Ketsui 1-ALL 1cc

Clearing the first loop of Ketsui in one credit has been a goal of mine for a long time. I dedicated a whole month to trying to pull it off on the XBox 360 port, then I got the PCB and put more time into it and came insanely close on the last boss. Then I gave up for a while.

Last night, after almost 2 years of playing the game off and on, I finally did it! I even captured it on video, for the most part. Protip: if you’re going to record something important on your iPhone, turn on airplane mode, otherwise a phone call will cause the video to stop recording.

Yep, I got a phone call in the middle of stage 4, which cut off my video. It’s a bummer, but here’s what I was able to capture.

Not my best score, but I bombed a lot and played it safe.

Ketsui is one of my favorite games of all time. First, the scoring system is straightforward and encourages really aggressive play by pushing you to destroy enemies while being as close as possible to them, which has influenced and improved how I play pretty much every other shooting game. Secondly, the art style and music are fantastic. Lastly, the bullet patterns are great and fun to dodge. Good bullet patterns are like puzzles to decipher and make you want to play more and find routes through them. Bad bullet patterns make you feel like they’re cheap and impossible, which just make you want to give up. Ketsui is full of great bullet patterns.

Now I really want to capture a full video…