ZeroRanger 1CC (w/ extras)

Описание: This is mostly just a raw footage of me doing a 1CC of ZeroRanger, a masterpiece shmup. Edited in are some related footage that you can't capture in a single 1CC run.

ZeroRanger is a love letter to the genre, more CAVE than Touhou and more classic shooter than CAVE. Like Ikaruga, it's a very approachable shmup and features free stage select, plenty of continues and a dynamic difficulty scaling. However, us shooters know the only authentic way to play a shmup is to 1CC it.

Brief comments on each stage, as much as Youtube allows me:

00:00:00 Opening 1

This is what plays when you start the game for the first time. There is no consequence for choosing either dialogue option.

00:01:21 Opening 2

This sequence of events occurs after the first time you die and return to the title screen. After waiting out a short demo in the title screen, another animated sequence will play. This has been edited into the run as you cannot get this opening on an authentic 1CC.

00:04:21 Stage 1-1

The first stage is pretty quick and easy, though my performance here is appalling. Thankfully, there is no shortage of extends through the early stages and I'll probably hit max extend anyway, so I decide to carry on.

00:06:37 Stage 1-2

The R-Type sometimes goes absolutely berserk getting close to 2-2 standards, but thankfully my horrible 1-1 performance prevents any chance of that happening.

00:11:05 Stage 1-3

1-3 isn't so bad since you get used to doing 2-3 in its full wrath, but the train segment can still occasionally land a hit here and there. The bosses are completely free so there's that.

00:16:20 Stage 1-4

1-4 is the longest single stage in the game with a lot of twists and turns. It's an endurance test that will likely take a few lives, but thankfully Erasure throws a boss rush at you before looping your game, and that's basically an extend farm.

Also, the monk turns into Sans if you attack him. For real.

00:29:38 Stage 2-1

Starting the loop, 2-1 is a more fast-paced stage 1 which throws you several curve balls. The upgrades to the bosses aren't that significant and they definitely can't outscale the fact that you now have the Charge subweapon.

00:32:04 Stage 2-2

2-2 is the consistently hardest stage in the game, though the later parts are a bit easier than stuff up to the miniboss. While Artypo can be cheesed relatively easily with the Charge subweapon, this is a demonstration of what happens if you fuck up. It gives you hope that you only need to hit it a few more times to finish it off while blocking 99% of your attacks with its frontal shield. Also I didn't expect onion man to use its opener again at the end there, leading to even more hits.

00:37:46 Stage 2-3

I'm sure the train in this stage violates the Geneva Convention in some way, but the Drill also cheeses it to the point where you only need to worry about vague positioning. The rest of the stage, including the boss, is fairly straightforward.

...I have no excuses for the drill clash performance.

00:43:26 FINALBOSS

This time, Erasure quotes the lyrics of Komm, süßer Tod then throws you in a fake game. You can't actually die here and it doesn't influence your main game state in any way, but I try my best anyway to compensate for that disastrous Grapefruit performace.

00:48:31 Stage 2-4

I don't attempt to score with the amoebas, due to a) being afraid of fucking up somehow and b) being pretty confident on Despair. The orb battle before the main boss is honestly harder due to the orbs being replaced if you don't destroy them simultaneously, and I don't even attempt to do the last attack legitimately.

Despair has one bad move with everything else being fairly straightforward. The huge crystals can sandwich you pretty easily and have a high degree of randomness, but nevertheless our lord and savior Charge saves us from failure once again. I'm so stressed at this point that I take a hit on her last word, proving once again why Charge is overpowered.

The following escape sequence is fairly easy if inconsequental due to not actually killing the player. I try to actually do it without dying for the sake of authenticity of 1CC.

00:59:14 TLB

This is a mix of incompetence and inexperience. The only real way to get a lot of practices in this part is to make a copy of a save with 2-4 unlocked and continuously replace the file, which I opted not to do. As you do, I again lose a life on the easiest orb attack and don't perform much better on the harder attacks either. Good thing the TLB actually isn't that hard at all, and is pretty forgiving even without having the maximum amount of extend.

01:05:31 Credits

This actually only plays after beating the game again after you've done the TLB, but I edited it in here anyway for the sake of completion. Those are my actual scores after doing another 1CC on the post-TLB version, which was arguably a worse performance than this run even.

The whole run has basically been about abusing broken weapons.