Short story: it's not cheating if it's a community decided decision that it's fine to use it. In this case both the Japanese and western shmup communities have decided that it's fine to use autofire for several reasons as it's better than the alternative. Mashing constantly for hours on end is not desirable and autofire just makes the games more accessible in general. And besides that you can always just have separate categories.
Agreeing with this statement which essentially boils down to an argument ad populum fallacy means that your video lambasting the SmashBox and B0XX and calling it cheating for using macros is wrong firstly because you accept that macros in the case of autofire aren't necessarily cheating, and secondly, because if the community decides that it's fine to use it, then SmashBox and B0XX both shouldn't be defined as cheating by this reasoning.
1:48 "Unless that autofire is on by default" No, EVEN IF autofire is on by default it's still not allowed, they only allow it if it literally can not be turned off. Remember, they banned autofire for Truxton II until 2019 when it was played in the Yolympics which does allow autofire and has a large portion of its community on TG, and they had to make a separate category for that.
Mashing is totally a world record! Haven't you seen Hudson's Master Takahashi hitting fire 16 times per second on the Hudson watch?!! 😂 Seriously though, yes it used to be a thing, but I obviously agree and don't see the purpose today. Especially if the community as a whole has decided auto fire is accepted. The PC Engine/Turbografx was the first turbo controller that I recall for a console out of the box and I doubt many have ever wanted to go back since. More importantly, at least in my mind, is injury due to long term playing that way. The constant repetitive motion on our hands and joints over thousands of hours a year is bad enough and I know a number of people who have had to limit their time, or stop altogether due to injury. They literally can't play games anymore from overdoing it and it's an important topic I also think should be discussed at some point. So to increase that wear and tear on the hands of competitive players in this day and age makes zero sense. It's a matter of the long term health of players.
Yeah I agree completely with the hand health stuff! I sort of feel like people who don t take it seriously either don t play all that much or are young and don t worry as much about long term health. Or maybe they just have steel hands ha.
I used to be against autofire for games that weren't defaulted to that (Metal Slug, Blazing Star). But damn I'm not a kid anymore and my button mashing skills has taken a toll because I type all day at work. Last thing I want to do is tap tap tap more! I use keyboard so makes things worse for me lol. Gosh it would be hell if we'd have to mash for Touhou.
A lot of modern shmups (especially bullet hell games) have the non-auto fire button fire a _burst_ of shots rather than one, so for those kinds of games it seems pointless to ban autofire since pressing the button 30 times a second doesn't make a difference compared to pressing it 12 times per second. Obviously for some games (like Mario Party as mentioned in the video, and rhythm games), manually pressing buttons quickly is the point. But I'm not going to spend 30 minutes mashing the fire button to crank out a high score or 1CC in ESP Ra. De. And imagine a full playthrough of Gradius V (an hour _and a half_ ) without autofire lmao
While I understand where you are coming from, I feel you were very biased in your presentation. You didn't even TRY to see the counter arguments against autofire. You simply made fun of players who didn't use it. You act as if not using autofire is bizarre. There are some valid concerns here. In several games (especially older games), autofire messes up the difficulty balance of the game. Metal Slug is a perfect example. Having autofire with your default pistol turns it into a "heavy machine gun" with unlimited ammo. The developers didn't intend this. There's also a bunch of 1980s games that were never intended to have autofire either. The difficulty is designed around being able to tap the button. So I think it's only fair that you address those points and try to see it from their opposing side. Right now this video has you coming off as very smug, and you could have done a better job presenting both sides of the argument here. I say this as someone who prefers to understand both sides of the argument.
Japan used to have competitions for Star Force on the Famicom and it required really fast button pressing to be the best. I think it inspired the early turbo buttons found on third party controllers and PC Engine
@@TheElectricUnderground If you go back and watch the STG Weekly episode on caravan games, they have some JP documentary footage of someone who was famous for his mashing skills.
I'm definitely not trying to go for world record scores, so for me it totally depends on the game. For Darius Gaiden, the default fire rate is more than enough to get you through the game if you know what you're doing, so for me, I personally prefer to play without turbo. But for a game like R-Type, I'm almost always going to be wanting to rapid fire instead of charging up the shot, so I GOTTA play that with an autofire option.
Interesting topic! I feel like the way autofire should be treated really depends on the game in question. For games like Cho Ren Sha 68k where autofire is basically the same as rapidly tapping the button (minus the hand pain) then yeah, there's basically no reason to split scores based on autofire. But I feel like for some games (mostly older ones) that fire like one shot every time you press the button, this gets a little more complicated. If you tried to put like 30hz autofire on a game like that, everything would die way faster than intended and at that point I think there should be separate leaderboards for autofire and no autofire. Or perhaps there could be some kind of limit on what autofire rates you could use, like if you used a low autofire rate that could reasonably be done with manual pressing, you could still enter the no autofire board. (this is probably very dumb though lol) Regardless, I definitely don't see a reason why autofire should be outright banned. Worst-case scenario, if autofire really does make a significant difference, just make a separate leaderboard for it. I personally don't use autofire in games that don't include it because of the enemy HP balancing thing I touched on before but I certainly don't consider it cheating and I wouldn't blame anyone for using it either.
I ve thought of this too! Making a standard "low auto" rate for games that get melted by 30hz. This is completely possible in mame and Retroarch as they allow custom rates
Also, using autofire when the developers did not intend can allow you to skip mechanics and phases of battles that would be far more odious without it. I’ve looked up videos for plenty of “high scores” by well known RUclipsrs that have runs that are simply not possible in the arcade because they used autofire.
absolutely! Though I would argue that this is actually an issue with the design of these older games, rather than an issue with autofire. The reason is because I do not consider being able to hit a button over and over quickly an important skill, so the games should create challenge via other methods rather than just having this artificial barrier of can you press a button over and over for long stretches of time.
@@TheElectricUnderground It's no more an artificial barrier than limited continues--both were intentionally programmed into the game by the developers (japanese or otherwise). I understand you dislike mashing but I personally have a distaste for the use of autofire or macros to break games. Like there are many shmups that don't have autofire but also really don't need it. The idea that every port of a new game NEEDS autofire to be playable is ridiculous. Yeah, you might not get as much score without autofire but that's truer to the developers' intentions.
You can't retrospectively decide it's a fault of the design because autofire breaks them. It's like saying a race track was badly designed because traction control allows you to go faster than intended.@@TheElectricUnderground
As a speedrunner myself I can share insight on why most speedrun games do not allow turbo buttons. Is mashing a skill? Mashing is indeed a skill, that is by definition. Every component in your gameplay is a skill by definition. The actual question is if mashing is a skill you want to allow to affect your scoring method (in the case of speedrunning the time). Most speedruns allow that as the mashing sections are short and inbetween some other large sections. You rarely need intense mashing for more than a few second. So in that sense mashing is a skill that extends the skill ceiling. As for shmups mashing would be a skill that raises the skill floor. If you do not mash all the time, you cannot run the game. No one explicitly commented that (to my knowledge) but it seems that most speedrunning communities are very open to lowering skill floor for their runs and extending the ceiling as this will allow more people to participate in the speedrunning community of the game in a meaningful way. As of late there is a wave of RPG games (mostly jRPGs) that allow their runners the usage of turbo buttons. In most of these runs there are extended sections you need to mash to skip dialogues. People in those communities consider these sections to be restrictive as if you are unable to mash for sometimes 4-8 hours (not exclusively but a lot) you are unable to run the game. Hence why they are pushing mashing out of the game. Context is important in this question. You mentioned Metal Slug, I have played all the games and the train section is a stand out. There is no other section that is not doable without mashing. I feel that in the context of speedrunning it would be better off if it did not allow turbo buttons. Of course other contexts it might be different. It all depends on what people want to pay attention to. Although Twin Galaxies might have affected the way rules are set in a lot of speedrunning communities, they are all self regulated for almost (if not) 10 years and a lot have changed. I do not think mashing is going out of most games as in speedrunning it is more often flavour than the main meal.
It 'll be interesting to see how it goes, I think for now speedrunners are fairly focused on playing on original consoles and using stock controllers, but as the speedrunning meta advances and more advanced control methods are introduced that allow for more efficient mashing (like mechanical keyboards with multi binds) mashing will seem more and more artificial as older players mash on buttons the old fashion way and newer players piano inputs at twice the speed. Speedrunning will have to regulate improved input methods there as well, which does seem artificial to me. Mashing has a distinct mechanical barrier that other aspects of play typically do not.
