Area 88/ U.N Squadron

[EVN]

Hey all,

Any Area 88/U.N Squadron players here?

Wondering if anyone knows what the deal is with this score for U.N Squadron on arcade:



Now according to Gamest/Arcadia this game has an infinite:



Here are the top MAME Scores here:



Here are the best scores from the SHMUPs forums and notice that the really high ones were all done with auto fire which is not allowed here on the arcade track:



Here are the best scores from MARP:





That Dwayne Richard 1,960,400 from 1992 seems like a pretty distant outlier compared to everything else - especially when comparing to scores done without autofire which makes this particular game significantly less challenging.

Anyone know how this was done or if it's possible under today's rule set?

[HAN]

To the best of my knowledge, the Dwayne Richard score is definitely possible.

There exists a way to "milk" the final boss's turrets that continually respawn for as long as you can hold out. The final boss does not "time out", meaning there technically is no time limit to defeat him, but the precise dodging and concentration needed to milk him that long is definitely skillful.

The easiest character to do this with is Mikey; His shot gets the widest so you have more leeway when positioning yourself to make shots at the the turrets without damaging the bosses core.

Would a similar score like this pass adjudication today? Hard to say. The counterstop (9,999,990) scores out of Japan got to be too plentiful that they started counting the money you have left at the end of the game and if you got all the hidden Mobi-Chan pickups to at least highlight the players that showed other skills.

[Pearl2hu]

impossible without the infinite milk.

[Pearl2hu]

A.K上越 - 1,846,850 - 30hz Autofire ON




1 No enemies missed, No purchases. 2,3930 | $20830
2 No enemies missed, No purchases. 6,5830 | $56830
3 No enemies missed. Boss full milk, Unicorn collected. No purchases. 14,2430 | $95730
4 4 Enemies missed, 3-4k loss at absolute. Boss full milk. No Purcahses. 19,9430 | $130830
5 No enemies missed, No purchases, Boss full milk. 25,8880 | $174230
Special 1 Enemy missed, -$1000 on boss. 54.07 Finish. 34,6880 | $207230
6 ~10 enemies missed. 9 of which are impossible to kill due to a branching path
Boss full milk, No purchases. 42,7640 | $258740
7 1 Enemy missed. -1k. No purchases. 51,3750 | $331350
8 15 Enemies missed. 6 Impossible due to animation, -**. Napalm pickup (+$1560) Boss milk. No purchases. 60,5050 | $399660
9 10 Enemies missed. -**. Not Full Boss milk(-10k?), No purchases. 71,5700 | $470,120
Last Boss 1 Enemy missed on hatch milk, S Shell pickup. 100% Destruction. 75,7050 | $498,800
Infinite Milk The turrets can be killed indefinitely, this is done for a while, totalling
an extra +16,650 Points and $22200. So 38,850 points in total.


+500000 Clear bonus
+$50000 Clear bonus (571,100)
+$2150 weapon reward (573,250)


1,273,700 + 573,250 = 1,846,850 (100 points get lost in the clear bonus.)


So subtracting the score from the milk
1,808,000


And then adding the absolute maximum A.K missed from enemies running away will total to around 1.83M


the WR without using the infinite stands at 1,851,760 by XEV. set in January of 1990, The game was officailly closed for submissions around 1990 due to the infinite milk on the final boss.
(Note : This run collects all 6 mobichans for bonus weapons to cash in on the clear bonus. This is an extra 16,160 points added.)


So because of this, Dwayne's 1.96 million run is mathematically impossible to achieve without abusing this milk no mmatter how it's looked at.

[EVN]

This is an example of the infinite on the last boss:

If someone did this for an extended period of time in a submission, I would call it leeching. To go from the max possible score to Dwayne's we are talking at least 15+ minutes of that. More if he didn't get all the available points throughout the game.

EDIT, and when I refer to the "max possible" - that was achieved with autofire. The scores without autofire are quite a bit less which would necessitate a significantly longer amount of "milking".

[HAN]

Another thing to take into account is that all the scores from Area 88 (Japan region version) have an extra stage "Mission Special" that the US version of U.N. Squadron does not have. So all scores from Area 88 should be higher due to this, if we're comparing apples to apples...timestamped link:

(alright, maybe my timestamp failed...its the stage right after the massive helicopter boss)

[Pearl2hu]

so that just makes it more apparent that the milk was used lol

[EVN]

So any of the "experts" in leeching want to weigh in and tell me if this score is possible under the current track rules plus the global rules?

To me I feel that this track should move to a "leeching allowed" track - maybe don't remove the score since there were probably no leeching rules for TG back in 1992. Not 100% sold on that though since in Japan they recorded 57 players maxing the game out at 9,999,990.

If I was going to make a good track on here what should it look like? Maybe its just not a good game for high score competition because of the way the end boss is, people could leech it a tiny bit and where do you draw the line?