![Salamander [Playstation 1] - First Loop 1CC Playthrough @psymagearcade](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/M-sydQZT23s/maxresdefault.jpg)
Uploaded February 2025 | Updated September 2026, 4 hours ago
Salamander, also known as Life Force in North America, is a shmup created by Konami as a spinoff of the Gradius series and released originally in 1987. This is one of the first games to combine both vertical and horizontal scrolling sections in a shoot em up. I originally beat the first loop of its sequel, Salamander 2, back in 2023, and I decided to play this one on Salamander Deluxe Pack Plus on PSX just like I did with the second game.
This run went pretty well until Stage 6 where I had an unexpected death. However, I did manage to no-miss the rest of the stage including the infamous escape scene. I haven't practiced the second loop much, so I ended up dying at that point.
I may create a discussion video about this one as I have quite a bit to say about it. It has its strength but also weaknesses that have caused the game to age a bit more poorly than it should have.
This run was played on default settings.
00:00 Intro + Stage 1
02:29 Stage 2
04:08 Stage 3
06:13 Stage 4
08:02 Stage 5
09:54 Stage 6
13:43 Loop 2 (2-1)
Salamander, also known as Life Force in North America, is a shmup created by Konami as a spinoff of the Gradius series and released originally in 1987. This is one of the first games to combine both vertical and horizontal scrolling sections in a shoot em up. I originally beat the first loop of its sequel, Salamander 2, back in 2023, and I decided to play this one on Salamander Deluxe Pack Plus on PSX just like I did with the second game.
This run went pretty well until Stage 6 where I had an unexpected death. However, I did manage to no-miss the rest of the stage including the infamous escape scene. I haven't practiced the second loop much, so I ended up dying at that point.
I may create a discussion video about this one as I have quite a bit to say about it. It has its strength but also weaknesses that have caused the game to age a bit more poorly than it should have.
This run was played on default settings.
00:00 Intro + Stage 1
02:29 Stage 2
04:08 Stage 3
06:13 Stage 4
08:02 Stage 5
09:54 Stage 6
13:43 Loop 2 (2-1)
![Salamander [Playstation 1] - First Loop 1CC Playthrough](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/M-sydQZT23s/mqdefault.jpg "Salamander [Playstation 1] - First Loop 1CC Playthrough
Salamander, also known as Life Force in North America, is a shmup created by Konami as a spinoff of the Gradius series and released originally in 1987. This is one of the first games to combine both vertical and horizontal scrolling sections in a shoot em up. I originally beat the first loop of its sequel, Salamander 2, back in 2023, and I decided to play this one on Salamander Deluxe Pack Plus on PSX just like I did with the second game.
This run went pretty well until Stage 6 where I had an unexpected death. However, I did manage to no-miss the rest of the stage including the infamous escape scene. I havent practiced the second loop much, so I ended up dying at that point.
I may create a discussion video about this one as I have quite a bit to say about it. It has its strength but also weaknesses that have caused the game to age a bit more poorly than it should have.
This run was played on default settings.
00:00 Intro + Stage 1
02:29 Stage 2
04:08 Stage 3
06:13 Stage 4
08:02 Stage 5
09:54 Stage 6
13:43 Loop 2 (2-1)")
![Commando [PSP/Arcade] - 1CC Commentary 348,400 pts (Capcom Classics Collection Reloaded)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/MlNT0SBCbUs/mqdefault.jpg "Commando [PSP/Arcade] - 1CC Commentary 348,400 pts (Capcom Classics Collection Reloaded)
0:28. Stage 1-1
2:35. Stage 1-2
3:45. Stage 1-3
5:06. Stage 1-4
6:20. Stage 1-5
8:00. Stage 1-6
9:14. Stage 1-7
11:05. Stage 1-8
12:12. Stage 2-1 (Last Stage With Commentary)
14:09. Stage 2-2
15:19. Stage 2-3
16:39. Stage 2-4
18:10. Stage 2-5
19:53. Stage 2-6
Commando, also known as Senjō no Ōkami in Japan, was originally released in 1985 by Capcom. It was an immediate hit for the company and along with Ghost N Goblins, helped grow the companys reputation in their early years. This game also helped popularize the run and gun genre in arcades along with Ikari Warriors.
