RayForce - 1CC (6.60mil)

1 Credit Clear of RayForce, with a final score of 6,600,000.
Played on the new PS4 version, which is part of the Ray'z Arcade Chronology - a high quality collection of the entire Ray series (RayForce, RayStorm and RayCrisis), produced by the fine folks at M2.
This is a significant improvement over my previous PB of 5.99mil.
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RayForce was released by Taito in 1994 and for me is the jewel in their crown. The graphics and overall presentation are absolutely phenomenal for a game from 1994, and it's backed by a cool scoring system and great stage design that has tons of scope for optimisation.
The central mechanic is the lock-on laser, which became a staple of the Ray series going forward. You can lock on to up to 8 enemies in the background layer with your homing laser, with an escalating score multiplier applied to each enemy in the lockon. For maximum score you want to always go for 8-locks, placing the most valuable enemies in the later slots. Pulling off high value locks requires strict timing and a lot of precision, but it is extremely satisfying, and it's a game that begs to be optimised for maximum score.
I have the strats to push above 7mil, but that would require a perfect run, and there are a few too many things that can go wrong. Dodging is quite hard in this game, due to your large hitbox, slow movement speed, and lack of a bomb or panic button, and occasionally it can be hard to judge bullet trajectories; for example aimed shots fired by turrets in the background layer. Zako behaviour is also unpredictable so you need to be alert at all times. For a game with relatively few bullets it's quite a bit harder than it looks.
As always, if you want to learn more about the game, check out the page on the shmups wiki
shmups.wiki/library/RayForce
Shooting Game Never Die
store.playstation.com/#!/tid=...

[@andreasbusuk]

RAYFIGHTER

[@GojiGuy]

damn this is brilliantly optimized. Great replay!