RF Generation Message Board

In the annals of shooting game history, there are a handful of games that transcend the normal genre boundaries, and achieve legendary status outside the niche community. Radiant Silvergun is well known for being an expensive Sega Saturn game, as well as for its complex control scheme. Cave shooters are well known for their difficulty, even outside of the core shmup fan base. And a large percentage of the Touhou fandom doesn't even play the STG's, but are only interested in the characters and lore. But few shooting games are as infamous as Raizing's Battle Garegga. Few games have evoked the passion in the community this game has, and few games have revealed themselves to have as many layers of complexity, while remaining approachable. Battle Garegga is still so highly lauded, nearly a quarter century after its original release.

Debuting in arcades in February, 1996, Battle Garegga was helmed by famed shmup programmer Shinobu Yagawa, who had previously cut his teeth on the Famicom, with the impressive shooter Recca. After joining Raizing, he developed Garegga, alongside programmers Yasunari Watanabe and Yūichi Ochiai. The game was well received among shooting game fans, and quickly became a favorite for players. The game's infamous rank system has become legendary in shmup circles, because of how everything you do in the game affects your rank, which in turn, affects the difficulty. Whereas in most games, you don't want to ever lose a life, Garegga often requires you to sacrifice one periodically, in a strategic fashion, to keep the game's rank under control. This is just one of the many layers the game has to offer, which is why it has become a popular title for scoring.

Starting in January 2021, the RF Generation Shmup Club will begin our 2nd annual, year-long scoring competition! January's game of the month will be Battle Garegga, and that will remain the overall scoring competition game for the entire year. All available versions of the game will be viable for scoring, including the arcade original (via PCB, MAME, Retroarch, etc.), the Sega Saturn version, and the more recent port from the M2 ShotTriggers team, Battle Garegga REv.2016. We'll get details together as to the different scoring categories, but competition will be available for multiple iterations and skill levels. Currently, the game is available digitally on both the PlayStation Network and the Microsoft Xbox Live online store for Xbox One. A physical PS4 version was released in Asian regions, and is still available through some online retailers, though the North American release was only available through Limited Run Games, and is sold out, though it can still be purchased on the secondary market. If you're a savvy collector, or feeling expensive, there's always the highly lauded Sega Saturn version. And for those who prefer playing on PC, emulation will be an acceptable means of participation. And of course, if you own or have access to a PCB or cabinet, we'd love to have your input and see some score submissions!

Scoring categories will be forthcoming, as will a Google Doc with the leaderboard. Keep an eye on this post for updates, as we get closer to January!

Participants:
MetalFRO
Addicted
Gamer707b
zoydo
Duke.Togo

This video will likely be a good resource for folks! While it likely won't help with scoring, it should at least give some fundamentals, and good tips on survival, and learning scoring from there can be the next goal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQHqmPgw_80

My favorite shooter!! But sadly I suck at it. Still love it though. The game has so much depth that people are still discovering things about it. That's nuts. And the look. Ahhhhh. Heck , I might get a quick credit in tonight.

Nice! This is a game that I've found daunting, and somewhat unapproachable for years. But it's friendlier than ever with the PS4 port, and with so much information out there now, in terms of managing rank, and how to approach it. I'm definitely looking forward to digging into it.

I'm a really poor Garegga player, still haven't figured out how the rank management and scoring exactly works and i played it quite a bit. I get along a bit better with easy and arrange, but arcade still wrecks me everytime. Love the game anyway and it has one of the best videogame Soundtracks ever made, if you ask me.

Yeah, Garegga's sountrack is on point, for sure! Welcome aboard, zoydo, as usual :)

Here's a good discussion on Garegga that should be useful for us all. It's pretty lengthy, but has some high level discussion that will be beneficial for anyone looking to dig into the game, particularly from a scoring standpoint:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz1kXyXOz_4

I'll be trash, but I'm in.

I wanted to make sure to drop the link to the Shmups Wiki page on Battle Garegga, because there's a wealth of good information there to glean:

https://shmups.wiki/library/Battle_Garegga (https://shmups.wiki/library/Battle_Garegga)

The page also links to sub articles about Advanced Rank control, Stages, Bosses, and a Video Index, where you can watch high scoring runs for tips. Lots of great stuff to go through!

I managed to make it to stage 3 on a single credit last night. One tip I want to pass on to everyone is, toward the beginning of stage 2, there's a building, once you fly over land, on the left side of the screen. If you bomb that building, you cause all kinds of birds to fly out of it. If you bomb and shoot those birds, you rack up a ton of points. You can use that to reach, or nearly reach, 1 million, to get the 1st extend.

Hey Guys,
sorry for being a bit late to the Garegga-Party, but i had some motivational issues this month (and maybe got a bit distracted by Aleste Collection).
But at least i played a score for every mode:

Arcade:
[img width=640 height=360]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50873879641_d68f98f8f1_z.jpg[/img]

Premium:
[img width=640 height=360]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50873170318_e83e1491d0_z.jpg[/img]

Super Easy:
[img width=640 height=360]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50873879726_a77204e46d_z.jpg[/img]

Very cool, zoydo! Was the Super Easy mode a clear? I assume it was, given the score, but I'm curious. Also, I need to give Premium a try, I haven't messed with that yet.

Super Easy was a clear, Premium St.7 Boss (Black Heart) and Arcade Stage 3 Boss.

Anyone have final thoughts on Battle Garegga?