@@TheElectricUnderground Speedrunning is definitely concentrated on unifying the playing field for all runners, hence why most old games do not accept anything but the original hardware. Emulators are used mostly in less popular games or games that are hard to find on original hardware. I cannot foresee that changing for the most part and I that is why I do not think mashing will be gone from old runs.
This video was pretty eye opening! I used to be kind of a purist, I got it drilled into my head really, but I've been eyeing auto and turbo options for a little while now. I have chronic bursitis due to an injury which, while not as serious as carpal tunnel or arthritis, still makes button mashing painful, so it's refreshing to see someone support the alternative options.
Oh man hand injuries are the worst!! I m glad the video has been helpful, I do want the word to get out more around this subject, especially for players picking up the genre for the 1st time.
If u are handicapped u should use any tool to make whatever game u wanna play accessible to you! If u are not, accept the given gamedesign or make up your own rules and leaderboard and find other people that interpret the challenge of confirming a button press in rapid succession as arbitrary challenge. The autofire leaderboards are waiting for your high scores!
Throughout 2020, I've been using my laptop a lot, given that it's my first PC. I don't have an established space to use it, so I often end up using it on the dining table, hunching over, and sitting on a hard wooden chair. It's really uncomfortable and makes my body ache all over. So, I've been looking more into ergonomics, like getting an external keyboard, and looking into buying an office chair. When it comes to autofire, the part about ergonomics is IMO the strongest argument. I want to be able to play these games long term, so the last thing I would want is to get myself carpal tunnel and preventing myself from playing more of these games. Who cares what other people think about the legitimacy of your clear or score? Take care of your health first and foremost. Still, the philosophical part was something I didn't really consider, and it's pretty insightful. We are here to see how people have planned their route, how practiced they are in their execution, how well they can handle unexpected scenarios. We're not here to see people mash their fingers off.
Thank you! Autofire is NOT the same as Turbo. I've actively avoided ports of Gradius games without autofire because the hand cramps are far too real before you get into the meat of the game.
To clarify, Turbo lets you exceed the limits of how fast one can press a button versus Autofire where the designers take the effort the balance the fire rate=spread between shots. Some games let you just hold it and others you got be more delicate with your inputs.
To clarify, Turbo lets you exceed the limits of how fast one can press a button versus Autofire where the designers take the effort the balance the fire rate=spread between shots. Some games let you just hold it and others you got be more delicate with your inputs.
@@tokyobassist Yes very true! It gets a little hazy in some games, but I think the points I make in the video could apply to both, though like I said in some games there might be a reason to score split between auto and turbo depending on how the games handle it. I think Darius Gaiden is like this.
I feel you my dude, I've been trying to look for some old school autofire setups for arcades (they do exist), but they are hard to track down. You may need to build some kind of circuit or something. If you are really invested, you could use a modern fightstick board coupled with the undamned usb decoder to create autofire on a cab.
The speedrunning comparison is funny to me, because I have some personal experience with that. I used to (casually) speedrun Zelda: The Wind Waker as a teenager, and one of the tricks, Zombie Hovering, involves insane mashing. It's something that's super easy with a turbo controller, but if you're inexperienced it will seriously fatigue, and eventually hurt you pretty quick. When I first started doing this trick I'd have to pause a ton to recover, but eventually it turned my right arm into a mashing machine to where I can spam buttons seemingly endlessly. I visited Japan for the first time recently, and spent a decent amount of time in various arcades. It took me a while to realize that on the various schmup cabs the buttons labeled X20 were actually just autofire buttons. I'm sure I got funny looks just going ham mashing on the Parodius Da machine fire button for half an hour straight when I could have just held the button, haha.
I don’t know, auto fire trivializes difficulty on Darius Gaiden and with it you can easily 1CC the game as long as you know what you’re doing. But then again, it opens up possibilities for higher scores.
For some reason I am imagining that old Japanese video of a crazy good Salamander player who could fire like... well, crazy. I remember being very sceptical of using auto-fire in games where it wasn't available by default (think Darius Gaiden or Fantasy Zone)... and then going to Japan and discovering that nearly all the cabs there have autofire buttons (often with switches to control shot speed!) It's unfortunate that it destroys the balance of certain games very noticeably, but that's just the way it is. Is it true that in the old Metal Slug games that auto-fire basically makes the normal shot as good as a HMG? That's what I remember hearing...
I actually don't agree with having auto-fire in Metal Slug. It's not a shmup and certain parts of the game were designed with no auto-fire in mind (like the train section).
I got Darius cosmic collection. They allow you to use auto fire and change the speed of it. So what I do is use the button pushed per second thing, I think it’s a website, i forgot what it’s called. But my bps is around 12ish so I set it around that. I’m just getting into the genre and while I like mashing every now and then. I don’t wanna break my finger just yet lol.
Yes M2 have fantastic autofire options in their ports. Just another example of how outdated the no-autofire mentality is, when almost all of the modern ports of these games have it built in ha.
Preaching to the choir, my man. I've been on the autofire train all my life. No sense in making the pace toward carpal tunnel that much more rapid than it already is.
I was thinking of this video again today after playing a lot of Panzer Dragoon (the unlockable from Orta) the last couple days on Xbox Series X. I had been mashing the buttons way too much, and am now finding that I have enough pain that I need to take the day off from gaming entirely. I don’t usually get that from shmup playing when I can hold a button for rapid fire - I think you nailed it with your comment about the benefits of avoiding RSIs. :)
As a kid, I've always used turbo when playing shmups, because everyone had those in their famiclones in my neighborhood. That was until I've discovered that the original NES did not have them and later started to upload scores for TG. I've started to consider turbo buttons a cheat, but after a week of streaming shmups and Contra several hours a day, I had a stiffness in my right forearm that lasted over 2 weeks - I had trouble writing with a pen and I could not do pull ups nor deadlifts in the gym, because my grip was severely weakened. I've learned the hard way that mashing is not really good for your health. Besides, if Nintendo (because I mostly play NES games) did not want their games to be used with turbo function, why did they make NES Max or Advantage, or licensed Hori's products that had turbo? Of course, there are games that are meant to be played without it, like Track and Field, or those that require rhythmical mashing for a good result (Contra speedrun), but I think that shmupping should be more like a mental sport than a physical one - focused on dodging, using right patterns etc. And I can't deny that getting your focus on mashing as fast as possible often causes you to fail in the other fields, especially when using a gamepad, where you have to kinda "switch" to using your fingers rather than a thumb to mash really fast, causing your gamepad to tremble. I think of turbo buttons in highscore leagues like of steroids in professional bodybuilding - if everyone in the competition uses it, why don't you? Except turbo is actually good for your health, steroids are not if you abuse them.
This is a great analogy ha. Yeah I think another sports analogy is when tennis went from wood rackets (no auto) to metal rackets (full auto). At first metal rackets felt unfair because some older players still insisted on wooden rackets, but once everyone swapped to metal the wood rackets felt completely out of date and silly.
I usually use autofire bc my mashing capability is very limited due to physiological reasons(and also bc that mashing shit was never making any sense to me)(also, i just realized that my survival 2-all of DDP scores more than TG score lmao(but i did used autofire tho))
yeah ha they also would reject it if it isn't played on wolfmame or something like that, I've looked into submitting to TG before but it's a huge pain still.
This is an interesting video to watch from a speedrunner's perspective. The Metroid Dread community recently voted to allow turbo controllers, and it has been fairly controversial. The pro-turbo positions lined up perfectly with the points brought up in this video, though the part that I find a bit amusing is that within the speedrunning scene, it has actually been the Japanese scene that has been more anti-auto-fire.
That is interesting! Well I think it will happen across all games eventually. Button mashing is not an interesting skill and more genres will realize that ha
Watching the video and I’m amused that the screenshot for the thumbnail is of the exact same model pad I got in the 90s and still use on some games today.
kiwi naughty naughty boy!!! I did a deep cut mushi reference from your twitter ha. 6:50 Was going to use the mushi cab meme but couldn't find it in time.
