Delicious Fruit
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by Cutie
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by Cutie
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by Cutie
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by Cutie
12 Reviews:
ElCochran90
*Cleared on 16/10/2023*
Rating includes extra. Difficulty rating excludes extra, which still leaves it unaffected.
A monumental milestone, the one with the blue outlines for cherries, tilesets, blocks and platforms, the one drenched in a black background like an underground maze that has no natural light, the one with the “Bizarre Super Mario Bros.” artwork presumably first seen in Clan Osaka’s blogspot in 2006, the one with the iconic opening screen that would be referenced in future fangame engines, the one that first saw the darkness of night on January 2010, until the release of version 3.0 in May of the same year that included a final boss: Colonel Schwarlitz...
aka Schwarlitz Longhener
aka Schwarlitz Longhena
aka The Leader
aka Colonel
aka Taisa
aka TIS
aka the squared purple moving sprite that throws dots and epilepsy episodes.
96.15% of my total playtime was spent in the final boss, and yet, the platforming segments and previous bosses give a lot to speak about.
Cyber’s earliest conception of platforming and traps is one of adventure despite the monochromatic design. Traps are not inventive in any way, at least in Black: you’ll have fast-moving spikes and disappearing blocks, mostly. However, there is also triggers, a concept found here and in Maze. We’re talking about early 2010 here, so some slack is being given. The second screen is interesting in the sense that the right side (from which you enter) gives a feeling of being a different challenge from the left side: needle platforming vs. cherry & platforms. The third screen, the one with platforms and red killer blocks, makes sure to use 100% of the screen, and each vertical corridor, as generic as it might be, feels different. This would be done many times in the future games of the following two years. When you encounter once again the initial screen, you don’t only utilize triggers, but also encounter how a screen constantly changes expectations through maze-like corridors.
Every screen you enter has a different feeling from the previous, so there’s not a spot in which you can say: “this is identical to that other screen”. Making non-repetitive platforming is better than having generic designs for over 20 screens and reaching final boss, regardless of the fangame’s difficulty. The fifth screen is a symmetrical visual assault of spikes and metallic tilesets, and the traps are not that unfair or frustrating in a way that it is a detriment for the playthrough. The sixth screen has an entire pillar rotating as a trap and this is not a usual trigger.
And so, every screen could be discussed as to why it keeps the game versatile. The section where you have to activate a trigger in a very specific way so that you can clear the screen to the right, riddled with fake blocks, is a funny one if you don’t pay attention to what you’re doing. Even telling the correct path in this block-infested screen is easy since the fake ones have the trademark blue outline.
This is 2010, for the third time, but the game uses levels that require more than one screen, mostly vertically. If the game had a scrolling mechanism (which was gladly implemented in Maze), it would make it more fun and the screen transitions less tricky. However, one can see that Cyber normally envisions levels that are not restricted to a single screen, but big rooms, once again using their entire space. There is also a symmetrical composition, and even if that’s a meme today, that’ll never stop being a plus to me.
The most notorious platforming segments for me are two: the Bizarre Mario Bros. artwork (with its corresponding theme), and the trigger screen composed of fake blocks where, the more you progress, the more memory you must build to remember where you can stand. For the former, it is such a sight to behold and a bad joke that you either take very positively or very negatively. You begin in nowhere and most reach “that spot over there”. The more you explore, the more the blocks reveal themselves. Mario and Luigi won’t make it an easy task though, as they throw equally bizarrely shaped bullets at you from obligatorily questionable places. Not that creepy this time, though, as it’s from the “L” and “M” from their hats and from Mario’s finger.
For the former screen, it’s the entire opposite, which I find creative. All blocks are visible, signaling the path to follow, and the floor is full of spikes. You must follow this path, but every time you touch one of these blocks, it disappears. Do you remember the path back and the safe spots? Triggers will reveal progressively where to head next. This will be done in an even better way in Maze, but also more difficult.
The bosses are as unapologetically funny and random as they come: the serpent-like duo could be counted as a mini boss because it doesn’t even have its own theme and, for some reason, the portal is always there. Just realized that in my own VOD: what happens if I go to the warp and ignore the boss? I actually have no idea. Japanese mushroom addicted Mario is so easy it could count as a troll boss. Kirby is fun and makes use of the full room. It’s not a common or predictable boss, even if it can be done in under a minute if you’re a good key-masher. This is a very light intro to the dotted projectiles and RNG behavior you’ll face in the final boss before extra. I do like Kirby as a boss in this game; it’s funny, dumb, short, and yet very practical.
