Pink Sweets ~ Ibara Sorekara

[EOJ]

I knew you were joking.  I just wanted to be clear that I didn't ban jpj.

[zlk]

I have to get to stage 5 to trigger the bug? I thought people could do it by stage 3, but maybe that is with autofire only.

Which shasta is the best? Selecting with a,b,c,d?

[EOJ]

Yeah, you'd need rapid B to do it by the end of stage 3.

Shasta "A" is the best. 

[hermosaguy]

The girlfriend was actually having fun playing this game!  With two players she is always in charge of the bomb and i take care of the shot.  I think she enjoys pressing 1 button and dodging what she can. Who would have thought this would be a couples game!

[zlk]

Where can I buy an autofire circuit/plugin/device that will allow me to have autofire on my B button? 

[EOJ]

There's a Sanwa autofire circuit you could put in your cab. Tops has them sometimes, but I think they're getting hard to find. Maybe someone else knows of an easier-to-find solution.

[rtw]

Where can I buy an autofire circuit/plugin/device that will allow me to have autofire on my B button? 

You can find them on YJ, a very neat device that plugs in between the JAMMA edge connector
and your loom. Originally they were made by Sanwa and called MGM-SS2.

[zlk]

You can find them on YJ, a very neat device that plugs in between the JAMMA edge connector
and your loom. Originally they were made by Sanwa and called MGM-SS2.

If you see any on yahoo.jp please let me know. 

[croikle]

You can also find plenty of diagrams for circuits to build yourself with a search for "autofire circuit".

[zlk]

What good does rapid B do anyway?  Hitting B just rotates the rose formation, holding it down fires the rose shots.  Why would rapid B make a difference?

I also don't see how I am going to no miss all the way to stage 5 to get infinite lives.  Right now my games end in stage 4.

[EOJ]

Rapid B raises the rank. Each time you press B to change the rose formation, it raises the rank a tiny bit. If you do it 20~30 times a second, as with rapid fire, it raises it fast enough to get enough destructible bullets in the first 3 stages to enable you to trigger the infinite lives by the end of stage 3.

With Shasta, you just have to use rapid B during the last phase of the stage 2 boss, the very beginning of stage 3 (during the first four enemy waves), and in the middle of stage 3 (from the fixed 1UP all the way to the midboss). This will give you enough destructible bullets to get the infinite lives immediately before, during, or immediately after the stage 3 boss.

I don't have a dedicated rapid B button, but I do have a rapid fire switch for my B button (on my Sigma controller). So I have to flick the switch on, then flick it off during play. A bit cumbersome, but it works.

I think it's pretty clear that the game was designed to have the infinite lives triggered with the fixed 1UP at the end of stage 5. This involves no missing from the beginning of the game until the end of stage 5, and getting 4 extends in the process. Note the unmistakable parallel with Muchi Muchi Pork in this regard - you can only get to the second loop in MMP by no missing the first loop (5 stages!), with a full live stock. Also, in MMP, scores with the second loop are higher than scores without it, just like scores with the infinite lives in PS are higher than scores without it.

[EOJ]

Some implied confirmation from Cave that the infinite lives was a programmed feature (rather than a careless bug) appears in the "Cave history book" recently released. On page 15, an unnamed programmer for the game writes:

"Originally, we planned it as a game with lots of shooting, where you'd have a bomb that recharged over and over that you could use to get out of tough situations. However, when we played the game [in development] we were astonished at [what happens to the game when you] bomb over and over from the start of the game. Is this a game where you cannot use a bomb as you would in normal game? [we asked] ... we were in despair over this point..."

That's all they state about it.

The part they leave off after the ellipsis is, of course, "so we programmed in an infinite lives trick to make the game playable with the infinite rechargable bomb." I think they like keeping a bit of mystique over this point, but it's easy to read between the lines.

[charlienash87]

to trigger the infinite lives, you have to grab a 1up when you already have 5 lives right? can it also be triggered by getting an extend when you already have 5 lives, or are the extends simply 1ups that appear on the screen like in, batrider, so to say? i've never played this and have seen very little actual gameplay.

[markedkiller78]

or are the extends simply 1ups that appear on the screen like in, batrider, so to say? i've never played this and have seen very little actual gameplay.

This

The rank in this game was too crazy for me. I would love to see a version with possible rank control / rank meter. It really would make this game AAA rather than the A title I currently rate it as.

There are so many great things in Pink Sweets, but the rank, the RANK! I never made it past the L4 boss.

[Dave_K.]

The rank in this game was too crazy for me. I would love to see a version with possible rank control / rank meter. It really would make this game AAA rather than the A title I currently rate it as.

Ah, but there is a rank indicator you can turn on, when you boot up in "Special Ver." of the PCB.  See here.  I still have to figure out the destructible bullet counter, and will post all the info together in a single blog post when I get time.

Also, rancor posted shots of the Cave History book Yagawa interview, and will be translating it soon, so maybe we will hear more insight into rank and infinite lives in Pink Sweets.

BTW: my belief that infinite lives is indeed a feature, came when we found "Multiply Mode" in the PCB test menu options.  This is the actual term, not "infinite lives", and is not a bug but an actual mode, and is what gets activated when you collect your 6th extend when playing a normal game.  The test menu lets you practice your scoring in this mode, and is separate/different from "Invisibility Mode" (another test menu option).  My guess is the intended objective was to activate this mode (without rapid fire) by no missing up to the end of stage 5 where the last fixed extend is, so you enter stage 6 in multiply mode with your well rehearsed Score Attack strategies.

[EOJ]

Also, rancor posted shots of the Cave History book Yagawa interview, and will be translating it soon, so maybe we will hear more insight into rank and infinite lives in Pink Sweets.

Sorry, YGW doesn't say anything about Pink Sweets in that interview.

Also, "multiply mode" is in Ibara and MMP too, in the test menu settings, so I fail to see how it is any evidence that the infinite lives trick isn't a bug in PS. I don't like calling the infinite lives trick "multiply mode" in Pink sweets, as you have to trigger a certain requirement in-game, which is different from flicking multiply mode on in the test menu. The Japanese call the infinite lives trick mugen 'infinite'.

[Dave_K.]

Also, "multiply mode" is in Ibara and MMP too, in the test menu settings, so I fail to see how it is any evidence that the infinite lives trick isn't a bug in PS.

Wow, I totally forgot about this!  If multiply mode is in the other two games, then yes it doesn't prove anything.  Also too bad  Yagawa didn't comment at all on PS in that interview.

[EOJ]

He does make some interesting comments about other stuff. Check UL for my on-going translation of the important bits.