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Mushihimesama (Normal) Maniac 1CC! (Switch)
4 years ago
General
So before I get into talking about my run I wanna talk about a little history of me and this game. So WAY back in maybe 2007-2010 I discovered the freeware game called "I Wanna be the Guy." This got me on an "I wanna play a lot of hard games" kick and so I started looking up various hard games of the time on YouTube.
Things like Guitar Hero 3's Through the Fire and Flames were the rage at the time, obviously that was something that even on the 4 note difficulty was rough for me, so I never made it to the 5 note difficulty let alone Expert.
During this time I also discovered Liddell, the bouncy character in my FA icon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXTMaBVPURw&ab_channel=pompedli
Now obviously during this time I also discovered Mushihimesama with this very video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP-mePr1-ZQ&ab_channel=GameSaru
Look at that crusty video quality, it really shows its age but to me it's still a classic because it was my first exposure to Mushihimesama.
I am not really the most experienced player with shmups and have only played a handful.
the demos for Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil, Perfect Cherry Blossom and Imperishable Night.
A few freeware shmups.
Castle of Shikigami 2 & 3.
Ikaruga.
Sin and Punishment for the Wii.
Raiden 1 & 2
And maybe a few other stray ones.
But Mushihimesama was always one that I at least wanted to TRY even if I couldn't beat it. "Why didn't you just buy it?" you may ask? Well the original console version was Japan exclusive, I didn't have an X-Box 360 so I couldn't get that version. And I am weird about buying PC games. I simply have a preference for gaming on consoles personally.
Well a little before June 15th I was looking through my Switch's messages and came across the "what's new in the e-shop" message. In the corner of my eye I saw "Mushihimesama" and was floored by this. So I went out to get a $20 e-shop card and bought this game.
At first I was merely playing it for the novelty of being able to play this game I have known about for so long, but as time went on I kind of wanted to push a little more. So once I discovered that Maniac difficulty (the second of 3 difficulties) had slower bullets than Original difficulty (which is the easiest of the 3 difficulties) I opted to play more in Maniac. Granted there are more bullets in Maniac but I was more able to more able to mentally process what was being thrown at me. So then I started using practice mode to get used to stages, as well as look up many Maniac playthroughs to figure out better pathing through levels.
For those who care here is a video of the difficulty I was going through:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkjTDVYmbsY&ab_channel=CAVEPCB
I hit a skill wall for a while until I realized you could push A while selecting the stage in practice mode to start at mid-bosses or bosses. Before discovering this the only way I THOUGHT I could practice bosses was going through THE ENTIRE STAGE. Foolish I know but I think watching some videos talking about Mushihimesama I might misheard something being said about practice mode. So that's all on me.
So then I practiced bosses, figured out my trouble spots and where I want/need to use bombs and then proceeded to grind out 1CC runs. I had managed to reach the final stage several times but I would get there with a low amount of lives, or if I DID reach there with 2-4 lives I would lose them all in rapid succession.
But yesterday I managed to get through stages 1, 2 and 3 all No Miss (deathless) and stage 4 I only died once. Granted I have been to stage 5 with 4 lives before so I knew this wasn't a sure thing. I reached the midboss deathless and unfortunately the midboss killed me but it was a blessing in disguise as you get 3 bombs upon death, so I could use those in the scary second half of the stage. And I did just that, I had 3 key locations in mind and I used my 3 bombs in those locations and managed to get through the second half of the stage deathless.
So I go into the final boss with 3 lives and 1 bomb. In practice mode you have 2 lives and I give myself 1 bomb as I preferred to practice with the worst case scenario. So I manage to get through the boss' first several patterns as they are easy to also manipulate to make the worst of it go mostly off screen, then I get to one of the patterns I can easily die on so I opt to use my one bomb at this point and just hoped that did enough damage to him so I could shoot through the final 1st phase pattern before the bullets become too dense, and luckily I did. So 2nd phase no bombs but 3 lives. At this point there is little chance of failure since if I die I can spam kill him with bombs, but I had been practicing this phase without bombs so I put in the effort to dodge the upcoming patterns.
Be it skill or dumb luck I managed to dodge the next 2 patterns and so too did I dodge the 3rd pattern. Now the 4th pattern is something I RARELY see for very long as in all my practice runs I either have enough bombs to spam kill him, mostly out of safety, or I have done enough damage with bombs before hand that I kill him before things become too chaotic. However I just focused and actually lasted through several seconds of this final pattern through very likely dumb luck and before I knew it the boss died! I managed the final boss No Miss and with only 1 bomb!
Thanks to this when the stage clear screen comes up it gives you an extra 10 million points for every lie you have remaining giving me a massive 30 million more points on top of the 74 million points I earned through the game. So my final score was 104,264,259!
Now obviously better players can get higher scores, so too can better players achieve a 1CC No Miss with far less bomb usage than me. But this was a personal achievement and I am VERY proud of what I managed to accomplish. =3 It feels incredible to not only be able to play this game I have wanted to play for maybe more than a decade, but to also 1CC the 2nd difficulty in the game.
With all that said if you have even a remote enjoyment of these kinds of games I HIGHLY recommend Mushihimesama. Furthermore the Switch port functions VERY well and I have only experienced a couple crashes, but ANY game can crash so yeah. =P It is $20 on the e-shop and worth every penny in my opinion. Furthermore it has a novice mode which makes all 3 selectable difficulties easier, so if you want to go into this a little slower then that is an option. I just wanted to go all out into Maniac personally.
