Mahou Daisakusen 1CC

The stuff I’ve posted on this blog earlier has been 1CC’s I’ve gotten a while ago, so thought I’d post something I just managed instead.
Here’s my 1CC of the first loop of Mahou Daisakusen (Japanese version).

It took me about a week of practice to get this. The game is very heavy on routing, and there’s really not too much bullet dodging required with some planning. Overall, this game is not really a favorite of mine, but it has a lot of charm.

I bought this PCB broken, since I suspected I could fix it. Initially, it had some weird graphics issues, see pic below.

Dumping the relevant ROMs showed them as good dumps, so started logic probing around surrounding IC’s until I found a 74LS669 that behaved strangely. Ordered another one of those and swapped it, and suddenly everything worked great!
This means I got this PCB pretty cheaply compared to buying a working PCB which is nice.

Survival strategies

In general, the most imporant part of Mahou is storing up bombs for the later bosses.
With the right routing, the first loop is not too hard until the S5 boss.

Some good stuff to know is:

• There are three Weapon types. Homing, Forward and Wide. Picking up two of the same in a row powers up all weapons once. Powering up twice puts you at max weapon level.
• Don’t die before S5 boss. If you do, just reset the game. Recovery is pretty pointless in this game.
• Use autofire at around 15hz (basically a requirement).

I played Miyamoto for my run, but Bornham also seems real strong. Strategy below is for Miyamoto though.
I have routed this game pretty well, so I’d recommend just looking at the video, but I’ll write some concrete tips here too, with some additional video tips.

Stage 1

Weapon guide:

• Grab Homing, and keep that until the next Homing to power up.
• Grab Forward at least twice in a row to get to max level.
• Grab Wide before boss.

Easy stage, not much to say here. You can sit on top of the water tower before destroying it to get all coins (see the video).

Stage 2

Weapon guide:

• Grab Homing when it shows up, keep that until the boss
• Try to grab Wide at boss (not a big deal if you miss it)

Stay atthe top of the screen when grabbing the four bomb items.

The main problem point in this level are the double turrets. Don’t waste a bomb here, instead:

• Shoot right turret, when it shoots, go to far right which is safe.
• Wait until two bursts are fired from both turrets, then move left.
• Move right after two bursts, and park yourself in bottom right.
• If right turret is dead, this is completely safe from left turrets attacks.

Boss is a bit tricky. Green bullets can be dodged by just going in the middle. The blue skull pattern is a bit problematic since the boss sometimes can come down and punch you when you dodge them. Safety bombing those once is fine.

Stage 3

Weapon guide:

• Grab Homing early. Keep that until the moving wall section
• Grab Wide at moving wall section, and keep that for rest of stage

You should not bomb in this stage.

The first section that’s good to know are the two bomb gargoyles. I just move up to the right to focus down one first, and it’s pretty easy.
The midboss has patterns that should be memorized.

After midboss, you can just sit at the bottom left of the screen until the boss. Some enemies will suck you in and move you around, so on the big heads from the walls, just keep holding joystick down and left.

On boss, just try to not get stuck right under him when he’s spraying out bullets at midscreen or lower. Otherwise pretty safe to just autofire.

Stage 4

Weapon guide:

• Use Wide for full stage until boss.
• Pickup Forward before boss

The sections with fast moving planes shooting targeted bullets at the start and end of the stage are the hardest sections of this stage. Try to stay towards the middle of the screen and shoot them early. Otherwise just try to dodge. Safety bombing here on something can be fine.

On the green dragons, shoot down their wings ASAP since that makes their patterns easy. You can delay the second kill a bit to get a slightly easier section afterwards, but don’t do it too late or you risk missing the bomb item. This video compares delaying vs not delaying them.

On the boss (after the initial form), stay in the middle shooting at him. Watch out for the green lasers and dodge to the right.
When he does the pattern that shoots out small enemies that fire bullets, just bomb.
Should take at most 3 bombs to take down the boss, usually less.

If you are feeling risky, you can do this strat for the lasers instead which speedkills quickly.

Stage 5

Weapon guide:

• Grab Homing when you can. If you miss the first one, there’s another one not much later.
• Keep Homing until end of stage.

This stage is very routing heavy, so just watch the video since there’s too many spots to describe here really. The route in the video is mostly safe.
Safety bombing a few of the castles can be fine.

The boss is real hard, so just try to keep 6+ bombs in stock here to bomb it down.

Stage 6

Weapon guide:

• Use homing entire stage

Twin-head Dragon:
Get close at the beginning with Homing to target the engines, then finish those out. Then watch for gaps in the fire shots, to cross over.
Bomb at most once, since you won’t get any Bomb pickup otherwise.

Robot:
Easiest Stage 6 boss. Practice dodging the mace attack as in the video.
Rush attack is typically safe at bottom of the screen.
Stay slightly to the left or right of the center of the boss when it’s firing the spread attack and it’s safe.

Ninja:
Expect to die to this at least once.
Practice all patterns, but use all bombs you have on each life, since this is a real difficulty spike… not much else to say here really. It’s just hard and takes practice.

Double mages:
Just go to the top-left corner, it’s safe.

Red robot:
There’s a pretty safe timeout strategy where you destroy one arm, and then stay at the top of that corner. Only very few of the green shots will have to be dodged then.
In my run, I do not do this and just go for destroying it though.
Stay to the left of the center of the boss when it does it’s spray attack.
If you have homing, you can target the head from behind, but it does very little damage.

Goblin king:
This boss is very easy with the proper routing up to the last few patterns.
Make sure to use your bombs, and try to stay far up on the screen until the green eyes are destroyed.
The green eye lasers can be dodged above their hitbox. Stop doing this and move to bottom of the screen once one is destroyed.

Stage 7

I have no idea how to do this boss nicely, but it dies to three bombs, so if you have a spare life in stock, you are fine.