Pork Up! New Ikuo score (Muchi Muchi Pork! Ver 1.01)

I played a few credits of 1.01 with Ikuo today, for the first time since I got my previous Ikuo score, and got a new PB of 425,628,890.

Unfortunately, my first loop was quite poor in this run, ending with just 212 million due to a couple costly chain breaks. In my previous 420 million run I got 224 million in the first loop. The second loop was much better in this run, though there were a few chain breaks in there as well. Anyway, 440+mil is looking more possible to me with a ~225 mil first loop, so I'll set that as my new goal.

Pork Up! New Momo score (Muchi Muchi Pork! Ver 1.01)

I was very happy to meet my goal of a 400+mil ALL with Momo in Ver 1.01 today, with a score of 401,002,380.

The last boss is very difficult to score on with Momo due to her weak lard attack, and I just barely scraped through the last phase with a very lucky dodge with no lives or bombs left. Scoring with the lard attack at the end was just enough to push me over the 400 million barrier.

I also got a higher score in DFK BL with B-Strong last week, somewhere in the 470 billion range, I think (it's on the xbox live leaderboards). I do enjoy that mode but Stage 5 is such a pain, I'm not sure I'll devote enough time to it to clear it. We'll see. I've been dabbling in a variety of other games as well, but Dodonpachi Saidaioujou will be released tomorrow, so I imagine when my copy arrives (hopefully early next week, if not sooner) I will focus on that, and if the scoring strikes my fancy, I'll play it for a good amount of time.

Pink Sweets Arrange

Today I practiced DDPDFK BL's Stage 5 with B-Strong. I've gotten the first half down, but the second half is giving me a lot of trouble. The Boss is quite easy to beat without dying, though.
Anyway, I also played a credit of Pink Sweets arrange today and I'm underwhelmed with it. I don't like the following:

1)No points for absorbing bullets. Even 1 point per bullet would have been nice. Feels very un-Yagawa-like as-is.
2)No points for hitting enemies/bosses with your shot. This is a big problem for me, it just feels off. Again, very un-Yagawa-like.
3)I don't like the shield being active in front of you as you shoot. You can just plow through everything without much worries, until you meet the bullet types you can destroy with your shot.
4)Too easy, due to 3).
5)No variety of items to pick up other than roses on the ground and small roses from cancelled bullets.


I do like the following:

1)Score-based extends. (I love these.)
2)Decent scoring system based on timed chains and a maximum x64 multiplier.
3)No real rank management needed (like MMP).
4)Hadou guns!

So it's a mixed bag for me. The little problems really bug me, and sap the enjoyment out of the game as I'm playing. Yagawa didn't program this Arrange, and it shows.

First B-Strong score (Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu Black Label)

Last week I decided to pick up a new game because I've been playing Muchi Muchi Pork! almost exclusively for the past few months. I really enjoy S. Yagawa's recent games, especially his collaborations with T. Ikeda and other programmers at Cave. So, among the games Yagawa has participated in programming for Cave that are available on the Xbox 360 (Pink Sweets 1.01, Pink Sweets Arrange, Espgaluda II Arrange, Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu Black Label and Akai Katana), I settled on Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu Black Label as my next game to score attack. After fiddling with the different shot types, I was drawn to Strong style, as it is the mode that most clearly gives me that distinctive Yagawa feel of destroying enemies, absorbing items, cancelling bullets into items, and dodging bullets that Muchi Muchi Pork! does. (The way the bombs and hypers fill up also sort of feels like a combination of score extends, lard attack refills, and bomb refills in MMP.) I also really like the fully powered shot. In addition, it has little of the "use a hyper and stay in a corner absorbing bullets" that scoring in Bomb and Power styles is based on, and which I find unappealing. When using a hyper in Strong style, you generally have to keep moving in order to score and survive, you have to dodge the fast bullets that spawn from cancelled bullets, and you have to accurately time your Shot presses when lasers get near. This is a really thrilling experience, knowing that with one wrong button press you'll get killed, breaking your chain (which only breaks when you use a bomb or when you get killed while using a hyper). Strong also has the nicest, most complex bullet patterns. At times they remind me of MMP's second loop,  or even some MMP first loop boss patterns at high rank.

Anyway, my personal best so far is 408,683,127,873, up to the beginning of Stage 5.

I was doing well in this run until the Stage 3 boss, where I lost two lives. I lost two more in Stage 4, and quickly crashed and burned at the start of Stage 5. I don't normally use practice modes just because I find it boring to play the same level over and over, but I may have to dig into it to have a chance at overcoming Stage 5, which appears to be massive and quite complex. Anyway, tentatively I am aiming for a 600+bil ALL (no Hibachi or Zatsuza). Once I get consistent at that I'll focus more on expanding my scoring into the 800bil~1tril range.

Pork Up! New Rafute score (Muchi Muchi Pork! Ver 1.01)

I decided to give Rafute another credit in Ver 1.01 today, and nearly reached my goal of 400+mil with a score of 395,134,670.

I got 194mil in the first loop, which is the first time I've scored so high with Rafute, but I also had a double chain break (where the chain breaks to the 1,000 medal value, you immediately accidentally die as the last 1,000 medal is falling off the screen, and your chain breaks again down to the 100 medal value) in Stage 5, which is the first time I think that's ever happened to me. I actually laughed out loud when it happened, and reached for the reset button, but then I thought, "what the heck, I'll keep playing". I'm glad I did. Thankfully the double chain break occurred toward the end of Stage 5 in a section that I get no more than 2~3 million from usually, and I had the medal value back up to 10K for the final curtain section before the boss. There were some other errors here and there so I should be able to do 200+mil in the first loop with her, eventually.

On a brighter note, I did not have any chain breaks in the second loop, and I think that's the first time I've done that as well! So this run was full of "firsts", most good, but one pretty bad.

Pork Up! New Ikuo score (Muchi Muchi Pork! Harahara mode Ver 1.01)

I only had time for one credit today, so I decided to try out Harahara mode in Ver 1.01 with Ikuo. It was my first credit with Ikuo in the mode, and I got a clear with a score of 202,181,060, which was good enough for the #1 spot on the Xbox live rankings with Ikuo.

I had two chain breaks and did nearly zero boss milking because it's so risky, but I think I can start to try and implement more of it in future runs. Particularly the stage 1 and 4 bosses. With that in mind, I'm setting my next goal at 210+mil, which would give me the top spot on the Xbox live rankings among all character types. If I play this a good amount and discover some safe patterns for boss milking, I'll probably go back to regular Ver 1.01 and do some more 2-Loop runs and try and improve my Ikuo score to 430+mil.

Pork Up! New Ikuo score (Muchi Muchi Pork! Ver 1.01)

I was glad to get a score of 420,521,550 with Ikuo in Ver 1.01 today, which meets my goal of getting the #1 spot on the xbox live rankings with Ikuo (though who knows how long that will last).

The replay is on Xbox live, so you can check it out if interested. I had 224 million in the first loop with one chain break. Decent second loop, though there were quite a few chain breaks and I didn't score well on a few bosses and midbosses. Theoretically with fewer mistakes I could do 430~450million, though I am not sure I will bother, since Ver 1.01 runs take so much time (over an hour for each credit), and there are so many things that can go wrong, ruining a good run. I'm quite satisfied with this score and anything higher than this would just be icing on the cake for me.