The Gamer's Quarter

GSL · Last edited by GSL on Sat Jul 08, 2006 11:19 am; edited 15 times in total

Alright, so I thought it would be fun to indulge in a little friendly competition here at TGQ, so I decided to hold a hi-score competition in one of the most venerable genres ever, the scrolling shooter, or sh'mup. If this one's enough of a success, there will be a #2 and #3 and so on for as long as anyone has interest.

First up is the freeware shooter Cho Ren Sha 68k, which can be downloaded here. Ignore the Japanese, just click the download link at the bottom of the page and get version 1.01 for Windows. Or download the original X68000 disk images if you're lucky enough to own a machine you can play them on--you bastard.

Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the game. It's simple, as far as sh'mups go, with no intricate Cave-esque scoring system or multiple buttons for various attacks. You have a button for shot and bomb, and the ability to pick up powerups in-game: more bombs, a shield, and more powerful shot.

Start the game on default settings, and play until you lose all of your lives, then post your handle followed by your score. While not required, a small screenshot (please post a link, not the entire image) showing either the game over screen or the name entry screen is nice for verification purposes. Not that there is any verification needed--this is just a fun, friendly competition, where the winner gets nothing more than mild bragging rights.
EDIT: Please also post the level on which you died.

The contest is now finished.

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Final Standings:
1: kimkallstrom1 4,912,138 Stage 2-3
2: JasonMoses 4,042,274 Stage 2-0
3: greatsaintlouis 1,876,177 Stage 1-4
4: squidlarkin 1,388,325 Stage 1-3
5: dessgeega 1,292,048 Stage 1-3.
6: captaincabinets 918,328 Stage 1-3
7: ShaperMC 910,924 Stage 1-3

dessgeega · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 2:35 pm Post subject:

a week, huh?

i'm down.
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GSL · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 2:50 pm Post subject:

I'll lead off:

Greatsaintlouis 1120093, Level 3

http://campus.sou.edu/~stlouisc/crs68k.jpg

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Meh, I can't seem to get better than my first run: 871,461

I may come back to it later! Also, the best tip I can give is that the game has a built in superplay (pretty much) in the attract mode.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

dessgeega · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 4:01 pm Post subject:

i forgot how much this game annoyed me.

i will produce something meaningful, though. i'll set aside some time later to re-watch the attract mode.
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squidlarkin · . Joined: 10 Dec 2005 Posts: 100

1,102,671. It's a start.

Also, this is odd. I remember playing this game before and it was much much slower and easier and I only barely had the attention span to play all the way through. I wouldn't even have thought this was the same game if it weren't for (spoiler text) that cloud of shrapnel you fly through at the beginning which is actually the remnants of the final boss.

EDIT: 1,388,325. The stage 3 boss is a bastard.

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

B coma · . Joined: 06 Dec 2005 Posts: 279

I made it to the end of stage 2 but let's just say that when I entered my name on the high score chart it contained this:

;_;

dhex · Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 10:09 am Post subject:

i only barely cracked 500k.
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dessgeega · Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 10:50 am Post subject:

1,292,048. stage 1-3. (just as the boss was self-destructing, too.)

remove the word "sh'mup" from title of thread plz.
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GSL · Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 2:00 pm Post subject:

dessgeega · Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 8:24 pm Post subject:

we here at the gamer's quarter frown upon use of that word.

it is a dumb word.
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GSL · Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 4:14 am Post subject:

1,208,958, Stage 1-3. The good news is I've pretty much got the first stage down cold. The second screws me over bad when I get to the bastards that rotate while firing the blue shots before they open up into the superlaser thingies, and if they don't get me, the boss does, and usually within 5 seconds of its death, too. Going into stage three with powered-down guns and no shield is like a hundred men with shotguns plugging away at the last fish in the barrel. Kinda reminds me of Gradius, the whole "lose your powerups and you're royally screwed" thing.

EDIT: Goddammit, FINALLY! 1,580,307, stage 1-4. I earned this score at 3:50 a.m. I had been trying to beat my old score since about 2. I must be really, really lame. Does anyone else ever play sh'mups to the point of developing a set pattern for each specific level? Are you intensely frustrated to the point of starting over when you manage to fuck that routine up within the first minute of play?

Also, I think the stage 2 boss is much more of a bastard than stage 3's.

JasonMoses · . Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 407

4,042,274 - Stage 2-0

God this game has a screwy difficulty curve. Mostly though, it has awesome music and bosses. I'm really interested in seeing what the second loop is like, at any rate.

dessgeega · Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 12:29 pm Post subject:

JasonMoses · . Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 407

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

JasonMoses · . Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 407

I doubt it? That's a lot of loops!

