DoDonPachi Saga Part 3 : Getting consistent with stage 5 to make it run ready (without bomb spamming)

DDP Saga Part 3 : Getting consistent with stage 5 to make it run ready (without bomb spamming)

My Goal(s)

"I want to play stage 5, play it well and have fun doing it."

One of my main or even the biggest goal of playing DoDonPachi was to be able to do stage 5 well, consistently and on demand. I don't like spamming runs hoping for that moment where the stars align.

The infamous DoDonPachi Stage 5

For me stage 5 is superfun because you can't really route it alot, it mostly comes down to pure bulletreading. But to put it in perspective  stage 5 is generally considered very hard, to be legitimately bomb spammed at any sign of danger (unless you're really good and/or going for a 2 loop clear or a major high score)

When I designed my initial route I was on paper able to do stage 5 no miss awhile back :






So while I could do it on paper, i did it back then just too design a route, but hadn't really mastered it yet. So i couldn't, at that point, do it in a run. (my consistency was just too low so I would have had to spam runs). Even though I could have just done runs a month ago and just bomb spam this stage and get a clear of the game, that isn't so interesting to me. (I ofcourse do want to get the 1cc but that's more like a side goal)

During the session 2 days ago I managed to do quite a good amount of practice stageruns of stage 5 with run consistency, meaning mostly  1 miss sometimes less, sometimes more and just a few bombs between like 2 and 4, sometimes 5.

When I wanted to stop the recording to upload the clip I noticed however that the recording wasn't running 😭

Usually this has always been quite demoralising and made me want to quit for the night and continue on a later date. This night however, it was totally different. For the first time ever I felt very em uuuhm 'combative', I just I knew/felt I could fight, and did another recording !







My analysis and explanation :

A few days ago I noticed suddenly some inconsistency in the first section of stage 5, where previously I was able to do that first part no bomb very well, basically as a given like 85 percent of the time or even more. However that day I would get hit by bullets close to my ship. So this is specifically not that stray lone bullet coming out of nowhere thing (that phenomenon plagued me a few months ago, but after doing the ocular strengthening by means of vision therapy it just went away), no it was always a bullet that I had seen coming and was there almost floating but I just suddenly got hit by it.


Then I took some rest and it didn't supercompensate, the next play session the same thing happened, I could read and dodge crazy stuff yet this kept happening and messing up my consistency. i knew something was up, and that something must have changed but what ? Logical deduction lead me to ask when did I perform my weekly maintenance routine of the vision therapy exercises ? It needs to be done weekly but has leeway of at least one week. Then it hit me ! I did one extra exercise that i used to nail down the double vision that wasn't a part of the regular vision therapy exercises ( I sort of just experimented with things and I noticed that this exact exercise alone was responsible for making the double vision become single vision, ofcurse only being able to do so because the ocular muscles were now trained and strong, they just missed coordination (working together). And because this exercise was, what I assumed, just for coordination, I didn't add prims as resistance (the equivalent of weights for the eyes training). 
So I immediately did the exercises and the thing of bullets close to the ship hitting me, vanished. Then I added prisms (prisms are tools used in vision therapy to make changes to the visual system) and suddenly I played stage 5 with consistency I just have not seen myself do before ! (and there isn't alot of routing possible so it's not a matter of just getting better at it by playing) !!! This is HUGE


I figured out a direct one on one mapping of a shmup visual skill to an optometric exercise
like having direct access to the underlying machinery ☺️

Thank you for reading this post, bye !!


About me :

"Hi, i'm AnimegirlSTG, i heart shooty shooty pew pew games !"

Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/animegirlstg/profilecard/?igsh=MW04Yzd

YouTube : https://youtu.be/25RTf4miNZE?si=hTkXzn85hz_CAMhA






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