[AC] Formation Armed F - ALL Clear 8,562,600

Turn on captions for some extra comments.
Formation Armed F was released in arcades in 1988 by Nichibutsu, the OG shovelware company.
Played for La Calice Cup Winter.
Not a whole lot of positive things to say about this game. The game is boring, the stages drag on forever, stage design is repetitive as hell and the bosses are basically non-existent.
The graphics are cool I guess.
System is very simple, you have one shot button and you can pick up different weapons from item drops as well as speedup items.
With the secondary button you can extend your options forward or backwards while also powering up your shot. This consumes one F though, which is displayed at the bottom. You can refill F's by picking up F items.
Bullets that touch your options get cancelled.
Game is a checkpoint shmup, so if you die you lose all your power and go back to a previous checkpoint.
Scoring is also a bit of a mess.
- More than 90% of your total score comes from the final boss. It gives a million points if you kill it. But since this is checkpoint shmup, you can do an exploit where you double KO, go back a checkpoint and then kill him again. So basically you want to no-miss to the final boss and then suicide all 7 lives on him.
- You can safespot the stage 4 boss and milk the respawning enemies for quite a while. You can milk for about 173,000 points before it times out.
Other minor scoring methods include:
- You get 1000 points for picking up excess speedup items and picking up weapons of the same kind while at max power.
- You get 1000 points for picking up F items while at max F's. So for scoring you want to use as little F's as possible.
- The snakes in stage 5 split up if you don't shoot the head. This gives some extra score.
- There is a tiny bit of milking on the stage 2 and 3 boss. It's only a couple of enemies though.
The item carriers come from the opposite side of the screen that you're on. So if you're on the bottom half they come from the top half and vice versa. You can actually die if you run into them so be careful.
Stage 3 is one of the hardest stages in the game for some reason. For score, using a lot of F's here to get all the turrets is probably better than not using F's.
Stage 5 is a lot easier with the wide shot.
For the stage 5 boss safespot, your option needs to slightly touch the wall. If not there's a chance a bullet can slip through and kill you.
Stage 6 is mostly about speedkilling the dudes that come from the right side.
Final boss movement is all static.
Could have gotten some more score if I beat stage 5 and 6 without using any F's.
Hardest part of the game is making sure your options don't cancel the bullets you try to suicide on.
Also not falling asleep.
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/ jaimersstg
/ jaimersstg

[@dent4f661]

I enjoyed reading the description lol

[@JohnshiBRPG]

Honestly, the only two good games I played form Nichbutsu are Terra Cresta and UFO Robo Dangar. With the latter, there are more shot options available with the final UFO attachment.

[@alexanderteuman7273]

I love shooter like this, i'am 54.

[@Taizen_Chisou]

me, at the start of stage 1: huh default high score is 50,000, and these base scores are so low. 8 million? me: _[reads description]_ haha ok why

[@chillagma]

Jaimers! what's the hardest game you played?

[@tomauberwenig2116]

You're so cruel in your description of the game :-) ! Being a lame shmupper, I enjoyed not being powerless in a late 80's game! But yeah, it's not that dynamic, I admit^^. Nevertheless, it's one of the first shmups to invite the gamer to play top half screen, at least for the first and second level (even if you're the opposite of a SuperPlayer like myself^^), and I really like the graphics, the music, and the option system.

[@Galiaverse]

Curious, but looking at Stage 3, it seemed to actually require some strategy for how relatively difficult it may have been. Would the game maybe been less boring if the other stages played closer to Stage 3? Having to use frequent F Items to position options in the right place for maximum benefit and survival? Just wanna know your thoughts.

[@emperorIng360]

stage 3 is one of the best stages in the game. If more of the game was like that, it would have been far more exciting. You can kind of snooze through half the game.

[@getter7seven]

Stage 1 theme music is oddly catchy at least~

[@FortuneHunters]

Is it me or the green carrier the ship lands on look like the white base?