart in a disco, avoiding shooting hearts at... homosexuals. In another minigame, you aim plates at the correct sushi. In another game, you're a kid solving math problems by shooting the right numbers. and so on.
As it turns out, nobody knew how to play this, so enter the Replay Yakuza. We did everything we could to solve all the damn minigames and the inner workings of the game. The game has rank, so you have to pick the right minigames to reduce it to playable levels. Each level you're given a choice of 3 minigames, and different minigames have different scoring capabilities on different levels, as well as different difficulties on different level and rank combinations. So picking the right games is an art that takes time and effort to understand.
Unfortunately for me, I didn't get 1st place although I definitely could've. I knew how to pull it off, just needed the luck to make it happen. This game did grow on me, too, though I wouldn't say it's great or anything.
Hard mode is quite insane. Too bad we didn't play that.

TURBO FORCE
My score: 864,300 vs highest score 1,116,200
Ranking: 8/106
And the last game was TURBO FORCE. It was up against Twin Eagle, so no matter which had game won, we would've all been losers for playing it. You play as a car, and you have ammo... shoot enough times and your weapon level goes down, if it's too low, you can't fucking kill anything. Collect semi-random items to keep your weapon level high, don't shoot unnecessarily, and hope you get semi-random "?" items that do semi-random things for certain almost-impossible portions of the game. The rank is crazy in this game and you have to die to make it manageable. Lastly, the enemy aiming algorithm is messed up in this game and you have to understand and abuse it to get anywhere. Mechanically, the game is a fucking mess. Let's also get into the stage design. Jesus, what were they thinking? Almost nothing happens for half the game. This is a true kusoge, in my book. I did manage to 1cc it but was the lowest scoring 1ccer due to dying almost immediately on loop 2. Not redoing that shit, I'm just happy I cleared this shitty game at all, to free me from its ice cold shackles.

Damn, now that I look, I sure wrote a lot. I guess it was easy to do so since I wrote this immediately after Calice was over. Anyway, Calice was fun too! Calice playtime was around 100 hours and my only regret was playing more Turbo Force and Hacha Mecha Fighter than RFJ orz

I'll also dedicate a small blurb to Batrider, because I have played it a fair amount in 2020. Almost 100 hours, I think. Initially, I was doing Solo Carpet, and upped my score to 19.6m. But then I started doing team stuff... This is what has eaten most of my time. I still haven't gotten a decent team run out because I simply cannot not make run ending mistakes. My current PB is a game over with 20.4m (Carpet, Baron, Maria: the WR composition) Which sounds terrible, but... the thing... here's the thing: team runs are hard. Really, really hard for so many reasons. I'm not ready for 25m yet, but if I can get a good run out, I expect 23m. Decent: 22m. if I can somehow pull shit together and get something great for my current level I guess it could get 24m but that is hard to imagine currently. Still, If I keep at it, maybe 25m will get more realistic in time!

I really like playing Batrider, but I also feel a bit bored with one part of the game. that is from Blackheart to Gob-robo. Blackheart, Airport, Bazzcok and Gob-robo is just a boring stretch of the run to repeat. It's a shame, but at least the rest of the game is entertaining to grind... well, except Confrict because he's dumb as fuck. Another thing that isn't really my cup of tea about Batrider is how brutally unforgiving it is. There's a vast number of "mistakes" that can happen that fuck over the run in ridiculous ways. Because of the nature of the game, many of these mistakes are pretty much unavoidable, but that doesn't mean the game shows any mercy; not hitting a score quota for instance, can fuck over your potential greatly in the long run. It's only because I like the game so much that I'm willing to play something so aggressively unforgiving, haha.

It's a bit embarrassing to go back on my idea of getting 25m, but I somewhat underestimated its difficulty. Right now, I'd be very happy with 23m and decently content (as in: it's a "start") with 22m.

Games other than this, I played a lot of Among Us (hilarious game) and my favorite VN I played was Raging Loop.

Let's survive another year!

Friday, January 1, 2021

2020