A lot of early shmups didn't have autofire for some bizarre reason. I suspect maybe mashing arcade buttons was easier? Maybe it was to artificially make the game more challenging? Maybe it's because of limited buttons due to hardware. Whatever the dumb reason, it was something that should have always been there, but wasn't. It's within the spirit of the game, so it's something that shouldn't be seen as cheating. With that said, some speedrunning communities do allow autofire, like Mega Man. Also speedrunning includes a lot of different genres, so autofire can be cheating in some game where it's not within the spirit of the game. But obviously in shmups, it absolutely is.
I think the concept of level design being more than mashing buttons was still coming together ha. Yeah treasure was one of the first devs to start building autofire into their games
To make it clear, Auto Fire ONLY help you in term of convenient while dodging bullet and planning route is another story I know I like doing button mashing, but for the games like this, I rather use auto fire cuz I don't want to hurt my finger (as hurt as guncon games) and lose my concentration on dodging bullets (yes, happened to me for real)
@@TheElectricUnderground I remember when I played "Border Down", to shoot homing laser rapidly, I have to rapidly press shoot button otherwise holding down will fire standard shot, I wished there is autofire button for homing laser. XP
*Autofire = You only have to buy 1 Controller !* *No Autofire = You have to buy at least 5 Controllers ;)* *Autofire also helps prevent the Hands from Aging prematurely and causing Pain !*
reminds of the QuickTime events good or bad debate when they first appeared in popular RPGs (mass effect2, witcher2). they and mashing shouldn't be measurements of skill. anyway, hand health wins.
5:10 namely in the base stages you do have to mash in a very specific rhythm to do more damage in Contra and thus beat things faster. Also true in the main 2D stages but not nearly to the same extent.
Dodonpachi is a lot different than some older games though because in dote on pachi your shot is basically a burst shot so it's not that hard to Hit the maximal rate. In some games using auto fire opens up completely new strategies that wouldn't be possible if you had to press the button.
I just got my first 1cc on Strider arcade (not a shmup, but you mash the fire button a LOT, was hurting my wrist using my fightstick) on the hardest difficulty and starting with only 2 lives in MAME. There's probably some input lag in MAME compared to an arcade cabinet, which is maybe a justification for using autofire. It's interesting that it's significantly easier the faster you can mash the fire (sword) button. Does this still count as a "real" 1cc?
Yes it does! For games like this (where autofire busts some of the mechanics) they get split into no autofire and autofire categories in Japan. So that would be an autofire 1cc :-) But all games allow for autofire that I'm aware of. Oddly it's only western players (because of Twin Galaxies) that seem caught up on the autofire question, but mashing buttons is not an important skill imo ha.
Interesting topic. I use autofire because my arm gets tired from mashing in the Metal Slug games. Even my mom got tired of mashing the fire button, and it was just in a segment of Metal Slug 3's final mission.
As an example, ninja gaiden's speedrun is crazily optimized, we are talking about few seconds or even frames, now the skill gap to break the record is the ability to mash or optimize movement by frames until something new gets discovered but it's unlikely. The thing is, that autofire wouldn't work in this case, because to slash multiple times in the air in ninja gaiden you need to press down + slash and then release to press down + slash again at the exact frame, if you simply hold down then autofire slash it won't work, only 1 slash would come out per jump, also it doesn't work if you are holding down-forward, so instead you need a key that presses and releases both down + slash, in that case it really would be cheating and unfair to most people, but really , if that was allowed the speedun would be pretty much dead, by normal mashing you can kill the final boss in 2 or 3 jumps by mashing really fast, no one can do it in one jump yet and maybe it's not possible for a human, each boss has 16 points of health so it would mean to consistently mash frame perfect down + slash at the peak of one jump, at each of those you need to release, because if you mess up once then you can't slash for the rest of the jump, if there was an autofire the boss would be deleted immediately. WIth shmups it's understandable because these boses can deal with more than 500 hits and even with autofire they last a long time, with other games some bosses get deleted from existence in less than 1 second literally, some games are so optimized it now comes down to these little frame perfect things or absurdly hard to perform tricks. The thing is that if you allow down + slash macros it becomes really hard to draw the line on what should be allowed or what should not be allowed.
Direction autofire is banned so in this case you d have to mash it out to some degree, maybe you could coordinate your mashed direction with a button autofire at a low rate or something. It would come down to efficient timing with your down inputs which sounds like a nice middle ground.
@@TheElectricUnderground In this case that wouldn't work because the moment you press slash without pressing down you get a normal slash and when you do that you can't do slash cancels anymore until you land. It's like it's 2 different kind of slashes that look the same, one is the intended one and the other is like a "glitched" one, they look the same but are actually different moves. If you do a regular one in the air then for the rest of the jump you can't act again or do the "down slash" one. If you do the down slash one you recover immediately and can act again, if you accidentally do a regular one with the rapid fire then you can't act again. That's why it wouldn't work by mashing down manually while having an autofire button on the slash. It would make the slashing sound effect but it wouldn't do anything, i have tried it.
Not sure what the DMC scene think about this, but I'm sure that it would be accepted for combo videos especially if you are clear that you use it for extended rainstorm (technically a hidden Crazy Combo, really hard in Turbo) much like how other people just mod DMC3 or DMC5. Speedruns are another question though optimal play doesn't really need mashing besides Vergil in DMC3SE (check our Waifu's videos). Dante does have some powerful skills locked behind mashing in 3, but Royalguard is the main style of choice which limits it a bit.
That s interesting Yeah in games like dmc it s a bit more complicated Because how it might effect combo linking and that sort of thing. Maybe certain buttons could be auto and others not or something
Thanks for the video! Great info. I’m curious about how the turbo button works on arcade sticks or through say, a Brook board. When turned on does it just make the shot fire as fast as the game allows? So Galaga for instance wouldn’t be a wall of bullets - just a pew pew pew about as fast as you can press fire?
Most classic shmups have a limit to how many bullets you can have on screen, so the bullet beam of death rarely happens. In Galaga's case you can't shoot if 2 of your bullets are on screen.
@@ZPS_STG cheers, so I guess the turbo button has a set fire frequency? I recall seeing something about being able to flash the brooks board to change the output.
Hey my dude great question. So on most arcade sticks (sadly) you are locked into one autofire rate (15hz or 20hz I'm guessing). So with older games that have really limited shooting like galaga, turning down the auto rate is a good idea ha. Even in some of the newer games, having a too fast autofire rate will actually be slower than using a lower one (like 300hz ha). So yes, it is definitely a good idea to tune your autofire rate per game, sadly I don't know of any arcade sticks that allow this on the fly, which would be cool. You can do it on the PC though with emulators or antimicro :-)
Auto fire for record high scores? Fine. Auto fire for speed runs? Fine. The only issue I have with auto fire is when it's used on older, usually pattern based shooters to complete the game like it's some sort of achievement (witness all the long play videos where folk auto fire their way through a game without breaking a sweat). Auto fire on old shooters (R Type is my current obsession) usually breaks the design and removes most of the difficulty, which makes playing them pretty pointless.
@@TheElectricUnderground I’m always impressed at the neat designs of your YT thumbnails (if that’s the right label) and I’d wear a t-shirt that said “ auto fire is not cheating”.
Have you played Deltazeal/XIIZeal or Psyvariar Delta? Those games have a sort of “auto fire” for maneuvers that require you to move your ship left and right rapidly. Having a button to do it allows you to be much more consistent but I think it might have been only available in the modern ports of the games and not the original incarnations. What do you think of these mechanics? I sometimes feel like I’m cheating when I just hold down a button to get something that is supposed to impact the movement and control over your ship.
Yes I've heard about it! A very interesting case since movement is not allowed to be autofired in games made after 1996 (according to jha). I d say that since this maneuver is supported to auto use on modern ports it s all good, kinda like gadget use in the new m2 ports.