I only did two takes of the commentary and used the second one, which turned out pretty well overall. There are a couple of smaller things here and there that I could have re-recorded, but I opted not to this time unlike my Hard Drivin video where I re-recorded quite a few different lines. Also, I had some issues editing the fast forwarding of the footage as well as the volume increase after the commentary finished at the end of Stage 2-1 going to 2-2. If there are any flashes or slightly off transitions, thats why. I still have the original footage, but I doubt anyone wants to watch over four minutes of point milking in the beginning.
The run went really well outside of the dumb deaths in 1-5. It turned out that I didnt even need to do the milking in Stage 1 for survival as I finished the first loop with lives to spare. This marks my first top down run and gun 1CC as well.
There are a few things that I didnt get to in the commentary. One, there is more RNG than just the way certain enemies spawn. There are even variations in terms of how many points you get from regular soldiers. Sometimes, its 200 and sometimes, its 300. I do not know why. Also, this version of the game is pretty much arcade perfect except for the lives, grenades, and medals near the bottom of the screen being a bit higher up than they should be. This is also true for the version featured in the PS1 compilation Capcom Generations 4, so I assume both versions are the same. Last, there is remixed music in this version like with Vulgus on this same collection, which I enabled. This is another game on the collection where I really enjoy the remixed soundtrack.
I will do more commentaries, but Im also considering doing commentaries on particular subject matters related to arcade gaming.
Also, special thanks to dumplechan and Pete Hahn because their 1CC runs did help me to learn this game.
dumplechans run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9gNUKhGwXM
Pete Hahns commentary video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIWRXKep-bM")
![Zeta Wing [C64] - Normal Mode 1CC 333,900 pts (NTSC 60 HZ)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/MlU2Aho4eTI/mqdefault.jpg "Zeta Wing [C64] - Normal Mode 1CC 333,900 pts (NTSC 60 HZ)
Zeta Wing is a homebrew shmup for the Commodore 64 that was created by Sarah Jane Avory and released back in 2020 on itch.io:
https://sarahjaneavory.itch.io/zeta-wing
This game is loosely inspired by Tecmos Gemini Wing from back in the 80s in terms of its colorful presentation, but it honestly plays closer to something like 1942 because you cannot go higher than about 2/3 of the way up the screen and enemies patterns fly around in a vaguely similar manner at times. However, this game isnt nearly as long as 1942 and not as repetitive.
This game has seven levels total, with each one having a distinct look and feel. The first thing thats obvious is how good this game looks for a C64 game. The parallex scrolling effects are awesome, like on Stage 4. Also, the color palette of the C64 is used to full effect. The graphics overall are fantastic. Plus, it runs extremely well at 60 FPS when playing in NTSC mode in VICE, though that also makes the game a bit harder. The game works fine in either PAL or NTSC, though PAL is a bit slower obviously. The music and sound effects sound good as well.
As far as the gameplay goes, its simple as you only have one button for your shot, but the game does not get boring either. The game throws just enough new wrinkles in the enemy patterns and level design to get things from getting stale. Stages 4 and 6 have environmental hazards in the form of tight passage ways, and they surprisingly work well. The bosses are mostly a pushover, but I did almost choke the run away on the last boss. I kind of forgot my routing for that boss and suffered accordingly, but its not as hard as I made it look.
The game does not punish death harshly either. There is no scoring penalty, no checkpoints, and you only go down one power level, so your shot does not go down to nothing from one death. Also, your shot has 10 possible power levels you can achieve from gathering powerups, but you probably wont get that high unless you no-miss the game.
