The New Zealand Story arcade speedrun - 8:17 dumplechan 2026-09-18 | The New Zealand Story arcade speedrun - 8:17
Spawn: In the Demons Hand arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-09-21 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Spawn: In the Demon's Hand played using Flycast v2.1. In-game timer: 8'35"16. Learned some strats from Cool Pup: Pick Sam, shoot them repeatedly, if your health gets low switch to insanely-strong punches. As long you get injured JUST enough to go into angry mode (but not enough to die and lose 12 whole seconds), you can dish out damage much faster with those punches than with your gun or dynamite. Is this a great game? No. Do I have another "it's not great, but..." point to bring up? Also no.
005 arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-09-21 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game 005, played with WolfMAME 0.257. Score: 54,800. Some maniacs on MARP have scored over a million points, for now I'm content to just clear two loops. This game has the saddest version of the Pink Panther theme I've ever heard...
Power Stone 2 arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-09-17 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Power Stone 2, played with Flycast 2.1. Score: 18,100. Not a very high score, but hey - at least I cleared it! In the arena levels, it's a battle royale, and it's easy to end up stunlocked by enemy items or super-attacks. Staying away from the ruckus and repeatedly opening chests, then safely nuking folks with your super attack, is a recipe for a reliable (if very low scoring) win. The difficulty curve varies a lot from game to game based on who the AI decides to target and what items they got. The elevator level can be a good one for a 1cc because the CPU players mostly miss the elevator, and the level with ships *can* be an easy clear if you make it to the gun turret and they don't immediately kick you out. The last level can be an absolute nightmare, but by jumping and grabbing one of the pillars then carefully jumping and perching on top of it, you can sit out two of the wooden-puppet fights beforehand, to make it easy-ish to reach the final boss with full-ish health and two gems. Grab a third gem ASAP, then jump up and use your super-attack a couple of times, hustle to collect 3 gems again, and repeat.
World Grand Prix 2 arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-09-11 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game World Grand Prix 2, played with WolfMAME 0.257. Time: 4'03"79. This is a much harder game than the first World Grand Prix - the opponents go faster (and can bump into you), and it's harder to take sharp turns. I still don't feel like I completely got the hang of the controls (in addition to pushing LEFT and RIGHT to turn, you can push UP and DOWN to lean), but I handled them well enough to come in 1st place.
World Grand Prix arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-09-11 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game World Grand Prix [wgpu], played with WolfMAME 0.257. Score: 120. This is a shockingly easy racing game - your bike is faster than the rest, and the game is pretty forgiving about auto-correcting turns to keep you on the track. If you hold down the accelerator, turn when the road signs tell you to, and ease off the gas going into big turns (especially U-turns), you can easily beat the other racers. You can even recover from a crash or two if you build up a good lead. Turns get a little scarier in later races, and race #5 is a bit slippery because of the rain, but this is still an easy game on default settings.
Ganbare Marine Kun Error% speedrun dumplechan 2023-09-08 | Error% in 0:29, breaking the sub-30 barrier. (Get it...SUB?)
Wally o Sagase! arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-09-06 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Wally o Sagase! [wwallyj], played with WolfMAME 0.257. Where's Waldo in arcade game form. Successfully completed 36/40 stages of the first loop - plus one from the second loop for good measure. This is a pretty silly 1cc project because it's simultaneously very easy and very hard. On the easy side of the ledger: Some stages have only 2 possible hiding spots for Waldo (at least in the first loop), and several bonus stages (like the lumberjack) are trivial. On the hard side: You only have so much time, and once it runs out, that's game over. And some of the "Where's Waldo" sections have a lot of decoys: The be-hatted heads popping out of pots are tricky, the Waldo doppelgangers in space are worse, and the deck of cards on the final "memories of waldo" stage is the worst of all. At least Wenda (or is it Wilma?) keeps us well stocked on ice cream cones to refill our TIMER.Below are some notes on clearing the game:- For the button-mashing mini-game, you want to press the button at an *accelerating* speed - just mashing as fast as humanly possible doesn't work. - For the football-tackle mini-game, I turned up the analog sensitivity and used the keyboard. Mouse control is no good for this one, you need to be ceaselessly scrolling up very fast for multiple seconds. (Not sure how hard this would be with the original trackball)- There is limited (but long) list of possible errors for the "find the mistake" levels. For instance, in the picture of the animals: The NW tree can have an owl with glasses or flowers added. The NNW lion can be wearing an outfit. The N yellow bird can become a brown bird, white chicken, or monkey. The NE zebra can change colors. A little divot can appear in the NE. The antlers in mid-NW can turn silver, have a bird's nest in them, or have a scroll by their side. The mid-SW giraffe can have something tied to their foot. The SE elephant can have a colorful cape. That's 15 options (and maybe there are a couple more). Anyway: Knowing about these differences ahead of time (especially the less obvious ones) gives you a head start on spotting them. I completely missed the color-changing race car in this run!
