I decided to try out Devil’s Crush MD, just to see if there are any differences, and I wanted to check out the OMAKEBGM##* passwords. I tried out “Venus Fire” from Thunder Force III, and I’ve (the round is still in progress, just paused) gotten my best score this century so far, and using just my Bonus Ball (once you’ve depleted your pinballs and lost, you get a “Last Chance” roulette, and if the number you land on matches the last three digits of your score you get a bonus ball), and then I got another bonus ball somehow shortly before getting to 30000000. Getting super annoyed by the Bonus Stages, though, because if I don’t get perfect I lose my blue ball (which yields more points and is easier to see against the background in this version). I’ve perfected Stages 1, 4, 6, but haven’t shot into the other bonus stages this round, yet. Fuck Bonus Stage 6.
Also, I’m not sure if this is how to do it exactly because I’ve only done it like, 3 times, but it seems like if you get the ball into the She Giant via the Devil Shooter at the beginning of the round (if the ball bounces off a corner and shoots into her immediately, I think), you’ll get 2000000 bonus points (I think that’s it, it’s a lot of zeroes!) pretty much immediately, which makes racking up the rest a lot easier.
Major downside of the MD version, though, is I find it a bit harder to keep track of the pinball. TG16 version has better colors, even if some of the graphics aren’t as detailed.
* The MD version has music from Thunder Force 2 and 3, Herzog Zwei, Elemental Master, and Shin Ku Gyoku Den that you can listen to during a round by entering a password. I wish I hadn’t chosen Venus Fire, I’m sick of this song already.
I guess I found a pretty shitty glitch. The two dragon eyes are supposed to spit your ball back out, but mine got stuck in the left eye (i’m tilting like crazy in hopes of dislodging it, but nope). Fucking hell!
fuck bonus stage 6 and also fuck whichever stage it is in the graveyard with all the dots.
also you are right about the skillshot into the woman’s head for 2m points
here’s some other stuff
you can get an extra ball by killing 109 enemies before cashing in your bonus, and also by changing the three bean things at the top of the middle screen bright red at the same time (though this is so fiddly and random as to be near-impossible)
if you enter a bonus stage while the BT (number of enemies killed) is high, it’ll be the “hard” version, with two pairs of flippers instead of just one. i don’t know the exact amount though.
you’ve already figured out that perfecting a bonus stage gives you the blue ball, which only lasts a limited time (you don’t necessarily lose it by failing another bonus stage or by dying, though it might seem that way), and multiplies all scores by 4, including your main bonus and any bonuses from being in or completing bonus stages). there’s also a red ball that multiplies your scores by 6. i don’t know how to activate this, though. completing consecutive bonus stages doesn’t seem to be it.
as for your main bonus, you can increase the base amount by hitting the skull on the bottom screen, or by going in the holes on the top screen. the multiplier can be increased by smashing the cocoons on the bottom screen or by killing two squads of skeletons from the same side of the middle screen. the BT (tally?) is increased by killing the weird little guts on the bottom screen, the skeletons on the middle screen and the wizards on the top screen.
i’m sure you know most or all of the above already, but hopefully there’s something in there that will help you.
I’m guessing changing those three things to red is how I was getting the bonus balls because I’ve only gotten them in that area?
I think the “harder” versions of the bonus stages are easier and quicker because I don’t get stuck in those stupid spit loops. They’ll either just continuously spit into each other, or will bounce back into one side’s spitter. And, more often than not, these goddamn loops will result in the ball being eventually just shot down the center. It’s awful, especially for Stage 6 once the dragon breaks loose, because you have to try to time the tilt right to roll the ball past the stupid hole, or wait out the dumb spit loop. There’s a few bonus stages where the spitters will do most of the hitting for you, but I still prefer just having control over the ball myself.
i started playing again last year, since it’s one of the built in games on the handheld mega drive i bought (though i’ve played it as a kid, and also like 10-15 years ago when i first got access to emulation).
anyway, in the past year i’ve had the red ball 2, maybe 3 times? i have no idea what triggers it, but it’s definitely real.
There are some character tutorials for each character/class type in Black Ops 4 narrated by a hologram of Woods, who I guess I would remember if I finished Black Ops.
Anyway while using Battery I threw a grenade, prompting him to say “that explosion was lit ay-eff,” so if y’all wanna know how the caliber of writing in this campaign-free CoD is faring, well.
I’m not done but I am far enough in to say that I should have listened to Rudie.
That said it is better than I was initially starting to fear, which is another way of saying that it is better than Amnesia, but I just… don’t like any mechanical aspect of any of their games. Fortunately the story set-up is at least somewhat interesting if a bit tropey and I am a bit curious to see where they eventually go with it, but yeah if a better me existed he would have walked away a few hours back. Me? I’m just gonna continue to wander around in circles having no clue what the game wants of me once every hour or so until I am free.
trying to replay nocturne, not the smt one, the lobster johnson and the bprd: the game one, but having too many problems with crashes and switches not activating and the framerate dragging ass and having to jam on keyboard keys before getting reponses. think it’s one of those things where the source code is going to need to spring up online and somebody make a patch for modern os’s for it.
looking at a walkthrough on youtube there’s all these conversations and even npcs that just never triggered for me, surprised I was even able to make it as far as I did
found a copy of dragonball z ultimate battle 22 that i didn’t know i had in a pile of stuff.
it’s a shit game, but it’s a lot better than the more popular dragonball final bout.
it aalso comes from those days when there was seemingly no interaction or co-operation between different licensors of dragonball stuff, and there were no official english spellings for character names, so like recoome is called likum, and buu’s name has two different spellings, neither of which are right: majin boo and super bou.
it seems like before about… 2002? there wasn’t much difference in quality between official dbz merchandise and bootlegs
UB22 might be better as a clunky Butoden successor, but does it have a mode where you can level up Kid Goku’s punch to take out any enemy (including your friend’s much more well-rounded Majin Vegeta) in a single hit?
it does have a levelling up mode, but i don’t think you can take it to the absurd extremes final bout offered. final bout also has really great looking gouraud shaded graphics, which is another thing in its favour
(though ub22’s combination of sprite characters and very low poly backgrounds looks a lot better than i remember)
if you turn Forza Horizon 4 up to the second-highest difficulty and turn off all the notifications and whatnot it’s like easily the most joyful and varied pure driving game ever
get an Xbox game pass free trial for two weeks and just go to town imo
It’s one of the few games that lets you play as Roshi, which is always nice.
In “Games I Played A While Ago (And I’m Still Shaken),” I tried to play Fortnite’s Sandbox mode to get a feel for it, and dropped with two kids. Went from cute (they introduced themselves to one another and added each other on PSN) to terrifying when they decided to hunt me, squeaking how they were getting closer and closer as I could hear their footsteps approaching.
I dunno how people wrap their heads around building stuff in that game so quickly!