A couple of smaller notes. One, for some reason, my screen was set to be cropped in VICEs Retroarch core. Thats why the video is cropped. I am going to try to avoid that in the future. Two, I used a CRT filter while playing. It looked better on this game than my usual upscaling shaders do when playing but on some of the stages the scanlines look a bit off, particularly in earlier stages. I do have a couple of extra videos coming up that were recorded with CRT filters, but those held up better somehow. Not sure what happened with this game in particular.
Played in Retroarch using the VICE x64 Fast core with a slightly tweaked version of the Phosphorlut shader preset.
00:31 Stage 1
03:21 Stage 2
06:26 Stage 3
09:15 Stage 4
12:43 Stage 5
15:41 Stage 6
18:30 Stage 7
#c64 #retroarch #shmups #homebrewgames #commodore64")
![Balloon Kid [Game Boy] - Single Play 1CC (Full Playthrough)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/MlyZyPdgqO0/mqdefault.jpg "Balloon Kid [Game Boy] - Single Play 1CC (Full Playthrough)
Balloon Kid is a game created by Nintendo for the original Game Boy and released in 1990. It is a sequel to the NES game Balloon Fight. This is one of the few Game Boy games made by Nintendo that was not released in Japan originally, only being released initially in North American and Europe. However, this game would be reskinned into a Hello Kitty game in 1992 for the Famicom and would get a GBC remake in 2000 that was a Japanese exclusive.
As mentioned before, this is a sequel to Balloon Fight on NES and has three modes. The first is Single Play, which has 8 stages and is the main mode of this game. My playthrough is of this mode. You also have a 2-player mode that is similar to the one in Balloon Fight and a Balloon Trip mode that is almost identical to the version featured in Balloon Fight.
The Single Play mode starts with a little cutscene where a young boy named Jim with balloons gets taken up in the air with the wind and his older sister, Alice, has to save him. You then play as Alice and have to get through eight stages, which scroll slowly from right to left. Like in Balloon Fight, you press A to go higher into the air, like youre flapping your wings, but unlike in that game, you can press B to let go of the balloons in order to land somewhere. You have bonus rounds in some stages where you have to grab all of the balloons in order to get a 1-Up. You also have a boss fight at the end of stages 2, 4, 6, and 8, while the odd number stages only require you to get from point A to point B.
The first half of this game is pretty chill. There arent many enemies or things that you can pop your balloons and cause you to land in the water and drown in these earlier stages and the pacing is especially relaxed in the first couple of stages. However, the difficulty spike in the second half of the game is legit and the last stage is pretty challenging, though not excessively difficult because extends are pretty generous in this game. This game even manages to throw in some more traditional platforming where you have to let go of the balloons, like in Stage 6 for example. These platforming sections are some of the hardest parts of the game as the controls are touchy at best and not the most precise as a result. It is much slower paced than Balloon Fight, but a lot of that is probably because of the original Game Boys limitations. Despite that, the level design here still manages to be quite challenging at times despite giving the player plenty of time to think about where to go next.
Overall, this is a great early Game Boy game and more than a worthy sequel to Balloon Fight. I did this run back in October of last year using the SameBoy emulator, configured to emulate a GBC. Then I used a blue color pallet set at the boot screen. Also, this is one of my earliest clears using my Qanba Crystal mixbox setup.
Game Boy Works review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu_7kYiF3gc
Hardcore Gaming 101 article: http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/balloon-kid/
00:00 Intro
00:39 Stage 1
04:38 Stage 2
09:49 Stage 3
12:23 Stage 4
18:10 Stage 5
20:54 Stage 6
28:10 Stage 7
31:27 Stage 8
40:28 Ending
#balloonkid #gameboy #nintendo #retrogaming #classicgaming")
![Twinkle Star Sprites [Neo Geo] - Story Mode 1CC Playthrough](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NLVpiRO9SD4/mqdefault.jpg "Twinkle Star Sprites [Neo Geo] - Story Mode 1CC Playthrough
Twinkle Star Sprites is a vertical shmup released in arcades via the Neo Geo MVS in 1996 and on home consoles via the Neo Geo AES and Neo Geo CD the next year. It also received a Sega Saturn port around this time that is practically arcade perfect. Published by SNK and developed by ADK, the makers of the World Heroes series, this game combines the basic gameplay of a shmup with fighting gamed and competitive puzzle games like Puyo Puyo. It is notable for being one of the first and only shmups where two players compete directly against each other on the same screen, albeit divided into two halves like multiplayer Tetris or Puyo Puyo.
