Highly technical score play on route ACFJOUZ with all possible boss body parts destroyed and all minibosses captured without the assistance of rapidfire cheats. Some notes:
-Max-level power-ups (5000pt bonus) are a significant contributor to adaptive difficulty increase and were avoided until the final stage (taking deliberate hits to ship shields when necessary) in order to keep the health of miniboss control orbs down
-Careful bomb timing was used on Zone J to maximize fish larvae destruction and ensure the purple extra bomb icon successfully appeared
-Keeping shot power level down as shown until Neon Light Illusion makes it easier to avoid accidentally destroying the lower tentacle incorrectly with a wide beam. Plus you don't need to worry about missing power-ups from that frustrating random asteroid in Zone F; you can't simply ignore it completely.
-Neon Light Illusion's tentacles were each destroyed at their base segment for a gigantic 409,600 point bonus
-Destruction of Deadly Crescent's final dorsal spine was delayed until near boss death to avoid the nasty mouth extension attack
-Zone Z is one of the few final stages where the environment around the miniboss fight is safe enough that its movement can be manipulated to consistently capture its control orb at maximum health (featured here)
-The end of Curious Chandelier's attack phase where it launches arms at you was purposely delayed to transition to the best final attack for ending the battle quickly

More notes to come (probably)

Recorded in MAME 0.160 using the ROMset found in the PC version of Taito Legends 2.

Capturing the final stage miniboss at its maximum amount of health depends crucially on triggering its laser attack in an open space so that you can fly behind and damage its control orb with rockets without harming the body. Here is one method of setting up this scenario when luck is not on your side.

The timing demonstrated for the second bomb release ensures the rest of the spinner enemies are spawned and killed instantly until the final enemy drops its extra bomb icon in an area of the screen where it can be collected. However, this timing only works across adaptive difficulty ranges that spawn 5- and 6-enemy waves. If the player is attempting to minimize adaptive difficulty increases up to this point in the game, it will not yet be high enough to spawn waves of five enemies. Collecting a shield power-up when already maxed out in one of the previous stages can bump up the difficulty enough to cross the threshold just before the spinner enemies appear.

Delaying the deaths of the fish larvae with careful shooting (a single shot will finish the job when combined with the full damage of a bomb) is crucial for ensuring that all 20 larvae spawn.

In this clear I missed two shot power-ups by accident at the beginning of Zone F, then skipped another on purpose. I avoided destroying any body parts in order to prevent the game's adaptive difficulty from rising too much and to keep Storm Causer manageable. I also avoided powering up my shot to the final level because Storm Causer is next to impossible to damage fast enough and destroy without white bullets in your shots unless you abuse some sort of autofire cheat (or use some bombs). A timing-out strategy might be possible as well, but that's tricky.

Recorded in MAMEUI 0.144 using the ROMset found in the PC version of Taito Legends 2.

Although I do many things to get extra points in this clear, this is NOT intended to be a real scoring clear. You can get considerably more points by actually using bombs on this route, among other things.

Recorded in MAMEUI v0.144 using the ROMset found in the PC version of Taito Legends 2.

This playthrough features heavy adaptive difficulty control. Absolutely no unnecessary difficulty-increasing boss body parts were destroyed until the final boss. Although I blew up many of Titanic Lance's cannons and destroyed all but three of Odious Trident's body parts at the end, this is in no way intended to be a true high-scoring run. Recorded in MAMEUI 0.144 using the ROMset found in the PC version of Taito Legends 2.

Although I do many things for extra points, this is not intended to be a truly score-focused playthrough in any way.

Recorded in MAMEUI 0.144 using the ROMset found in the PC version of Taito Legends 2.

Although I do a number of things for extra points, this is not intended to be a scoring run in any way.

Recorded in MAMEUI 0.144 using the ROMset found in the PC version of Taito Legends 2.

This clear also features heavy adaptive difficulty control: no unnecessary boss body parts have been destroyed until the final boss, and almost no power-ups were grabbed when already at max power (except for two accidental shields in Zones B and Z'). I even avoided some power-ups in Zone P instead of Z' because it's trickier to avoid them in Z'.

Some tips for this route:
-By only attacking Prickly Angler at point-blank range you can manage to destroy the boss with all its body parts intact--and prevent any unnecessary adaptive difficulty increases.
-The Zone Z' miniboss is super helpful for surviving the later part of the stage. The longer you delay taking its control orb, the longer it takes for it to die when you need it.
-Diagonal movement comprises reduced vertical and horizontal movement vectors in Darius Gaiden. You can use this to your advantage by pressing against a screen's edge to slow down your movement for precision dodging. This is very useful for squeezing between some of Crusty Hammer's tight patterns and outlasting Great Thing's tracking laser.

Recorded in MAMEUI 0.144 using the ROMset found in the PC version of Taito Legends 2.

Darius Gaiden is not a 2D shooter designed with two players in mind. There are far from enough power-up items to service both players, and the enemy attack patterns in many instances were designed to be dodged by one player only--with some attacks it can be challenging to tell what's going on with two players and dodging can require tight synchronization to stay alive. If you want to beat Darius Gaiden with a friend, some careful planning and strategy is necessary.