This man is on to something! I would argue the first stage of most shmups is also arbitrary challenge, especially after u played the given shmup for a while cause u are forced to start on level 1 but following this logic of "declare something as arbitrary challenge, that's not part of the meta/game i want to see" i could just use a superplay macro for stage 1 right?! Mashing is arbitrary skill check? What other inputs are also arbitrary and would allow for a macros to circumvent these difficulties? Like i would love to be good but like dodging bullets and stuff is super hard, couldnt i just use a macro for that too, would that be okay too? Also what about games that have no rapid fire option or a slow one, how do i break that difficulty barrier?.... This logic is arbitrary, who r u to choose what is part of the intended gamedesign and challenge and whats not, if the game doesnt have an autofire option, i would argue that mashing is obviously part of the presented challenge and game design. How about you just have different leader boards for macro users and without instead of arguing for one way and one way only, this video is so stupid, it makes me wanna dump my vert crt 2d shmup setup and never look into this community again.
There is a line in the sand here that makes a lot of sense that JHA has been following where basically players can auto button inputs but not directional inputs (in games after 1996, anyway) so there is no slippery slope of sliding into movement macros or tas
Using autofire almost always puts your score in another category already. Mashing is usually pretty stupid and ruins your hands over time, so I see this as a strictly good thing for both sides.
The reality is that the developers aren't playing the game, the players are, and every game has a set of skills that the community values, and a set of skills that the community does. You can go on about how "oh eventually there'll be a dodge macro", but it won't happen (outside of a TAS) because dodging is a valued skill. Mashing is not a valued skill.
Unless it's an intrinsic feature of a game I don't see how it's not cheating, without automatic fire it would be physically very very difficult to accomplish a constant rate of fire while also using x/y controls.
By standardizing autofire use across competitive players like the Japanese have. Like I say in the video allowing autofire opens up the game to more refined gameplay and routing, rather than having a good deal of "skill" come down to the art of mashing buttons ha.
In a way, I think whether it's cheating or whether it should be allowed are two separate issues. I think if it's not in the game by default or a setting in the game then it's cheating. Personally I hate mashing so I cheat and I don't care but I'm not going to pretend it's not cheating.
@@RinMariiiii I have a mechanic keyboard (And is a loud one), you really want me to be an annoyance at night? Because playing CRS without Autofire with that keyboard is going to make it an annoyance for both me and those that live with me.
It isn't a meaningful skill in terms of game design. Another example would be grinding in RPGs, having the mental patience to sit and wait through hundreds of repetitive battles is a skill in a sense, but it isn't meaningful. This is why fighting games have largely dropped mashing mechanics as well
@@TheElectricUnderground Appreciate your replies. It's a meaningful skill in that one player might not be able to 1cc Blazing Star without autofire, whereas a second player is able to (as the developers intended it). I would argue the second player was more skilled: either having more stamina (strength) to make it through or being cognizant of when he needs to mash and when he doesn't.
If turbo is not an option in the game, then using turbo is fine but you're not playing that game anymore It's a different game then. I mean I totally understand why people want to. That's ok, but it's not that game anymore unless it's a part of the game, Simply put, it should be a separate category. By using turbo you are changing the entire game and the way it's played, It changes the balance of skills used, period.
if the game does not want you to press the buttons that fast, they can limit it on their side. and in fact this has been done! as a recent example the basic shot in zeroranger does not fully come out unless the button is held for a significant period of time. so using autofire makes your shot worthless. this is the same argument people use against things like glitches. the only thing we can base our decisions on is the game in front of us, not what people "intended" or "meant" or anything stupid like that.
I can see what you mean, but in cases like this (like metal slug) I think swapping the autofire as the default and the non autofire as a separate category makes more sense as competative play has embraced autofire and so the standards have shifted since the twin galaxies days basically.
It's as much cheating as any other macro is cheating, because it's a macro. All of the macros, you could just do with very much the skill and effort, but putting in that effort is the challenge, like any competition. Considering TASBOT is a very complex macro, is TASBOT cheating? Howabout replay editing? Since the replay is also a macro. What about save states? With dedication, you could do all those things perfectly the first time, so savestates to retry over and over until you win isn't cheating right? Or aimbots? With dedication, you could just aim better, but aimbot does it for you. It's just a shortcut, not cheating! Not gonna tell you how to play your game, but if you consider any other kind of macro or shortcut to be cheating, you shouldn't give autofire/turbo a free pass. It's just another double standard. It might be on the mild side, sure. It might be "well it's not so bad so whatever", but it should be considered to be a form of cheat, just like any other. You're breaking the designed/implemented rules of the game to make things easier for yourself. Same with slowdown, speedup, any other thing to alter the game from it's original design, is some level of cheating.
Don t forget about the beginning of the video though that details the 20+ years of world records achieved in Japanese arcades using autofire, so that bridge is already long crossed. As far the slippery slope type of thing where we start with autofire and end in tas bots, there is an effective history where clear rules have been established with autofire use and has actually tightened up rather than spreading to macro use. Also the design of the games them selves has caught up with this and most shmups now have built in autofire. I think a more practical approach to this question is more useful than equating autofire to tas or other macros (though most macros would be effectively useless in arcade games due to their variation in game design).
@@TheElectricUnderground It shouldn't be controversial to say "It IS a macro, you are no longer playing the game as it was intended, but it might be more fun/have more longevity with this change"
Best comment in the whole section, a macro is a damn macro. I wonder how fighting games would look if anyone could just declare something in the game as arbitrary challenge and started using macros :D mehh shoryuken is way too hard let me set this macro real quick... I wonder what other inputs in other games might be considered arbitrary challenge..headshots in cs are tricky too sometimes.. The view presented in this vidro is like saying "nah, i dont like this challenge presented to me in this game" . Lets lower the baskets in basketball to make the sport more accessible to smaller people and in general just more people....while spitting on the intended gamedesign and shitting on the integrity of the game/sport.
@@MrBroken030 this is a perfect analogy, street fighter 2 players don't use shoryuken macros, even though the input has been made easier in subsequent games I'm not saying that all shmups need to be held to the same standard as a single fighting game, but I AM saying it needs to be decided on a game-by-game basis and the reasoning in this video seems a bit too broad
@@MrBroken030 Ha it's not me declaring this, I'm just the messenger. There are hundreds of top tier japanese players who set world records that play with autofire, there is a long scoring history that vastly overshadows what the west and TG crowd has been able to accomplish in the genre. So it's actually the other way around where declaring autofire cheating is arbitrary because this is not how the competitive players play. In an FGC sense, it would be like banning pad and only allowing players to play on american arcade sticks or something.
![BAK Jay - Find Out (For Your Love) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/10FJO_XBCvY/mqdefault.jpg)
Short story: it's not cheating if it's a community decided decision that it's fine to use it.
In this case both the Japanese and western shmup communities have decided that it's fine to use autofire for several reasons as it's better than the alternative.
Mashing constantly for hours on end is not desirable and autofire just makes the games more accessible in general.
And besides that you can always just have separate categories.
Exactly!
Agreeing with this statement which essentially boils down to an argument ad populum fallacy means that your video lambasting the SmashBox and B0XX and calling it cheating for using macros is wrong firstly because you accept that macros in the case of autofire aren't necessarily cheating, and secondly, because if the community decides that it's fine to use it, then SmashBox and B0XX both shouldn't be defined as cheating by this reasoning.
1:48 "Unless that autofire is on by default"
No, EVEN IF autofire is on by default it's still not allowed, they only allow it if it literally can not be turned off. Remember, they banned autofire for Truxton II until 2019 when it was played in the Yolympics which does allow autofire and has a large portion of its community on TG, and they had to make a separate category for that.
Oh jeez ha it runs that deep
If it literally fucks up your hands. Then throw it away. Some people suffer bad carpal tunnel from mashing. I don't see why this should be celebrated.
If it's just about not hurting your hands should the auto fire be limited to something that's humanly possible then?
Not having auto-fire for shmups on portable systems should be illegal.
I know! Class action lawsuit, let's do it!
Mashing is totally a world record! Haven't you seen Hudson's Master Takahashi hitting fire 16 times per second on the Hudson watch?!! 😂 Seriously though, yes it used to be a thing, but I obviously agree and don't see the purpose today. Especially if the community as a whole has decided auto fire is accepted. The PC Engine/Turbografx was the first turbo controller that I recall for a console out of the box and I doubt many have ever wanted to go back since. More importantly, at least in my mind, is injury due to long term playing that way. The constant repetitive motion on our hands and joints over thousands of hours a year is bad enough and I know a number of people who have had to limit their time, or stop altogether due to injury. They literally can't play games anymore from overdoing it and it's an important topic I also think should be discussed at some point. So to increase that wear and tear on the hands of competitive players in this day and age makes zero sense. It's a matter of the long term health of players.