The basic gameplay works like this. Enemies appear on your side of the screen in waves. Whenever you kill the first enemy in that wave, you start a chain and other enemies get taken as part of the chain if they are close enough whenever you start it. Whenever you do this, you throw fireballs back onto the opponents side and the better the chain, the more fireballs will be thrown. If your opponent take enough hits from these projectiles thrown on screen, they lose all of their hit points and you win. Your opponent can also do this. Fireballs can also be reflected back to an opponent.
There are other elements like the fact that charged shots can fire projectiles to the other screen and if you charge up a charge shot enough, you can fire a boss attack onto an opponent. Also, the enemies on screen that come in waves cannot kill you, but can take off some hit points and reduce your firepower briefly. You get two bombs that clear the screen like they would in a shmup, and these are important for defensive purposes as you cannot dodge or reflect every projectile.
The game itself has two modes: Character Mode and Story Mode. Character Mode allows you to choose one of several different characters and fight through seven rounds including the last boss and is structured like a fighting game. The Story Mode, which is what I cleared, has you play as Ran, a young witch looking to find the Twinkle Star which was stolen by the evil Mevious.
Story Mode for the most part is pretty easy until you get to the last two or three stages. By Stage 5, the RNG starts to play a heavy role in how the matches play out. Sometimes, the AI is really bad and cant dodge but often times, they dodge incredibly well near the end. Even early on, the AI is sometimes a bit rigged against the player. The erratic nature of the AI also plays a role in your scoring potential as quicker runs might work out in your favor survival wise but result in less scoring. To be fair, this game was probably balanced more for two player matches than single player.
On this run, it was my third time clearing it and while my scoring wasnt as good as previous clears as youll see at the very end after the credits, it was my best survival run as I even managed to get through the final stage without dying.
I did use 25HZ autofire off my Brook board, which I initially thought was extremely helpful but I got stomped later on in Character Mode after this so Im not 100% sure how much of a difference this made compared to 15HZ outside of pointblanking being a little easier.
Played in FBNeo via RetroArch in AES mode instead of MVS mode. Difficulty is set to the standard MVS/Level 4.
00:00 Intro
00:27 Stage 1
02:34 Stage 2
04:03 Stage 3
06:16 Stage 4
07:44 Stage 5
10:07 Stage 6
11:44 Stage 7
13:42 Ending
#neogeo #arcade #neogeomvs #neogeoaes #neogeocd #shmups #snk #snkplaymore #arcadegames #twinklestarsprites
#shootemups")
![NFL Blitz [PC] - Insane Shutout Win vs Rigged AI](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/N_hYa8fym-w/mqdefault.jpg "NFL Blitz [PC] - Insane Shutout Win vs Rigged AI
NFL Blitz is one of the greatest arcade sports games of all time, if not the greatest. While later games in the series would add new gameplay elements, the original game has aged like fine wine outside of the small playbook and not being able to get on fire.
The PC version in particular was just about arcade perfect from a graphics standpoint, with the only issue being the slightly wonky diagonal movement because this version was made with keyboards in mind. It works fine nowadays on modern Windows and even Linux via WINE as long as you use the latest version of NGlide. NGlide can even upscale the game while maintaining the 4:3 aspect ratio.
But anyways, this is the first shutout in this version of the game that Ive done in a long time, if Ive even done one. Ive scored a lot more points before, but shutouts are not common in this game against the AI. However, there were quite a few close calls and things that went comically wrong. The rubber band AI was not happy that I was shutting down its offense throughout the game. It tried to rig the game but did not succeed. The ending in particular is must-see stuff as even I didnt expect it.
