Hello everyone and welcome to the latest installment of the Weekly Contests!  This week's game is going to be Star Force.  Here are the rules:

• 1 life only
• If you fail to beat a boss, your run ends immediately.
• It is forbidden to play stage 25 more than once. Your run ends after beating the Infinity Stage once.
• Highest score wins
• Participation: 20,000
• GENRE: Shooter/Shoot 'Em Up

The contest ends Sunday, 8/6/17 at 11 PM NA time.  Your user name MUST be written or typed on a piece of paper and be in the picture for your score to be valid.  The entire TV screen, or computer monitor if you are playing on an emulator, MUST be in the picture for the score to be valid.  No partial screenshots will be considered or accepted.  No screenshots by hitting "print screen" on a computer will be allowed.  You must take a picture of your computer monitor.  There may be instances where this will be acceptable, but it will be at the discretion of myself and the contest organizers.  Also, the use of turbo controllers is forbidden, as well as any cheat codes, Game Genies, slow motion functions, or save states if playing on an emulator.  Also, we will only be using NTSC systems for the contests.  The use of PAL systems will NOT be allowed.  Good luck everyone and have fun  

1st	6,584,700	Gloves
2nd	6,000,100	Bea_Iank
3rd	1,138,700	acromite53	**New this week
4th	1,083,200	arnpoly
5th	1,066,200	skinnygrinny
6th	379,100	bluzebrother11
7th	301,900	Brock Landers
8th	201,400	ninjistar
	184,700	tablew/chairs
	146,400	Tom Guycot
	136,400	JamesRobot
	129,900	Seppatoni
	76,000	Yoshi
	73,500	zobber
	73,400	EgasKrad
	71,600	Murray
	66,300	dirk12121212
	65,800	mbd39
	31,000	SuperJimtendo
LAST	27,100	Stryphos

Here's how the stage progression works in Star Force.  There's a boss at the end of each stage named by a letter of the Greek alphabet.  In order to proceed to the next stage, you must destroy the boss.  It os possible to skip the boss, but you are forced to play more of the game before you loop back to the boss (hence the need for a furthest progression contest).  The stage you are currently in is shown in the upper lefthand corner of the screen to the right of the letters "AR."  The letter corresponds to the first letter of the Greek letter in the English spelling of the word.  Unsure of what I mean?  Stage 1 is Alpha, stage 2 Beta, stage 3 Gamma, and so on.  Stage 1 is marked by a letter "A" for Alpha, stage 2 a letter "B" for Beta and stage 3 a letter "G" for Gamma.  Here's a break down of all the stages in the game in order:


Stage 1:  Alpha
Stage 2:  Beta
Stage 3:  Gamma
Stage 4:  Delta
Stage 5:  Epsilon
Stage 6:  Zeta
Stage 7:  Eta
Stage 8:  Theta
Stage 9:  Iota
Stage 10: Kappa
Stage 11: Lambda
Stage 12: Mu
Stage 13: Nu
Stage 14: Xi
Stage 15: Omicron
Stage 16: Pi
Stage 17: Rho
Stage 18: Sigma
Stage 19: Tau
Stage 20: Upsilon
Stage 21: Phi
Stage 22: Chi
Stage 23: Psi
Stage 24: Omega
Stage 25: Infinity (Bonus for beating Omega stage.  Infinity stage loops forever)


I have bolded the letters which signify the stage you are playing in the game.  Be aware that stages Epsilon and Eta are both marked as "E," while stages Pi, Phi, and Psi are marked with a "P" and Omicron and Omega are marked with an "O."  Omega Stage is easy to discern from Omicron due to the faces you can destroy instead of towers, as well as Infinity from Iota (there's faces you can destroy in Infinity Stage instead of towers).  It is possible it cold be difficult to discern runs ending on stages Epsilon and Eta and stages Pi, Phi, and Psi.  Further proof of scores from runs ending on these stages could be requested if the scores look suspicious.  I would recommend taking a picture either prior to the start of the boss fight or after defeating the boss on these stages to prove you were on stage Eta as opposed to Epsilon.

This sounds overly complicated for my poor simple woman brain.  
I don't remember playing this one before. I foresee this being a participation score week for me!

kobra

Wohoo!
I am team Skinny this week! Go for the win!

What? No team ninji??  
 

Skinny is the holder of the 2016 shooter icon! He is due for a win this year.  

 

haha! thank you maam   i am actually trying this week and going to win! where you at glovsie?!?! 

 

I am a fan of team skinny, but this is not the reason for another win!
 

He better not chicken out!
This week I will have a really hard time even making top 8.
I am doing emulator practices on this and I haven't even hit participation yet!
 

Awesome! I'll be competing with y'all.

I wonder why this is another low score contest. I know that Guardian Legend was low score because of places where you can point press.

Awesome. One of my favorites.

Star Force was ported to the SG-1000 in Japan. The SG-1000 was Sega's first console, before the Master System. It was supposed to compete with the Famicom but its graphics capabilities were about on par with Colecovision.

The scrolling is pretty much identical to the Colecovision.

i didnt even realize its a low score contest. there is really no reason for it to be. there is a extra life loop but easily avoidable. 

ill be posting a high score run so i prob will come in last. unless someone wants to challenge me for the unofficial win this week   

 

I'll check with Bimmy about the low score ruling.

If there is an issue with an extra life loop then this could be a high score, one life only contest.  

Shooters are more fun to play for high score.
 

Removed; posted before the rules were changed.

Yeah, I think I'd prefer that instead of another low score on a shooter.

And this is a tough one. One life only would be a real test of shooter skills. I doubt I'll do well.
 

But if it is one life only, then lower the participation threshold!
Right now I can't make 5K points without dying on this.

 

Indeed, participation will be much lower if it is 1-life.

Ugh, seriously??? Okay, this irks me a little bit. I spent a good chunk of my day yesterday trying to come up with a decent set of rules so that people wouldn't be complaining about the game turning into a scoring grind if it were a high score contest. I was trying to prevent people from just looping stages over and over by avoiding killing the stage bosses and trying to get people to actually play through the game. You want high score? You want a challenge? Fine. High score it is. 1-life only. No life looping allowed. Participation: 20,000