**COLONEL SCHWARLITZ LONGHENER**
The mere existence of this dude in the fangame realm is a timeline event in itself, a watershed, a new landmark, a ultimate endurance and skill test, and a prime example of suckass coding. Rumor has it, Cyber had made this boss without the intention of people beating it, but a clear screen was still made, and even extra content for the Version 4.1. The origins of this dude are even so forgotten by the fangame community today that not even the recent revival of the TIS event with Schwarlitz’ Requiem on Twitch mentioned who the hell this guy is. It’s the equivalent of watching Kill Bill and having no idea of who Hattori Hanzō was (in real life and in cultural folklore) or playing a fangame and not being able to tell when you are in any Kirby-inspired world.
Colonel is the most iconic antagonist and final boss of the DoDonPachi series (not the true final boss, which is normally Hibachi, a creation of the Colonel himself). In his fundamentalist belief that the human race is inherently flawed, he seeks to extinguish it. Cyber accounts for the greater percentage of responsibility of the usage of DoDonPachi soundtracks in the Kill the Kamilia sequels, as well as their impossible Happilous copycats and even counted Western medleys.
This absolutely tough mf is considered to be the first barrage boss in fangames and has two phases: normal phase and angry red phase (one of Cyber’s bosses’ trademarks which would apply not only to Barrage but also to literally every main boss in Maze).
BLUE PHASE
Blue Phase features one song: デスレーベル95-97-02. This is a remix of many boss themes from DonPachi, DoDonPachi and DoDonPachi Daioujou. The phase begins with a warmup attack that consists of small-dotted bullets of three colors, each one indicating increasing density: first red, then light blue, then yellow. This is a proper intro for what will predominate in the rest of the avoidance and the skills you should develop: linear reading (there are no curved attacks), one frame movements, and being completely aware of the hitbox of your kid. For the latter point, if you overestimate it or underestimate it, you’re dead. The way the programs are arranged is fun: it’s not about having audio cues and rhythmic attacks. It’s a barrage challenge with music; the attacks are independent.
It’s fun to see how attacks are coordinated and they have a symmetrical logic: one red square emerges from the Colonel throwing blue delicious fruits everywhere, and touches the left wall, stopping the fruits and tossing more dot projectiles. Then, another red square emerges and goes to the right, but with the left one accompanying it. Once it has done its work, a third red square emerges and all three go up, doing the same, all of them having an equal distance between each other and leaving the left side of the screen as the safest spot. There might not be music synchronicity, pretty much like LoveTrap influenced it with Miku, but there is an order and a logic.
Before the platform, there is one seriously unfair attack: the transition between the subsequent three squares (which appear more rapidly the second time) and the two walls of spikes following you. It can be read, so it’s not impossible, but considering human skills, it’s quite luck-based. The optimal thing is to be near the center, which increases the density and lowers the possibility of moving; if there’s a roof of dots above you and you move to much, the walls of spikes will behave accordingly, making awful curves and the attack can be controlled as much as a McLaren F1 LM on ice, steering back and forth. This is guaranteed death. So, there is less density if you’re on the corners, right? True for the dots but think about how two lines behave if the center of origin remains stationary and you rotate both lines. They will cross each other at some point. If they are completely vertical (both having 90° with respect to the ground), the distance between is the highest. The more they rotate, the lower the distance is. The distance available if you’re at a corner is close to zero, and the way to increase it is to walk slowly to the center. Considering they emerge from Colonel’s shoulders and accounting for the distance between them and The Kid, there’s around a 2.5-second gap between you moving and the wall adjusting. The tighter the space, the more probability you have of dying due to density. However, the problem doesn’t end there. For some bizarre reason of poor coding and sense of depth, when the dots overlap the spikes, the dots are invisible except for counted red ones on the left wall. This makes no sense and I have no explanation for it. This causes your reading to be limited and, out of the blue, dots you never saw properly before will come out from the walls. It’s a horrible attack and will be the toughest grind of the first phase, especially because your initial position pretty much depends on the RNG of the previous attack which is three squares throwing garbage everywhere.
We just got started because the platform itself requires a whole discussion.
