High Score Challenge - Round 2

Retr0gamer

Something fishy this way comes.

Darius Gaiden

Let's have some fishy shooting action for the next high score challenge.

Same rules apply:

1 credit only

Highest score by the end of Sunday wins

I think I should also state that we use the default mame/rom dip switch settings.

unky chop chop

Ahhhh a shmup , never really played any of the Darius games extensively but I love the look the music is kick ass , and I would like to.learn it ( never understood any of those power up meters at top of saw a difference , except the shield one

From your comment "bang of fish " I thought of James pond 😂

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122882449#Comment_122882449

The power up system is basically you have your normal shot, bombs and shield. Once you fill the bar then that part of your ship levels up and you get better shot, bombs or shield. So you are kind of trying to level them up before you lose a life which I believe resets them.

unky chop chop

Yeah I just remember there was only two gauges at the top any time I ever played it and I was bleedin confused colours of power ups and what they did ...sure I'll just play it properly later!!!

Probably it , one was the bomb power up

unky chop chop

Ohhh yeah , had two credits on the game ...really liking it. Only made it to third stage but it's great game .

The bosses are the business , and I forgot about alternative stage route .

612730 was first attempt ,

764130 second .

Will give another few credits later . Good choice retro

geotrig

Not showing on the mister and I no longer own the PCB so I m out this week

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122883952#Comment_122883952

The Saturn port is 1:1 isn't it? Fire it up on the MiSTer using the Saturn core!

Retr0gamer

Best run so far. Scrapped through stage 3 by the skin of my teeth and didn't last long in Stage 4.

One thing I noticed, the ability to score higher seems to go up if you pick the lower stages. I hit 800K when I died on the stage 2 boss when I wasn't even hitting that when I got to stage 3 on the upper zone.

Some tips from looking at some videos:

You can point blank enemies and boss. This means your damage increases massively the closer you are to a boss.

The auto fire is incredibly slow. If you can tap fast enough you can significantly increase fire rate which means you can take down bosses a lot quicker. Some ports have an autofire option but I'm going for a carpal tunnel run.

There is a 1up on every stage 3 and on every stage 6 but I doubt we will be seeing stage 6!

Anyway, I'm really enjoying the game. I always preferred these games to the bullet hell games and the later Darius games have some of the best bullet patterns in shmups.

Retr0gamer

Just an experiment, this was taking the low path. I only got to the start of stage 3. Better points potential but the difficulty is definitely higher.

Retr0gamer

How do you follow up your best run yet?

By failing to get out of stage 2 in multiple attempts.

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122885342#Comment_122885342

Haha! That stage 2 boss takes a bit of a beating.

I didn't realise you could fire a lot faster by hammering the button. Definitely made a difference in getting passed him to stage 3.

Absolutely brilliant game. Only managing to score in the 8,000,000 so far but I have yet to try the bottom paths. Can see myself sinking a lot of time into this.

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122885601#Comment_122885601

I think my top score I deviated to the lower ones after stage 2. The lower stage 2 and boss I find very difficult. Can't get out of there without being on my last life.

unky chop chop

Theres some cool Darius gaiden ultimate guides out there . The original japense one looks absolutely beautiful if I could read it , love to get the hard copy .

"2.4 CAPTAINS AND CAPTURE

All stages save the fourth have a mid-boss, and all mid-bosses have a sphere on their head (more or less).If you can damage enough this sphere without destroying the mid-boss, you will freeze the boss:if you take the floating sphere, you will capture the mid-boss ("captain") and will fight at your side until destroyed!"

Now that's interesting , supposedly you get massive bonuses from doing it .

I know the one on first stage , the fish(imagine)

Must try this when home

unky chop chop

Ill download this book and print it off it nice glossy paper just because it looks kick ass.

Retr0gamer

Its easier to get the mid boss sphere if you hover above them and use your bombs. Bombs seem to do a lot of damage. The first and second mid boss are easy enough but the third one is a pain in the hole and I usually end up losing lives trying to capture him.

o1s1n

One thing I really am loving about this game is the sheer variance in enemy projectiles.

