Following up one legendary arcade game with another, we have the seafood shmup, Darius. Specifically, the Extra version.

Darius is famous for its ultrawide display, at an aspect ratio of 4:1, which is longer than the ultrawide monitors of today. This was achieved with 3 CRTs and some fancy mirror usage in the arcades, or so I read.

This isn't my first time playing Darius and to be frank, my first impressions of it were just, meh.

Being one of those old school shmups, it suffers from Gradius syndrome, since it uses checkpoints and has total power loss on death.

#Darius

A single death is pretty much fatal, as this game is very dependent on building momentum. Recovery is extremely difficult, if not impossible.

For scoring, each life you have left is worth 1 million points, so that's further incentive to not die at all.

To help with the Gradius syndrome, you can get a shield by picking up blue items. However, you do not get i-frames when your shield is hit, so it is possible to lose it instantly if you are in a stream of bullets or you are colliding with something big.

The game also feels sluggish, partly due to the immense length of the screen, but also because there's quite a bit of down time.

Boss fights are the most egregious when it comes to down time. There's a lot of time spent at the beginning waiting for the boss to spawn. Taito gives you a bunch of balls to shoot at, but why not just have the boss fight start immediately?

It also takes a long time for the boss to sink down and for the level transition to happen.

It's also a little annoying that in zones with no ceilings, items can easily escape through the top. Meanwhile, the zones with ceilings tend to be very claustrophobic, which can make things really frantic (not necessarily bad).

I don't know. I want to like Darius more, but I just don't really vibe with it.

It's been 11 days since I last played anything  

Anyway, things are starting to look up a little, so I have a bit of time to play! Next one on the list is Dogyuun, a Toaplan shmup. Incidentally, the title is a Japanese onomatopeia!

This is the last shmup in the lineup, but it's easily the worst of the 3. 19XX and Darius are both pretty good, even if I have my nitpicks, but Dogyuun is just... yikes.

There's not much of a scoring system in place. You just get 5000 points for picking up the same weapon or module you already have, and 10 points every frame if you capture an enemy or item box with the tractor beam.

#Dogyuun

The tractor beam just doesn't gel well with the rest of the game design. The tractor beam is behind the player ship and it doesn't extend far at all, which makes it really risky to use.

Furthermore, the tractor beam is used by holding down button 3, but pressing button 3 also drops the module you have equipped.

And even when you capture an enemy or an item box, your captive also gets destroyed in one hit, so it's very easy to lose it.

You do get 100 points per frame for capturing a larger enemy, but it also slows down your ship.

It's simply very high risk for very low reward.

The game design is also nothing spectacular. There's just a ton of homing enemies and homing missiles.

So what did Dogyuun do well? For starters, the pixel art is *so detailed*. It turns out it's done by Joker Jun, and once again he delivers! I'm really fond of the aesthetics in a lot of the shmups he worked on, like ESP Ra.De. and Akuu Gallet.

I was also pleasantly surprised by how there's actually no power ups in this game. So, even though it uses checkpoints, you can just get right back into the action instead of being nerfed to hell when you die.

These won't be enough to keep me playing though, not when there are still 15 more games.

Ah, I forgot one more thing. Typical of Toaplan, the level transitions are smooth. There's no cut-aways to a result screen. The end of one stage is actually linked to the start of the next stage. Strangely, this is something that is pretty uncommon, even though it makes the game feel more cohesive and less disjointed, from an aesthetic perspective.

Also, the green weapon sucks. As usual.

A bit of a busy day today, so I got a bit of gaming done in the morning. This time it's Final Fight, one of the most renowned beat 'em ups.

I've only ever tried out one other beat 'em up before this, which was Undercover Cops, and I didn't like it much due to the prevalence of insta-kill traps.

Final Fight is much more enjoyable, even if I still suck at crowd control and making use of up/down movement.

Contrary to what the genre's name may suggest, beat 'em ups seem to require a very methodical approach, often exploiting cheese strats to make the fights safer. You only get so many hits after all.

#FinalFight

Of course, Capcom knew this, so they will swarm you with a variety of enemies, so that you are less likely able to cheese, at least not without skillfully managing the mob first.

But I don't know how to do so, so I still didn't get far into the game ​

Scoring is... not the most interesting? There seems to be only two things you can do. The first is to alchemise the item drops, so that you get 10000 point items instead of the basic items that only give a few hundred points, but this requires a tricky combo to do. The other thing is to milk boss fights for respawning enemies.

