Category: Shmups

Some Cave game difficulty rankings have been going around the Twitterverse recently, so thought I’d post my opinions and list, with some motivations behind the entries.

This is how I’d rank the difficulty of most Cave games in one credit. Videos of me clearing them are attached for all titles.

• This does not cover the more difficult modes of the games, so no Mushi Ultra, SDOJ EX or similar.
• This is for 1-ALL for multi-loop games
• Entries are grouped into five difficulty groups.
• Entires within groups are pretty similar in difficulty, but somewhat ordered by hardest (top) to easiest (bottom). This is much more vague than the overall grouping though, since the difficulty will be similar-ish.
• Some comments why they are placed where they are is attached

“The List”

T1 (Harder)

• Dangun Feveron (B-Roll or C-Roll)
  Very hectic game that’s easy to mess up in. Don’t go for TLB, and time out last boss (it takes a while). Still hard.
• Dodonpachi Saidaioujou (A-Shot)
  Overall high difficulty. Last stage is really hard, and its best to try and save bombs for it. Ideally no-miss to S4 midboss extend, which requires pretty strict routing.
• Ketsui (Type A)
  You get a lot of extends and bombs in this, but even considering this, a lot of routing is needed for the last three stages. The bosses are quite hard. The lock-on system rewards quick lock ons for survival which means strict routing.

T2 (Hard)

• Ibara (Bond Type C)
  The harder bosses can be skipped by saving up Hadou charges, but you still need to deal with the last two stages, which are hard unless you manage the rank . This means intentionally dieing a lot, and correctly. Requires a good amount of routing, and Garregga-esque rank management.
• Dodonpachi Saidaioujou Exa Label (D-Shot)
  Overall easier than regular SDOJ if keeping rank low, but still hard. Some boss/midboss patterns are significantly easier.
• Guwange (Any character, Gensuke is easiest)
  Most of the difficulty comes after full life refill in last stage. Getting to it requires some work, but is easier than the rest of the game. Later part of last stage is hard to no-miss, and you want to have some resources for last boss. Final boss pattern is real random and can mess you up unless you have some life to tank it.
• Guwange Blue Label (Any character, Gensuke is easiest)
  Overall easier stages due to bullet slowdown on Shikigami, but some patterns are harder (especially phase 1 of final boss). About the same difficulty to clear.
• ESP Ra.De. (Yusuke or J.B.)
  Last two stages require good routing. S4 boss is a little hard. Final boss has a lot of phases and is tricky.

T3 (Medium)

• Ibara Kuro (Dio Type D)
  No need to control rank like in regular Ibara. Some easy graze safespots for setting up score for extends. Still need to deal with stage parts of last two stages, but still an easier clear than vanilla.
• Mushihimesama Futari 1.0 Original (N Palm)
  Plays similar to 1.5, but Ab Palm is garbage, and N Palm is a better option. S4 boss has a pattern with broken safespots that needs bombing. Last boss is also harder. Overall a much harder clear.
• Akai Katana Exa Label (Type C)
  If keeping rank low, the patterns aren’t too bad. Just like in Shin, you can’t just reflect bullets on hard patterns, so you need to learn them, and bomb the trickier parts. Type C’s Spirit attack is extremely powerful and can melt hard boss phases like S6 boss phase 2.
• Akai Katana Slash/Shin (Type B)
  Much harder than regular Akai Katana, due to Spirit form not reflecting bullets, and additional stage. Still not too bad. Worst patterns can be bombed, and the sword attack does good damage. Type B is real strong in this.
• Progear no Arashi (Bolt + Nail)
  Recommend going for 11M extend. That gives a good amount of resources, which helps with the clear. Not much to say otherwise. Medium difficulty patterns, where the hardest can be bombs.
• Espgaluda 2 (Asagi survival route)
  Tateha/Ageha is very hard, but Asagi can “cheat” due to her Kakusei being so strong. Save gems for bosses, then just melt them. Allows basically skipping last boss. Still needs routing and resource control though.
• Muchi Muchi Pork (Any character, but Rafute is easiest)
  Some hard patterns, but you get 10+ lives pretty easily, and the bomb is strong, and can be used often. This allows for many mistakes while still clearing.
• Pink Sweets (Kasumi B, inifinite lives glitch)
  Without infinite lives, this game is extremely hard. Setting up infinite lives require strict routing and careful play, especially on S3 midboss. I’d argue its similar in difficulty to many other clears.
• Dodonpachi DOJ Tamashii (B-L)
  Basically same as BL. Maybe a little harder, but not much.
• Dodonpachi DOJ Black Label (B-L)
  Needs some routing, but you get enough resources in terms of hyper and bombs to skip a lot of the harder parts. Some early game scoring is sufficient to hit all score extends.