Wheels Runner arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-09-04 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Wheels Runner [wheelrun], played with WolfMAME 0.257. Score: 65,700 - cleared an 8-stage loop plus a couple more. At first it just seems like a cheap knock-off of Super Sprint, but after playing it for a while, it reveals itself as a REALLY cheap knock-off of Super Sprint, with CURSED AND HAUNTED hitboxes. Still, the gimmick of courses that switch layout back and forth is kind of neat. After a while you get a sense for whether the bridge will actually be there in a second when you drive across it. The makers, International Games, shamelessly shoehorned their "IG" logo into the victory screen, overhead point-dispensing blimp, and a couple of the stages. This game starts off easy, but stage 8 is really rough - the opponent cars drive effectively, there's very little room to pass them, and it's easy to be tripped up by the track switch. I *barely* beat that yellow car - in fact, it looks like the jank hitboxes may have erred in my favor.
Water Match arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-09-01 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Water Match [wmatch], played with WolfMAME 0.257. Score: 59,908 - a new MARP record! Similar to the game Track & Field but the events are water-themed and the controls are two joysticks plus an action button. Does double the joysticks mean double the fun? In this case, probably not - especially if you don't have the stickers on the side of the original cabinet to explain how to control your character. INSCRUTABLE! Here are notes on controls just in case anyone's crazy enough to challenge the MARP record:- Freestyle swim: Alternate between left stick up and right stick down, then left stick down and right stick up. Every time your character finishes a stroke and extends an arm, you should switch the sticks twice. Don't go too fast or it won't count. When you reach the wall, hit the action button to turn around and swim back!- Canoe: Alternate pushing the left then right sticks down to paddle forward. Push the left stick down repeatedly to turn RIGHT, push the right stick down repeatedly to turn LEFT. The second canoe event can be won by just rushing forward without turning at all, and accepting the crashes. (In the International games in the second loop, you actually have to steer!)- Rowing: Alternate between left stick up and right stick down, then left stick down and right stick up. Make your first move just as your crew-mates are about to start a stroke. After that, you can make your move quite early and it'll still count (I was switching as soon as I saw the splash of the previous stroke in the water)- Butterfly (forward parts of swimming medley): Swirl the sticks in a circle (left clockwise, right counterclockwise)
Samurai Shodown arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-08-30 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Samurai Shodown [samsho], played with WolfMAME 0.257. Score: 448,330. Thanks to @1CCZio for tips (and a video) on how to 1cc with a defensive Earthquake. Earthquake's normal moves have good range and damage, and he's TOO BIG TO THROW. So the strategy is to block - stand block as soon as they jump, duck block otherwise - and wait for them to do a move you can counter with A+B (or just B). On some opponents like Gen-An I backdash to avoid getting crossed up. Of the opponents, the most notable are Amakusa (final boss: You can throw at the start of the round then never attack again) and Tam-Tam (who dishes out a lot of chip damage, but often does a standing slash you can counter with B). Ukyo is also notable for having a special move that hits your crouching block - I just hoped he didn't use it too often!
Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-08-29 | A 1-credit clear of the Neo Geo arcade game Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer [gowcaizr], played with WolfMAME 0.257. Score: 296,500. This was a hard-fought victory: My strategies work well much of the time, but sometimes the CPU surprises me with moves I don't have an answer for. Against the damage powerhouses P.Twins and Ohga I can't afford much bad luck. I had a lot of failed runs along the way. As frustrating as they were at the time, I really do like this game - the OST grew on me, I kind of like over-the-top character designs. Maybe it's just Stockholm Syndrome from playing it for a few hours, but I think this is a fun fighting game 1cc - and more challenging than the typical fighting game clear.