Final Fight seems like a fun game to revisit in the future, but for now, it's certainly not my forte, so it won't be my focus for the Yolympics.

That is, if I even have the time to revisit games. But if I do, the current list consists of 19XX, Darius and Bubble Bobble.

I thought I would be more free this week to play, but I was wrong once again  

Since the event is ending in one week, I aim to finish trying out every game by today, and use the last week to revisit the games I want to play.

First up is Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. This is a game adaptation of the film by Atari. There are three difficulties/courses, with the Hard offering the most points, so that's the only one I played.

#IndianaJonesAndTheTempleOfDoom

Each stage has multiple sections, starting with one where you navigate around the temple to rescue kidnapped children. Enemies are also roaming all over, with spike traps on the ground. The most janky part about this section is how easy it is to walk off the platform, possibly to your death if you fall for too long.

The next section is sort of an autoscroller, where you ride a minecart deeper into the temple. Along the way, there are dead ends and pitfalls, as well as enemy minecarts chasing after you (and they rubberband as well). This section is much easier to die on IMO.

There's one last section where you collect a Sankara Stone. You can farm enemies a bit, but eh. You get a big clear bonus once you leave this section.

I did decently well for this game (given that I don't have a lot of time to spend for each game) but I'm not exactly eager to come back and improve my score.

Up next on the list is Jump Bug, by Alpha Denshi. This is a horizontal shooter, but instead of piloting an aircraft, you're driving a really bouncy car.

To score, you want to collect as many money bags/gems as possible, and bounce on clouds with point values inscribed on them.

There are also a variety of enemies, but the most threatening one is the joker, which is pretty fast and jumps around a bunch as well. Apparently they have static spawn positions, so it's possible to predict when they appear and take them out before they become a threat.

#JumpBug

At the end of stage 1 is a pyramid section, where the autoscrolling stops, allowing you to explore it. However, money bags that you pick up will cause a stationary enemy to spawn, so you have to be more careful as well.

The pyramid is an infamous section, as it is possible to perform an infinite, albeit a slow one, by repeatedly killing the respawning enemies. For the sake of the event, this trick is banned.

I didn't get much further than this, but it's a decent game in my books. Early arcade games can have some pretty interesting ideas, and their simplicity can be a breath of fresh air. It doesn't take much to make a good game!

A little out of alphabetical order, depending on whether you take "The" into account, but next is The NewZealand Story. This is a cute Taito platformer, where you play as a kiwi chick that can shoot arrows.

The goal is to rescue a fellow chick that is caged up somewhere on each level, battling enemies along the way. The game gets pretty chaotic by area 1-3, with lots of enemies (most of which fly) and spikes covering many surfaces.

There's an unstated time limit for each level, so scoring involves farming enemies as much as you can before the timeout enemy becomes a threat to you.

#TheNewZealandStory

Items drop in a fixed order (similar to how The Legend of Zelda on the NES does it), with most of them being fruits that simply give points. However, some of the items are weapons or power ups.

Notably, one scoring trick is to use the bomb weapon on enemies riding on balloons, as it can rack up score quickly. This is because the bomb gives points for every frame, and balloons have a little bit of invincibility before they die.

There are also warps that can bring you to a different part of the current level, or another level altogether.

It gets tough, but it's really fun!

Back to another Atari game. This time, it's Paperboy.

I really love the concept of this game. You play as the newspaper delivery boy, throwing the newspaper to houses that subscribed.

But what about the houses that didn't? Well, of course you force them to read the paper by throwing papers at them too, but through their windows and doors! And run over their flowerbeds for good measure. That'll teach them for not subscribing!

The controls, however, are pretty awful. In part, it may be due to the fact that it's analog and I'm using an arcade stick (which has digital inputs only). But it just feels really unwieldy.

#Paperboy

Like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, there are 3 courses/difficulties to select from, with the harder ones yielding more points. For instance, Hard Way has a 3x score multiplier, but you also have to contend with more people, cars and other obstacles getting in your way.

You also get more points if you throw a newspaper into a customer's mailbox, rather than the porch. And of course, you get points for destruction of non-customers' property. A lot of points, in fact.

At the end of each course is a training stage, where you try to hit targets with the newspaper while navigating around obstacles.

After the day is over, any customer who you failed to deliver to or whose property you damaged will unsubscribe from the newspaper, so you'll need to be careful.

The concept is so fun. If only the controls weren't so bad...

Maybe it would be a lot better using the actual bike-like controls on the arcade cabs?