GSL · Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 1:19 pm Post subject:

JasonMoses · . Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 407

GSL · Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 1:24 pm Post subject:

JasonMoses · . Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 407

Cho Ren Sha is one of the easiest shooting game I've ever played until stage 6, or it would be if I had never played Hyper Duel and Thunder Force and shit. The game gives you an average of 5 or 6 bombs per stage, possibly more, guarantees 3 extra lives per game, and lets you have a shield at almost all times as a safety net. It's ludicrously forgiving, and that's not even counting how relatively easy most of the bosses and enemy patterns are for most of the first loop. The only vaguely harsh element of the game design is that you lose all your shot power-ups if you get destroyed. Even so, shot power really doesn't matter too much. Etc.

GSL · Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 1:47 pm Post subject:

That's just what I'd expect a robot to say... Shocked

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

is there anyway to run this in a window as opposed to full screen?
_________________
“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

dessgeega · Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 2:02 pm Post subject:

i havn't been able to pull off the get-all-three-items-at-once trick, so i've decided simply to ignore it in the interest of not messing up and getting something i don't want.

something must be wrong with me, since the game starts getting hard for me around the second stage boss.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

JasonMoses · . Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 407

I think I used the 3-in-1 trick all of 4 times throughout the course of the game.

kimkallstrom1 · . Joined: 21 Feb 2006 Posts: 26

kimkallstrom1 1,623,383 Stage 1-4 screenshot

2nd's good enough for me. got to get back to work on the site.

dessgeega · Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 3:41 pm Post subject:

hi tim.
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kimkallstrom1 · . Joined: 21 Feb 2006 Posts: 26

dessgeega · Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 3:59 pm Post subject:

i still can't beat the star brain at the end of nightmare stage 32 though Sad

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kimkallstrom1 · . Joined: 21 Feb 2006 Posts: 26

i wonder when studio siesta is going to release a demo. an awesome game just begging for a hi-score competition. Smile

oh, sorry. i should be talking about Cho Ren Sha 68k. Soldier Force is teh awesome!

GSL · Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 2:23 am Post subject:

So I see there's a word filter on the board. Cute. Sorry, JasonMoses, I guess I'll have to leave the apostrophe in sh'mup. Otherwise, s h m u p gets Nazi-lated into 'shooter'--I noticed this when I tried changing the thread title.

1,876,177 Stage 1-4.

kimkallstrom1 · . Joined: 21 Feb 2006 Posts: 26

kimkallstrom1 2,993,740 Stage 1-6 screenshot

dhex · Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 7:54 am Post subject:

so can i cop to totally sucking then? 610k.
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captaincabinets · Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 8:27 am Post subject:

Been practicing a couple of days, got home tonight and did this:

Screenshot

It felt a bit slow, but I put it down to some kind of sugar induced bullet time.

Then I realised Firefox was using 99% of the cpu, and it was the game that was running like a three legged dog. Quit Firefox, ran it again, and got about 200k. I was pretty sad.

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Hmm, I don't know how to handle this score then.

It is fairly cool that you admited to the difference.
_________________
“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

captaincabinets · Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 8:47 am Post subject:

Oh yeah.. I meant to say don't include it in the list. Believe me, as soon as my 'ctrl' finger is functioning again, I'll be practicing again. If there's one thing that ikaruga taught me about life, it's persistence.

dessgeega · Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 1:58 pm Post subject:

i wouldn't mind seeing some of your replays.

(DEMO.REP in ETC_DAT folder.)
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JasonMoses · . Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 407

Here's mine!

From last night. Despite a lot of mistakes on my part I still managed to blow up a third of the 2-0 boss! I die immediately afterwards. My lack of experience in 2-0 shows. Also the fact that it's about twice as hard as the rest of the game combined.

kimkallstrom1 · . Joined: 21 Feb 2006 Posts: 26

Tim W. 4,912,138 Stage 2-3 screenshot

JasonMoses · . Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 407

Thank god.

ps good job

GSL · Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2006 4:53 am Post subject:

Okay, scores are updated. Sorry I didn't get to it sooner today--I had summer class, a grocery run the likes of which hadn't been seen by my pantry in months, and a midnight showing of the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

captaincabinets · Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2006 7:58 am Post subject:

Finally for me a half decent score... 918,328 at 1-3

Screenshot

I am so pleased with myself!

GSL · Posted: Sat Jul 08, 2006 11:17 am Post subject:

So, I, uh... suppose we're done, then. It's not the Tuesday deadline, but there seems to be another hi-score competition up, and I'd positively hate to compete with someone else's idea.

Good job everyone, and thanks for playing.