ZeroRanger Full Story 1CC w/ Caption Commentary

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Demo Ending
1:51 Attract Mode
4:54 Game Start
6:21 Stage 1-1
8:45 Stage 1-2
13:07 Stage 1-3
18:20 Stage 1-4
31:50 Stage 2-1
34:35 Stage 2-2
40:03 Stage 2-3
45:41 Stage 2-4 Part 1
51:10 Stage 2-4 Part 2
59:56 Stage ???
1:10:10 Credits


There be spoilers in this video and in the description below. Granted, considering this video's title, most people reading this probably don't care about spoilers.

Zeroranger is an amazing love letter to shmups. It's got everything. Mecha, monsters, absolute destruction, references to Buddhism, and a story that grows more complex as you discover bits of lore hidden around the game. Having paid attention to its development since my teenage self got wowed by its 2014 build(back when it was called Final Boss), it's really quite amazing to see how it's progressed since then. I have to give mad props to Eebrozgi and Ebbo for putting all their love and creativity into this game.

This video is going to be a little different from my other 1CC videos. This will be both a run of the game, and a compilation of Zeroranger's story. In my playthrough videos, I try to show as much of the game as possible, and since the story elements shown in a Zeroranger run almost completely show the story, I decided for the sake of completeness to include the rest of the story elements. Since several of these story elements permanently disappear or become simplified for all future runs after you encounter them, I chose to do what I call a "Fresh Save 1CC". Basically, when I start a new save, I have only one run to complete the game (including the true last boss). If I fail or decide to restart, I need to delete the save and try again. It doesn't really add any difficulty, aside from having to beat the TLB after playing through the whole game.

For this run, I chose the Type C ship, AKA Decker. Out of the two ships available, I think Decker is the harder one to use. Its main shot, while more powerful, is harder to hit enemies with since it has no spread. The small popcorn is especially tough to shoot since if they move left or right quickly enough, they can survive flying through your main shot. Type C also can't use the beastly chargeshot and sword weapons that the other ship can use.

Now for scoring, it's pretty simple. Killing enemies increases a score multiplier up to 6.4 (12.8 if you're in robot mode). The multiplier on the GUI also doubles as a juice bar, which is automatically filled when you kill enemies, doesn't move when you're damaging enemies, and drains otherwise. The higher your multiplier, the faster the juice drains. If you run out of juice, the multiplier halves, then plummets to 1.0. When you kill big enemies, you can keep shooting their bodies until they explode to get extra points, though keep in mind that your juice will start draining the instant they explode. There are also three secret bonus items in every stage except the last one. The first one gives 1000 points, the second gives 2000 points, and the third gives 4000 points.

The extend system is pretty interesting. The number of points you need to get an extend changes depending on how well you're doing. Therefore the only way to know how close you are to an extend is to look at the color of the score. The whiter it is, the closer you are to the next extend. The maximum amount of lives you can have is 8. When at max lives, the game will constantly push back the next score extend until you lose a life, so that way you can't reach the score extend when you have max lives. Speaking of extends, it seems that most bosses will drop a 1up on defeat if you have 0 lives.