(Btw, if you're playing in MAME, press left on the course select screen to fix a calibration issue. Otherwise, the game will keep forcing you to go left.)

I'll stop the posts for now, since I'm back home and need to finish up as many of the other games as I can.

I have some time, so I'll try to catch up with the posts.

This one is from UPL, and it's called Penguin Wars! This has been a source of rage for many during the event, but personally I thought it wasn't too bad. Nothing has quite been as infuriating yet addicting as Risky Challenge.

How this game works is that you are playing against an NPC. Each side starts with 5 balls, and the goal is to make sure the opponent has more balls than you by the end of the round. If you managed to get all 10 balls to the opponent's side before time runs out, the round ends early with your victory. Same applies if the opponent pulls this off.

#PenguinWars

So what about this game makes people so mad? See, if you get hit by an oncoming ball, you'll fall over and be stunned for several seconds. There's nothing you can do to speed up the recovery. But here's the catch: you can get stunlocked if you are hit by another ball while you are still fallen over. If you get hit just once, the opponent can easily grab nearby balls, throw them at you and hit you before you can get up.

To add insult to injury, the AI is VICIOUS. If it grabs another ball fast enough while you are stunned, it will delay to the last second before throwing the ball, so that it can run down the clock while keeping you stunlocked.

Adding to the chaos, the balls can bounce off each other, causing them to approach you at different angles instead of just head on. Halfway through some rounds, you are also able to throw the balls at an angle (normally you can only throw straight ahead), but I don't know how this ability is triggered.

When there are 30 seconds left, an invincible yellow blob appears in the middle of the board, which will bounce your balls back if you hit it.

Each loop consists of 4 sets/opponents. And from loop 3 onwards, you face off against 2 opponents at once! 

Anyway, for scoring, you want to get as many perfect rounds as possible (i.e. get all 10 balls to the opponent). You get points for every ball on the opponent's side, as well as for the remaining time.

You also get points for knocking the opponent over, but this isn't easy to do.

After each set, there is a bonus stage to get points risk-free.

The biggest source of score, however, is only accessible from loop 2 onwards. There is a different blob in the middle of the board from the very beginning, and this one isn't invincible. Each hit grants you a few thousand points, so you can get a perfect round's worth of score in a couple of hits.

I hope to at least get a 1-ALL of this game before the event ends! And hopefully when I do, I also get to rack up some score in loop 2 from the blob.

Right now, my current PB is the last set of loop 1. Those dang koalas and beavers...

Ladies, gentlemen and fellow Eldritch horrors in between, I interrupt this program to tell you:

I got my Penguin Wars 1-ALL 

Each opponent's AI is quite different. For the beaver, they are particularly avoidant of incoming balls. If you space out the balls close enough, you can throw them rhythmically in quick succession, preventing the beaver from crossing over and grabbing the other balls on their side.

I learned the strategy for this from Zerst, who has a crazy high score of 1.9 million. I only managed to pull it off once in the 3 rounds, but it was enough to give me the boost I needed to take down the tyrannical beaver.

So I lost the first round, got the strategy on the second, and in the last round...

I barely brought the round to a draw, so we move on to the sudden death round. This time, there's an additional bomb, which if the time runs out, will blow up whoever has it.

The thing is, I wasn't sure if this was how it really worked when I was playing, since I never witnessed it myself. But I suspected this may be the case.

The beaver tried to throw it to me when there were a few seconds left, but thankfully I chose to prioritise the bomb and threw it back in the nick of time. And sure enough, the bomb took precedence over the number of balls, so I finally won the set over the beaver!

I proceeded to lose in the first match of loop 2 :P

The tournament ended around 1 week ago, but I'm only getting around to posting the rest of my impressions now (uni student life  ). Most of the remaining will be quite brief, since I didn't get to play them much.

First one is Puzzle Bobble 3, which is a puzzle spin-off of Bubble Bobble. This is one of those puzzle games where there is a cluster of coloured pieces coming down from the top, and you need to clear them by matching them before they reach the bottom.

When you make a match, every bubble that gets disconnected from the anchor pieces will also fall and be cleared away.

#PuzzleBobble3

The more bubbles that fall as a result, the more points you get. The bonus increases exponentially, so for a high score, you need to take the risk of building large clusters, up to around 20 bubbles.

However, there's a catch. If you try to do this without paying attention, you'll typically see the bonus cap out at 1.6 million. So how do you get the big 10 million bonuses? The trick is that the match must be strictly 3 bubbles only (i.e. 2 already in place + 1 that you shoot).