Yeah I agree completely with the hand health stuff! I sort of feel like people who don t take it seriously either don t play all that much or are young and don t worry as much about long term health. Or maybe they just have steel hands ha.
I used to be against autofire for games that weren't defaulted to that (Metal Slug, Blazing Star). But damn I'm not a kid anymore and my button mashing skills has taken a toll because I type all day at work. Last thing I want to do is tap tap tap more! I use keyboard so makes things worse for me lol.
Gosh it would be hell if we'd have to mash for Touhou.
A lot of modern shmups (especially bullet hell games) have the non-auto fire button fire a _burst_ of shots rather than one, so for those kinds of games it seems pointless to ban autofire since pressing the button 30 times a second doesn't make a difference compared to pressing it 12 times per second.
Obviously for some games (like Mario Party as mentioned in the video, and rhythm games), manually pressing buttons quickly is the point. But I'm not going to spend 30 minutes mashing the fire button to crank out a high score or 1CC in ESP Ra. De.
And imagine a full playthrough of Gradius V (an hour _and a half_ ) without autofire lmao
oh jeez ha, that sounds brutal.
I've been using autofire since the Sega Master System 1988! YOU'LL NEVER STOP ME! Lol 😲
Og :-D
While I understand where you are coming from, I feel you were very biased in your presentation. You didn't even TRY to see the counter arguments against autofire. You simply made fun of players who didn't use it. You act as if not using autofire is bizarre. There are some valid concerns here.
In several games (especially older games), autofire messes up the difficulty balance of the game. Metal Slug is a perfect example. Having autofire with your default pistol turns it into a "heavy machine gun" with unlimited ammo. The developers didn't intend this. There's also a bunch of 1980s games that were never intended to have autofire either. The difficulty is designed around being able to tap the button.
So I think it's only fair that you address those points and try to see it from their opposing side. Right now this video has you coming off as very smug, and you could have done a better job presenting both sides of the argument here.
I say this as someone who prefers to understand both sides of the argument.
Japan used to have competitions for Star Force on the Famicom and it required really fast button pressing to be the best. I think it inspired the early turbo buttons found on third party controllers and PC Engine
That s interesting!
@@TheElectricUnderground If you go back and watch the STG Weekly episode on caravan games, they have some JP documentary footage of someone who was famous for his mashing skills.
I'm definitely not trying to go for world record scores, so for me it totally depends on the game. For Darius Gaiden, the default fire rate is more than enough to get you through the game if you know what you're doing, so for me, I personally prefer to play without turbo. But for a game like R-Type, I'm almost always going to be wanting to rapid fire instead of charging up the shot, so I GOTTA play that with an autofire option.
Yeah darius gaiden is one of those games where a turbo vs in game autofire score split makes sense to do.
Interesting topic! I feel like the way autofire should be treated really depends on the game in question. For games like Cho Ren Sha 68k where autofire is basically the same as rapidly tapping the button (minus the hand pain) then yeah, there's basically no reason to split scores based on autofire.
But I feel like for some games (mostly older ones) that fire like one shot every time you press the button, this gets a little more complicated. If you tried to put like 30hz autofire on a game like that, everything would die way faster than intended and at that point I think there should be separate leaderboards for autofire and no autofire. Or perhaps there could be some kind of limit on what autofire rates you could use, like if you used a low autofire rate that could reasonably be done with manual pressing, you could still enter the no autofire board. (this is probably very dumb though lol)
Regardless, I definitely don't see a reason why autofire should be outright banned. Worst-case scenario, if autofire really does make a significant difference, just make a separate leaderboard for it. I personally don't use autofire in games that don't include it because of the enemy HP balancing thing I touched on before but I certainly don't consider it cheating and I wouldn't blame anyone for using it either.
I ve thought of this too! Making a standard "low auto" rate for games that get melted by 30hz. This is completely possible in mame and Retroarch as they allow custom rates
Learning about autofire was a revelation when I stared getting into shmups. I would seriously not play them without it.
Also, using autofire when the developers did not intend can allow you to skip mechanics and phases of battles that would be far more odious without it. I’ve looked up videos for plenty of “high scores” by well known RUclipsrs that have runs that are simply not possible in the arcade because they used autofire.
absolutely! Though I would argue that this is actually an issue with the design of these older games, rather than an issue with autofire. The reason is because I do not consider being able to hit a button over and over quickly an important skill, so the games should create challenge via other methods rather than just having this artificial barrier of can you press a button over and over for long stretches of time.
@@TheElectricUnderground It's no more an artificial barrier than limited continues--both were intentionally programmed into the game by the developers (japanese or otherwise).
I understand you dislike mashing but I personally have a distaste for the use of autofire or macros to break games. Like there are many shmups that don't have autofire but also really don't need it. The idea that every port of a new game NEEDS autofire to be playable is ridiculous. Yeah, you might not get as much score without autofire but that's truer to the developers' intentions.
You can't retrospectively decide it's a fault of the design because autofire breaks them. It's like saying a race track was badly designed because traction control allows you to go faster than intended.@@TheElectricUnderground
As a speedrunner myself I can share insight on why most speedrun games do not allow turbo buttons.
Is mashing a skill? Mashing is indeed a skill, that is by definition. Every component in your gameplay is a skill by definition. The actual question is if mashing is a skill you want to allow to affect your scoring method (in the case of speedrunning the time).
Most speedruns allow that as the mashing sections are short and inbetween some other large sections. You rarely need intense mashing for more than a few second. So in that sense mashing is a skill that extends the skill ceiling. As for shmups mashing would be a skill that raises the skill floor. If you do not mash all the time, you cannot run the game. No one explicitly commented that (to my knowledge) but it seems that most speedrunning communities are very open to lowering skill floor for their runs and extending the ceiling as this will allow more people to participate in the speedrunning community of the game in a meaningful way.
As of late there is a wave of RPG games (mostly jRPGs) that allow their runners the usage of turbo buttons. In most of these runs there are extended sections you need to mash to skip dialogues. People in those communities consider these sections to be restrictive as if you are unable to mash for sometimes 4-8 hours (not exclusively but a lot) you are unable to run the game. Hence why they are pushing mashing out of the game.
Context is important in this question. You mentioned Metal Slug, I have played all the games and the train section is a stand out. There is no other section that is not doable without mashing. I feel that in the context of speedrunning it would be better off if it did not allow turbo buttons. Of course other contexts it might be different. It all depends on what people want to pay attention to. Although Twin Galaxies might have affected the way rules are set in a lot of speedrunning communities, they are all self regulated for almost (if not) 10 years and a lot have changed. I do not think mashing is going out of most games as in speedrunning it is more often flavour than the main meal.
It 'll be interesting to see how it goes, I think for now speedrunners are fairly focused on playing on original consoles and using stock controllers, but as the speedrunning meta advances and more advanced control methods are introduced that allow for more efficient mashing (like mechanical keyboards with multi binds) mashing will seem more and more artificial as older players mash on buttons the old fashion way and newer players piano inputs at twice the speed. Speedrunning will have to regulate improved input methods there as well, which does seem artificial to me. Mashing has a distinct mechanical barrier that other aspects of play typically do not.
@@TheElectricUnderground Speedrunning is definitely concentrated on unifying the playing field for all runners, hence why most old games do not accept anything but the original hardware. Emulators are used mostly in less popular games or games that are hard to find on original hardware.
I cannot foresee that changing for the most part and I that is why I do not think mashing will be gone from old runs.
This video was pretty eye opening! I used to be kind of a purist, I got it drilled into my head really, but I've been eyeing auto and turbo options for a little while now. I have chronic bursitis due to an injury which, while not as serious as carpal tunnel or arthritis, still makes button mashing painful, so it's refreshing to see someone support the alternative options.
Oh man hand injuries are the worst!! I m glad the video has been helpful, I do want the word to get out more around this subject, especially for players picking up the genre for the 1st time.
If u are handicapped u should use any tool to make whatever game u wanna play accessible to you! If u are not, accept the given gamedesign or make up your own rules and leaderboard and find other people that interpret the challenge of confirming a button press in rapid succession as arbitrary challenge. The autofire leaderboards are waiting for your high scores!
