[AC] Same! Same! Same! (1P Version) - 1-ALL Clear (3,583,190 to 2-5)

Turn on captions for extra comments.
Clear of the 1st loop of the game without using continues.
Same! Same! Same! (known in the west as Fire Shark) came out in arcades in 1989 and was made by Toaplan, one of the most prominent shmup developers. Same! Same! Same! is the sequel to Hishouzame (Flying Shark in the west).
Same! Same! Same! is an early Toaplan game, and early Toaplan had a very distinct feel and gameplay to them. The games have pretty low enemy bullet count, but every enemy has really fast aimed bullets that they use to try and snipe the player from every angle. The sniper boats that come from behind are pretty notorious.
You can see early Toaplan style as a prototype that Seibu further developed with Raiden.
Same! Same! Same! is quite infamous, it's one of the hardest arcade shmups ever made!
At least in terms of just clearing the main game, so just in terms of 1st loops and no separate difficulty modes. The game is incredibly brutal, unfair and punishing.
It came out during a time when arcade operators were putting pressure on developers to make games as bullshit hard as possible to make the most revenue, and this game is a prime example of that. The game's difficulty was not the original vision of the developers, but they were able to balance the game like they wanted with the later Megadrive port.
In order to make it harder, they basically got rid of the 1st loop and made people start in the 2nd.
2P version and Fire Shark, the western version of this game, are waaay easier to the point where they're basically different games.
The game is extremely hard for several reasons:
- Difficulty and bullet speed is nuts to the point where you need a very strict route to survive.
- RNG bouncing items that get in the way and mess up said routes.
- You have a shot limit which makes it inconsistent when you destroy enemies i.e. • Bullshit
- The game is long. 10 stages per loop.
- Checkpoints and Gradius syndrome, recovery after a death is very, very hard.
- Bombs do not give any i-frames.
- Hitboxes are huge.
- Enemies can only fire in like 8 directions, which makes for some really weird bullet interactions.
- Enemies hiding in the scrolled-out sections of the screen and sniping you pointblank as soon as you scroll the screen.
Now let's talk about one of the things that makes the game so hard: the deadly powerups.
Powerups in this game bounce completely randomly around the screen, and even reach all the way to the bottom. These get in the way a lot and picking up the wrong ones is often equal to dying. The green items are the worst because the green shot is a total penalty weapon that sucks and will get you killed.
And they knew exactly what they were doing with the green items because they stay longer on screen than any other powerup in the game.
The red items stay on screen a bit shorter and all the other (good) powerups leave the screen pretty quickly.
Bombs in this game are quite powerful and you can make the bomb explode further up the screen by holding the bomb button.
However they do not give you any invulnerability frames at all. They also take like a second to even go off.
So bombs are pretty useless as a defensive resource, the best you can do is use them in advance as a shield to block bullets and damage enemies.
If you die you lose all your power and get send back a checkpoint.
Recovery is extremely hard because it takes like three full stages to fully power up, and survival at low power is really, really hard. You get a massive ton of extra lives in this game but they don't mean all that much. The first death is often a downwards spiral, you're basically limping from checkpoint to checkpoint until you eventually "bleed out" and run out of lives.
Scoring in this game basically comes down to no-miss, no-bombing for as long as possible. You want to score because it gives extends.
- The way stage bonuses work is that they take the score from score items you picked up and then use your current bomb stock as a direct multiplier. So the more bombs you didn't use, the more score you get. These bonuses get pretty huge, with ten bombs in stock they can go up to 500k for a stage.
- Besides that you also get a big bonus for clearing a loop. Loop 1 is worth a million and it increases by 1m per loop, maxing out at 10m.
The game loops infinitely and gets harder each loop.
To add further insult to injury, the game stops giving score extends after the 1st loop.
For multi-looping you almost have to no-miss, no-bomb the 1st loop to get enough score to get enough lives to survive the later loops. The big planes still drop the occasional 1-up and 2-up at least, but you can't really relay on them.
Here is an insanely detailed guide for the game: crossfish.saku...
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/ jaimersstg
/ jaimersstg

[@ryful_z3]

The terms “limping” and “bleeding out” very accurately describe what happens after the first death...