With some practice (and luck with getting the right colours), you can pull this off in round 1!

The best players can pull this off 4 times in round 1, for a whopping 40 million points!

However, doing so can be tricky, as the colours you get are restricted to those still on the screen. If you clear out all the red bubbles for instance, you will not get red bubbles for the rest of this round. And with fewer colours, it gets much harder to build a large cluster.

What kinda sucks however, is that the colours you get are otherwise fully random, so you can get easily screwed over by the RNG. (It feels like the best puzzle games, like Tetris and Puyo Puyo, has rules for this reason.)

You also only get the laser pointer that lets you see where the piece will go in round 1. Afterwards, you have to just gauge the trajectory by eye. Sure, it's a skill, but I feel like it takes away from the puzzle aspect of strategically placing bubbles.

Like Darius, there are multiple branching paths, with each zone having a few rounds. As such, you can pick the zones which are easier for you.

Certain zones have a ring of enemies around them. I've never tried them out though, so I don't know what that signifies 

Next one is SonSon, made by Capcom. It's sort of like a horizontal shooter, in that it is an autoscroller, but it is also a bit of a platformer. There are 6 platforms that pretty much run through the whole game, aside for a few gaps.

The game is sort of based on Journey to the West, so Son Son actually represents Sun Wukong (or Son Goku as he is known in Japanese). Player 2 is Ton Ton, who represents Zhu Bajie.

There are no distinct stages per se, but you do get milestones counting down from 20 to indicate your progress. Which is sorely needed, because this game looks very same-y throughout.

#SonSon

Enemies appear in groups, and taking out the whole group will award bonus points. However, the enemy variety is pretty small.

You also get points for collecting the fruits and vegetables scattered around. Most of these don't award much, but collecting them spawns much higher value food items that give hundreds or thousands of points.

In certain spots, there are also hidden bamboo shoots. They will only grow out when you pass them by, and collecting them grants you 1000 points each.

After every fort, there's the good ol' Capcom Yashichi item, which gives a big bonus that increases in value after each fort.

Now for a game that I've actually played before: Spinmaster. This was featured in La Calice Cup 6 a couple years back. It's a platformer made by Data East, where you are trying to rescue Mary, the girlfriend of Johnny (player 1), while also piecing together a treasure map.

This was also quite a meh game, though I do like it more than SonSon. My only goal going into this was to get close to the score I achieved in LCC6, and I managed to pull it off.

Autofire wasn't allowed for Yolympics, which made it a bit of a pain to play (I have more to say about this, but I'll leave it for later).

#Spinmaster

Most of your score just comes from the end of stage bonus.

You can try to farm enemies, but they don't give many points. If you do, however, it's better to group them up and jump on them consecutively, since the bonus increases by 100 points for each successive jump without touching the ground.

There are treasure chests all over, some hidden and others not. These can contain weapons or piles of gold, the latter of which give extra points.

While there's a variety of weapons, you pretty much just want to stick to the dual shuriken, which is easily the best. Not only does it have the best DPS, you can also attack in every direction easily.

There are also treasure chests which contain life ups which heal you (you have 3 hits per life), bombs or 1-ups.

And yes, like a shmup, you have bombs in this game. Each weapon has a different attack for the bomb, but generally it does damage over a large area, if not the whole screen, and grants you temporary invincibility.

It's an alright game. I do feel a little more inclined to try and clear it some day, after revisiting it for Yoly.

And hey, the other nominated games that I've played before were Risky Challenge and Time Tunnel, so I'm glad this got in instead of those. Wouldn't have minded Special Criminal Investigation though XD

We have another platformer, and this one's a hack and slash too. It's Strider, or Strider Hiryuu in Japan, by Capcom.

I didn't get very far, since I couldn't figure out how to clear the jump in stage 2, but after seeing a playthrough of it, it seems like a really interesting game!

Unfortunately, in terms of scoring, it kinda sucks. You basically just farm points at each section until time nearly runs out, then you move on to the next to reset the timer.

The only attack you have is slashing with your sword, and thankfully we have autofire for this. You can also collect drones to help you shoot at stuff.

#Strider

Unfortunately, we played the vanilla strider ROM, which is a buggy, unfinished version. It doesn't even have the full soundtrack in it, with the first stage music playing for most of the later stages.

This is the result of some weird ruling by the organiser, since the nominator didn't specify a different ROM, so we ended up going with the inferior version. Again, more on this later.

Anyway, this is a cool game. Would like to revisit it some time and hopefully see more of the game.