Pink Sweets->Ketsui

[EOJ]

I sold my Pink Sweets board and I used the money to buy Ketsui - it arrived yesterday.
I think I made the right decision, though I plan to buy PS back at some later date.

[Geezer]

I'm sure I recently read a post of yours saying you wouldn't pay more than $500 for Ketsui?

[EOJ]

Haha. Yeah. I ended up paying about double that, but less than $500 out of my pocket due to the Pink Sweets sale.

Anyway, no regrets! I'm enjoying the game a lot more than when I previously owned it. I'm starting to get
a better feel for the system, and the boss fights are great.

And what kind of Cave-fan-site admin would I be if I didn't own Ketsui? That's like a priest who doesn't own a bible.

[Plasmo]

Oh noes you failed!!!

[KOMA]

Ketsui ->Mushi BL for me when the game was out.Who's win?

[EOJ]

Ketsui ->Mushi BL for me when the game was out.Who's win?

I would have done the same.

@Plasmo: yes, I am fail. Pink Sweets will be mine again, but first I must give Ketsui some deserved time.

[jpj]

nice one.  i thought you woulda got deathsmiles  

i like ketsui, but find it harder than doj  :/  though i haven't played it too much

but at least my shasta scores are safe!

[EOJ]

Nah, deathsmiles is going to drop more in price over the coming months, I'll probably spring for it summer-ish. Ketsui's price seems very stable and may even rise (gasp!), actually it has gone up about $100 over the past month or 2, so I wanted to get it before it was like $1500 for a bare PCB.

Ketsui is a lot easier than DOJ for me, though they have similarly nasty stage 5s.

[zakk]

The Ketsui price really tempts me to sell that board at times, but I'm not sure I can really bring myself to do it.

[EOJ]

For me, it comes down to whether or not you've gotten a score you're satisfied with, or have met some other goal you think you can reach, like getting to or clearing the second loop. When i've totally maxed out my potential and am exhausted with a game, like I was with ikaruga, then I don't mind selling it. I think that's why Valgar sold his Ketsui. He liked the game, but would rather have $1200 than a really good game he's already pretty much maxed out his potential on, and reached most of his goals.

It's funny, as with my 114mil Ibara Kuro score, I feel like that's pretty much the best I'm going to do with that game, and I don't have a great desire to try and get higher. I like the game a lot, but if I'm not going to play it for score anymore, the only reason for me to keep it is for collecting purposes, and I'm not sure how keen i am on that these days, particularly with deathsmiles and the new DDP coming up - would be nice to have some spare cash to buy these soon.

[Sperrfeuer]

Ketsui ->Mushi BL for me when the game was out.Who's win?

look at my avatar

[KOMA]

Yeah,some games have sentimental value,like Mushi futari 1.5/BL for me,i think i can't sell these kits compare to PS/Ketsui i have already sold without regrets and i'm particulary not interested to get them back.

[hermosaguy]

I sold my Pink Sweets board and I used the money to buy Ketsui - it arrived yesterday.
I think I made the right decision, though I plan to buy PS back at some later date.

I am most definitely surprised!  Now I have no one on my side to hate Ketsui!  

[EOJ]

So far Ketsui is pretty good, but still nowhere near as good as a game like Mushihime-sama or Mushihime-sama Futari, for me. I find Muchi Muchi Pork to be better as well. I am determined to give it a lot of time before my final decision, however. If I had never played their recent games, it might be more exciting for me right now. Overall the game is very drab and depressing in its look and color scheme, and the levels don't look terribly different from one another. Not the type of game I've been a fan of in the past, in terms of visuals. I understand the visuals fit the theme of the game, but I guess I'm just not a fan of the theme then!

All the graphic glitches in the game sort of bother me as well. I hate seeing all that video garbage on the screen when I'm getting lots of boxes. :/

The scoring system IS fun, though, and maybe when I get a bit better at it my view of the game will change. I'm not totally clear on the lock-on shock in relation to the boxes - do ALL boxes you get with the lock-on shot reduce the multiplier, or only those you get when the timer is at 0? Is the only advantage of using the lock-on shock during the timer that you can get +5 boxes from distant enemies during this time? Or does it help your score in some other way?

[zakk]

The glitch doesn't happen all that often for me; I think I only see it occasionally on stage 2 right before the midboss, and maybe in stage 3 at the first big stealth bomber type plane.

You're doing it wrong! That or there's some pretty wide variance in boards that triggers the glitch.

[EOJ]

I see it towards the end of stage 1, a few times in stage 2, in stage 3 during the midboss fight and sometimes after, etc. I don't see what I'm doing wrong, I'm just trying to play for score.

Added some Qs about the scoring system in my last post. Any help?

[Plasmo]

I am most definitely surprised!  Now I have no one on my side to hate Ketsui!  laugh

I'm with you! We need more Ketsui haters!!:P
Actually I think we're just jealous.

@EOJ
You usually get more boxes from killing an enemy with the lock on shot than when you would've killed it with your regular one.

[EOJ]

@EOJ
You usually get more boxes from killing an enemy with the lock on shot than when you would've killed it with your regular one.

Okay, so it's like Futari 1.5's Maniac mode then - you get more gold when you use the A shot when the chaining bar is flashing red than if you use the C shot when the bar is flashing red. The bar reduces like the timer in Ketsui, and only increases with the C shot, also just like Ketsui (however, sometimes I use the lock-on shot in Ketsui and destroy a bunch of enemies at close range, and it seems to keep the timer from reducing as fast as normal).

Still wondering about how the lock-on shot boxes reduce the multiplier.