T4 (Easy)

• Dodonpachi (C-L)
  Just bomb when things are scary.
• Donpachi (Type C)
  You get so many bombs, and are encouraged to use them due to the end of stage recharges. Some bosses have easy safespots.
• Espgaluda (Ageha)  
  Very easy except for last boss, which is hard. Practice that a lot.
• Mushihimesama Futari 1.5 Original (Ab Palm)  
  Very straightforward game. Ab Palm is real strong, not much to say here.
• Mushihimesama Futari Black Label Original (Reco)  
  A little easier than 1.5 probably, but basically same thing.
• Dodonpachi 2 – Bee Storm (Without triggering TLB)  
  Keep score low enough to not trigger TLB. Most boss patterns are 100% static so learn the safespots. Abuse energy recharge glitch.
• Mushihimesama Original  
  Recommend using S-power for the good speed. Fast sparse patterns that aren’t too hard.

T5 (Very Easy)

• Akai Katana Climax/Zetsu (Type C)
  Similar to regular Akai Katana but one extra stage, thats not very hard. Energy recharge glitch doesnt work, but doesn’t make things much harder.
• Akai Katana (Type C)
  Spirit form + energy rechage means skipping all hard patterns are possible. All the slowdown also helps. Type C just melts things in spirit form.
• Deathsmiles (Rosa)
  Learn a simple route for first stages. Use hyper and don’t bomb Jitterbug to get the 2-up, which means you can just bombspam last boss. Silly.
• Dodonpachi DFK 1.5 (Strong C)
  You can just autobomb through this basically. So many bombs.
• Deathsmiles 2 (Casper)
  Easy patterns. Easy clear. Bad game.

Pink Sweets is easily one of Caves hardest games, but on PCB there’s an infinite lives glitch that can be triggered, which trivializes the rest of the game.

This requires getting 4 extends without dieing, which is not much easier than a typical Cave 1CC. I got this a while ago, but finally took the time to record a quick commentary on how to trigger the glitch, if others are curious.

Extends spawn when you destroy 2500 enemies or destructible bullets, and then kill an enemy. This means you want to try to destroy as many destructible bullets as possible, especially on midbosses and bosses. This requires pretty careful planning.

On a good Stage 1 run, you should be able to get the zan counter to about 2000, triggering the first extend early on stage 2. If you trigger the first extend later in Stage 2, that’s not a huge problem since you can make up some on the Stage 2 boss, where I don’t care much about going for zan in this run.

S3 midboss is the make or break section of the run, since it’s very easy to mess it up, and it will sometimes give you random movements which makes it hard to trigger the deaths of side capsules when you want it.

For MAME practice, you can use the following lua script, to display the zan counter when playing, which simplifies routing. This will obviously not be helpful when playing for real on a PCB later as in the video above.

// Put this in pinkswts.lua
cpu = manager:machine().devices[":maincpu"]
mem = cpu.spaces["program"]
s = manager:machine().screens[":screen"]

function draw_hud()
 cnt = string.format("CNT : %d", mem:read_i16(0x0c4a3ab6));
 s:draw_text(225, 3, cnt);
end
emu.register_frame_done(draw_hud, "frame")

// And run game with mame64.exe pinkswts -autoboot_script pinkswts.lua

For completitions sake, here is my full 1CC using the glitch, but the rest of the run isn’t very exciting.

