Arcade - Galaga - Points [Rapid Fire] - 3,225,890 - Daniel Rodriguez

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyUS4owpqr0

Points [Rapid Fire]
Score Track	https://www.twingalaxies.com/scores.php?scores=10262
Rules	Dip-Switch Bank 6J: 1 = OFF 2 = ON 3-6 = OFF 7 = OFF/UNUSED 8 = OFF Dip-Switch Bank 6K: 1-3 = OFF 4 = ON 5 = OFF 6-7 = ON 8 = OFF Rapid Fire P.C. Board: Position A: Rapid Fire Note: The above Dip Switches, are not only the FACTORY DEFAULT settings, but are also the correct Twin Galaxies Settings for this title and will provide the following settings; 3 Lives Extra Ship @ 20k, 70k and every 70k thereafter. Difficulty: Rank D Special Rules: Useage of the trick to cause enemies to stop firing is banned. It has been deemed permissible for a player to intentionally play on the player 2 side so as to allow the millions-digit to show up in the final score.
Submission Message	Hello TG, my name is Daniel Rodriguez and i'm submitting this WR that was verified by Walter Day and Billy Mitchell. They are both seen through the video commenting about varies things. This came all together thanks to Neil , Walter , Billy , Doug (who supplied the Galaga original board , Frank from arcade Odyssey (for the game) and Marcel with his staff of coordinators at the Florida APE show. Thank you for your help!

This isn't difficulty Rank D. On Rank D the enemies still fire at you on stage 10. Rank D also doesn't kill screen on Stage 256 like happens in this video. This looks like Rank C since on Stage 256 (aka Stage 0) it just shows the starfield and no enemies ever come out again which is the normal behavior on Rank C.

Based on the gameplay shown, incorrect settings were used.

This isn't difficulty Rank D. On Rank D the enemies still fire at you on stage 10. Rank D also doesn't kill screen on Stage 256 like happens in this video. This looks like Rank C since on Stage 256 (aka Stage 0) it just shows the starfield and no enemies ever come out again which is the normal behavior on Rank C.

This also looks like Fast Shot play rather than Rapid Fire play. Rapid Fire, which is what this track is for, lets you hold the button down to shoot, but the bullets don't actually move faster. Those bullets look like they're moving faster.

Based on the gameplay shown in the video, incorrect settings were definitely used.

-George Strain

Here's a link that describes the behavior of Stage 256 in Galaga on the different difficulty settings and explains why the different behaviors occur. On Difficulty Rank A and Rank C stage 256 is a "kill screen": http://donhodges.com/galaga_stage_256_fix.htm

-George

Hello George, please skip to exactly 2:27:25 seconds. You will see the verification of the dip switches. You will see dip switch setting # 2 is clearly on. Mr Walter Day verified the board before and after the attempt.

Daniel, first of all, I'd like say congratulations on your achievement and your skill on Galaga. I know several people that have met you and they've all said you're a great guy, and I know you made serious efforts to make sure you were using the correct settings for your record attempt.

I agree that in the video it looks like you have the 6J bank of dip switches (the one on the right) set to Switch 1 Off, Switch 2 On, and Switch 3 Off. switches are counted from the bottom, off is to the left and on is to the right. They're a bit hard to make out in the video but If you look at them around 2:11:41 in the YouTube video they're reasonably clear.

However I just researched this and it looks like the TG dip switches listed do not actually give you Rank D (Hardest) difficulty, at least on some machines, including the one you played on. If you look at the Galaga manuals on KLOV (http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_de...=&game_id=7881), there are multiple manuals up and one shows that Switches 1 and 2 control the difficulty, with 1 = Off and 2 = On giving you Rank C. This is what is reflected in the gameplay in your video. The other manual shows that Switches 2 and 3 control the difficulty with 2 = On and 3 Off giving you Rank D, which is what it looks like TG relied on when listing dip switch settings on the track. If you run Galaga in a recent version of MAME that shows what the physical dip switches look like as you change the settings, you'll see that it shows Switches 1 and 2 control the difficulty, and with the settings you used of 1 = Off and 2 = On, you get Rank C. TG has always tracked Galaga using Rank D instead of Rank C since Rank D avoids the Kill Screen you encountered on Stage 256. On Rank D Stage 256 is a normal stage so you can keep playing as long as you have lives left. This is how the Galaga scores on all the other TG tracks are higher than 4M since there's no way you can score over 4M if the game ends on Stage 256. For examples of how stage 256 behaves on Rank D, here are two videos. The first one shows it on Regular Shot Speed and the second shows it on Fast Shot Speed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-Kk_cQT5bU and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6tOUOvkLLc

So the problem looks like TG lists the incorrect dip switches to give you difficulty Rank D, and at least some manuals also do. You can verify that the gameplay in the video is not difficulty Rank D by running Galaga in MAME on each difficulty (you can use a real arcade machine as well if you have one). It is easy to identify Rank D since only on Rank D do the enemies start going fast on the 2nd pass starting on stage 8 (which is why this is the Hardest setting) and only on Rank D do they fire at you as they come out on stage 10. In your video they do not fire at you as they enter on stage 10 so it is not difficulty rank D. You can also tell by the behavior on stage 256. As described in the link I gave in my earlier post (http://donhodges.com/galaga_stage_256_fix.htm), your video shows the behavior of Stage 256 on Rank C. Unfortunately you didn't show a boot sequence in the video of the machine starting up, but if you had it would have shown Rank C.

To see this yourself, if you still have access to the machine, I'd recommend you start it up the machine with the dip switches set the same way you have them in the video. You will see it show Rank C as the difficulty. If you then switch Dip 1 to On and Dip 2 to Off and restart the machine, you'll see it show Rank D as the difficulty.