Everyone familiar with K3 will curse the platform, and it’s legendary: a funny-looking metallic flat thing with eyes. Cute. This is the most famous choke phase of the Boss Rush, not necessarily because it is the most difficult, but because it depends pretty much on you: timing and patience constitute 95% of the final outcome. It also has many hits, but the pattern is perfect and will never stop hitting the same bouncing spots. Let’s go back to Black, as all of us belonging to the Black gang DO HAVE valid reasons to complain: Colonel only has one hit, but the platform’s behavior is objectively luck-dependent and absolute King Dodongo shit. When I asked live why it did so many weird things, I got three equal responses:
a) “Solid” - TTBB
b) “It’s a solid” - Barfyace
c) “Coded as a solid” - Kiyoshi
Cool and amazing to know, but what on Earth did that mean in Christian English? I was, frankly, too embarrassed to ask back. After interacting with it, I realized something: you cannot jump through it from below; it’s like hitting a solid ceiling or a solid tile. “So that’s what they meant, probably”, I thought, but that didn’t explain all the other crap! (Please read the following points if you plan to beat Colonel)
1) The platform stops moving when you step on it, except when it doesn’t. I discovered a secondary rule: if the platform is moving up at any angle and you’re on it, it does stop, but it doesn’t if it’s going down at any angle. Imagine there’s no Colonel or barrage attempting to finish your life: if you take this platform and it is going down, it will transport you (and still sorta, because if it’s going at an angle you must move with it horizontally; it doesn’t move your horizontal position); the moment it hits the ground, it won’t move anymore until you hop off the bus ride.
2) The bouncing of the platform is random (shoutouts to Kiyoshi for explaining this). When Colonel spawns the platform, always from the same initial point, it goes either two directions: down left or up right. If it’s the latter, it will always bounce back, and that’s our first clue for what actually happens: if the hitbox of the platform touches any wall, the roof or the floor at the same instance a killer projectile does, the platform can bounce at any direction depending on the pixel of collision. As fa as I’m concerned, no one has published a formula for calculating in which way the platform will move now, because it also causes the platform to change the degrees of its trajectory. For all of us that have grinded the boss enough, we have had the same softlock/impossible scenario: the platform travelling in a perfectly horizontal, 180° trajectory, with a probability of zero of changing its inclination. You’re dead. This can also happen at any height: the middle of the screen, literally the floor, or the freaking ceiling. The game just says: “this attempt was futile, and your efforts amount to zero”. That explains why if the initial platform spawn goes up right, it bounces to the contrary position: because Colonel’s big, squared sprite also kills you, so the platform detects it. You have zero control over this phenomenon.
3) Granted, the platform stops when it goes up, and since it’s a solid, you can double jump on it. Right? Wrong. There is no rule for this; perhaps it’s a fps issue, but the platform decides if you can do only a single second jump out of it, or a double jump as intended. This particular problem can frustrate a substantial number of attempts to shoot the Colonel beginning with the fact that a second jump doesn’t have the same height. In short, jumping once or twice out of the platform is a coin toss.
RED PHASE
In all honesty, this phase is unforgiving and brutal, but I still attribute more difficulty to the first phase because of the wall spikes attack (with its preceding transition) and the downright mental platform.
The red phase is where the manual challenge matches the psychological challenge, since it’s longer and has at least two unfair attacks where RNG can treat you unfairly. There is no checkpoint, so this guarantees you will have between 7 and 9 minutes of boss fight, depending on the behavior of the platform.
The first attack comes with a visual warning: it’s a creative one that demands you remain in the middle, since the size of the vertical bars is more than enough to obliterate you. Every single attack in this phase comes with dotted projectiles free of charge, regardless of what the Colonel throws at you. Again, it’s not a rhythmic avoidance timed with music, I insist, but the music itself gives you important audio cues.
The musical structure of this phase is amazing, to be honest, and it consists of three songs:
I. Dodonpachi DaiOuJou OST – Hihou: Vertical seizure bars, spinning blue pregnancy test, roof of cherries, wall of cherries, seizure bars and squared leftovers, second spinning blue pregnancy test, red vertical and diagonal cherries rain --> As a “welcome to hell phase; this is not even my final form”, this subphase builds tons of tension and suspense, but also hype. Hands down, the most luck-based attacks are both the roof attack and the wall attack, especially the latter, which due to RNG is perfectly capable of doing a wall of cherries taller than 4.5 blocks of 32X32 each, and I got two of these. More often than not, you will have blind spots when the walls open like the Red Sea, but they will be covered by dots, so it’s still technically an impossible wall to get through. The rain of cherries emulates a hardcore version of the attack of IA in Sunspike after the intro, where cherries come from left (diagonally), right (diagonally) and up (vertically), with a fair share of dots density. The reading required here is insane, including a correct calculation of the height of your jumps, and it is, for me, the most difficult attack of the entire red phase that is not luck-based. This leads to a transition where cherries come from the bottom corners and the center towards the Colonel, as if he was amassing power. This transition is mercilessly brutal, since the previous attack might corner you and being in the middle is also a good strat for any emergency, so any form of transition to this next attack is just plain awful and can lead to the tiniest room for air.