[@armormodekeeg]

12:12 Jaimers: Bullets will start to get really fast at this point. Me: OH, THEY WEREN'T ALREADY?

[@LimeCultivist]

Ah yes, the deadliest enemy of them all - the powerups

[@alexhndr]

When even Jaimers, the shmup master himself, said that this is the hardest arcade shmup ever made... *You know you better stay away from this game, if you value your sanity*

[@ZPS_STG]

We played it in a competition with over 120 people for an entire month a few months ago, no one beat it (someone did make it to the final stage and clear the day after it ended though) Best I could do was barely making it in to Stage 4 Best Jaimers could do was making it to Stage 9 which was good enough for 2nd place

[@serraramayfield9230]

There's worse but this is definitely one of the most vicious.

[@millsshumps1968]

Managed to 10 loop the European version on Player 2 side which is easier. The Bullet hell was never this crazy until around the 6th loop. What I don't get with shumps fans is that Tatsujin/Truxton came out after this game and players were rating it's difficulty with the bullet hell above this game. Truxton was difficult for its time but no where near as intense as this game.

[@serraramayfield9230]

R R Because Tatsujin Ou came out afterward and was somehow even harder.

[@awe9217]

the name is the response you get from posting something very relatable

[@Shepardus]

For those who like the fast bullets but prefer something a bit more forgiving, I would recommend trap15's hack. It makes checkpoints more forgiving by giving you maximum movement speed from the start (no speed powerups) and making every powerup upgrade the weapon rather than every third powerup. Additionally, powerups stay on the screen for less time, making powerup dodging less annoying. It also includes built-in autofire. I've still never gotten past stage 5 or 6, but at least it feels less like the game actively hates me.

[@handlessuck589]

Same!Same!Same! The Good Edition

[@cps1247]

I'd much prefer 2P version with side-screen scrolling hack

[@cardsharpHS]

I actually wondered if this great game had a more "playable" edition. Toaplan themselves say they regretted succumbing to pressure from arcade operators and the resultant overall difficulty of Same! Same! Same! I dislike Speed-Ups in any shooter personally too, just because the game has to be balanced around them. And when you can't pick enough up at certain recovery positions, you're screwed.

[@evanseifert8858]

I love that cover with the shark in the sky, so badass. It seems like the name of this game is a play an "Tora! Tora! Tora!" (Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!), which is the name of a war movie and also the code-word that was used to signal the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor during WW2.

[@Yatsuzume]

manuel approves

[@cardsharpHS]

Toaplan said they thought Tiger (in 'Kyuukyoku Tiger') "sounded strong" and they got Same! Same! Same! by thinking "what other animal sounds strong"? They hit upon shark.

[@MylstarElectronics]

Toaplan forever!

[@God-ch8lq]

I'm more of a CAVE guy

[@cardsharpHS]

​@@God-ch8lq - No, Toaplan forever! I love that you love CAVE though. I despise the backlash against their awesome games just because they're contemporary...

[@ZPS_STG]

Just watched this again and noticed a mistake in the captions. The clear bonus doesn't double with each loop, it increases by 1m, eventually maxing out at 10m.

[@OGPimpin]

Im playing this on the Mini v now. This game is absolutely BRUTAL its ridiculous, but I love Toaplan games!

[@DiceDsx]

I though you were exaggerating about the green powerup, but man, they really try to shove the "focused" shot into your mouth here.

[@darkerfalcon3747]

58:26 *GAME OVER, MAN!*

[@FatDragonHats]

Time to study up bois, new M2 port and Mister cores dropping soon Good run dude

[@Readund]

The bullet visibility is miraculously bad, it only added to the difficulty.

[@DiddlyDiPotatoes]

I quite enjoyed this game on the MD even if it's a right bastard later. Great run and commentary as usual.

[@benparfittvideo]

Love your work, dude!

[@_very]

Did the musician for this game listen to a lot of Rush?