Virtua Athletics arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-08-26 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Virtua Athletics, played with Flycast 2.1. Final score: 5,589. A collection of athletic-themed mini-games in the vein of Track & Field and many many other games it inspired (Strength and Skill, Gold Medalist, Hyper Sports, Field Day, Hunchback Olympics, etc.) It's quite easy to complete the game. There's definitely room to do much better on the events than this quick-and-easy playthrough - but hey, we did set at least one world record!
Vicious Circle arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-08-25 | A 1-credit clear of the unreleased arcade game Vicious Circle [vcircle], played with WolfMAME 0.254. A trashy 1cc of a trashy game! Vicious Circle is like a half-baked version of Killer Instinct with homelier graphics. Mashing normal attacks works surprisingly well against the AI - duck+mashing C is enough to win the whole dang round against some of them if you land the first hit and you're good at mashing.
Super Punch-Out!! arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-08-24 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Super Punch-Out!! [spnchout], played with WolfMAME 0.257. Score: 123,560.
Success Joe arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-08-23 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Success Joe [scessjoe], played with WolfMAME 0.257. A genuinely unsettling game. It probably wasn't intended to be creepy but the eerie grating music, the bloody boxer faces, the lonesome echoes of voices and punch sound effects combine to make potent nightmare fuel. Strategy notes below.Stage 1: Dodge (down+left) up to four punches then counterStage 2: When he approaches, mash Up+AStage 3: Hit A+B at the same time to dangle your arms, then when he approaches hit up+AStage 4: Dangle your arms, then when he approaches hit up+BStage 5: Strafe left or right and punch until he jumps and ducks down in front of you. Wait just a moment, then punch 4 times in a row (he'll stand into your first punch and eat the rest)Stage 6: Dangle your arms, then when he approaches hit up+A
Top Ranking Stars arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-08-22 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Top Ranking Stars [trstar], played with WolfMAME 0.257. Score: 811,600. Juanman learned how to 1cc this, LordBBH streamed it, now I'm doing my copycat 1cc. Strategy by fight:- Shouichi: Hold up+C, release as he approaches (release a little early)- Tamshing: Hold up+C, release just after he gets near- Bruce: Down+Forward+B then down+back+B, repeat- Nipper: Down+Forward+C then down+back+B, repeat. (This is the hardest fight for me because of RNG)- Michael: Hold up+C, release just after he gets near- Kabuki: Hold up+C, release as he approaches (release a little early)- Final boss: Old down+C, as soon as he starts his special press up, block and immediately release button to counter
Youjyuden arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-08-20 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Youjyuden [youjyudn], played with WolfMAME 0.257. Score: 206,500. NO MISS, BABY! This is a shmup/run-and-gun hybrid developed by Irem. It shares the same dank boss-yelling-in-pain OWWWW! sound effect as Kid Niki, another Irem game from the same era.This isn't a long game but it gets pretty difficult, especially since death causes you to lose your shot power. Dying at certain points - like just before the medusa boss on stage 3 - makes for a very difficult recovery. The game has a mix of ground stages (1, 3, 6, 7) and flying stages (2, 4, 5). Tapping button-1 fires your normal shot (which is aimed, if you're on the ground) and button-2 fires a straight-ahead secondary shot, which can be powered up twice by grabbing blue potions. Some enemies only take damage from the secondary shot, and fighting them without the full shot range from 2 power-ups is much harder.Clearing the game mostly involves getting the hang of how enemies behave and remembering where they spawn. A couple of tricks:- On the autoscroller shmup stages, hugging the bottom of the screen is recommended much of the time. While there, you don't have to worry about getting ambushed from the sides - the enemies that swoop in from sides are just above you, and they can't shoot down until after they turn upward. - I'm taking a planned route on the last stage where I can safely run past a lot of enemies. This route took a lot of savestate practice to learn, but it makes the level much more approachable. The main RNG I still need to watch out for is that the witches can appear right in front of me, which requires either stopping or making a well-timed secondary shot. Firing just as the *last* witch's shot explodes is roughly the right timing for the first section.