II. Ketsui Death Label (ケツイ デスレーベル 絆地獄たち) – No Remorse (alternate version of DoDonPachi Daifukkatsu Black Label – No Remorse [True Last Boss]): Amazing transition between both themes: Hihou and No Remorse. Here you face vertical falling cherries and dotted projectiles density that can go anywhere. These attacks are stupidly long. Right in the middle of this, the attack gets reversed: maintaining the dots density, now the cherries come from the floor. FROM THE FU****G floor. This is the scariest attack ever, where your heart rate is above 120 now. Any spot of the floor can be lava, and the spawning of the cherries from below is still RNG, but the dots keep coming from above (Colonel keeps spawning them). So you have this involuntary and very intuitive reaction to jump all the time, except that if you jump, you might touch a point you didn’t read. It’s terrifying, for real, Cyber showed his darkest cruelty right here. The theme of No Remorse gives it an epic feeling rather than a hyperactive, aggressive one, like reaching new heights you hadn’t before, and there is a peak to reach. The final attack during this theme consists in the same red squares you have seen throughout, bouncing in random directions, and creating dots density when they hit walls. Under any scenario, it’s a simple attack that can get tricky if the RNG is in a bad mood; the scary part is when they bounce on the floor. Each square has a fixed number of times it can bounce before exploding, emanating an even bigger shower of dots. If you’re in the middle of the screen and two squares explode at each one of your two sides, say goodbye. This seemingly peaceful attack is a preamble for the final punch: the point where your heart will go above 150.
III. DoDonPachi Resurrection: ]-[/34(#! – Cyber knows his human psychology; it’s known you’re 7 minutes into the battle, and this son of a gun throws this freaking theme at full force for the final form of Longhena: an epileptic Colonel that flashes strong lights at your eyes while replicating exactly the same first attack of the blue phase, but instead of three levels of density, it has four: light blue, green, yellow and red. Nothing more. This theme is meant specifically for you to be tense. Prepare a mindset willing to accept that you’ll be close to dying at least five times, and I’m talking about a frame of difference each (can be anything between 1 and 3 pixels). You’ll see your life flash in front of your eyes, you’ll realize if your pulse was appropriate for being a doctor or not, you’ll realize if the levels of cholesterol are ok in your body if you don’t have a heart attack, and you’ll know you’re suited for Mexican cuisine if you don’t throw up. This is also the tensest state my entire chat has ever been in.
When you hear that signature, loud bang, you’ll know you have conquered yourself.
This boss is one of the hardest things I have ever done, and the toughest thing I have ever done live.
Final verdict on the boss: extremely exciting and tense, a woeful first half and an exciting and fairer second half with two luck-based instances and a terrific amalgamation of themes with great song transitions. Recommended for avoidance experts.
EXTRA
Now, there is an extra, and it is pretty much symbolic. The extra sucks and is annoying. It’s a long save of three screens which you have to do deathless and then backtrack through them, with the peculiarity that the first screen changes to three high gates in a row and a high gate diagonal, the worst elemental thing you can put at the end of a save. I died to this 3 times or so. The extra boss is whatever: a giant downwards spike in the ceiling which you have to damage by shooting a killer spike in the bottom, quite Destination-like (before Destination) but not auto aimed. Some spikes follow you endlessly, so it gets annoying, but it’s a 15-minute challenge at the most. I don’t even know what’s the trigger for beating the boss (you don’t really beat it), the floor opens, visual memorabilia are offered to you concerning the bosses you conquered, and there you go: the official screenshot for FSR submission can be tak... Wait a minute.
Overall: It’s a flawed game with incorrect physics, substandard platforming, and bizarre bosses, one of them being the first and still one of the toughest barrage bosses available out there. However, it shows how epic and big Cyber’s games can be with his handling of space and gimmick choices. As old school as it might be, it set new standards that people are trying to beat more than 13 years later.