[@BIL0471]

Quite possibly, Masahiro Yuge loves his prog - shmuplations.com/toaplan-yuge1/

[@Isgostnort]

33:33 The most amazing part starts at this point.

[@handlessuck589]

The difficulty of this game feels more subtle and sinister when compared to danmakus which scream "I'M HARD! NOTICE ME!" in your face. Not a bad thing but subtle difficulty Is something I want to see more of aside from this and Rayforce. The music in this game is PUMPING. Stage 1 theme has been my LLS for months now. (Last song syndrome not Lotus Land Story)

[@Mario-pq9bi]

Mad respect!

[@millsshumps1968]

This puts my 2CC Striker's 1945 to shame when you talk about fast bullet hell. From Mills@ShumpsForum

[@getter7seven]

Stellar stuff.

[@ASE-PRL]

autofire isnt the twin galaxies way

[@handlessuck589]

Every time I see Twin Galaxies mentioned my perception of them just gets worse and worse I swear. Breathing is banned in Twin Galaxies iirc

[@broadbandislife]

Gotta dig all the little visual flourishes like the enemy planes spiralling to the ground and all the little hijinks happening around the airfields. Nice WW1 motif too which the design sticks to fairly faithfully - love the big warships with the janky ass hexagonal turret configuration, which was an actual thing until naval engineers and tacticians worked out just having superfiring sets fore and aft was the optimal way to go. It's probably here because, as _World of Warships_ players will be only too aware, the IJN's like first dreadnought-pattern battleship (and many other designs of the period) used it.

[@cardsharpHS]

Are you using semi-auto for this or are you the fastest Track and Field player on Earth? This is one of the only shooters I personally have to "cheat" and use semi-auto fire. I knacker my trigger arm in all the others but there's no way I can do enough damage quickly enough without in this.

[@zsascsforever4155]

Jaimers i have a question, what do you use to play these shmups? Joystick? Keyboard? Or arcade stick?

[@JaimersSTG]

Sega Saturn pad.

[@JohnshiBRPG]

What are your thoughts of Truxton II / Tatsujin Ou? It is said to be one of those very hard games as well.

[@balneor]

I remember he did a save-state clear attempt stream of the latter a couple years back, took 2h30 to beat. The video's still there, with chat reaction. Its description is enough to guess how he felt about ithe thing. Wonder if he's ever gonna go back to it.

[@mrblackjacker32.03]

@@balneor maybe with the M2 ShotTriggers release. But again, it's Truxton II / Tatsujin Ou.

[@ZPS_STG]

It may not look like it but this game comes close to being as hard as an LNN of a Touhou game. post-my own sam3 1p clear edit: probably ufo lnbnv tier actually

[@burntyper]

Lol tohou...

[@God-ch8lq]

It's harder, cuz if you die, recovery is a bitch

[@God-ch8lq]

Also ur hitbox is the entire sprite, bullets are pc98 levels of fast, and bullet visibility is low

[@ZPS_STG]

@@God-ch8lq Just the wings are the hitbox but the point still stands

[@God-ch8lq]

@@ZPS_STG good 2 know

[@rockethero1177]

So…am I in the minority for liking Fire Beam?

[@OmKol]

Impossible shark game

[@darkerfalcon3747]

Idk what shump is the hardest one between the original 1P version of Same! Same! Same! or the JP version of Gradius III (AC).

[@cps1247]

Green weapon is equal to blue balls in stage 4 boss of Salamander arcade

[@paulnguyen8910]

Can you play 12 straight hours and get to 99,999,990?

[@GITAHxgCoo]

toaplan what cave can't

[@daserfomalhaut9809]

What a strange name

[@handlessuck589]

Oh its supposed to mean Shark!Shark!Shark! or something along those lines. Some sort of signal in WW2.

[@daserfomalhaut9809]

@@handlessuck589 I just realized it's not "Same" like two objects being identical, but "Som-ay" because no shit, Japanese. Now it sounds MUCH better in my head. lol

[@Nightwing_Meh]

waht the fuck