Throughout 2020, I've been using my laptop a lot, given that it's my first PC. I don't have an established space to use it, so I often end up using it on the dining table, hunching over, and sitting on a hard wooden chair. It's really uncomfortable and makes my body ache all over. So, I've been looking more into ergonomics, like getting an external keyboard, and looking into buying an office chair.
When it comes to autofire, the part about ergonomics is IMO the strongest argument. I want to be able to play these games long term, so the last thing I would want is to get myself carpal tunnel and preventing myself from playing more of these games. Who cares what other people think about the legitimacy of your clear or score? Take care of your health first and foremost.
Still, the philosophical part was something I didn't really consider, and it's pretty insightful. We are here to see how people have planned their route, how practiced they are in their execution, how well they can handle unexpected scenarios. We're not here to see people mash their fingers off.
Yes exactly!
Thank you! Autofire is NOT the same as Turbo.
I've actively avoided ports of Gradius games without autofire because the hand cramps are far too real before you get into the meat of the game.
To clarify, Turbo lets you exceed the limits of how fast one can press a button versus Autofire where the designers take the effort the balance the fire rate=spread between shots. Some games let you just hold it and others you got be more delicate with your inputs.
To clarify, Turbo lets you exceed the limits of how fast one can press a button versus Autofire where the designers take the effort the balance the fire rate=spread between shots. Some games let you just hold it and others you got be more delicate with your inputs.
@@tokyobassist Yes very true! It gets a little hazy in some games, but I think the points I make in the video could apply to both, though like I said in some games there might be a reason to score split between auto and turbo depending on how the games handle it. I think Darius Gaiden is like this.
I do handmash metal slug, but only because I don't have a good hardware solution for inside an arcade cabinet.
I feel you my dude, I've been trying to look for some old school autofire setups for arcades (they do exist), but they are hard to track down. You may need to build some kind of circuit or something. If you are really invested, you could use a modern fightstick board coupled with the undamned usb decoder to create autofire on a cab.
@@TheElectricUnderground honestly, there's probably an easier and cheaper way to achieve it.
@@TheElectricUnderground holy cow, I found this: members.optusnet.com.au/eviltim/rapidfire/rapidfire2.png
I think I'm going to make one.
bro its even banned in Metal Gear Solid, Ocelot tells you he'll know if you autofire while youre tortured & punish you for it
Ha I think there is a way to get around it! I remember using autofire on Twin Snakes at least. I love that moment in mgs1 though
What?! I don't know this before!
The speedrunning comparison is funny to me, because I have some personal experience with that. I used to (casually) speedrun Zelda: The Wind Waker as a teenager, and one of the tricks, Zombie Hovering, involves insane mashing. It's something that's super easy with a turbo controller, but if you're inexperienced it will seriously fatigue, and eventually hurt you pretty quick. When I first started doing this trick I'd have to pause a ton to recover, but eventually it turned my right arm into a mashing machine to where I can spam buttons seemingly endlessly.
I visited Japan for the first time recently, and spent a decent amount of time in various arcades. It took me a while to realize that on the various schmup cabs the buttons labeled X20 were actually just autofire buttons. I'm sure I got funny looks just going ham mashing on the Parodius Da machine fire button for half an hour straight when I could have just held the button, haha.
I don’t know, auto fire trivializes difficulty on Darius Gaiden and with it you can easily 1CC the game as long as you know what you’re doing. But then again, it opens up possibilities for higher scores.
Darius Gaiden is one of the games that I think doing a turbo vs in game auto fire split makes sense
For some reason I am imagining that old Japanese video of a crazy good Salamander player who could fire like... well, crazy.
I remember being very sceptical of using auto-fire in games where it wasn't available by default (think Darius Gaiden or Fantasy Zone)... and then going to Japan and discovering that nearly all the cabs there have autofire buttons (often with switches to control shot speed!) It's unfortunate that it destroys the balance of certain games very noticeably, but that's just the way it is.
Is it true that in the old Metal Slug games that auto-fire basically makes the normal shot as good as a HMG? That's what I remember hearing...
I actually don't agree with having auto-fire in Metal Slug. It's not a shmup and certain parts of the game were designed with no auto-fire in mind (like the train section).
I got Darius cosmic collection. They allow you to use auto fire and change the speed of it. So what I do is use the button pushed per second thing, I think it’s a website, i forgot what it’s called. But my bps is around 12ish so I set it around that. I’m just getting into the genre and while I like mashing every now and then. I don’t wanna break my finger just yet lol.
Yes M2 have fantastic autofire options in their ports. Just another example of how outdated the no-autofire mentality is, when almost all of the modern ports of these games have it built in ha.
imagine getting a world record cause of mashing
i can't think of a single popular shmup where mashing speed alone would get you a world record
The last rtype world record was on a geniune arcade cab without autofire
Preaching to the choir, my man. I've been on the autofire train all my life. No sense in making the pace toward carpal tunnel that much more rapid than it already is.
Oh shit, look at Mark with the fresh shave!
Yep my monthly shave ha! I shave once a month and cycle through my beard.
I never quite understood why anyone would consider autofire cheating. Unless you like the idea of breaking your fingers mashing the button.
I was thinking of this video again today after playing a lot of Panzer Dragoon (the unlockable from Orta) the last couple days on Xbox Series X. I had been mashing the buttons way too much, and am now finding that I have enough pain that I need to take the day off from gaming entirely. I don’t usually get that from shmup playing when I can hold a button for rapid fire - I think you nailed it with your comment about the benefits of avoiding RSIs. :)
As a kid, I've always used turbo when playing shmups, because everyone had those in their famiclones in my neighborhood. That was until I've discovered that the original NES did not have them and later started to upload scores for TG. I've started to consider turbo buttons a cheat, but after a week of streaming shmups and Contra several hours a day, I had a stiffness in my right forearm that lasted over 2 weeks - I had trouble writing with a pen and I could not do pull ups nor deadlifts in the gym, because my grip was severely weakened. I've learned the hard way that mashing is not really good for your health. Besides, if Nintendo (because I mostly play NES games) did not want their games to be used with turbo function, why did they make NES Max or Advantage, or licensed Hori's products that had turbo? Of course, there are games that are meant to be played without it, like Track and Field, or those that require rhythmical mashing for a good result (Contra speedrun), but I think that shmupping should be more like a mental sport than a physical one - focused on dodging, using right patterns etc. And I can't deny that getting your focus on mashing as fast as possible often causes you to fail in the other fields, especially when using a gamepad, where you have to kinda "switch" to using your fingers rather than a thumb to mash really fast, causing your gamepad to tremble.
I think of turbo buttons in highscore leagues like of steroids in professional bodybuilding - if everyone in the competition uses it, why don't you? Except turbo is actually good for your health, steroids are not if you abuse them.
This is a great analogy ha. Yeah I think another sports analogy is when tennis went from wood rackets (no auto) to metal rackets (full auto). At first metal rackets felt unfair because some older players still insisted on wooden rackets, but once everyone swapped to metal the wood rackets felt completely out of date and silly.
I usually use autofire bc my mashing capability is very limited due to physiological reasons(and also bc that mashing shit was never making any sense to me)(also, i just realized that my survival 2-all of DDP scores more than TG score lmao(but i did used autofire tho))
yeah ha they also would reject it if it isn't played on wolfmame or something like that, I've looked into submitting to TG before but it's a huge pain still.
Go for it! Congrats for your DDP victory!
This is an interesting video to watch from a speedrunner's perspective. The Metroid Dread community recently voted to allow turbo controllers, and it has been fairly controversial. The pro-turbo positions lined up perfectly with the points brought up in this video, though the part that I find a bit amusing is that within the speedrunning scene, it has actually been the Japanese scene that has been more anti-auto-fire.
That is interesting! Well I think it will happen across all games eventually. Button mashing is not an interesting skill and more genres will realize that ha
@@TheElectricUnderground I sure hope so! A lot of speedrun community leaders are very set in their ways, though, so it may be a very slow process
Watching the video and I’m amused that the screenshot for the thumbnail is of the exact same model pad I got in the 90s and still use on some games today.
I know right! It's a pretty sweet controller
I'm legitimately surprised Mushi didn't get brought up here but still a good video lol
kiwi naughty naughty boy!!! I did a deep cut mushi reference from your twitter ha. 6:50 Was going to use the mushi cab meme but couldn't find it in time.
