MAME ROW #172 - DoDonPachi

[retropieuser555]

Yikes what a stacked week! Street fighter 2 & Space Invaders!!

Also I never knew jackrabbit was a mame game, I always thought it was a DOS game, good to know!

[AdamBeGood]

@retropieuser555 said in MAME ROW #172:

Yikes what a stacked week! Street fighter 2 & Space Invaders!!

Also I never knew jackrabbit was a mame game, I always thought it was a DOS game, good to know!

This is a big week!

I'll go for DoDonPachi but it's a great line-up and a ridiculous choice.

Do you mean Jazz Jackrabbit? Very diffferent, although does have a Rabbit in it.

[IanDaemon]

@AdamBeGood I agree. DoDonPachi is great and Jazz Jackrabbit had very different gameplay.

[Impman66]

Torn between DoDonPachi and the game that started it all in effect Space Invaders. But had to go for Space Invaders, as if that had not of taken off, we would not of had the stuff we did.

[IanDaemon]

Since I have it right here I played a warm-up match of DoDonPachi. (2,643,510 with red jet, shot type)

The game is just fun to play even if I'm having a bad day. The movement feels good.

p.s.
I'm not trying to circumvent the voting process although I understand that I'm unintentionally influencing it.

[obsidianspider]

This week's winner is DoDonPachi

[IanDaemon]

I tried using the "auto shot" button, but I actually did worse than using the "shot-laser" button gameplay. (Plus using "auto shot" only and then picking "laser-type" powerup would be kind of pointless.) I dig the speed difference you get with "shot-laser".

[IanDaemon]

That DoDonPachi YouTube footage may have been the arcade attract reel, but:

• they never used the laser beam as if they were using only the auto-shot and bomb buttons.
• they didn't get any bees.
• they weren't very good.

[thelostsoul]

@IanDaemon Well the footage is probably just casual play of someone who just wanted do a recording done.
Actually if you play for highscores, you do not want to use too much of the beam, because it kills the enemies too fast in a row. The level design of DoDonPachi is designed with the multiplayer of the scoring system in mind. You need to wait and kill slowly as possible, because then the multiplayer will stay and go higher. If you don't kill enemies for a certain period of time, then it will drop down. Hopefully this explanation is not too wrong.

I myself played with the green helicopter most in the past. Today I will sit down and try again, so stay tuned.

Edit: The controls for Arcade systems on my installation are total mess and I can't even navigate in the menu. So sorry to tell you, but I won't play until this is resolved. Damn I really like this game.

[mitu]

Got 2 817 630 and died at the 2nd level boss (red jet, shot type).

[IanDaemon]

Dang it! I just remembered that I turned off the electrical circuit in that part of the house to do some plumbing & electrical work yesterday and I can't play my arcade cabinet today. :(

[mitu]

Small improvement, managed to get on the scoreboard: 4 278 080 (red, laser).

[sirhenrythe5th]

My favourite SHMUP of all time and i was on vacation:/
Good to see it won anyway!
It has got an awesome scoring system.
You can finish level one with 100.000 pts.....or with a million pts, depending on your skills.
Hint: if you dont use any bombs until the stock is full (the beginning of the stage 3) you get 2x points :)

I wont post my highscore table here, it would be kind of unfair. I play this game since 20 years now and get through it with 1 coin (dont play anything with continues)

[AdamBeGood]

@sirhenrythe5th said in MAME ROW #172 - DoDonPachi:

My favourite SHMUP of all time and i was on vacation:/
Good to see it won anyway!
It has got an awesome scoring system.
You can finish level one with 100.000 pts.....or with a million pts, depending on your skills.
Hint: if you dont use any bombs until the stock is full (the beginning of the stage 3) you get 2x points :)

I wont post my highscore table here, it would be kind of unfair. I play this game since 20 years now and get through it with 1 coin (dont play anything with continues)

Post it! :p

[IanDaemon]

Play with shot only? But you need the laser to get the bees to appear.

[sirhenrythe5th]

@IanDaemon you can use the beam of course (holding button A), it is the bombs (button B) that should not be used to get the big points :) Plus collecting further bombs until the stock is full. If you dont miss any from the start this will be at the beginning of stage 3.

[IanDaemon]

I played more over the weekend, but sadly my score didn't improve.

[obsidianspider]

MAME ROW #173 is now live!

[sirhenrythe5th]

@IanDaemon said in MAME ROW #172 - DoDonPachi:

I played more over the weekend, but sadly my score didn't improve.

Hint 2: all the enemy formations and events are scripted. If you play this great game for hundreds of times you can rush through the stages while sleeping :D

[pjft]

@sirhenrythe5th I'd really like to see the high score table :)

Tangent intro: a few years back, after noticing that I had a lot of MAME games that I should like but ended up not playing them very much because the process wasn't fun enough, I read an article which is no longer online that made me understand why: https://web.archive.org/web/20181120043643/http://insomnia.ac/commentary/arcade_culture/

I ended up learning that this author seems to have some strong opinions on some topics, and tends to write in a controversial tone, but this specific article I save to this day because it changed the way I played MAME games - and made them so much better as a result - precisely because of what you just said very subtly, "don't play anything with continues".

As such, I set up a collection on RetroPie where I'd keep some games that I'd just play over and over again, 1 credit at a time, to see how far I'd make it. In the beginning they were Final Fight, Contra and DoDonPachi - I don't think I had any others in my "regular" list. It took me a while to consistently get to the first @mitu score, and afterwards making it to the high score list was an extremely rewarding achievement - that's why I want to congratulate @IanDaemon and @mitu on their scores during just the MAME ROW period! I certainly didn't get to have a score in the high score table in the first week.

These days I get to the end of level 2 boss consistently, and the majority of the time I get to the 3rd level and lose somewhere around there.

My top score is 8.5M, 4th level - I don't think I ever made it past it with 1 credit.

Still, a lot to learn, but it's one of my favorite games from these past 2-3 years that I've played it. I didn't take part in MAME ROW because I didn't have time, but I'd love to try it out and submit a new score if I get to the high score table again.

But do share your score, really - impressive achievement 1cc'ing this game :) Hope to get there one day.