The game itself is pretty interesting. It plays sortof like Yagawa’s earlier games, but is much less forgiving, and rank control isn’t as doable since you no longer get point extends.

Going for a non-infinite lives 1CC is very hard, and seems easiest by completely skipping item pickups and playing very carefully. It seems unlikely that I’ll get back to doing that, since this isn’t really one of my favorite games.

Stuff from the collection

After a few weeks of trying, I managed to get 1CC in Battle Garegga with Golden Bat on both the PS4 port and the original PCB this week.

Definitely a game that lives up to the hype. It’s also a game with a lot of stuff going on, so not going to try and write up any real strategies for it (just read about it on the shmups wiki). Rank management is extremely important for setting up the last few stages to be reasonably hard.

Since I did write down my overall route, I’m pasting it below though, hoping that it might be useful. Otherwise I’d just watch the videos. I feel like this route is a pretty good approach to a survival 1CC.

My Golden Bat 1CC route for Golden Bat

Overall stuff:
While this is a survival run, it aims to hit the 7M extend (and can hit 8M). You want to do some scoring in Garegga to get more extends to lower your rank.
If you drop the medal chain before S4, reset the game.
I always mess up at least a few things in my runs, but this can be seen as the general goals I have.

Stage 1:
– Get two options.
– Die to boss once to reduce rank..
– End stage at 0.3-0.4M, 1 Life, rank at around 1-2%

Stage 2:
– Should be at about 1.5M after birds.
– For the big thank, count seven waves of red planes and then follow it down along the screen to pointblank it.
– Try to avoid activating “search hidden formation” which increases frame rank. This might mean not shooting some of the last enemies.
– Die to boss and go on top of it to quick-kill with a bomb.
– End stage at about 2M, 2 Life, rank at around: 1-2%

Stage 3:
-Bomb the initial rails and silos for big medal points.
-Afterwards, try to not pickup any bomb fragments.
– Die once before 3M (you should be at one spare lives afterwards).
– Get the hidden extend (reset the game if you don’t).
– End stage at about 3M, 3 Life, rank at around: 2-3%

Stage 4:
– Avoid bomb fragments unless you need them for destroying stuff.
– Bomb the small pipes before the orange tank, and all tank silos at the start of the stage.
– On orange tanks, start from the right tank, then move left (bombing the silos) and finally take the second right tank.
– Intentionally die to the four green tanks to do damage to their threads. Try to pick up 2-3 big bomb fragments.
– Leave five bomb fragments before the boss to setup homing formation.
– Die down to 1 spare lives before the 4M extend.
– End stage at about 3.8M, 1L, about 3 Bombs, Homing formation, rank at around: 2%

Stage 5:
– Avoid hitting max bombs since it increases rank.
– Power up to 4 options, max power.
– On Mad Ball, if run is going well it might make sense to not die and just bomb it. If you feel like your rank is too high, die to it and bomb it similar to on Stage 2.
– Start slayer at about 5M, 2L, 4-5% rank (or 3L, 8-9% rank if not dieing to Mad Ball).
– Leave five bomb fragments at end of slayer to setup for Homing formation at start of S6.
– Start Blackheart at about 5.5M, 2-3L, 7-11% rank and try to not die 🙂

Stage 6:
– Power up to max if you aren’t already. Raise autofire to 15hz. Get homing formation.
– Ignore medals (chaining them here are hard).
– Use one bomb on turret wall.
– Reach boss at 6M+, 3L, max power, homing, 3-4 bombs, about 25% rank.
– Bomb both phase 1 and 2.
– End at: 6.5M, 3L, 27-30% rank.

Stage 7:
– Blackheart 2 at 6.5M, 3L, 30% rank, some bombs.
– Die once probably. End at around 7M. Only use bombs on the pattern where he goes downwards if you need more score to hit the 7M extend due to messing up earlier.
– Reach Glow Squid at 30-35% rank, 3L.