WazzupGenius00 posted... It can definitely be tough to recover. But also the rank goes way down after a death to give you a chance
(if youre unfamiliar with arcade game lingo, rank refers to the adaptive difficulty many games utilize which typically makes the game harder the longer you play/the more you play well, as well as reducing the difficulty after a death or when a continue is used. Shooting games are where it is most evident, but other genres like beat em ups also utilize it. Clearing a game on one credit or doing speedruns sometimes requires careful management of rank, even necessitating intentional deaths at times. For example TMNT speedruns intentionally die right before the fight against Bebop and Rocksteady at the same time because it lowers both of their health significantly, saving a lot of time there. Technically you can keep the rank a little bit lower in Gradius by not using all your powerups, but its not really worth it to do so.)
Huh, never knew about that. Thanks for the detailed explanation! I hadn't noticed a difference, but maybe I was too focused on being disappointed I lost all my powerups lol