@@TheElectricUnderground ahh that's what I get for being an audio listener lol
@@KiwiSTG Yeah should have mentioned a bit about how crazy mushi autofire is in detail, its a great example
With autofire the characters usually because slower (donpachi for example)..so it must used with Brain. Why japanese are better?
A lot of early shmups didn't have autofire for some bizarre reason. I suspect maybe mashing arcade buttons was easier? Maybe it was to artificially make the game more challenging? Maybe it's because of limited buttons due to hardware. Whatever the dumb reason, it was something that should have always been there, but wasn't. It's within the spirit of the game, so it's something that shouldn't be seen as cheating. With that said, some speedrunning communities do allow autofire, like Mega Man. Also speedrunning includes a lot of different genres, so autofire can be cheating in some game where it's not within the spirit of the game. But obviously in shmups, it absolutely is.
I think the concept of level design being more than mashing buttons was still coming together ha. Yeah treasure was one of the first devs to start building autofire into their games
To make it clear, Auto Fire ONLY help you in term of convenient while dodging bullet and planning route is another story
I know I like doing button mashing, but for the games like this, I rather use auto fire cuz I don't want to hurt my finger (as hurt as guncon games) and lose my concentration on dodging bullets (yes, happened to me for real)
Yeah button mashing in a lot of shmups just is absurd
@@TheElectricUnderground I remember when I played "Border Down", to shoot homing laser rapidly, I have to rapidly press shoot button otherwise holding down will fire standard shot, I wished there is autofire button for homing laser. XP
*Autofire = You only have to buy 1 Controller !*
*No Autofire = You have to buy at least 5 Controllers ;)*
*Autofire also helps prevent the Hands from Aging prematurely and causing Pain !*
reminds of the QuickTime events good or bad debate when they first appeared in popular RPGs (mass effect2, witcher2). they and mashing shouldn't be measurements of skill.
anyway, hand health wins.
Right ha! Even re4 quick time kinda suck without turbo
5:10 namely in the base stages you do have to mash in a very specific rhythm to do more damage in Contra and thus beat things faster. Also true in the main 2D stages but not nearly to the same extent.
Dodonpachi is a lot different than some older games though because in dote on pachi your shot is basically a burst shot so it's not that hard to Hit the maximal rate. In some games using auto fire opens up completely new strategies that wouldn't be possible if you had to press the button.
I just got my first 1cc on Strider arcade (not a shmup, but you mash the fire button a LOT, was hurting my wrist using my fightstick) on the hardest difficulty and starting with only 2 lives in MAME. There's probably some input lag in MAME compared to an arcade cabinet, which is maybe a justification for using autofire. It's interesting that it's significantly easier the faster you can mash the fire (sword) button. Does this still count as a "real" 1cc?
Yes it does! For games like this (where autofire busts some of the mechanics) they get split into no autofire and autofire categories in Japan. So that would be an autofire 1cc :-) But all games allow for autofire that I'm aware of. Oddly it's only western players (because of Twin Galaxies) that seem caught up on the autofire question, but mashing buttons is not an important skill imo ha.
Interesting topic. I use autofire because my arm gets tired from mashing in the Metal Slug games. Even my mom got tired of mashing the fire button, and it was just in a segment of Metal Slug 3's final mission.
Metal slug 3 without autofire is such a slog, the game is really long. It hurts the game a lot to force players to mash each credit
I beat the game with 89 credits in the Anthology!
damn, ur mom plays metal slug 3? thats so cool
As an example, ninja gaiden's speedrun is crazily optimized, we are talking about few seconds or even frames, now the skill gap to break the record is the ability to mash or optimize movement by frames until something new gets discovered but it's unlikely.
The thing is, that autofire wouldn't work in this case, because to slash multiple times in the air in ninja gaiden you need to press down + slash and then release to press down + slash again at the exact frame, if you simply hold down then autofire slash it won't work, only 1 slash would come out per jump, also it doesn't work if you are holding down-forward, so instead you need a key that presses and releases both down + slash, in that case it really would be cheating and unfair to most people, but really , if that was allowed the speedun would be pretty much dead, by normal mashing you can kill the final boss in 2 or 3 jumps by mashing really fast, no one can do it in one jump yet and maybe it's not possible for a human, each boss has 16 points of health so it would mean to consistently mash frame perfect down + slash at the peak of one jump, at each of those you need to release, because if you mess up once then you can't slash for the rest of the jump, if there was an autofire the boss would be deleted immediately.
WIth shmups it's understandable because these boses can deal with more than 500 hits and even with autofire they last a long time, with other games some bosses get deleted from existence in less than 1 second literally, some games are so optimized it now comes down to these little frame perfect things or absurdly hard to perform tricks.
The thing is that if you allow down + slash macros it becomes really hard to draw the line on what should be allowed or what should not be allowed.
Direction autofire is banned so in this case you d have to mash it out to some degree, maybe you could coordinate your mashed direction with a button autofire at a low rate or something. It would come down to efficient timing with your down inputs which sounds like a nice middle ground.
@@TheElectricUnderground In this case that wouldn't work because the moment you press slash without pressing down you get a normal slash and when you do that you can't do slash cancels anymore until you land.
It's like it's 2 different kind of slashes that look the same, one is the intended one and the other is like a "glitched" one, they look the same but are actually different moves.
If you do a regular one in the air then for the rest of the jump you can't act again or do the "down slash" one.
If you do the down slash one you recover immediately and can act again, if you accidentally do a regular one with the rapid fire then you can't act again.
That's why it wouldn't work by mashing down manually while having an autofire button on the slash.
It would make the slashing sound effect but it wouldn't do anything, i have tried it.
Not sure what the DMC scene think about this, but I'm sure that it would be accepted for combo videos especially if you are clear that you use it for extended rainstorm (technically a hidden Crazy Combo, really hard in Turbo) much like how other people just mod DMC3 or DMC5.
Speedruns are another question though optimal play doesn't really need mashing besides Vergil in DMC3SE (check our Waifu's videos). Dante does have some powerful skills locked behind mashing in 3, but Royalguard is the main style of choice which limits it a bit.
That s interesting Yeah in games like dmc it s a bit more complicated Because how it might effect combo linking and that sort of thing. Maybe certain buttons could be auto and others not or something
Thanks for the video! Great info. I’m curious about how the turbo button works on arcade sticks or through say, a Brook board. When turned on does it just make the shot fire as fast as the game allows? So Galaga for instance wouldn’t be a wall of bullets - just a pew pew pew about as fast as you can press fire?
Most classic shmups have a limit to how many bullets you can have on screen, so the bullet beam of death rarely happens. In Galaga's case you can't shoot if 2 of your bullets are on screen.
@@ZPS_STG cheers, so I guess the turbo button has a set fire frequency? I recall seeing something about being able to flash the brooks board to change the output.
Hey my dude great question. So on most arcade sticks (sadly) you are locked into one autofire rate (15hz or 20hz I'm guessing). So with older games that have really limited shooting like galaga, turning down the auto rate is a good idea ha. Even in some of the newer games, having a too fast autofire rate will actually be slower than using a lower one (like 300hz ha). So yes, it is definitely a good idea to tune your autofire rate per game, sadly I don't know of any arcade sticks that allow this on the fly, which would be cool. You can do it on the PC though with emulators or antimicro :-)
@@TheElectricUnderground thanks again. Learned a lot today. 🕹📺
Auto fire for record high scores? Fine. Auto fire for speed runs? Fine.
The only issue I have with auto fire is when it's used on older, usually pattern based shooters to complete the game like it's some sort of achievement (witness all the long play videos where folk auto fire their way through a game without breaking a sweat).
Auto fire on old shooters (R Type is my current obsession) usually breaks the design and removes most of the difficulty, which makes playing them pretty pointless.
There’s a t-shirt design in this Mark.
That s an interesting idea!
@@TheElectricUnderground I’m always impressed at the neat designs of your YT thumbnails (if that’s the right label) and I’d wear a t-shirt that said “ auto fire is not cheating”.