SegaSonic the Hedgehog arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-08-20 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game SegaSonic the Hedgehog [sonic], played with WolfMAME 0.257. Score: 904. This is not a complicated game, but controlling things properly is tricky! I played using a keyboard, with sensitivity set to 80, and with trackball increment/decrement speed set to 26. BUT! During cutscenes, I bumped up the speed to 36 for the desert level and for the final escape, in order to get enough speed. Having speed any higher makes the traps harder to deal with because it's easy to either BONK off of them or get stuck in a skid animation when you switch directions. Higher speed also makes the last portion of the water section (the hardest part of the game) even harder.
Muscle Master arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-08-15 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Muscle Master [musclem], played with WolfMAME 0.257. Score: 772. Not much to this one - the challenge and charm of the actual arcade machine probably came from the pump control. .inp file uploaded to MARP: http://replay.marpirc.net/inp/9/6/b/ugh_musclem_772_wolf257.zip
Search and Rescue arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-08-13 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Search and Rescue [searchar] played with WolfMAME 0.257. Score: 449,230. A run-and-gun with a rotary joystick to aim. You roam around a crashed ship full of zombies and GUTS levels and aliens clearly inspired by Giger. You have your choice of three shot types - the big fire is my weapon of choice because its charge shot summons a shield that protects you from several hits (or many seconds) before dissipating. Use the shield, go slowly, and learn boss patterns, and it's not that hard. US romset [searcharu] is much harder (the elevator spawns are rude). Speedrun strats are possible - if you're being chased by a pack of zombies, then fewer monsters spawn ahead of you - but I opted for the "slow-and-steady" route. You don't end up rescuing anyone - kind of a downer given the title!
Dog Fight arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-08-12 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Dog Fight - cleared a loop of four battle levels plus bonus stage. The side of the screen is a safespot for many enemy waves - at least on the first loop!
Momoko 120% arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-08-12 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Momoko 120% [momoko], played with WolfMAME 0.255. Score: 549,500. Made it through 1 loop and part of a second. Momoko 120% is an odd little platformer where you play Momoko, a young girl escaping from school (and later, from work) before the building burns down, then making a getaway on your MOMOKO blimp. After clearing all five stages, you get married, then have a daughter, who then has her own fire-fleeing adventures. It's the circle of life! Momoko 120% has a messy difficulty curve: The first levels are almost free, but later on there are hazards that give you little or no time to react like flames firing projectiles at you or deadly droplets raining from above. (Bouncing up on a trampoline into a droplet - as I did on this run - is especially infuriating)
Gunbarich arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-08-08 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Gunbarich [gnbarich], using Marion. Score: 13,993,700. This is my favorite ball-and-paddle arcade game, because you have some control on the ball's trajectory - after you hit it with your flipper you can curve its flight for a while. I really like the graphics and music, even the "LUCKY!" sound effect is endearing. Playing for a 1-credit clear can frustrating, given how big a difference one lucky (or unlucky) shot or power-up can make, and given how easy it is to time-over on cruel levels like 6-1. It took me over 100 attempts to get the clear (and it's a minor miracle I made it with one life in reserve). Playing Gunbarich for score is a pretty silly because so much score depends on getting a lucky chain. There's a high skill ceiling - but you still need to pray to the RNG. Strategy notes below! Strategy notes:- You can bounce the ball by just bumping into it, or strike the ball by hitting the button to hit it with your flippers. Striking the ball (and striking enemy shots) is generally a good idea to give you control over their flight, but if there are walls or enemies near the bottom of the screen sometimes it's safer not to strike the pink ball - just let it bounce off your paddle on a slow, predictable path.- There are several item pick-ups. M is multi-ball. S slows down the ball to its starting speed (useless early in a level, but helpful later after the ball has been bouncing around and accelerating for a while). The H powerup lets a struck ball pierce several normal blocks, until it hits the top of the playfield or breaks too many. The W powerup puts wings on your flippers and lets you REALLY curve balls around (maybe more than you want to; it's easy to accidentally lose a struck ball when you're moving the paddle) The rare purple ? power-up gives you either super-shots that can break even gold bricks, super-wings, a super-multiball, or the ability to fire shots from your paddle that destroy all blocks (even gold ones). You can't have both H and W at once, and getting a normal power-up disables the ? powerup.