[5] Likes
Rating includes extra. Difficulty rating excludes extra, which still leaves it unaffected.
A monumental milestone, the one with the blue outlines for cherries, tilesets, blocks and platforms, the one drenched in a black background like an underground maze that has no natural light, the one with the “Bizarre Super Mario Bros.” artwork presumably first seen in Clan Osaka’s blogspot in 2006, the one with the iconic opening screen that would be referenced in future fangame engines, the one that first saw the darkness of night on January 2010, until the release of version 3.0 in May of the same year that included a final boss: Colonel Schwarlitz...
aka Schwarlitz Longhener
aka Schwarlitz Longhena
aka The Leader
aka Colonel
aka Taisa
aka TIS
aka the squared purple moving sprite that throws dots and epilepsy episodes.
96.15% of my total playtime was spent in the final boss, and yet, the platforming segments and previous bosses give a lot to speak about.
Cyber’s earliest conception of platforming and traps is one of adventure despite the monochromatic design. Traps are not inventive in any way, at least in Black: you’ll have fast-moving spikes and disappearing blocks, mostly. However, there is also triggers, a concept found here and in Maze. We’re talking about early 2010 here, so some slack is being given. The second screen is interesting in the sense that the right side (from which you enter) gives a feeling of being a different challenge from the left side: needle platforming vs. cherry & platforms. The third screen, the one with platforms and red killer blocks, makes sure to use 100% of the screen, and each vertical corridor, as generic as it might be, feels different. This would be done many times in the future games of the following two years. When you encounter once again the initial screen, you don’t only utilize triggers, but also encounter how a screen constantly changes expectations through maze-like corridors.
Every screen you enter has a different feeling from the previous, so there’s not a spot in which you can say: “this is identical to that other screen”. Making non-repetitive platforming is better than having generic designs for over 20 screens and reaching final boss, regardless of the fangame’s difficulty. The fifth screen is a symmetrical visual assault of spikes and metallic tilesets, and the traps are not that unfair or frustrating in a way that it is a detriment for the playthrough. The sixth screen has an entire pillar rotating as a trap and this is not a usual trigger.
And so, every screen could be discussed as to why it keeps the game versatile. The section where you have to activate a trigger in a very specific way so that you can clear the screen to the right, riddled with fake blocks, is a funny one if you don’t pay attention to what you’re doing. Even telling the correct path in this block-infested screen is easy since the fake ones have the trademark blue outline.
This is 2010, for the third time, but the game uses levels that require more than one screen, mostly vertically. If the game had a scrolling mechanism (which was gladly implemented in Maze), it would make it more fun and the screen transitions less tricky. However, one can see that Cyber normally envisions levels that are not restricted to a single screen, but big rooms, once again using their entire space. There is also a symmetrical composition, and even if that’s a meme today, that’ll never stop being a plus to me.
The most notorious platforming segments for me are two: the Bizarre Mario Bros. artwork (with its corresponding theme), and the trigger screen composed of fake blocks where, the more you progress, the more memory you must build to remember where you can stand. For the former, it is such a sight to behold and a bad joke that you either take very positively or very negatively. You begin in nowhere and most reach “that spot over there”. The more you explore, the more the blocks reveal themselves. Mario and Luigi won’t make it an easy task though, as they throw equally bizarrely shaped bullets at you from obligatorily questionable places. Not that creepy this time, though, as it’s from the “L” and “M” from their hats and from Mario’s finger.
For the former screen, it’s the entire opposite, which I find creative. All blocks are visible, signaling the path to follow, and the floor is full of spikes. You must follow this path, but every time you touch one of these blocks, it disappears. Do you remember the path back and the safe spots? Triggers will reveal progressively where to head next. This will be done in an even better way in Maze, but also more difficult.
The bosses are as unapologetically funny and random as they come: the serpent-like duo could be counted as a mini boss because it doesn’t even have its own theme and, for some reason, the portal is always there. Just realized that in my own VOD: what happens if I go to the warp and ignore the boss? I actually have no idea. Japanese mushroom addicted Mario is so easy it could count as a troll boss. Kirby is fun and makes use of the full room. It’s not a common or predictable boss, even if it can be done in under a minute if you’re a good key-masher. This is a very light intro to the dotted projectiles and RNG behavior you’ll face in the final boss before extra. I do like Kirby as a boss in this game; it’s funny, dumb, short, and yet very practical.