The first thing we thought about was how to distribute power-up items. In most Darius games there are barely enough power-up items for a single player to obtain full power by the end of the game, and the most important thing in Darius Gaiden is getting one's shot power to an obstacle-piercing level for the later stages. Being able to use the environment for cover while blasting away at the enemies behind it is essential. If you want to beat Darius Gaiden with 2 players, you must come to terms with this. This is difficult to do if you split the shot power-up items (red medals) evenly between players. In addition, there also are just barely enough rocket power-up items (green medals) to get them to their full power level by the end of the game, and homing rockets, in particular, can be very helpful for the last two stages of the game.

Thus, we decided to split the power-ups by type: the player who dies less should get all the red medals until they don't need anymore, while the other player can get all the green medals until they don't need anymore. The benefits of higher shield levels aren't nearly as important, so shield power-up items (blue medals) can be split fairly evenly by need. Shield priority should go to the player getting the red medals though.

The rocket player can be thought of as a massive bomb reserve to prevent the shot player from dying and downgrading their shot power. The rocket player can afford to die several times because rocket power is not downgraded upon death. However, when the shot player dies the whole run can be jeopardized. Therefore, the shot player should get all the extra bombs (purple medals) to better prevent any single death of theirs, while the rocket player should get the two extra ship icons hidden in stage 3 and stage 6.

Recorded in CSMAME v0.144.

Darius Gaiden has an adaptive difficulty system which makes the game harder as you destroy boss body parts. It also increases when power-ups are collected at max level (5000pt bonus), and by some other factors, but most of these are minor compared to blowing up boss body parts. As the difficulty increases, miniboss control orbs and bosses have more health, bosses fire larger and faster bullets, enemies in general fire more bullets, and enemies appear in larger waves. You may have heard the myth before that shot power level also affects the adaptive difficulty, but this is simply not true. You may still want to regulate your shot power to make capturing minibosses easier, however. White bullets do more damage than the green, penetrating ones, which also happen to pass through control orbs and damage the minibosses' bodies. This makes a huge difference for the minibosses of stages 6 and 7.

The trick to capturing all the minibosses is to keep the difficulty down until the final zone. When too high, their control orbs have too much health compared to their bodies and it can become impossible to dislodge it without killing them. I have carefully attempted to destroy almost exactly as many boss parts as I could get away with without increasing the difficulty modifier so much that capturing the final miniboss in Zone V becomes too inconsistent. I probably could have destroyed at least one more of Folding Fan's parts.

Captured minibosses are worth enough points that it can be worth it to skip destroying some boss body parts (which are worth 30,000 points apiece) to ensure you can capture all of them on certain routes... However, on ACEHLQV you can get more points by skipping the stage 7 miniboss in favor of more body parts.

Recorded in MAMEUI 0.140u2 using the ROMset found in the PC version of Taito Legends 2.

This game is a heavy memorizer that rewards the player for playing close to the edge of the screen and memorizing pretty much everything. Speed (how fast a stage scrolls) is controlled by where the ship is located on the horizontal axis of the screen. Some people are really put off by games like this, but I find it to be a great adrenaline rush.

Graphical issues (the score bar running along the top of the screen, in particular) are due to incomplete emulation of the game back when I recorded this on an ancient build of MAME.

I don't bother charging to the third level because the second does the same amount of damage.

I have included two other methods of killing it for comparison. One is using the Clock item crush to get in multiple hits, the other is an efficient way to defeat it in one hit if you have about 500 strength. As you can see, neither is any match for the Diana + Mandragora combination.

On their own, these passwords send you to the highway stage with no health and an inability to do anything, forcing you to reset your game. However, if you let a demo start up and then try one of them, you'll be transported to the highway stage, but with all heart tanks and sub tanks and all Mavericks defeated and their powers. Note how your inventory is identical to the demo's at the moment you exit it; you'll even have the same sub tank energy! The only difference is that you don't get Dr. Light upgrades. In effect, this is one of several methods of bypassing the dash upgrade in Chill Penguin's stage. Also note that even if you go back and grab all four Dr. Light upgrades, the Hadouken cannot be obtained with this bug--Dr. Light's capsule will simply never appear in Armored Armadillo's stage for whatever reason.

Note that this password was removed on the PAL version of the game. This trick does, however, work on the Japanese version (Rockman X).

These are the final fights with Sigma in Mega Man X, with only X Buster use, and the only upgrade being the forced arm upgrade given to you earlier in Sigma's fortress. Fighting the Sigma battles without the dash and Maverick weapons is quite a challenge but completely doable.

Some tips for pulling this off:
-Sigma's dog, Velguader, is knocked out of an attack by a second level charged shot (the blue one) or higher (the purple one). Since they both do the same amount of damage, second level charged shots are the best thing to attack with.
-Optimally, you should keep about two body lengths (X's body) between X and Velguader. This allows you to easily run under its jumps and energy balls, and gives you enough time to react when it runs at you or breathes flames.
-Sigma is hurt for one notch from any attack other than Electric Spark, so there shouldn't be any need to charge the X Buster. However, charged shots can be useful anyway because have properties that increase your chances of hitting Sigma when he's bouncing off the walls: The first-level green shot is slower, and both cover more screen area than a regular bullet.

I fought Sigma's final form the normal way for the first half of his health to demonstrate how to dodge his attacks, then switched to the cheap method (sitting on his hands) for the other half. This one turned out pretty sloppy, but it gets the points across that I wanted it to. If you look closely, you can tell when my nose was itchy!