- The order of the first 4 stages (temple, Christmas, pumpkins, clockwork) is random. The stages and bosses are harder if you play them later in the rotation. There's also some randomness on stage 6 where you play 2 of 3 possible levels. The order after you first power-on the game is fixed. I stuck with the default order because it's easy to repeatably play that order, and it seems to be a good one: 6-1 is really rough, but getting the temple out of the way first makes life easier. - After a certain number of points, a normal stage will spawn a special blue chest. You have a limited time to hit it from any side to show a bomb, then hit the bomb to clear the level! This is a huge help on some levels, though pretty useless if the level is easy (like 3-1) or the bomb spawn point is inaccessible (like 5-2). It's not easy to control your score to make the chests show up on the levels you want, so it's mostly just something to eagerly take advantage of when it happens. (About 1.4 million triggers the chest at the start of 4-1 if you haven't triggered it already. You can spawn the BOM chest at least twice in one run)- My first couple of shots on each level are carefully planned - for instance, on 5-2 I rush to the right side, hit the button to spawn the ball more quickly, then launch it up the channel quickly before the moving chest-monsters appear. After the first shot it's a matter of responding to what happens and using the power-ups you get.- On 7-1: Bouncing the ball off toward the side of the screen, on a more horizontal path, is generally what you want. Closer to vertical is bad unless you can shoot straight up the middle.- For harder bosses (level 4-3 and later), send the pink ball up above and to the side as much as you can, to make it bounce around minimize how many times you have to return it. Don't even worry about whether the ball is hitting the boss, you'll do plenty of damage by reflecting shots. On the 6-3, 7-3, and 7-4 bosses, avoid standing directly underneath him when he fires a beam. - On 7-2, getting a ball up top to bounce off the chests is a semi-reliable way to score a huge number of points. If you want a world-record score, that's the trick to go for. (I was happy to get my ball back down so I could finish the level without running out of time)
Golgo 13: Kiseki no Dandou arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-08-06 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Golgo 13: Kiseki no Dandou [g13knd]. Score: 23,697,300 and accuracy rate 790.3. I had a lot harder time with this game than the first Golgo 13 arcade game - there are some pretty precise shots that I learned a visual cue to line up on (the waterskier rope and shooting up the tank's cannon), and a couple of scenarios where it's hard to react to the cue telling you who to shoot (the dog stage, and the one where you need to shoot one of four men).
Golgo 13 arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-08-01 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Golgo 13. Score: 22,978,380 and accuracy score: 767.50. Played with WolfMAME 0.255 using mouse as a "light gun". I first learned about Golgo 13 by playing the two NES games, which were a bit of a mixed bag but definitely memorable. In a series of mini-games you use your sniper rifle to assassinate various people but also pull off other trick shots like shattering a diamond, cutting through ropes with bullets, and even shooting the high heel off a shoe.
Bagman arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-07-09 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Bagman, played with WolfMAME 0.250 as part of the Summer Yolympics 2023. Score: 77,890. An arcade game where you play an escaped convict running around a mine, grabbing money-bags and stashing them in your wheelbarrow, all while avoiding the guards. It's a very stark world with a plain black background and - most of the time - no background music, just the sounds of minecarts and running guards. I remember watching the attract mode of this game when it came out, wondering how anyone would ever clear it. Eventually, people worked out tricks to misdirect the guards - I used strategies learned from a Yolympics teammate to eke out a clear of the first loop. It felt like stepping back in time, into the dimly-lit arcade, where the cabinet had been playing the attract mode for 40 years, and picking up where I left off.
Moonwalker arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-07-09 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Moonwalker [mwalk], played as part of the Summer 2023 Yolympics, using WolfMAME 0.250. Score: 272,880. Some quick tips for the game: Charge shot does far more damage. Firing straight up/down/left/right is relatively safe since enemies attack diagonally. Beyond that, clearing the game is mostly a matter of learning a relatively safe route through the stages and bosses. Pretty doable even with just 2 lives no extends, partly because of the health refills that grow less plentiful in the late-game.
Virtua Fighter 3 1cc dumplechan 2023-06-20 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Virtua Fighter 3, played with the Supermodel emulator. Time was 3'3"87, and the score(?) was 607,400, but I screwed up the bizarro initials entry so I was just AAA. This is an easy cheesy clear versus the CPU by just using Akira's dashing punch over and over, blocking any nonsense they try to start the round with.