Notes: For some reason, the audio here is a bit louder than my usual gameplay footage. My apologies ahead of time. I have no way to control the audio levels in game, and this is straight gameplay footage with no edits. Also, this was played on default settings.
00:00 Intro
00:19 First Half
04:12 Second Half
08:23 Final Stats")
![Paperboy [Atari Lynx] - Middle Road 1CC Playthrough 208,600 pts](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NxHetDRz6hQ/mqdefault.jpg "Paperboy [Atari Lynx] - Middle Road 1CC Playthrough 208,600 pts
The Atari Lynx was home to plenty of ports of 80s arcade games, especially those from Atari Games, and Paperboy got a port to the handheld in 1990. For those who are not familiar with the original game, you play as a paperboy delivering newspapers on your bicycle, while trying to avoid tons of hazards ranging from people and objects rolling around to even the absurd like the Grim Reaper. The arcade cabinet is known for its unique handlebar controls, which home ports did not even try to replicate for good reason.
The Lynx version of this game is pretty solid. Its not the best arcade port on the Lynx but it could have been a lot worse at the same time. The graphics, albeit heavily pixeled, capture the look of the original pretty well in terms of the neighborhoods and the color scheme. It does run as a lower frame rate than its arcade counterpart, but thats not too unexpected for the Lynx and doesnt hurt this port much.
The developers did a great job here with the controls. Using up and down on the D-pad to speed up and slow down respectively works surprisingly well here because you dont have to keep holding down said direction once you happy with a particular speed. Steering is digital instead of analog but feels responsive. Throwing newspaper is done with either B or A, and its pretty easy to hit the mailboxes, easier than in the original.
Just like the arcade version, it has three different difficulty levels divided into roads: Easy Street, Middle Road, and Hard Way. Overall, the difficulty here is toned down compared to the arcade original. One, the bees dont really chase you here unless youre going as slow as possible for a little while. Two, you start off with one more life than the original. Three, the slower speed makes it a bit easier to time your newspaper throws, which are already a bit easier to time though it does feel a bit different here. Between that and the hitboxes for either the paper or the mailbox being pretty generous, it should be easy to get the papers into the mailbox instead of the front door for bonus points.
I did run into a glitch where the hitbox on the last fire hydrant in the second half of the route seems to have a much bigger hitbox than the other one, but that one is easy to avoid as my run illustrates. You just need to go onto the road. It is possible to go to the left of that one if youre extremely precise, but the maneuvering is much tougher than it should be.
The biggest weakness of this port is surprisingly the music. The sound effects arent bad, but the music is not a great rendition of the original tracks. The Lynx is capable of better than this.
My run itself went quite well. I managed to finish with a couple of lives to spare, but I could have finished with more had I not gotten a bit sloppy on Sunday, the last day.
00:00 Intro
00:23 Monday
03:04 Tuesday
05:36 Wednesday
08:27 Thursday
11:09 Friday
13:41 Saturday
16:04 Sunday
#paperboy #atarilynx #atari #gameplay #playthrough #1cc #retrogaming #classicgaming #newspaper #delivery")
![Outrun 2006 Coast 2 Coast [PC] - Heart Attack Mode Full Run (Goal B)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OSeE-tamLbI/mqdefault.jpg "Outrun 2006 Coast 2 Coast [PC] - Heart Attack Mode Full Run (Goal B)
Outrun 2006 Coast 2 Coast is an amazing racer that Ive been coming back to on and off this year thanks to the Outrun 2006 Tweaks mod. I decided to go back and play the Heart Attack mode of this game on the original Outrun 2 tracks. The purpose of this mode is to complete specific objectives, which reward you with hearts depending on how well you execute them.
I had a very good run for the most part. There were some smaller mistakes that kept me from getting the AAA rank overall, but there were no wrecks or serious mistakes on my part either.
Also, I am working on a larger discussion video at the moment, which I hope to have finished soon.
00:00 Intro
00:41 Race
05:27 Final Results and Credits")
