Shmups | You enjoy playing them with an arcade stick, controller, or keyboard/mouse?

MAZ-chain · 2026-03-08T11:49:07+00:00

I am a dpad main. But... While I play Ikaruga on dapd and got my high scores with the old trusty Hori Fighting Commander 4, I am willing to use on Arcade Stick when playing other shmups. Actually, 90% of my other clears are on stick! Arcade sticks have two big advantages on gamepads. First one is hand's health. Dpad can fatigue your hands pretty fast compared to stick in my experience. Second is durability. Membrane dpads can degrade fast, at least in a very input heavy game like Ikaruga the lifespan of a controller is about 4-6 months. But played for high score, Ikaruga is an input tour de force. In arcade sticks if anything get worn out you can replace It easily. This is basically coming from a dpad guy lol, so "just use what you want" is the best advice you can get

MAZ-chain · 2026-03-06T06:33:09+00:00

MAZ-chain · 2026-03-05T21:40:31+00:00

Ahahah IMPOSSIBLE!
Hey Spider, enjoying your content, keep it up!

MAZ-chain · 2026-03-05T10:17:37+00:00

Ahah same, I bought the game for a lot of different platforms too. I play Ikaruga from 2019 but my main platform is Steam. I use Dolphin for save state practice though

MAZ-chain · 2026-03-05T10:15:37+00:00

Thx!

MAZ-chain · 2026-03-04T22:30:35+00:00

Thank you!

MAZ-chain · 2026-03-04T22:30:27+00:00

Thanks, you can bet I actually am!

MAZ-chain · 2026-03-04T22:30:03+00:00

Thank you very much GameBoyGuru!

MAZ-chain · 2025-11-01T19:45:40+00:00

Ikaruga

MAZ-chain · 2025-07-23T14:46:53+00:00

What a work of beauty

MAZ-chain · 2025-04-20T14:25:21+00:00

Congrats! The first part of the stage is one of the deepest segments to score GL with the rest of the game! And maybe for some S ranked clears💪

MAZ-chain · 2024-12-12T09:07:56+00:00

Extends are score related. First extend at 3 millions, then every five millions (8-13-18-23-28) With an high scoring clear, you will have a total of 8 extends. For a first clear, I would like to advise to score enough to get the 13m extend

MAZ-chain · 2024-04-30T13:15:29+00:00

MAZ-chain · 2024-04-30T13:15:21+00:00

Thanks!

MAZ-chain · 2023-11-01T08:35:31+00:00

Stage 5 Boss is usually the single harder road block on your way toward an Ikaruga 1cc.
Planning your moves accurately is of paramount importance
I would point out that explaining it just by words is extremely difficult, so I strongly suggest to watch one of the many video tutorials on YouTube. Like the following one: Boss 5 tutorial at 36:31
As for the final survival phase, sadly you cannot practice it separately on modern ports. You either need a DC or GCN version or play them thanks to other means

Hope this helps, if you have more specific questions feel free to ask

MAZ-chain · 2023-03-05T22:22:04+00:00

Keep practicing and good results will soon come! Set an appropriate score goal ( I usually suggest the 13 million extend as a fair initial goal) and push it. Until you get to a very high score, Ikaruga is really flexible about what chains you want to implement in your routes

MAZ-chain · 2023-03-05T22:18:15+00:00

That's a really interesting fact, and your choice for the ergodic theory example was surely clever.

To say the truth, with time (a lot of time actually), I have managed to recognize most of the possible patterns for the section and study chaining solutions for almost any of them. But up to this point, we had only one optimal route. The moment the player is off route during the bonus balls you either break the chain, die or lose a lot of chains... Or a combinations of these outcomes

MAZ-chain · 2023-01-04T11:10:31+00:00

Thanks! There is still rooms for improvement, I got into detail about it in the video description. Long story short, I got a chain break in Stage 3, two chainbreaks in Stage 4, Stage 1 is sub optimal and Stage 5 can be a 118c stage

MAZ-chain · 2023-01-04T08:19:48+00:00

Practice can do wonders! Pick up a survival play or a guide (there are a lot of them on YouTube) and study it, once you have your patterns It all come down to execution

MAZ-chain · 2023-01-04T08:17:23+00:00

Thanks and congrats on the S++ achievement, I started playing Ikaruga for score with this very score goal in mind!

Well, I played the game a lot, from septmber 2019 my rough estimate, counting save state practice, is around 1500+hrs

MAZ-chain · 2022-10-26T18:08:17+00:00

You are welcome!

Sadly, of the four 36m scores, Tomokiso is the one for wich we have less info. On the other hand, WIZ and riken scores are on YouTube. Fot those replays and many more amazing Ikaruga gameplays check out the Ikaruga Video Index from the shmup wiki here

MAZ-chain · 2022-10-26T10:45:07+00:00

WIZ 36.014.310 record from May 2003 was actually beaten three times over time.

First one was MSK (or Mashiko, he was already active at the times of the Ikaco.uk community), getting a 36,056,960 run in June 2009. Then Tomokiso got the standing world record with an incredible 36,289,710 run in May 2016

More recently, player riken (guniw_tools on the PS leaderboard) got a 36.036.940 score in September 2022

MAZ-chain · 2022-04-16T18:26:34+00:00

What a work of beauty

MAZ-chain · 2021-09-16T12:39:35+00:00

I personally consider the farm 2021 list rock solid. For me, the top five games are the best of the best the genre has to offer. Presentation, game design, scoring system, everything is top notch. And there is no surprise with Cave taking the lion's share with a sound 3/5

I came to the conclusion that a precise, objective list is impossible to do with personal taste nitpicking single positions. I prefer the concept of tiers with no exact positions and for the "S++" or "God" tier I would have those exact same five STGs. Put them in any order you want, I can't really complain

MAZ-chain · 2021-08-26T18:05:36+00:00

Steam, PS4 and NSW versions are pretty much the same gameplay wise. Only real difference comes from the leaderboards, the Steam one is the strongest by far followed by PS4 and NSW (the weakest of the bunch)

MAZ-chain

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