Harem arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-06-20 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Harem [harem] - cleared two sets of three stages each (camels, cars, and tents). Played with WolfMAME 0.255. Score: 33,620.
Groove on Fight arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-06-19 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Groove on Fight [groovef], played with WolfMAME 0.255. Score: 767,700. I used a team of Solis, plus Solis again, because I didn't want to learn two characters. I didn't even need to learn a lot of moves! The basic strategy is: Jump + strong punch, then duck+strong punch after it connects. Do that over and over with the right spacing and timing and the CPU keeps falling for it pretty consistently. There are other workable ways to win with Solis (LordBBH shows off an infinite in 1CCBBH).The last boss is a huge difficulty spike. First, instead of you and your partner fighting 2-on-2 or even 2-on-1, it's a 1-against-2 battle where you have to defeat your partner-character first. Second, the boss has a terrifying toolkit of highly damaging moves. Check out 7:49 for an example of some of the crazy damage the final boss can dish out just from normals. Finally, he sometimes blocks the jump + strong punch attack. I'm not sure if the blocking comes down to timing/spacing or pure luck; it does seem if you manage to jump just over him the punch reliably connects. In the end I made attempt after attempt until the RNG gods smiled upon me and you get a clear.
Asylum arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-06-18 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Asylum [asylum], played with WolfMAME 0.255. Score: 1,435. Thanks to @juanman2483 for showing the way to lead the Arnold-Schwarzenegger-impersonator to victory.This is an unreleased prototype and it's an interesting mess. You face evil vacuum cleaners, pencil launchers, and a goat-skulled devil. You bounce free-falling elevators up to a higher floor. You restore health by finding a magic toilet to "flush out the uncoolness in you". It feels like the game designers could've been drunk, or sleep-deprived, or both, and reminds me of other gratuitously-weird games like Weird Dreams, or the DOS text-mode game Insanity. Playing the game is a bit annoying - your health slowly drains over time (you have "Gauntlet health"), there are a lot of gotcha death traps, and aiming your shots is a little fiddly. But the zaniness has some charm. I like how the mascot devil-character gives you "hints" where you always want to do the opposite of what it says. The main tech to beating the game is that after you jump, you can push both buttons together to double-jump, and that double-jump can carry you over walls and other hazards. The other trick is getting the hang of the elevator sections - my strategy was to deliberately aim to hit the wall a little *under* each bomb, watch what's coming up on that side, and then react by either bouncing away or staying. The last trick is just getting good item RNG - some of the best are the toilet icon for a full health refill, a tortoise-and-hare boosting your run speed, and a power-outlet giving you more strong shots.
Psychic Force arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-06-16 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Psychic Force [psyforce], played with WolfMAME 0.255. Time: 9'8"63. My strategy was to strafe around until the computer had the audacity to DO STUFF, then punish with a light-light-light-heavy combo. The result was an easy-breezy 1cc but with a quite slow completion time. It's not a great game but (as expected for Taito) it has a terrific soundtrack. The most notable thing about this clear for me is that it worked out to be my 700th arcade game 1-credit clear. I've come a long way since I struggled my way to finishing Black Tiger at the campus arcade all those years ago...
Point Blank 3 arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-06-01 | A 1-credit clear of Point Blank 3 [ptblank3], finally emulated in MAME as of 0.255! Score: 115,127. The Point Blank series is probably the most famous set of games in the "light gun mini-game collection" category. Exidy made some early games in that category like Crack Shot or Hit 'n Miss. The Point Blank series has difficulty spikes with occasional "INSANE" minigames, plus one chance (pure RNG as far as I can tell) to refill 1 heart after the first 8 rounds.
Darkstalkers arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-06-01 | A 1-credit clear of Darkstalkers [dstlk], played with WolfMAME 0.254. I tried this a while back and had a hard time - but it turns out just spamming Demitri's fireball works shockingly well. For Morrigan and Anakaris, I got fancy and threw in air fireballs. Score: 645,900 points. Far from a MARP record, but it'll make a decent score to post on lvlupscore.com.