Things like Guitar Hero 3's Through the Fire and Flames were the rage at the time, obviously that was something that even on the 4 note difficulty was rough for me, so I never made it to the 5 note difficulty let alone Expert.
During this time I also discovered Liddell, the bouncy character in my FA icon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXTMaBVPURw&ab_channel=pompedli
Now obviously during this time I also discovered Mushihimesama with this very video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP-mePr1-ZQ&ab_channel=GameSaru
Look at that crusty video quality, it really shows its age but to me it's still a classic because it was my first exposure to Mushihimesama.
I am not really the most experienced player with shmups and have only played a handful.
the demos for Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil, Perfect Cherry Blossom and Imperishable Night.
A few freeware shmups.
Castle of Shikigami 2 & 3.
Ikaruga.
Sin and Punishment for the Wii.
Raiden 1 & 2
And maybe a few other stray ones.
But Mushihimesama was always one that I at least wanted to TRY even if I couldn't beat it. "Why didn't you just buy it?" you may ask? Well the original console version was Japan exclusive, I didn't have an X-Box 360 so I couldn't get that version. And I am weird about buying PC games. I simply have a preference for gaming on consoles personally.
Well a little before June 15th I was looking through my Switch's messages and came across the "what's new in the e-shop" message. In the corner of my eye I saw "Mushihimesama" and was floored by this. So I went out to get a $20 e-shop card and bought this game.
At first I was merely playing it for the novelty of being able to play this game I have known about for so long, but as time went on I kind of wanted to push a little more. So once I discovered that Maniac difficulty (the second of 3 difficulties) had slower bullets than Original difficulty (which is the easiest of the 3 difficulties) I opted to play more in Maniac. Granted there are more bullets in Maniac but I was more able to more able to mentally process what was being thrown at me. So then I started using practice mode to get used to stages, as well as look up many Maniac playthroughs to figure out better pathing through levels.
For those who care here is a video of the difficulty I was going through:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkjTDVYmbsY&ab_channel=CAVEPCB
I hit a skill wall for a while until I realized you could push A while selecting the stage in practice mode to start at mid-bosses or bosses. Before discovering this the only way I THOUGHT I could practice bosses was going through THE ENTIRE STAGE. Foolish I know but I think watching some videos talking about Mushihimesama I might misheard something being said about practice mode. So that's all on me.
So then I practiced bosses, figured out my trouble spots and where I want/need to use bombs and then proceeded to grind out 1CC runs. I had managed to reach the final stage several times but I would get there with a low amount of lives, or if I DID reach there with 2-4 lives I would lose them all in rapid succession.
But yesterday I managed to get through stages 1, 2 and 3 all No Miss (deathless) and stage 4 I only died once. Granted I have been to stage 5 with 4 lives before so I knew this wasn't a sure thing. I reached the midboss deathless and unfortunately the midboss killed me but it was a blessing in disguise as you get 3 bombs upon death, so I could use those in the scary second half of the stage. And I did just that, I had 3 key locations in mind and I used my 3 bombs in those locations and managed to get through the second half of the stage deathless.
So I go into the final boss with 3 lives and 1 bomb. In practice mode you have 2 lives and I give myself 1 bomb as I preferred to practice with the worst case scenario. So I manage to get through the boss' first several patterns as they are easy to also manipulate to make the worst of it go mostly off screen, then I get to one of the patterns I can easily die on so I opt to use my one bomb at this point and just hoped that did enough damage to him so I could shoot through the final 1st phase pattern before the bullets become too dense, and luckily I did. So 2nd phase no bombs but 3 lives. At this point there is little chance of failure since if I die I can spam kill him with bombs, but I had been practicing this phase without bombs so I put in the effort to dodge the upcoming patterns.
Be it skill or dumb luck I managed to dodge the next 2 patterns and so too did I dodge the 3rd pattern. Now the 4th pattern is something I RARELY see for very long as in all my practice runs I either have enough bombs to spam kill him, mostly out of safety, or I have done enough damage with bombs before hand that I kill him before things become too chaotic. However I just focused and actually lasted through several seconds of this final pattern through very likely dumb luck and before I knew it the boss died! I managed the final boss No Miss and with only 1 bomb!
Thanks to this when the stage clear screen comes up it gives you an extra 10 million points for every lie you have remaining giving me a massive 30 million more points on top of the 74 million points I earned through the game. So my final score was 104,264,259!
Now obviously better players can get higher scores, so too can better players achieve a 1CC No Miss with far less bomb usage than me. But this was a personal achievement and I am VERY proud of what I managed to accomplish. =3 It feels incredible to not only be able to play this game I have wanted to play for maybe more than a decade, but to also 1CC the 2nd difficulty in the game.
With all that said if you have even a remote enjoyment of these kinds of games I HIGHLY recommend Mushihimesama. Furthermore the Switch port functions VERY well and I have only experienced a couple crashes, but ANY game can crash so yeah. =P It is $20 on the e-shop and worth every penny in my opinion. Furthermore it has a novice mode which makes all 3 selectable difficulties easier, so if you want to go into this a little slower then that is an option. I just wanted to go all out into Maniac personally.