**COLONEL SCHWARLITZ LONGHENER**
The mere existence of this dude in the fangame realm is a timeline event in itself, a watershed, a new landmark, a ultimate endurance and skill test, and a prime example of suckass coding. Rumor has it, Cyber had made this boss without the intention of people beating it, but a clear screen was still made, and even extra content for the Version 4.1. The origins of this dude are even so forgotten by the fangame community today that not even the recent revival of the TIS event with Schwarlitz’ Requiem on Twitch mentioned who the hell this guy is. It’s the equivalent of watching Kill Bill and having no idea of who Hattori Hanzō was (in real life and in cultural folklore) or playing a fangame and not being able to tell when you are in any Kirby-inspired world.
Colonel is the most iconic antagonist and final boss of the DoDonPachi series (not the true final boss, which is normally Hibachi, a creation of the Colonel himself). In his fundamentalist belief that the human race is inherently flawed, he seeks to extinguish it. Cyber accounts for the greater percentage of responsibility of the usage of DoDonPachi soundtracks in the Kill the Kamilia sequels, as well as their impossible Happilous copycats and even counted Western medleys.
This absolutely tough mf is considered to be the first barrage boss in fangames and has two phases: normal phase and angry red phase (one of Cyber’s bosses’ trademarks which would apply not only to Barrage but also to literally every main boss in Maze).
BLUE PHASE
Blue Phase features one song: デスレーベル95-97-02. This is a remix of many boss themes from DonPachi, DoDonPachi and DoDonPachi Daioujou. The phase begins with a warmup attack that consists of small-dotted bullets of three colors, each one indicating increasing density: first red, then light blue, then yellow. This is a proper intro for what will predominate in the rest of the avoidance and the skills you should develop: linear reading (there are no curved attacks), one frame movements, and being completely aware of the hitbox of your kid. For the latter point, if you overestimate it or underestimate it, you’re dead. The way the programs are arranged is fun: it’s not about having audio cues and rhythmic attacks. It’s a barrage challenge with music; the attacks are independent.
It’s fun to see how attacks are coordinated and they have a symmetrical logic: one red square emerges from the Colonel throwing blue delicious fruits everywhere, and touches the left wall, stopping the fruits and tossing more dot projectiles. Then, another red square emerges and goes to the right, but with the left one accompanying it. Once it has done its work, a third red square emerges and all three go up, doing the same, all of them having an equal distance between each other and leaving the left side of the screen as the safest spot. There might not be music synchronicity, pretty much like LoveTrap influenced it with Miku, but there is an order and a logic.
Before the platform, there is one seriously unfair attack: the transition between the subsequent three squares (which appear more rapidly the second time) and the two walls of spikes following you. It can be read, so it’s not impossible, but considering human skills, it’s quite luck-based. The optimal thing is to be near the center, which increases the density and lowers the possibility of moving; if there’s a roof of dots above you and you move to much, the walls of spikes will behave accordingly, making awful curves and the attack can be controlled as much as a McLaren F1 LM on ice, steering back and forth. This is guaranteed death. So, there is less density if you’re on the corners, right? True for the dots but think about how two lines behave if the center of origin remains stationary and you rotate both lines. They will cross each other at some point. If they are completely vertical (both having 90° with respect to the ground), the distance between is the highest. The more they rotate, the lower the distance is. The distance available if you’re at a corner is close to zero, and the way to increase it is to walk slowly to the center. Considering they emerge from Colonel’s shoulders and accounting for the distance between them and The Kid, there’s around a 2.5-second gap between you moving and the wall adjusting. The tighter the space, the more probability you have of dying due to density. However, the problem doesn’t end there. For some bizarre reason of poor coding and sense of depth, when the dots overlap the spikes, the dots are invisible except for counted red ones on the left wall. This makes no sense and I have no explanation for it. This causes your reading to be limited and, out of the blue, dots you never saw properly before will come out from the walls. It’s a horrible attack and will be the toughest grind of the first phase, especially because your initial position pretty much depends on the RNG of the previous attack which is three squares throwing garbage everywhere.
We just got started because the platform itself requires a whole discussion.
