February 2020 Shmup Club - Grid Seeker

[SaturdayDevelopment]

Had an excellent, fully-caffeinated run this morning:  452,860
Level 1: 50k bomb bonus and 50k helper-copter bonus
Level 2: 50k bomb bonus
Level 3: 50k helper-copter bonus (spammed bombs hard)
Level 4: Took a late bullet from the first big plane and lost all my momentum.  Crash and burn.

[EZ Racer]

So I wasn't able to get started on Grid Seeker until late last week. Spent a fair amount of time over the weekend with it.

I really want to like this game; interesting gameplay, fun mechanic with the grids and bullet collecting, solid graphics and sound. But so far, I just haven't. I want to be able to shoot while moving my ship forward on the screen, and I can't do that without moving the Grids.

While I realize this is a direct port of an arcade game, every game I find myself wishing the Grids were controlled by the L and R triggers. I realize that it is probably part of the challenge of the game to have the controls set up in this manner, but even then, basing the challenge on a control gimmick rather than on the natural flow of the game feels a bit artificial.

I probably just need to spend more time getting used to it. But it just seems like it would make the controls smoother and the game so much more accesible with this change.

My best score is just under 120,000 as I'm still struggling to consistantly defeat the Level 1 boss. No pics to post yet.

On a side note, playing it on a borrowed copy of Taito Legends 2. Had never heard of Metal Black until I saw it right next to Grid Seeker on the game select screen. It's an interesting shmup as well.

[SaturdayDevelopment]

So I wasn't able to get started on Grid Seeker until late last week. Spent a fair amount of time over the weekend with it.

I really want to like this game; interesting gameplay, fun mechanic with the grids and bullet collecting, solid graphics and sound. But so far, I just haven't. I want to be able to shoot while moving my ship forward on the screen, and I can't do that without moving the Grids.

While I realize this is a direct port of an arcade game, every game I find myself wishing the Grids were controlled by the L and R triggers. I realize that it is probably part of the challenge of the game to have the controls set up in this manner, but even then, basing the challenge on a control gimmick rather than on the natural flow of the game feels a bit artificial.

I probably just need to spend more time getting used to it. But it just seems like it would make the controls smoother and the game so much more accesible with this change.

My best score is just under 120,000 as I'm still struggling to consistantly defeat the Level 1 boss. No pics to post yet.

On a side note, playing it on a borrowed copy of Taito Legends 2. Had never heard of Metal Black until I saw it right next to Grid Seeker on the game select screen. It's an interesting shmup as well.

Check your instructions.  I'm using the Xbox version of TL2 and the right trigger auto-fires without moving the GRIDs.  If you use A, then the GRIDs move when you move (which I've never been able to properly control).  I agree that if I had buttons to control the GRID movement, I would use them more.  However, I tend to just keep them out in direct front.

I also checked out Metal Black and thought it was a pretty interesting shmup that I've never heard of.

[MetalFRO]

@SaturdayDevelopment - nice score! Looks like you're making good progress

@EZ Racer - I know what you mean, but consider the context of the time the game came out. Outside of Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat, and NEO GEO games, very few arcade games utilized more than 2 buttons. In a bit of an interesting trade-off, you also get auto-fire, which wasn't necessarily a standard thing in arcade shmups until a couple years after this point. It's part of the challenge of the game, and while I agree it can be frustrating, there are moments where it works well.

Speaking of which, I've been trying to refine my strategy for the Stage 2 boss, so I can be more consistent with beating it on 1 life, and not dying. Sadly, I'm not quite there yet. I have a save-state in MAME set up just before the boss, and I looped through that a bunch last night. In doing so, I've discovered that the bosses seem to have some RNG with how they play out. Using auto-fire, so the fire rate is exactly the same each time, I've noticed that sometimes I'll get a hail of bullets during a particular moment in the boss fight, and other times I won't. If I take out the right-side extending arm first, and then sit off just to the right of its position, at the bottom of the screen, I can often just sit there and pelt the cannon on the back that fires the orange orbs. In doing so, sometimes the small turrets will shoot pink bullets at me, and I'll have to lightly adjust my position, so the GRIDs will catch them, and other times, I'll get no bullets. It doesn't seem to be tied to how many of the small turrets are still on the left-side extending arm. But it's not an absolute safe spot 100% of the time. Also, I figured out that, once I've eliminated the right-side extending arm, and can make those minor adjustments to catch bullets, with the bomber, fully powered up, its wide shot is enough to take out the incoming missiles, and deal damage to the boss, so it's just a matter of keeping that up until it goes down. That makes the bomber the most effective craft against that boss, in my opinion. Also, the wing extensions on the bomber are not vulnerable, so you don't have to factor that in as part of the hit box.

[MetalFRO]

Huzzah! A new PB this evening, using the Bomber, and reaching stage 5! That was my absolute best run in this game, by a fair margin. I was just on point for the run, and everything came together, until I hit stage 6, then it fell apart quickly. But I feel like it's doable. Not sure if I'll progress past that, but I might have to practice a bit in stage 4 and beyond, to see if I can at least get a little further before the end of the month. I do also want to try and credit-feed to the end, if I can do so w/o crashing the game, like I did before.

ALSO, I mapped out the bonus totals for the number of bombs you finish the stage with:

# Bombs                      # Bonus Points
----------------------------------------------
0                                  0
1                                 1000
2                                 3000
3                                 10000
4                                 20000
4 & full meter               50000

As mentioned before, having a surviving helper nets you 50K. Also, you get an additional 100 points per enemy killed in each stage, and it seems like it's cumulative per level you advance, maybe? It's not a big bonus, but if you take out a lot of enemies as you go along, you get a slight point boost, so you can take advantage of that.

[MetalFRO]

WARNING!
A NEW PB
773,910
APPROACHES

[MetalFRO]

Anyone have any final thoughts on the game that I can include in the podcast notes?

[SaturdayDevelopment]

Grid Seeker is a hidden gem.  I had never heard of it before this playthrough, but I'm glad to have checked it out.  The GRID system is a unique and fun way of managing bombs and defensive strategy.  I was glad that the scoring was pretty straightforward, considering this was my first shot at a monthly playthrough.  The soundtrack was excellent and had a good variety of tracks.  The tracks on level 3 and 5 were highlights for me.

One other item of note is that Taito Legends 2 is a solid compilation of games.  I like that they had 3d mockups of the arcade cabinets for each game, along with some marketing materials.  I tried a few of the other shooters, but they paled in comparison to Grid Seeker.  I did find that trying out other games after an intense round of GRID seeker was a good way of cooling down.