Emergency Call Ambulance arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-05-29 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Emergency Call Ambulance, played with the SuperModel model 3 emulator. Score: 18,965.Some notes on the "4th gear trick":* Supermodel config: Change input type="shiftupdown" to input type="shift4" in Games.xml in the "eca" and "ecau" and "ecaj" sections* Game config: Hit the Test button (default: 6) then press the Service button (default: 5) to move the cursor to "game assignments" and hit Test (6). Then then move the cursor to "gear lever" and toggle it to 4-speed. Then go to Exit, then to Exit.* Now you can press 3 to insert an imaginary let's-pretend coin, then push right to select Manual, then press Up.* Mash 1+A to skip cutscene* Hold UP to accelerate, and twitch your fingers between R and T to toggle between 4th gear and neutral, to accelerate extra-fast. Once you know the 4th gear trick, there's not much more to explain. You have a time limit (the patient's health), that ticks down faster if you bump into anything. So drive fast (but slow enough you can still make turns), take shortcuts when you can, and avoid everything. As you might expect, type of collision matters - it's better to knock down a light pole than to have a head-on collision with a van. The ambulance has trouble with tight turns at high speed, so sometimes it's best to hold down to brake, then do the 4th-gear trick if you need to build up speed again.Like so many games, this is a clear I learned by watching 1CCBBH. His run has some commentary as well as comments on the video that explain some scoring tech: youtube.com/watch?v=k67dNNTlu0s
World Rally arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-05-27 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game World Rally [wrallyat], played with WolfMAME 0.254. Score: 62,610. This is (I think) the first game to use this control scheme of responding to cues about upcoming turns - it had a direct sequel and inspired other games like Neo Drift Out, Backfire!, and the ridiculously-named game Blomby Car. The controls are *mostly* very forgiving - it's almost impossible to over-steer on ordinary turns. The main challenge comes from complex turns that require slowing down enough to maintain control - without going so slowly that you take over 60 seconds for a race.
One Shot One Kill arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-05-25 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game One Shot One Kill, played with WolfMAME 0.254. There are a lot of light-gun-mini-game-collections, Point Blank series is the most famous...and here's another one, by Promat! This has cartoony graphics that ride the line between jank and endearing. Some of the mini-games are what you'd expect, others are surprising (wait, you straight up SHOOT PEOPLE for hopping the turnstile and not paying?) It feels a little rough around the edges, especially the fact that there's no high score screen, but it was a very easy 1cc. On MARP people somehow got 10x my score and I'm kind of curious how, but the .inp files are on such ancient versions of MAME that I don't think I'm THAT curious.
Tao Taido arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-05-24 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Tao Taido, played with WolfMAME 0.254. Papa's butt-charge move is pretty effective: Hold A+B to charge up to the second power level, then hold forward and release. Tao Taido doesn't work well as a fighting game. The moves are INSCRUTABLE, the dodging and blocking mechanics are unexplained and badly-implemented, the three-stage charging is impractical and disrupts the flow of a match, the character designs are off-putting. Tao Taido makes it onto some people's lists of "Worst Fighting Games Ever". There are far worse games out there (like The Last Apostle Puppetshow) but Tao Taido is definitely very bad.At least it's bad in interesting ways - full of little surprises, even if some are unwelcome. There's a wide variety of creative (if mostly useless) special moves. The soundtrack doesn't sound anything like a typical arcade game - I actually like the soundtrack because I love gamelan music. One trivia point is that the character Malcolm later found his way into the Sonic Wings series, a much more successful venture by Video System.
KenJu arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-05-23 | A 1-credit clear of the unreleased arcade game KenJu, played with Flycast 2.1. Seems like a pretty solid game, and the cel-shaded graphics look pretty good compared to generic 3D of the time, but it never saw an official release and was lost to the mists of time...until some dedicated nerds preserved the game data for us to play and wonder about what the full version might've looked like. The CPU does shameless input-reading but it's not very good at countering Shihua's throw.
Beastorizer arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-05-23 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Beastorizer [beastrzr], also known as Bloody Roar, played with WolfMAME 0.254. Time: 10'35"83. Gado's qcb+A punch is *VERY* effective against the CPU - sometimes they block or hit you, but you only need to be right a few times.
