[Arcade] G.I. Joe - ALL Clear / 1CC - Score: 3323 (Roadblock)
68Turn on captions for some extra text commentary during the video.
G.I. Joe is a Cabal-like arcade shooter made by Konami that released in arcades in 1992.
Like NAM-1975, it shares many elements with Cabal, though I'd say this game really perfected the style. It's fast and frantic, with not one dull moment, tons of variety in stages and the screen is always full with targets to try and optimize your score. It has some pretty impressive graphical effects for the time as well and is probably one of the best licensed games out there. Though as it's a 3D game done entirely with 2D sprites the perspective can feel rather wonky at times.
Newer versions of Mame have broken graphics for this game in many places, which actually makes it pretty hard to parse what is even going on.
It used to work just fine, but after a certain update it just broke, and has stayed broken for over 15 years now.
In order to play the game with proper graphics you need Mame 0.115, which is a build from 2007.
System:
You only get one extra life in this and there are no extends.
Though you do have a healthbar that can take three hits, and you can get health back from rare drops.
You can carry up to 9 missiles and they do big damage in a splash radiance, these drop very frequently and you're expected to spam them.
Enemies can drop an autofire powerup if you don't have it yet, you lose it after taking any sort of damage. Usually enemies drop these immediately after you lose it, but there are like no drops at all in the final stage and it's really dumb. I just use external auto for this to save myself the mashing.
The reticle is always in front of you and you can only move it up or down. Unlike NAM, there is no dodge-roll or any to way to fix your lock.
Scoring:
Scoring consists entirely of optimizing kills, which is actually quite hard as there are so many enemies and only so little time. Proper use of the missiles is essential to get most of them before they leave the screen.
Some targets are worth more than others and need to be prioritized. Like the foot soldiers are only worth 1 point while the vehicles are worth 2. A lot of background stuff can be shot as well for higher values.
Bosses usually have extra parts you can destroy and enemies you can milk. The Baroness ship especially has tons of destructible parts you can destroy even though it's not very obvious you can: https://i.imgur.com/hnEYEXI.png. This boss seems to have some extremely weird bug(?) going on with it though, if you shoot it during the phase transition you just get completely random score. It ranges from 0 to like 70 points and I have no idea what causes it. But that's probably where the extra mystery score from the world record comes from. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7eoCPRLrJc
The hardest part of the game by far is Destro.
It's a very chaotic fight and losing a life here is pretty expected, meaning you're forced to do the final stage without dying most of the time. The game would be -so- much easier if you had just one more extra life in this.
Shoot them before they shoot you is the name of the game here.
Used Roadblock because that's what the world record used.
Not sure if there is really any difference between the characters aside from different reticles.
Old run from the La Calice Cup tournament from 2020.
00:00 - Intro
02:04 - Mission 1-1: Chemical Plant
05:04 - Mission 1-2: Air Base
10:25 - Mission 1-3: Cobra's Weapons Plant
14:48 - Mission 2-1: Jungle
20:16 - Mission 2-2: Cavern Base
28:18 - Mission 3: The Final Battle
33:10 - Ending & Credits
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