Maybe ill see if I can get this one going. the PCB holding tab on the Left side inside the case is broken, so its a pain to get it working. Should be able to try none-the-less. Ive been in a Shmup kick lately...

Nice score, and Happy Birthday brotha!

I did notice that those green guys where worth alot too. Those trilobites are a pain in the ass to kill, but a few times I was able to get that earthquake powerup and take most of them out...

Nice. And I thought I did well for getting to stage 5 in my stage 2nd try. Had never played this before this week. And happy birthday!

Yeah, happy birthday arnpoly!

Also, it is good to see you back guts!

Thanks! I see you are still tearing it up in these contests. Next fall I definitely won't take a hiatus from the contests to focus on daily fantasy football. Instead,I'll just do them concurrently.

Score Updated... We're allowed to die this week right? I died a bunch a times on that play through...

As long as you didn't point rack or take advantage of any 1up loops,you'll be good.

Score updated, as well. Only to 315k, though.


BriGuy -- I'm guessing you'd agree that the most valuable place to die is on the last boss?

It seems like the final section of the last level is extremely point-rich.

If a person gets to the last boss with all of their lives in reserve, I am guessing it is possible to readily break through 400k.

I had a bad game, so only 1 extra time to play through the final section on this round.



Basically, you want to be killing the last boss on your final life.  

Ok thanks, that was just me playing through and dying as I wen't along. No 1-up loops or other shenanigins.


I think I had about 3 lives left when I reached the final boss, and I defeated him on my last one... I did'nt keep track of how many points I had before I reached him though. This was my first time beating the game so none of my deaths were strategic, I was just playing to progress basically while killing as many enemies as I could. 

When you die on that final boss you get thrown back to the pathway where theres the bilateral spiders on the walls and all the bats with powerups coming down the middle. The powerups are very random every time you go through, one time the power-ups where mostly just skulls, and not once did I get a dragon upgrade so I had to defeat the final boss with just the blue dragon. He took a ton of damage before dying too.

Yeah, you could be unlucky regarding the available upgrades on your final life, but assuming you can kill all of the grey mace-throwers, and beat the two mini-bosses, you'll get more points than killing the final boss on your previous life.
(not that the final boss is particularly hard to kill even without upgrades -- he just takes longer)

I think our games must have worked out about the same, in terms of accidental deaths and general pacing, because 2 more lives in the last section would have bumped me up to at least 345k from 315k.




But having 3 lives the first time you reached him... that should mean there is the opportunity to have at least 3 more, maybe 4 or more additional, depending on how things work out with the fairies.

So my 400k estimate could be low.  It might be possible to break 425k or even 450k on an exceptional game (probably helped with luck-of-the-draw on the point-bonus upgrades -- and I mispoke earlier, they are 5k each, not 10k)

I don't think there is actually point racking in this, but I could be mistaken.

I haven't paid attention to whether the spider boss generated spiders are actually worth points or not.

But nowhere else in the game can you just camp and kill stuff, due to the auto-scrolling.


1-up loops would be the only mechanism for indefinite point generation, as far as I can tell.

There are some kickass scores this week! Right now, I can get to LVL 6 consistently, but I usually die at LVL 7. Gonna give it a couple plays this evening. The bosses are pretty easy in this game.
I know I'm the guy with the three-headed dragon avatar, but I was busy fighting Godzilla, Angurius and all their pals lately. Those freaks won't let Planet X alone these days!

Agreed, but be careful of the ice-level boss.  If you don't annihilate him immediately with a 3-headed green dragon, the ice shards are deadly.

Yeah, I noticed that, because the fast scrolling portion before that boss can be quite cheap at times

It's not that long, so once you get it memorized it really isn't too bad, so long as you have a fully powered blue or green dragon to work with.

Are the fairies random too? I didn't even realize what you where refering to. but that would make sense now.

Don't think so. Depends on how you played through the level I guess. The first time I saw a gray fairy I thought my game was broken (And actually used to have a broken copy of this game)

Any insight on the fairies and how to not get the shadows of them?

Nope.

I doubt it is random, but I don't have a great deal of variability in how I play through the first 4 or 5 levels (no hits, no deaths), and I don't always get the non-shadow fairies.

From the interwebs:
"According to the instruction manual, to free a maiden you need to hit a specific ground area somewhere in the level."

You guys are giving me an inequality complex. I really need to try to at least break 100k!

Yeah we need to figure this out. If I find any spots I'll let you guys know. On another note, supposedly if you press select 20 times during the part of the ending when the girl is riding the dragon she will lift up her skirt. 

Haha what?!