Have you played Deltazeal/XIIZeal or Psyvariar Delta? Those games have a sort of “auto fire” for maneuvers that require you to move your ship left and right rapidly. Having a button to do it allows you to be much more consistent but I think it might have been only available in the modern ports of the games and not the original incarnations. What do you think of these mechanics? I sometimes feel like I’m cheating when I just hold down a button to get something that is supposed to impact the movement and control over your ship.
Yes I've heard about it! A very interesting case since movement is not allowed to be autofired in games made after 1996 (according to jha). I d say that since this maneuver is supported to auto use on modern ports it s all good, kinda like gadget use in the new m2 ports.
Talking about Contra, i hate playing it without turbo fire. Or better yet - Super Contra. No fun.
For sure!
Mark .. this is totally unrelated but no one is playing the most underrated cave game . Muchi pork. Would be great content to go for the 1cc.
Yeah I m gonna check it out and pink sweets too soon
@@TheElectricUnderground well you would have the best Sensai with Plasmo.
This man is on to something! I would argue the first stage of most shmups is also arbitrary challenge, especially after u played the given shmup for a while cause u are forced to start on level 1 but following this logic of "declare something as arbitrary challenge, that's not part of the meta/game i want to see" i could just use a superplay macro for stage 1 right?!
Mashing is arbitrary skill check? What other inputs are also arbitrary and would allow for a macros to circumvent these difficulties?
Like i would love to be good but like dodging bullets and stuff is super hard, couldnt i just use a macro for that too, would that be okay too?
Also what about games that have no rapid fire option or a slow one, how do i break that difficulty barrier?....
This logic is arbitrary, who r u to choose what is part of the intended gamedesign and challenge and whats not, if the game doesnt have an autofire option, i would argue that mashing is obviously part of the presented challenge and game design.
How about you just have different leader boards for macro users and without instead of arguing for one way and one way only, this video is so stupid, it makes me wanna dump my vert crt 2d shmup setup and never look into this community again.
There is a line in the sand here that makes a lot of sense that JHA has been following where basically players can auto button inputs but not directional inputs (in games after 1996, anyway) so there is no slippery slope of sliding into movement macros or tas
Using autofire almost always puts your score in another category already. Mashing is usually pretty stupid and ruins your hands over time, so I see this as a strictly good thing for both sides.
The reality is that the developers aren't playing the game, the players are, and every game has a set of skills that the community values, and a set of skills that the community does.
You can go on about how "oh eventually there'll be a dodge macro", but it won't happen (outside of a TAS) because dodging is a valued skill.
Mashing is not a valued skill.
RAIDEN DX without Autofire is brutal 🤣
Its like playing track and field haha
Same with raiden 2!
What game is that playing on the screen?
Na minha opinião é e sempre será cheat usar Autofire, senão o próprio Arcade(máquina de loja com o jogo) também teria Autofire.
Unless it's an intrinsic feature of a game I don't see how it's not cheating, without automatic fire it would be physically very very difficult to accomplish a constant rate of fire while also using x/y controls.
By standardizing autofire use across competitive players like the Japanese have. Like I say in the video allowing autofire opens up the game to more refined gameplay and routing, rather than having a good deal of "skill" come down to the art of mashing buttons ha.
@@TheElectricUnderground true. If it could be standardized in the west I would fully support that
In a way, I think whether it's cheating or whether it should be allowed are two separate issues.
I think if it's not in the game by default or a setting in the game then it's cheating. Personally I hate mashing so I cheat and I don't care but I'm not going to pretend it's not cheating.
You guess that someone with their sane mind would go to ChoRenSha64k without autofire?
I tried CRS on an NES pad once without autofire.
I got as far as 1-5 or 1-6 and to say I had a sore thumb after would be putting it politely.
@@RinMariiiii I have a mechanic keyboard (And is a loud one), you really want me to be an annoyance at night? Because playing CRS without Autofire with that keyboard is going to make it an annoyance for both me and those that live with me.
THANK YOU! PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T FUCK YOUR HANDS FOR A STUPID GAME
Mashing is a skill. Of course it’s a skill. Duh!
It isn't a meaningful skill in terms of game design. Another example would be grinding in RPGs, having the mental patience to sit and wait through hundreds of repetitive battles is a skill in a sense, but it isn't meaningful. This is why fighting games have largely dropped mashing mechanics as well
@@TheElectricUnderground Appreciate your replies. It's a meaningful skill in that one player might not be able to 1cc Blazing Star without autofire, whereas a second player is able to (as the developers intended it). I would argue the second player was more skilled: either having more stamina (strength) to make it through or being cognizant of when he needs to mash and when he doesn't.
If turbo is not an option in the game, then using turbo is fine but you're not playing that game anymore It's a different game then. I mean I totally understand why people want to. That's ok, but it's not that game anymore unless it's a part of the game, Simply put, it should be a separate category. By using turbo you are changing the entire game and the way it's played, It changes the balance of skills used, period.
if the game does not want you to press the buttons that fast, they can limit it on their side. and in fact this has been done! as a recent example the basic shot in zeroranger does not fully come out unless the button is held for a significant period of time. so using autofire makes your shot worthless. this is the same argument people use against things like glitches. the only thing we can base our decisions on is the game in front of us, not what people "intended" or "meant" or anything stupid like that.
I can see what you mean, but in cases like this (like metal slug) I think swapping the autofire as the default and the non autofire as a separate category makes more sense as competative play has embraced autofire and so the standards have shifted since the twin galaxies days basically.
@@SweatyFujoshi but auto-fire uses extra software or hardware, so it's more like using mods than glitches
Only idiots wants their thumbs sore by mashing the buttons.
It's as much cheating as any other macro is cheating, because it's a macro. All of the macros, you could just do with very much the skill and effort, but putting in that effort is the challenge, like any competition.
Considering TASBOT is a very complex macro, is TASBOT cheating? Howabout replay editing? Since the replay is also a macro. What about save states? With dedication, you could do all those things perfectly the first time, so savestates to retry over and over until you win isn't cheating right? Or aimbots? With dedication, you could just aim better, but aimbot does it for you. It's just a shortcut, not cheating!
Not gonna tell you how to play your game, but if you consider any other kind of macro or shortcut to be cheating, you shouldn't give autofire/turbo a free pass. It's just another double standard. It might be on the mild side, sure. It might be "well it's not so bad so whatever", but it should be considered to be a form of cheat, just like any other. You're breaking the designed/implemented rules of the game to make things easier for yourself. Same with slowdown, speedup, any other thing to alter the game from it's original design, is some level of cheating.
Don t forget about the beginning of the video though that details the 20+ years of world records achieved in Japanese arcades using autofire, so that bridge is already long crossed. As far the slippery slope type of thing where we start with autofire and end in tas bots, there is an effective history where clear rules have been established with autofire use and has actually tightened up rather than spreading to macro use. Also the design of the games them selves has caught up with this and most shmups now have built in autofire. I think a more practical approach to this question is more useful than equating autofire to tas or other macros (though most macros would be effectively useless in arcade games due to their variation in game design).
@@TheElectricUnderground It shouldn't be controversial to say "It IS a macro, you are no longer playing the game as it was intended, but it might be more fun/have more longevity with this change"
Best comment in the whole section, a macro is a damn macro. I wonder how fighting games would look if anyone could just declare something in the game as arbitrary challenge and started using macros :D mehh shoryuken is way too hard let me set this macro real quick... I wonder what other inputs in other games might be considered arbitrary challenge..headshots in cs are tricky too sometimes.. The view presented in this vidro is like saying "nah, i dont like this challenge presented to me in this game" . Lets lower the baskets in basketball to make the sport more accessible to smaller people and in general just more people....while spitting on the intended gamedesign and shitting on the integrity of the game/sport.
@@MrBroken030 this is a perfect analogy, street fighter 2 players don't use shoryuken macros, even though the input has been made easier in subsequent games
I'm not saying that all shmups need to be held to the same standard as a single fighting game, but I AM saying it needs to be decided on a game-by-game basis and the reasoning in this video seems a bit too broad
@@MrBroken030 Ha it's not me declaring this, I'm just the messenger. There are hundreds of top tier japanese players who set world records that play with autofire, there is a long scoring history that vastly overshadows what the west and TG crowd has been able to accomplish in the genre. So it's actually the other way around where declaring autofire cheating is arbitrary because this is not how the competitive players play. In an FGC sense, it would be like banning pad and only allowing players to play on american arcade sticks or something.