DAY ONE DODONPACHI REPLAYS (deeper analysis later on probably)

Well, this first day was pretty rough, I'm gonna be uploading a few replays that I've recorded of Dodonpachi (before I published this, I accidentally had called it Danganronpa haha). I haven't watched them personally yet, but I can already kind of tell what a few of my bigger weaknesses are. For starters. I feel like I make unnecessary movements to dodge bullets that I don't need to be even worrying about. what you'll see a couple times is bullets will be coming towards my direction, but none of them are directly coming towards me, and for some reason i'll weave left or right towards empty screen space during the barrage when I could have easily just waited for the bullets to go passed me and then moved to the space, I guess i'm trying to herd bullets preemptively? Another huge thing is that I know I'm playing right now for survival but I'm still chasing the score emblems and I'm getting stupid deaths because I make brash and unsafe chases that get me killed. The final thing I see is that I know 2-3 major places that I die at, and as you watch these replays you'll see I didn't really change my gameplan all that much during those spots. I'll probably through a deeper analysis for each replay later on, but for now, I think this'll do!  Please, if you see anything else that I can improve on, please leave a comment below, or even hit me up on twitter @GDLKscrub.

Thanks for reading,
GDLKscrub

heres the full playlist of today's replays

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz16KnslTcoVpPSNhPI9ZBWhEgMNneCRd

Introduction, what to expect, and my experiences thus far.

Hello, and welcome to my humble little blog that could.

My name is Justin, most of you know me as GDLKscrub in the SoCal fighting game community, however this blog will have very little to do with that, instead, this will be a daily (hopefully) updated blog of my experiences with Shoot Em Up games or as the community so affectionately calls them, "Shmups". To keep it brief, here is the wikipedia definition of the genre. 

"Shoot 'em up (also known as shmup or STG) is a sub-genre of the shooter genre of video games.
In a shoot 'em up, the player character engages in a lone assault, often in a spacecraft or aircraft, shooting large numbers of enemies while dodging their attacks. There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up. Some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain types of character movement; others allow a broader definition including characters on foot and a variety of perspectives. Shoot 'em ups call for fast reactions and for the player to memorize levels and enemy attack patterns. "Bullet hell" games feature overwhelming numbers of enemy projectiles. "

My focus will be on the Bullet Hell/Danmaku vertical (i'll include horizontal shooters occasionally) sub-genre of shmups.  Some popular examples of this are: 

the Touhou Project

 touch any of those white lines and YOU'RE DEAD

Donpachi series

Donpachi actually means Leader Bee, so this image is pretty fitting, yes?

UMVC3: The Morridoom Match up 

SOUL FIST SOUL FIST SOUL FIST SOUL FIST SOUL FIST SOUL FIST SOUL FIST SOUL FIST

As my goal is updating this blog daily, even if there isn't a change in high score or whatever, I'll update it with my opinions and feelings on my time playing that day, etc etc. Also since I'm new to this, don't expect high score updates as much as progression on 1cc'ing a game (1CC is clearing a game with a single credit). I'll attempt score runs after I 1CC said game.

Also something worth noting: 1CC'ing is something very far off, and I'm very new to this genre, so even more than progression on 1cc posts, expect alot of "hey I found this random shmup, heres my day one opinion after a couple hours of playing it!" posts :)

 This will be extremely candid, so don't expect professional, grade A, proofread 100 times before submitting writing all the time, but please expect it most of the time. 

Some Backstory 

So how did this new found hobby come to fruition? Funny story actually, like I mentioned before, I frequent major fighting game tournaments in SoCal, and just this past march, there was a tournament in Irvine, California called SoCal Regionals. They had this area set up in some far off corner of the venue where people could bring their own sonsole set up, and it just so happen when I walked in, that STG weekly was doing a marathon of various shmups. After talking to the person hosting it, later found out to be Softdrink 117 from the System 11 forums, I found that spectating this guy playing some random game where he was just weaving through these crazy bullet patterns was incredibly fun. Seeing as though I was at a fighting game tournament, obviously I was more interested in playing whatever fighting game I had interest in on at the time, I quickly left and didn't think much of it afterwards.

...But the seed had been planted. 

Fast forward sometime in April, My dad had tore a ligament and was in need of somebody at home to help him whenever he needed it, and at the time, I was heavily invested in Dota 2, but as you know if you've ever played that, if you pause in the middle of the match for an extended period of time, you run the risk of getting the aggression of every player involved, so I looked for something that I could play solo that I hadn't played before, enter the touhou games.

As I was a huge fan of Doujin Fighting games, it was extremely difficult not hearing about the touhou series, the biggest Doujin game series of all time. So I gave that series a spin, and sooner or later I found myself hitting that retry option and trying to top the best score I had,  it became a seriously fun distraction, and soon, that distraction grew into this blog.

So what am I playing these days?

Well, I'm one of those "don't want to learn how to walk before running" so I went straight to the first list I could find on the forums that detailed "top shmup here" or "best shmups ever" and went hunting. So at the moment I'm playing:

Touhou 10-14 on normal, but at first I was playing on lunatic! (Seriously, playing on that difficulty at my skill level is like tossing a toddler with boxing gloves in the ring with Mayweather, 0-10 match up, BUT IT HURTS SO GOOD!)

Castle of Shikigami III on Extreme 1 -  I'm finding this game really easy compared to the rest of the games on this list, so for the first couple of weeks, expect a lot of updates from this game, as well as...

Dodonpachi and Daifukkatsu - I'm concentrating on one game from a series at a time, so don't expect very many daifukkatsu updates at first, as I'm having a lot of fun trying to 1cc Dodonpachi right now. 

There are a lot of other games that I dipped my toe into that I'll be "reviewing" as time goes on, (you'll probably be seeing a lot more of those early on in this blog, as I'm still "previewing" the selection)  but  those mentioned above are probably the titles you'll see updates for the most, progression wise for now.

Thank You! 

If you've been able to get down here, I suspect you're legitimately interested in what I'm trying to achieve, to which I say, thanks a ton! :) If you just wanted to scroll all the way down to the end... :( Go back up and read the whole thing! It's not boring, I swear.

I'm having a lot of fun playing through these games, and I hope you will enjoy reading (and watching) my experiences. 

Contact Me! 

If you have suggestions or comments

Twitter is @GDLKscrub

FB is Facebook.com/GDLKscrub 

Steam account: GDLKtao (please add me!) 

Shmups.system11.org : GDLKscrub