Everyone familiar with K3 will curse the platform, and it’s legendary: a funny-looking metallic flat thing with eyes. Cute. This is the most famous choke phase of the Boss Rush, not necessarily because it is the most difficult, but because it depends pretty much on you: timing and patience constitute 95% of the final outcome. It also has many hits, but the pattern is perfect and will never stop hitting the same bouncing spots. Let’s go back to Black, as all of us belonging to the Black gang DO HAVE valid reasons to complain: Colonel only has one hit, but the platform’s behavior is objectively luck-dependent and absolute King Dodongo shit. When I asked live why it did so many weird things, I got three equal responses:
a) “Solid” - TTBB
b) “It’s a solid” - Barfyace
c) “Coded as a solid” - Kiyoshi
Cool and amazing to know, but what on Earth did that mean in Christian English? I was, frankly, too embarrassed to ask back. After interacting with it, I realized something: you cannot jump through it from below; it’s like hitting a solid ceiling or a solid tile. “So that’s what they meant, probably”, I thought, but that didn’t explain all the other crap! (Please read the following points if you plan to beat Colonel)
1) The platform stops moving when you step on it, except when it doesn’t. I discovered a secondary rule: if the platform is moving up at any angle and you’re on it, it does stop, but it doesn’t if it’s going down at any angle. Imagine there’s no Colonel or barrage attempting to finish your life: if you take this platform and it is going down, it will transport you (and still sorta, because if it’s going at an angle you must move with it horizontally; it doesn’t move your horizontal position); the moment it hits the ground, it won’t move anymore until you hop off the bus ride.
2) The bouncing of the platform is random (shoutouts to Kiyoshi for explaining this). When Colonel spawns the platform, always from the same initial point, it goes either two directions: down left or up right. If it’s the latter, it will always bounce back, and that’s our first clue for what actually happens: if the hitbox of the platform touches any wall, the roof or the floor at the same instance a killer projectile does, the platform can bounce at any direction depending on the pixel of collision. As fa as I’m concerned, no one has published a formula for calculating in which way the platform will move now, because it also causes the platform to change the degrees of its trajectory. For all of us that have grinded the boss enough, we have had the same softlock/impossible scenario: the platform travelling in a perfectly horizontal, 180° trajectory, with a probability of zero of changing its inclination. You’re dead. This can also happen at any height: the middle of the screen, literally the floor, or the freaking ceiling. The game just says: “this attempt was futile, and your efforts amount to zero”. That explains why if the initial platform spawn goes up right, it bounces to the contrary position: because Colonel’s big, squared sprite also kills you, so the platform detects it. You have zero control over this phenomenon.
3) Granted, the platform stops when it goes up, and since it’s a solid, you can double jump on it. Right? Wrong. There is no rule for this; perhaps it’s a fps issue, but the platform decides if you can do only a single second jump out of it, or a double jump as intended. This particular problem can frustrate a substantial number of attempts to shoot the Colonel beginning with the fact that a second jump doesn’t have the same height. In short, jumping once or twice out of the platform is a coin toss.
RED PHASE
In all honesty, this phase is unforgiving and brutal, but I still attribute more difficulty to the first phase because of the wall spikes attack (with its preceding transition) and the downright mental platform.
The red phase is where the manual challenge matches the psychological challenge, since it’s longer and has at least two unfair attacks where RNG can treat you unfairly. There is no checkpoint, so this guarantees you will have between 7 and 9 minutes of boss fight, depending on the behavior of the platform.
The first attack comes with a visual warning: it’s a creative one that demands you remain in the middle, since the size of the vertical bars is more than enough to obliterate you. Every single attack in this phase comes with dotted projectiles free of charge, regardless of what the Colonel throws at you. Again, it’s not a rhythmic avoidance timed with music, I insist, but the music itself gives you important audio cues.
The musical structure of this phase is amazing, to be honest, and it consists of three songs:
I. Dodonpachi DaiOuJou OST – Hihou: Vertical seizure bars, spinning blue pregnancy test, roof of cherries, wall of cherries, seizure bars and squared leftovers, second spinning blue pregnancy test, red vertical and diagonal cherries rain --> As a “welcome to hell phase; this is not even my final form”, this subphase builds tons of tension and suspense, but also hype. Hands down, the most luck-based attacks are both the roof attack and the wall attack, especially the latter, which due to RNG is perfectly capable of doing a wall of cherries taller than 4.5 blocks of 32X32 each, and I got two of these. More often than not, you will have blind spots when the walls open like the Red Sea, but they will be covered by dots, so it’s still technically an impossible wall to get through. The rain of cherries emulates a hardcore version of the attack of IA in Sunspike after the intro, where cherries come from left (diagonally), right (diagonally) and up (vertically), with a fair share of dots density. The reading required here is insane, including a correct calculation of the height of your jumps, and it is, for me, the most difficult attack of the entire red phase that is not luck-based. This leads to a transition where cherries come from the bottom corners and the center towards the Colonel, as if he was amassing power. This transition is mercilessly brutal, since the previous attack might corner you and being in the middle is also a good strat for any emergency, so any form of transition to this next attack is just plain awful and can lead to the tiniest room for air.