Can you respond to whether the machine was using Fast Shot or Rapid Fire? They are not the same thing. With Fast Shot your bullets move much faster than normal which lets you shoot things much faster and penalizes you much less when you miss. With Rapid Fire you can hold down the fire button to fire without having to press the button each time, but your bullets do not fire faster than normal. If anybody wants to easily see the difference between the two, you can run the 20th anniversary edition Galaga (20pacgal in MAME) and there are separate settings for Rapid Fire and Shot Speed. From the video it looks like Fast Shot Speed to me instead of Normal Shot Speed. The same two videos I linked about show the difference in Normal Shot Speed (first video) and Fast Shot Speed (second video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-Kk_cQT5bU and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6tOUOvkLLc


Regards,
George

Hmm... Looks like the forum software mangled the formatting on my previous post a bit because of the youtube links I used. Let's try that again:

Daniel, first of all, I'd like say congratulations on your achievement and your skill on Galaga. I know several people that have met you and they've all said you're a great guy, and I know you made serious efforts to make sure you were using the correct settings for your record attempt.

I agree that in the video it looks like you have the 6J bank of dip switches (the one on the right) set to Switch 1 Off, Switch 2 On, and Switch 3 Off (switches are counted from the bottom, off is to the left and on is to the right).

However I just researched this and it looks like the TG dip switches listed do not actually give you Rank D (Hardest) difficulty, at least on some machines, including the one you played on. If you look at the Galaga manuals on KLOV (http://www.arcade-museum.com), there are multiple manuals up and one shows that Switches 1 and 2 control the difficulty, with 1 = Off and 2 = On giving you Rank C. This is what is reflected in the gameplay in your video. The other manual shows that Switches 2 and 3 control the difficulty with 2 = On and 3 Off giving you Rank D, which is what it looks like TG relied on when listing dip switch settings on the track. If you run Galaga in a recent version of MAME that shows what the physical dip switches look like as you change the settings, you'll see that it shows Switches 1 and 2 control the difficulty, and with the settings you used of 1 = Off and 2 = On, you get Rank C. TG has always tracked Galaga using Rank D instead of Rank C since Rank D avoids the Kill Screen you encountered on Stage 256. On Rank D Stage 256 is a normal stage so you can keep playing as long as you have lives left. This is how the Galaga scores on all the other TG tracks are higher than 4M since there's no way you can score over 4M if the game ends on Stage 256. For examples of how stage 256 behaves on Rank D, look at the two videos in my post right before this one. The first one shows it on Regular Shot Speed and the second shows it on Fast Shot Speed

So the problem looks like TG lists the incorrect dip switches to give you difficulty Rank D, and at least some manuals also do. You can verify that the gameplay in the video is not difficulty Rank D by running Galaga in MAME on each difficulty (you can use a real arcade machine as well if you have one). It is easy to identify Rank D since only on Rank D do the enemies start going fast on the 2nd pass starting on stage 8 (which is why this is the Hardest setting) and only on Rank D do they fire at you as they come out on stage 10. In your video they do not fire at you as they enter on stage 10 so it is not difficulty rank D. You can also tell by the behavior on stage 256. As described in the link I gave in my earlier post (http://donhodges.com/galaga_stage_256_fix.htm), your video shows the behavior of Stage 256 on Rank C. Unfortunately you didn't show a boot sequence in the video of the machine starting up, but if you had it would have shown Rank C.

To see this yourself, if you still have access to the machine, I'd recommend you start it up the machine with the dip switches set the same way you have them in the video. You will see it show Rank C as the difficulty. If you then switch Dip 1 to On and Dip 2 to Off and restart the machine, you'll see it show Rank D as the difficulty.

Can you respond to whether the machine was using Fast Shot or Rapid Fire? They are not the same thing. With Fast Shot your bullets move much faster than normal which lets you shoot things much faster and penalizes you much less when you miss. With Rapid Fire you can hold down the fire button to fire without having to press the button each time, but your bullets do not fire faster than normal. If anybody wants to easily see the difference between the two, you can run the 20th anniversary edition Galaga (20pacgal in MAME) and there are separate settings for Rapid Fire and Shot Speed. From the video it looks like Fast Shot Speed to me instead of Normal Shot Speed. The same two videos I linked about show the difference in Normal Shot Speed (first video) and Fast Shot Speed (second video).


Regards,
George

So what your saying is that the dip switches shown in the rules are not rank D and rank D is what is said to be the setting in the rules? If that is what your saying, then we need to accept this score because that is what Jace Hall tells us that we should do in a case where the rules are broken or incorrect. Reason being because we dont know if the previous record holder used the same dip settings or not. So it wouldnt be fair for him nor daniel to reject. jace also mentioned that a new track can be made with the correct settings.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jesse Porter

Reason being because we dont know if the previous record holder used the same dip settings or not. So it wouldnt be fair for him nor daniel to reject. jace also mentioned that a new track can be made with the correct settings.

---

By the same logic, it wouldn't be fair to the previous submitters if the record IS accepted. We can either be unfair to 1 gamer or 4 gamers. That seems like easy math. Daniel can resubmit to a new track once they become available. That's the most fair way to proceed.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by donatreides

By the same logic, it wouldn't be fair to the previous submitters if the record IS accepted. We can either be unfair to 1 gamer or 4 gamers. That seems like easy math. Daniel can resubmit to a new track once they become available. That's the most fair way to proceed.

---

so what you are saying is that the previous submitters played the game on rank D? How would you know that for sure?