Article - The Dodonpachi Score Glitch Bounty is Alive With a Lead!

The Tangled History of Shmups’ Most Notorious Glitch

Glitch Found!!! Bounty now Canceled!

All Donation Drive Money Has Been Refunded.

Hello everyone!

Today, the Glitch Bounty Committee, which consists of  Blackisto, Gusto, Jaimers, KZ, and myself, would  like to announce that  we have banded together to offer a sizeable  bounty for a very  controversial scoring glitch in the beloved shmup, Dodonpachi.   As far as we are aware, a public bounty like this for a scoring glitch   is unprecedented in shmup history and likely will never occur again.

The bounty is currently worth $2,000  plus an extra $260 added via crowdfunding thanks to the generous contribution of Rodarmor ($250) and Anthony A. ($10) 😀

The bounty total is now $2,260!

If  you are unfamiliar with shmups or Dodonpachi, you may think this   amount of money being offered for a mere scoring glitch is absurd — and   it is — but it is also necessary. Sometimes money can help motivate people to do the right thing.

If you haven’t seen it already, I have also recorded a video on the subject:

https://youtu.be/8YAVjSgNgNg

The Tangled History of the Dodonpachi Score Glitch

To  understand the implications of this bounty, it is important to  know  the history of this glitch and the effect it has had on both the   Japanese and Western shmup communities. As mentioned before, Dodonpachi   is a beloved and widely played shmup with a scoring history that dates   back to the 90’s. Even early in its lifespan, Dodonpachi was popular to   play for score. During this time, while many players were digging into   the game and exploring how to better optimize scoring, one player came   across the mysterious Score Glitch. Again,  this was  back in the late 1990’s, more than twenty years ago, when it  is  speculated that the glitch was first discovered. Additionally, it is   believed that this glitch was initially triggered completely by  accident  (as many glitches are).

Since  that time, only a few players in the world have been privileged  to  know about how the glitch works and see its effects with their own   eyes. Instead of being shared openly and credited to the original finder   (like in the case of speedrunning), a culture of secrecy has developed   around this glitch. Very few people outside this inner circle of  players  know what the glitch is or how it works, and the ones that do have sworn to secrecy themselves.

What is most concerning is that all three world records (for the three separate ship types) all utilize this glitch and are essentially unbeatable without it.

How is this possible? The reader may be asking. How  can  these players have world records, and yet not show the glitch in  action?  Couldn’t the players simply reverse engineer how the glitch  works from  the videos of the world records?

We  probably could, except that no public replays exist. In Japan, the   records for a scorekeeping organization called JHA (which has roots in Gamest Magazine)   must be achieved in an arcade and verified by an arcade operator, so  no  video evidence is required for a world record. This is how The Glitch has managed to remain secret for so long. And this is why, outside the efforts of this bounty, it will likely remain a secret.

But Why? Why Would World Class Players Actively Conceal the Glitch?

Some  may feel that the people concealing this glitch are merely  acting out  of spite or to protect their world records. However, I  believe the  situation is much more complicated and nuanced than that,  so, as to not  villainize these players, I want to explain my theory  behind their  motivation (which I think is well-researched).

To  begin with, Dodonpachi is an incredibly brutal yet beautiful  scoring  game as originally designed. To get the scores that these world  record  holders have achieved, even minus the glitch, requires years —  and  perhaps decades — of intense play and study. However, as I  understand,  the power of this glitch, when made publically known, will  nullify all  that dedicated mastery and basically break Dodonpachi’s  scoring. Think  of it as an infinite in a fighting game, where once the  player  discovers the infinite, all the other aspects of competitive  gameplay  are thrown in the garbage.

Essentially  then, the players who are keeping this glitch hidden are  viewing  themselves as keeping pandora’s box closed. They don’t want the  glitch  revealed because all the competitive gameplay will just come down  to  who can abuse the glitch the most effectively.

This is understandable, except there is one huge issue with this idea … the world records scores were achieved using the glitch, so pandora’s box is already open and the monster inside has boosted scores. But we’ll return to this point shortly.

First, I want to say that, in the west, there is an extremely obvious solution to this whole problem. Why don’t they just ban  the glitch? Or why don’t they just create a glitched and glitchless   category (as I proposed in another article on this very site last year)?

The  problem comes back to JHA. Remember how I said that JHA does not  use  video proof and instead relies on an arcade operator to check the  end  score? Well, since there is no video involved and just an end score   screen, this means that JHA has no means to create separate categories   for scoring and so an 800 million score played glitched or non-glitched   are indistinguishable from one another. What these players fear is not   some distant Western player beating their world record on emulator   (which JHA would not recognize anyway), but instead a fellow Japanese   player who barely plays DDP, but knows the glitch, showing up in their   arcade and counter stopping the game.

And  so it all makes sense. The moment this glitch is revealed to the   public, it is likely someone will figure out how to use it for a counter   stop and Dodonpachi will become a dead game in arcades, just like all   the other shmups with abusable glitches that JHA just bans for   convenience.

So … maybe we should just let them keep the glitch hidden then, right?

NO!

And here is why.

