Hey guys! I am travelling in Japan this month, I had wanted to go for such a long time. Of course, I had to take a look at all this arcade business, so in Tokyo we met up with Adversity1, NTSC-J, Erhune, Eaglet and mdl and went to Ebisen and HEY. We also were at Washoii\Tougeki, where we witnessed some pretty crazy live superplays. More on that later.
At Ebisen, I played a DDP run (crap), went out for a smoke, and when I came back in... SOF-WTN himself was starting a run O_O So, jet lagged and uber tired to the max, I witness the DDP UltraMaster demonstrate some of the tricks that make 749M possible.
Also met Kamui and SPS among others (garegga and Ketsui). SPS played a 495M 2-ALL run live just like that... lol.
Anyway, got a bunch of DOJ runs done on cabs. Recently, I had finished learning the full game and was going to start playing full runs soon, so being here is a good opportunity to do that with sticks before I go for the real deal with keyboard. After a lot of shit, got a little more consistent and some chains started coming, etc. Now I'm in Kyoto, played like 6 runs in the major arcade here, and beat my high score :p
Black Label - Type A ExpertProMeTheus - 1,774,124,370 -2-5 - 3483 Hits - PCBMy first PCB entry


Perhaps some will recognize the A-Cho arcade. Its a cool place, has a nice bunch of Cave games, including SDOJ, DOJ, DDP 2 (lol), Ketsui, Futari BL, DFK BL... Haven't seen a huge affluence on shmups so far but I've not been on busiest days or hours.

This was one of those runs where I died in stage 1-1 for a nice start. This kind of stuff happens a lot more often to me when I play with sticks. But I got a smooth first loop going after that, bombing one of the patterns of stage 5 boss however, losing max bonus for the next two stages. Then I think it was death in 2-1, and maybe 2-3, some other stuff like that, can't remember precisely. I got to Hibachi with only 1 life in stock, but I managed to get to the last pattern, last form health at like 40%. It seems quite clear that a stick 2-all would be possible, which is exciting. However, even though I will come back to play some more, I have a lot of other things I want to do or see while I am in Japan obviously, so I think it probably won't happen.
Anyway, I guess this will make the very last few "elitists" guys that I've heard about who still say stuff like "eh, sticks in arcade is the true way, guys who play on MAME\Keyboard\Ports\whatever else can't do it the proper way" think again. To be honest, this "argument" of theirs already looked like a ridiculous last rempart for a long discredited dogma, and I'm sure people who are still thinking that way are very scarce nowadays.
Of course, I will improve on this and 2-ALL after I get back home. As always, thank you guys for all the past encouragements that have helped make this and the rest possible !
To Western Shmupping !
ProM