[MrMonkeyMan]

You lose something like 5-10% (depends on the size of the enemy) off you multiplier every time you kill something with your lock shot.  It doesn't matter if the timer is going or not.  And yeah, you get a lot more chips for killing an enemy with the lock shot, so using the lock shot when you have a 5 chip chain going is a very good idea.  You get a little time added to the time when you kill an enemey as well (time added also depends on the size of the enemy).

You should also know that your multiplier is only applied when you finish an enemy off with the lock shot.  You won't get many points without it.

[EOJ]

Thank you MMM! Knowing that the multiplier is only applied when you finish off enemies with the lock-on shot is very helpful (I had thought it was applied to every enemy you destroyed, regardless of what shot you used!).

So I guess the game is a balance between raising your multiplier with the C shot, and cashing in on it with the A shot, which in turn reduces the multiplier a little but adds to your score, and gives you more boxes (which should keep the multiplier afloat?). This is similar to Mushi Futari 1.5's Maniac mode in many ways, so it should be easy for me to get the hang of it after some more time with the game.

[zakk]

You can also milk more chips out of an enemy by starting to engage lock-shot but not actually killing them with the lock shot. It's a really fiddly timing thing where you kill the enemy with the pods as they're deploying, but before the actual lock on laser comes out. It's what they demonstrate in the omake section of the INH DVD.

Although honestly I only use it in stage 1, so it's probably not all that critical.

Basically you want to try to burn your multiplier on big high-point value enemies. The trick is that there are some medium sized enemies that give you enough chips that your net multiplier reduction is close to zero (or even positive) so it's worth it to lock shot those.

THEN you have to consider that the total stage chip count factors heavily into your end-stage bonus, especially in later stages where you (theoretically) have lots of extra lives, so sometimes it's worth lock-shotting huge groups of zakko-type enemies just to increase your overall chip counter.

This scoring system is sorta of head-hurty and fiddly at times.

[EOJ]

Thanks for the extra info, that's very helpful. Sounds like there's more depth and nuance to the system than I had assumed.
I will fiddle with it some more and see if I can get some better scores.

There really isn't any great guide for the game out there in English (would be nice to make one soon!), other than the one on world-of-arcades. Valgar posted a thread on shmups, but he doesn't talk about most of what you guys are telling me, hence my confusion on some basic aspects.

[rtw]

EOJ, What does your MASTER VER look like on your Ketsui ?

rtw

[EOJ]

It's just 2003/1/1 MASTER VER

No periods. I don't have the fixed ROM as I have the demonstration bug, and I experienced the stage 5 "music at half-speed" bug as well. But I have ordered the fixed ROM and it should arrive in a couple days.

[rtw]

It's just 2003/1/1 MASTER VER

No periods. I don't have the fixed ROM as I have the demonstration bug, and I experienced the stage 5 "music at half-speed" bug as well. But I have ordered the fixed ROM and it should arrive in a couple days.

Mine says "2003/1/1 MASTER VER."

And it's the fixed version. On a sidenote, of all the Ketsui PCB's I have ever seen,
I have never seen a fixed version for sale except the one I own and which
I dumped.

rtw

[EOJ]

My previous one was a fixed one, I bought it from a Japanese PCB shop. They didn't advertise it as fixed, and it had the original ROM, but there was no demonstration bug.

[rtw]

My previous one was a fixed one, I bought it from a Japanese PCB shop. They didn't advertise it as fixed, and it had the original ROM, but there was no demonstration bug.

There is no demonstration bug if you have a charged battery, do a set to default in setup and
never touch the brown SW1 switch. The fixed version has changed kanjii like seen on this
page:

http://www.world-of-arcades.net/Cave/Ketsui/Revisions.htm

rtw

[EOJ]

I mean the demonstration bug in FREEPLAY. My new board does it every time I try, and it's set to default. Never touched the brown switch. I've read that basically everyone else with an unfixed board has the demonstration bug as well. I tried out all the glitches on my previous PCB, and it had none of them, so it was obviously fixed.

If you have only seen one fixed ROM in your life, you can't be sure all of them have the same label on the ROM.
Perhaps all of them fixed by CAVE/AMI have the label, but maybe mine was fixed by the shop (if they have their own ROM writer, perhaps they just re-wrote the ROM themselves?)

[rtw]

I mean the demonstration bug in FREEPLAY. My new board does it every time I try, and it's set to default. Never touched the brown switch. I've read that basically everyone else with an unfixed board has the demonstration bug as well. I tried out all the glitches on my previous PCB, and it had none of them, so it was obviously fixed.

If you have only seen one fixed ROM in your life, you can't be sure all of them have the same label on the ROM.
Perhaps all of them fixed by CAVE/AMI have the label, but maybe mine was fixed by the shop (if they have their own ROM writer, perhaps they just re-wrote the ROM themselves?)

Ah OK, I never use FREEPLAY so I forgot about this bug :oops:

I meant that the fixed version label has the corrected kanjii. So to rephrase:

"I have never seen a Ketsui PCB with a corrected kanjii EPROM label."

If the shop reburned it themselves they had to take off the label, subject the chip
to some UV to erase it and then reburn it.

rtw

[zakk]

Perhaps all of them fixed by CAVE/AMI have the label, but maybe mine was fixed by the shop (if they have their own ROM writer, perhaps they just re-wrote the ROM themselves?)

You have to peel the sticker off to erase the rom so you can write it. Although I guess they'd be real careful about it, but that would still be a pain in the ass to do and make it look good when you re-applied the sticker.