It's a bit like they've taken projectiles from different games and put them together, the style is very different. Makes it a little difficult to know what's coming until you've played the level quite a few times.

Will they be shooting at me with a straight blue lasers, tiny missiles, metallic fish scales, green organic blobs or huge fluffy white balls of cotton?

unky chop chop

Bullet patterns are cool aswell ...Got me best so far

1105570.

Onwards and upwards .

unky chop chop

Also Initially I said I remember being confused with all the colour power ups .

Well there is a stashed one in a bit of scenery in every level , thinks it's orange , if you collect it at a certain point in it's 360 degrees rotation you get better points .

Not figured it yet but I got 50 points one time and a whopper amount another time

I found the first one , it's few mins into first level , block at bottom of terrain on screen that releases it

Retr0gamer

There's also a screen clearing one you can find. In the scenery. You'll see them flash if you hit them. The 1up in stages 3 and 6 are found the same way.

Retr0gamer

One other tip though I don't know how much it helps.

When you pick up a shield power up, of you have a shield it will only add one extra hit up to its maximum. If you pick it up with no shield it will top up the shield to the max.

Any time I went to abuse this I just lose a life.

geotrig

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122884032#Comment_122884032

loaded it up last night after a bit of effort and failed attempts at bios and game not loading correctly and then button mapping :problem: ! ,not sure if its 1:1 but I'm nowhere near good enough at determining these things and its damn near close from memory without a real comparison. I thought it was suffering from a bit more slowdown but its been well over 10 years since I last owned and memory could be a bit fogged on that !

now the game ,I'm still not a fan of Darius gaiden and I don't know why as its exactly what I would describe I want from a hori shump but I jut feel meh on it ,always have, never a game that had me saying just one more credit ! maybe its the lack of the extra screens but I've only limited experience of the others as well so who knows.

will get a few credits in over the next few days and post a low score point then.😅

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122890762#Comment_122890762

Haha, exactly the same thing happened to me. Booted it up, the bios wouldn't work, the game throws up an error as if it's not going to work but then it does after 5 seconds, to polish it all of the buttons were mapped bizarrely. And player 2 was registering as player 1 for some reason.

I fixed it all up and hit save settings so hopefully it doesn't happen again…

Tried giving this another whirl last night. Really lost my mojo compared to the night before where I was consistently making it passed the first two stages without too much effort.

Had to give up after a few attempts as I had a weird problem, the control panel on my Candy 25 is made of steel and it was too **** cold to keep going. Hands were freezing.

Is there are arcade equivalent of driving gloves? 😂

geotrig

sat down to give this a proper go last night and got side tracked on setting up umk3 😅 I Did say I'm not a fan of Darius Gaiden.

unky chop chop

The egret 2 mini has had it's marquee updated👌 I couldn't for the life of me finding that extra life on stage 3 , I'll continue later , it could be a real clincher !

unky chop chop

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122891049#Comment_122891049

Try removing a/c ground wire to bottom of the CP, and the fuse in the inline filter .

Maybe you will get the odd shock to get the blood pumping and warm ya up.

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122895860#Comment_122895860

It's a hidden power up. Couldn't tell you where it was when I got my high score but I saw it floating around during all the madness.

Was definitely the clincher for me as I wasn't taking any chances and used the extra bombs on the boss.

unky chop chop

I just got it and exactly the same ,managed finished 3rd level for first time and my highest score . Fired off a bomb somewhere and I got it during chaos .

Never came across that squid boss before so just bombed the crap out of him with the extra life and went at him point blank in desperation.

unky chop chop

On a roll here . 1644550.

Somehow dodged that squid bosses pouring bullet rains in the last sec and killed him with out losing a life

unky chop chop

Tried a different route ..the force is with me at the moment .breezing through levels .

1864820.

That M zone...boss appears straight away .

Also on the D zone I got to actually see the 1up before collecting it . It's a glowing sphere with something in the middle , I've seen it before and tried to dodge it ,thinking it's an enemy or bullet

Retr0gamer

Feck it, I'm off to Luxembourg for the weekend so I'll only get a chance to challenge you Sunday night!

safetyboy

Will give this a bash tonight.