Dino Rex arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-05-20 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Dino Rex [dinorex], played with WolfMAME 0.254. Score: 1,341,600. This game is a glorious mess - from the Engrish (CoLLopse of the cIvILIzation), to the wild lore, to the inscrutable fighting game mechanics, to the constant DINOSAUR SCREAMS. If the left player ends up to the right of the right player, the two dinosaurs politely reposition themselves to get back on the correct side. There's a dream sequence where your dinosaur rampages through a modern city. And your masked dinosaur-tamer character is revealed to be...Rastan? It's a game that's hard to love but even harder to forget.
Sports Shooting USA arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-05-19 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Sports Shooting USA, played with Flycast 2.1 using the mouse cursor as the light gun. Score: 1,770.49. Thanks to Cool Pup for the Flycast light gun setup guide! This is a nice easy clear with a mouse (probably quite a bit harder aiming with the arcade light gun, especially depending on how well-configured the cabinet is at your local arcade!)
Mobile Suit Gundam arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-05-11 | A 1-credit clear of Mobile Suit Gundam [msgundam1], played with WolfMAME 0.254. Score: 355,700. A mech-on-mech fighting game that looks great but doesn't play all that well - it's from 1993 when fighting games were very trendy but not many developers had the knack of making them yet. Only two attack buttons means a limited moveset - and I occasionally ended up using the wrong "mash attack for a wimpy short-range laser" move.
Melty Blood Actress Again arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-05-07 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Melty Blood Actress Again, played with Flycast 2.1. Score: 1,093,600. I used the special "CKFY" code to unlock the character Neco-Arc and then relied on her EYE LASERS to win the game. (It's degenerate, but effective!) Neco-Arc reminds me of Digi-ko from Di Gi Charat - a silly mascot character with cat ears who KNOWS she's a silly mascot character with cat ears, and makes the most of it.
Suzuka 8 Hours 2 - arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-05-07 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Suzuka 8 Hours 2 played with WolfMAME 0.254. Time: 3'05"61. The game didn't ask me to enter my initials for some reason, but at least I won the race. With a name like Green Hill Circuit, you'd expect to see a blue hedgehog zooming past at any moment...
Wild Riders arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-05-07 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Wild Riders, played with Flycast version 2.1. Score: 514,063. A bit of an anticlimactic ending because I missed the last jump, but it's still a clear! Getting the controls set up correctly was half the battle - I never did get the handbrake button configured, but doing a slide helps with getting tight turns. There's some serious rubber-banding on the pursuit - if you're 100m or more ahead, minor bumps will take your lead down by 20m or more...but if you're just 10m ahead and not stopped, you're fairly safe as long as you don't make big mistakes.
Uchuu Daisakusen Chocovader: Contactee arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-05-06 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game 1cc #685: Uchuu Daisakusen Chocovader: Contactee [chocovdr], which is freshly emulated in MAME 0.254. The game lets you pick from four menus of mini-games, and if you do well enough to get an S rank in all four, it gives you a bonus game - the dancing mini-game, with faster music, where you can't miss a single step. After a few attempts that failed on the fast dancing I pulled off a clear with what I think is a pretty good score: My high school coach told me to always give 110%, and in this game I gave 114.2%. The easiest mini-games I found so far are: Bottom right, bottom left, bottom left, then bottom left OR right.
Mr. Driller G arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-04-30 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Mr. Driller G, played with WolfMAME 0.254. Score: 484,120 and time 8'5"8. Used Holinger-Z the digging robot, who can take one hit before being crushed - not sure if it was just a lucky run but I cleared on my first try with Holinger-Z after many failed attempts with the default character.
Mr. Driller 2 arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-04-28 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Mr. Driller 2, played with WolfMAME 0.254. Score: 493,880 and time 9'22"61. A really fun little game! I think 1000m mode in Mr. Driller 2 may be a bit easier than it is in the first Mr. Driller, in order to make room for an even harder final 2000m stage in Egypt. It took me over 100 attempts to 1cc 1000m mode on Mr. Driller and only 10-20 to derust and clear Mr. Driller 2
Extreme Downhill arcade 1cc dumplechan 2023-04-26 | A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Extreme Downhill. The game crashes during the end sequence in the current version of the emulator (WolfMAME 0.253). Still counts!
