I will try to remember that if I get to do another run in time for the contest.  

Reached level 5 boss.

Still puts me in third place.

I want to like this game more than I do,but the derp factors it has keep me from doing so.

It has a bad,bad case of the Gradius syndrome which I hate and worse,the game starts you off with only half of your health bar. They could've just made the health bar full,or halved it and it'd still be full...albeit shorter. I'd have been cool with either. But to make it like they did....half empty..is a huge FU to player in my opinion. It's like...hey look,we could have easily made this a full health bar to help you...but no,we're going to be assholes and only give you half. And oh by the way,lots of enemies take off two bars of health.....you're welcome!

So factor that in with the Gradius syndrome and you have a game that's frustrating to play if you die.You pretty much may as well hit the reset button.

A small saving grace is that if you die once you only lose the weapon that you were currently using and can use the other one if had been powered up,but overall it's still a gigantic pisser.

And the stage 4 boss as well as the jumps you have to make can suck my ballsac.

Alright, I am home early tonight so I am going to fire this dirty bastard up......don't have the cart though so I guess it is emulation.

Don't lie,you're going to go get hammered and play Pokemon Go.  

 Yeah. If you have a favored weapon, It's a good idea to quickly switch to the other when you're about to die so you can keep it.

On the level 4 boss, just be careful not to jump too soon. Keep jumping and shooting and it will go down after awhile as long as you don't run out of health. Thank goodness there is an easy pattern to the jumps and there isn't an absurd amount of Battletoads style memorization.

 

This may be a situation where the emulation lag makes the game harder as I've had numerous fall deaths. Most of the time I die in that level is from falls,especially when I'm fighting the boss. Getting the shield before the fight is huge,although it has yet to help me as I haven't beaten that boss yet. It would be nice if the bosses didn't take 4,000 hits to kill even with your powered up weapons. Fighting even the first boss with the default weapon would probably take a week.

 

You've been able to get the shield? It's in such an awkward spot that I haven't been able to grab it. It would make that boss fight a lot easier.
 

Hahahahha I already played Pokemon Go that is what I meant.

 

Isolated Warrior can lick a bag of cheesy ball sacs.

I wonder what the cutoff point for participation will be. My current score might get me 6th or 7th place... or possibly 9th. I'm expecting skinny, brock and bert to have beaten the game by Sunday, and then who knows who else might show up with over a million points.

Yeah,I just jump over there before it appears but stay at the bottom of the screen so I'll have enough time to jump to the next platform. 
 

I am already finding this game incredibly easy........first ever time playing and I am currently at 300k just started some level with little assholes popping out of the ground or something.

For the levels I have been on my feet you can literally just jump over all projectiles? He is suspended in the air for quite some time..........

Alright, maybe I spoke too soon.........I got to an area where there is lots of poisonous ground areas and it whooped my ass.....

The third stage boss is where the challenge kicks in. The first two stages are pretty much a cakewalk if you're decent at shooters.


 

I think I'm done with this game. The Gradius effect absolutely destroys the fun factor (for me anyway) and I'm pretty fed up dying once and my runs being completely halted. A few tweaks here and there and this game truly would be a "hidden gem" but as it is,it's just an average game/above average game.

Maybe I should just take a few days off and come back to it,but as of right now I have no desire to play it again anytime soon.

I just broke the million mark, lol. Came so close to topping Bea's score but screwed up.

I also think that the emulation lag is screwing with you. It's probably easier on real hardware.

As far as shmups we've done for the contest, I think that this game is harder than Legendary Wings but easier than 1943 and Gyruss.

Emulator input lag can really be a pain at stage 4. I lost a few good runs due to it last night.

Well others are apparently crushing it playing on emulators so I guess everyone knows something I don't considering everyone seems to have absolutely no problems with this game at all except for me.

I don't know if anyone else has,but I found a secret area in stage 2 that takes you to a place with lots of powerups which is nice although you walk slow but speed up in that area as you go through it.

 

I haven't found that one, but I did find the hidden area in stage 1 that fully upgrades both weapons as well as bombs.

 

I haven't played enough of the game to know, but can't you heal up to the max that the health bar allows?  If so, the way to look at it is that you start off with full health with the opportunity to earn up to double health!   
 

^That is a positive way to look at it for sure. Not the way I view it though.  

Stage 4 is kind of a pain in the ass. You have to dodge and shoot enemies while also constantly making jumps. You can be doing fine, make one wrong move, and totally blow it.

Absolutely,which makes your run essentially dead.