Gradius Gaiden - 1cc (Normal, Vic Viper, SOM?DL, 1-ALL)
First, a couple of timestamped tricks for anyone working on this game:
21:45 When this boss enters its second stage, you park your ship in the upper left corner with your options underneath you and just chill. There is always the chance that the option hunter will use this inopportune moment to harass you, however.
24:03 I like to dart past this boss's opening lasers and point blank it for a quick kill at its last stage. Just be careful doing this as I accidentally hit a gunner going in too soon when I tried it the first time in this run and had to recover.
36:50 this wall boss actually has a safe spot! I didn't see many people using this in the clears I looked up (maybe it doesn't work on harder difficulties?), but it totally trivializes this fight. I use a red line in the background to get the right x-axis on the screen and simply center my bullets in the core's center for the perfect y-axis. You do have to move forward and back horizontally when it moves its lasers, but it's very easy.
37:43 This boss is a little scary and a bit of a punk who did end one of my clear attempts. I like to put my ships at a diagonal here to point blank him with an option during his first attack. Note, this is only safe-ish and you'll need a shield as I usually take one hit while holding this spot, but it's worth it for the damage output and easy to get consistent.
40:00 No need to deal with these dragons. Just park in the upper left corner. Also when it turns into the brain from Salamander, you don't need to shoot its eye--it'll just transform in a few seconds, so simply avoid it.
Today is a good day. Haven't uploaded a clear since January! Life has just gotten so busy that I've been playing shmups a lot more casually lately and focusing on other stuff, but I'll always get a little pew pewing in when I can. I've actually been playing a lot of survival horror this year for some reason.
Anyway this game slaps. It may honestly be the single best Konami shooter ever made and that is truly saying something because I freaking love Konami shooters. The presentation and difficulty is just top notch.
This game does not let you mix and match weapons as far as I know, but it DOES let you rearrange the power up order which is fantastic. I put options as my second power up which allows me to recover extremely fast and efficiently in my 2 deaths doing this run. Thus, the "Gradius Syndrome" is largely abated in this game.
This game and R-Type Delta are not just peak games in their series, they're peak games of the mighty Playstation. What a console that was! What a console it IS! What a library. 10/10. Play this one!!