Uploaded July 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago

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Got a 2-all, almost 3-all (nearly reached last boss of the 3rd loop) on the 2p version of Same! Same! Same!. This version is a later relase of the game that is heavily toned down and rebalanced compared to the original 1 player version.

The main changes are:
1 - Removal of checkpoints, your ship now instantly respawns on death

2 - You can no longer scroll the screen horizontally, the playfield is now completely fixed. This means some enemy formations are different and also some of the lightning bolts are in different places in the stage.

3 - Drastically reduced difficulty. Enemies are a lot less agree, shoot less often and bullets are A LOT slower

4 - Your ship is less powerful. the blue weapon has a lower shot limit meaning you do less damage and have less screen. coverage (more bullet gaps). Also you can only carry up to 7 bombs instead of 10 (which also makes your end of stage bonuses cap out at 350k instead of 500k). furthermore, for some reason the red ship is also weaker than the blue ship (second player).

NOTE: The blue ship (2nd player) does more damage than the red ship in this version of the game. I did this run before knowing this very important piece of info.

5 - Item drops are different, and now you get speedups from killing certain enemies instead of the item carrier blimps. Also, the item table does not reset on death like in the 1p version, so the blimps will always drop the same thing regardless in every run.

6 - 2 players can play at the same time, thus the name of this version lol.

So the big question: Do all these changes make it better than the original version?

It's definitely a mixed bag. On one hand I appreciate the toned down difficulty and removal of checkpoints, but I feel like they really took it too far. They've reduced it down to the point where even the 4th loop of this version is still probably easier than the 1st loop of the original.

Also removing the screen scrolling does not make the game better. I get why they did it, (to simplify the logic of having 2 players fight over scrolling the screen), but it just makes the game feel more cramped and reduces the possible strategies.

The main thing balancing the drop in difficulty is your weaker ship. But having a massively powerful killing machine of a ship was one of the better things about the original.

Despite my gripes I do feel like this version will probably appeal to casual players more, but for me I would stick with the original.