II. Ketsui Death Label (ケツイ デスレーベル 絆地獄たち) – No Remorse (alternate version of DoDonPachi Daifukkatsu Black Label – No Remorse [True Last Boss]): Amazing transition between both themes: Hihou and No Remorse. Here you face vertical falling cherries and dotted projectiles density that can go anywhere. These attacks are stupidly long. Right in the middle of this, the attack gets reversed: maintaining the dots density, now the cherries come from the floor. FROM THE FU****G floor. This is the scariest attack ever, where your heart rate is above 120 now. Any spot of the floor can be lava, and the spawning of the cherries from below is still RNG, but the dots keep coming from above (Colonel keeps spawning them). So you have this involuntary and very intuitive reaction to jump all the time, except that if you jump, you might touch a point you didn’t read. It’s terrifying, for real, Cyber showed his darkest cruelty right here. The theme of No Remorse gives it an epic feeling rather than a hyperactive, aggressive one, like reaching new heights you hadn’t before, and there is a peak to reach. The final attack during this theme consists in the same red squares you have seen throughout, bouncing in random directions, and creating dots density when they hit walls. Under any scenario, it’s a simple attack that can get tricky if the RNG is in a bad mood; the scary part is when they bounce on the floor. Each square has a fixed number of times it can bounce before exploding, emanating an even bigger shower of dots. If you’re in the middle of the screen and two squares explode at each one of your two sides, say goodbye. This seemingly peaceful attack is a preamble for the final punch: the point where your heart will go above 150.
III. DoDonPachi Resurrection: ]-[/34(#! – Cyber knows his human psychology; it’s known you’re 7 minutes into the battle, and this son of a gun throws this freaking theme at full force for the final form of Longhena: an epileptic Colonel that flashes strong lights at your eyes while replicating exactly the same first attack of the blue phase, but instead of three levels of density, it has four: light blue, green, yellow and red. Nothing more. This theme is meant specifically for you to be tense. Prepare a mindset willing to accept that you’ll be close to dying at least five times, and I’m talking about a frame of difference each (can be anything between 1 and 3 pixels). You’ll see your life flash in front of your eyes, you’ll realize if your pulse was appropriate for being a doctor or not, you’ll realize if the levels of cholesterol are ok in your body if you don’t have a heart attack, and you’ll know you’re suited for Mexican cuisine if you don’t throw up. This is also the tensest state my entire chat has ever been in.
When you hear that signature, loud bang, you’ll know you have conquered yourself.
This boss is one of the hardest things I have ever done, and the toughest thing I have ever done live.
Final verdict on the boss: extremely exciting and tense, a woeful first half and an exciting and fairer second half with two luck-based instances and a terrific amalgamation of themes with great song transitions. Recommended for avoidance experts.
EXTRA
Now, there is an extra, and it is pretty much symbolic. The extra sucks and is annoying. It’s a long save of three screens which you have to do deathless and then backtrack through them, with the peculiarity that the first screen changes to three high gates in a row and a high gate diagonal, the worst elemental thing you can put at the end of a save. I died to this 3 times or so. The extra boss is whatever: a giant downwards spike in the ceiling which you have to damage by shooting a killer spike in the bottom, quite Destination-like (before Destination) but not auto aimed. Some spikes follow you endlessly, so it gets annoying, but it’s a 15-minute challenge at the most. I don’t even know what’s the trigger for beating the boss (you don’t really beat it), the floor opens, visual memorabilia are offered to you concerning the bosses you conquered, and there you go: the official screenshot for FSR submission can be tak... Wait a minute.
Overall: It’s a flawed game with incorrect physics, substandard platforming, and bizarre bosses, one of them being the first and still one of the toughest barrage bosses available out there. However, it shows how epic and big Cyber’s games can be with his handling of space and gimmick choices. As old school as it might be, it set new standards that people are trying to beat more than 13 years later.
Rating: 5.5 55
Difficulty: 90 90
Nov 18, 2023
LastTISisLife
Masterpiece that can't be described by words
[2] Likes
Rating: 10.0 100
Difficulty: 82 82
Dec 28, 2022