A little introduction first.
I'd say last October/November was the last time I sat down and concentrated on producing a series of scores in general. Most of it was in October with the final PCB Extra run with Reimu-B finishing up November 7th (wait no, I went back and updated Reimu-A and Marisa-A again a few days later). About a week after that I felt shooting for two billion in PCB Normal which had been on my mind for a while, but I've been barely motivated for a long time already (I wouldn't have refreshed my Extra scores if not for HS参謀 introducing a new route for Reimu-A). So I'm playing a little each day with Marisa-A, improving...right up until I get a good run where I take notice that I failed to set up Flowery Soul to graze inside the explosion (because I didn't practice properly), and when I finish the run I end up with 1.997B. I don't think that run was the cause, but for one reason or another I didn't feel like playing anymore. Also, I think 2B with Reimu-B would be easier (I'm more comfortable playing with her anyway), but I always do this thing where I cycle through all the other shot types so my experience culminates at the Reimu-B run and I can make it extra good. Playing with Marisa-A was nice, though. Always good to try something new.
Way later starting on May 5th this year I feel like going for 2B again. I play for an hour to two hours each day and feel bad when I die to silly things. The pressure (and delayed gratification) starts mounting. I hear dreams tend to be about stuff you've thought about recently so I guess the subject matter of this one was inevitable. And they seem to be more prevalent at a time you don't normally sleep.
2012/05/08, before 19:10 (evening nap)
Watching the PCB Normal/Marisa-A record set by HS参謀. Something happens after Yuyuko’s third spell or fourth noncard where it ends as though it timed out. The bullets disappear and nothing happens for a few seconds, then the battle resumes as usual.
As he’s finishing up with Resurrection Butterfly I look at his score and notice there’s still over 300M to go to match up with the record (so it's in the 1.7B range). After the endgame bonus is tallied the score is only 1.79B. While I’m sitting there confused at the score the game hasn’t ended yet, running for about 20-30 seconds. And then the announcement for Resurrection Butterfly starts again and I immediately realize that he picks up the remainder of the score from bugging out Yuyuko. I was a little disappointed because the old score I made was 7M over his (except it was really 1.997B, not 1.797B) without ever bugging the fight and I heard the question echo in my head, “Did I really surpass his run at some point? At least in stage four I’m still behind.” No items spawned during Resurrection Butterfly, and after capturing it his score was 1.815B. In my mind I’m thinking that there’s still two spells to go before he reaches 2.137B.
Next up is Deadly Dance, and he doesn’t employ the usual circling tactic. I’m thinking it’s because the pattern is now backwards (but that means you should still be able to do it, but you know how dreams are). The pattern he employed was making long slightly curved sweeps across the screen, shooting the entire time and slowly being pushed down. I knew there were more bullets but my focus was only on two parts for each sweep which served as markers for me. One of them is simply passing by a wave of five arrowhead bullets lined up, and the second involved some sort of squeeze between another wave like that and a lone arrowhead bullet. Like you’re supposed to push through them before going in the other direction. I thought it was taking a while for the spell to end even if he’s not shooting Yuyuko directly all the time. I look at the spell bonus and see it at 26M and counting. Still a bit of a way to go before the sweeps reach the bottom of the screen. Dream ended there.
I had another dream of this type that would crop up in the middle of a playing streak, back in 2010. I'll get to it some other time.
I still remember how this version of Deadly Dance looks, but I'm still too lazy to do a sketch of it. I'll put that off for later as well.
On May 11th I reach the target and feel another amazing high I didn't think would surface from a goal like this. Jumping, fist pumping, all that stuff I don't normally do. I guess the creeping nervousness helped with that, performing less confidently during the final battle and suffering a few close calls.
Of course in retrospect you'll realize how bad the run really is, but at least it doesn't take away from the initial moment. Like this fatal mistake in the beginning of stage five where I die and the entire first half of the heavy point-carrying fairies get away. All because I didn't practice the move, and that's unbelievable. Oh, I guess I got to that stage once the other day and pulled off the trick so I expected to wing it, but not this time. I can't believe it never crossed my mind to practice that.
The climb to 2B this time was mostly a matter of catching up to the level of execution I held in the 1.997B run. The only thing I chased after was the status on stage four before the boss fight since most of the deviations will appear at that checkpoint. 573M, 877 point items (wait, I didn't include the CherryMax?). After that I could catch up with better milking on a few spells. The situation with the score transition from stage four to five is interesting because of that stupid mistake in the 2B run, but I did get a higher score from Youmu's midboss spell (still not as good as previous runs and a little close to the edge), and I forgot that I died to her final spell in the old run. The cherry value penalty was felt during the stage six item spam and both scores evened up after that.
For the sake of this post feeling complete I'll put in links to the replay files.
And then I'm still perturbed by the bad Yuyuko fights. Obviously, practice mode is where it's at. This is what a stage six run should look like:
PCB Normal/Reimu-B Practice Stage Six 475M
(I sort of run around with different handles)
I think it could at least go for 484M. T (who motivated me through competition) did a better job with Flowery Soul, pulling off extra explosion grazing in the middle of the spell. I only squeezed ahead because of Resurrection Butterfly. I also forgot to pull off his redirection method for Yuyuko's opener to make it more graze-friendly. Then there's other little minor things that add up, and some missing tactics.
