Deathsmiles PCB: major bug?!

[dmauro]

I was closing out HEY arcade with some friends tonight when I decided to play a credit of Deathsmiles seeing as it's one of my favorites and I've never played the PCB. My run seemed to be going well until the Sakura fight: I was playing as Rosa, with all my life bars plus extends (one of them empty), and I bumped into one of her lasers. Actually, I'm not sure if it was the laser or the pot it came out of, but rather than losing a half bar or full bar of life, I lost about one sixth or so of a bar.

At first I figured it was just a graphical glitch so I ignored it, but while powered up in the castle I messed up again and took a bullet. Rather than Rosa dying and ending my power up, she acted as if she ran into an enemy, took another sliver of health, and continued with the combo in power up mode!

I proceeded to get my first 1CC of the game despite hitting plenty of bullets during the Tyrannosatan fight. Throughout all of the final level I took only minor damage from bullets and never lost power up mode to damage.

Getting the cake from Jitterbug did not stop the bug, nor did getting back to having my health be at a standard half or full bar demarcation.

Something to note about the machine is that it is a vanilla/mbl machine that switches between the two. Probably not an issue, but I figured I should mention it.

Sorry if this is a well documented bug and this thread is waste, but I've never heard of it. Sorry I didn't get a video, my friends ran off to play fighting games :/

edit:
I went back and played another credit to see how the dipswitches are set, and it's definitely set up so that you don't take much damage. I'm not sure how I lost that first life though.

[EOJ]

Sounds like the cab had the life gauge dip switch settings altered to be super easy. IIRC you can alter it so each life bar only reduces a sliver upon getting hit by a bullet.

[dmauro]

Okay, that makes sense, but I lost my first life as per the default setting.  :?

[EOJ]

Yeah, that part is weird.