Why Does This Matter? The Damaging Effect of The Glitch

To keep the length of this article under control, I have organized my thoughts into the following points:

1. They have already used the glitch to achieve world record scores, so they can’t have their cake and bury it too.
2. Keeping  the glitch secret creates a concerning power dynamic where  the secret  holders get to choose who gets to compete on a world-record  level and  who does not. The conflict of interest is troubling to say the  least.  This privilege to know the secret has nothing to do with the  gameplay  at all and favors players who go out of their way to befriend  secret  holders. Eternal gaijins like myself are also at an extreme   disadvantage.
3. This  secret keeping also reinforces a belief that needs to be  squashed,  that players can “own” strategies. The player who fell into  this glitch  initially and then decided to keep it a secret had no right  to try and  take ownership of such an important scoring strategy. This is  no  different than a collector who hides a rare game and refuses to  share  it with the rest of the world, just because he happens to possess  the  last physical copy. This holds true for routes as well. Allowing   players to “own” routes means that the players who first begin playing   and finding things back in the 90’s now have control over the entire   competitive landscape just because they started playing first.
4. The  secrecy neuters the availability of resources and replays for  the  game. Due to all this secrecy around the glitch and DDP itself, the   game is shockingly bare of videos and resources. Unlike a game like   Ketsui, where SPS (the current world record holder) uploads many high   scoring videos publicly (cheers SPS!), there are barely any replays of   top Japanese Dodonpachi players. The highest A-L replay is not by WTN   and WTN’s own masterful gameplay can only be seen in a live   demonstration from Stunfest that did not show the glitch or other secret   strategies. However, WTN has clarified that he did not know the secret   scoring glitch at the time he participated at Stunfest 2014.
5. It  gives Dodonpachi a bad reputation as a scoring game (it’s a  dead-end,  in a sense) and causes a lot of unnecessary tension between  the Western  and Japanese shmup players.

The Crossroads, Where Do We Go From Here?

To  be clear, as critical as this article may read when it comes to  this  issue of glitch hiding, I do also want to state that one of the  goals  of this bounty is to help bring Japan and the rest of the shmup playing world  closer together. Taking a step back, I think the issue of the   Dodonpachi glitch is a breaking point for a much larger problem. The   larger problem being that the old method of score keeping via JHA in   Japan needs to be abandoned. Let me make it clear that I have no   problems with JHA themselves or anything like that, but it is simply a   system of doing things that is outdated and holding back cooperation   between the Japanese and Western shmup players. Of course, there are   additional barriers like language and strange copyright laws that get in   the way, but I do think that this devoted focus to the printed   magazine-style score keeping hurts everyone in the year 2020.

For  example, if the Japanese players started to move away from this   arcade-only / end screen-only style of score verification and instead   started to embrace contemporary proof standards (recorded video) then   both sides would benefit. The west would benefit because we would no   longer be completely out of the loop as to what Japanese players were   doing and we would be able to learn from the game play in their videos.   This would also open up many more avenues of communication between   Japanese and Western players. On the Japanese side of things, moving to a   peer-reviewed video standard (for world records at least) would allow   much greater flexibility and future-proofing for their scoring   categories. They could easily create glitched and non-glitched DDP   categories and no longer worry about the game being murdered. In fact,   even outside of this bounty, this will happen at one point or another if   they stick with the current system, as another Japanese player is  bound  to figure it out and exploit it at some point.

WTN Speaks! Thoughts on the Situation from World Record Holder WTN

The  following is a summary of WTN’s thoughts that he has expressed to  the  Glitch Bounty Committee that he has written to help clear up the   many misunderstandings between the Japanese and western communities.   Hopefully, this will also clear up misunderstandings about the bounty   itself. WTN has kindly come forward to explain his side of the story as   well as explain the situation in Japan. To not make this post even   longer than it is, we will summarize it briefly, but you can find the   full translated archive here:

Link: Letter from WTN to the West

In  the west, there seems to exist a negative image that the Japanese   players purposefully hide their replays and silencing anyone from   talking about their strategies. This is not the entire truth. The reason   why not many players upload videos primarily stems from these two   issues:

• Japan’s  high score scene has a different history that emerged in a  different  mindset and culture. In the west, we share all information and   strategies with each other, but, in Japan, competition originally   happened between individuals or groups of people. There were many tiny   communities instead of one big one. Therefore, it was more advantageous   to have more information than your opponent.

Besides  this, they also have a culture where it’s common practice  that you  need permission from the person that first found a route or  strategy  when you want to make something public that includes these  findings.  For us westerners, this is culture shock for sure.

• Another  limiting factor has been restrictions set upon the players  by arcade  operators and some game companies. Players can share videos  between  themselves, but in order to make a video recorded in an arcade  public,  they first need permission from the copyright holder. Because of   various incidents that happened in the past, such as fake scores and   leaked strategies, certain arcade operators deemed this a necessary   measure. As a result of this taboo, people don’t have the habit of   making replays public.

WTN  states that he has no problems with sharing the DDP 1-5 full  chain  when asked and that it was never supposed to be a secret. The only   problem was just that he can’t make his video of it public because of a   local rule of the arcade where the footage was recorded. This has been a   massive point of confusion for everyone.

In  regards to the DDP bug, he states that he doesn’t have the  authority  to reveal the bug because NAL is the one that first found it,  but he  also doesn’t want to reveal the bug because it will ruin the game  for  everyone. This was mutually decided between the three players that  were  in the know.

Lastly, he states his views on the topic of making routes public:

• “It’s up to the freedom of the player whether to make a route public or not.

※    It’s fine if other players/communities want to request information, but no one is obligated to give it out.

• A player that makes his own routes public should naturally be praised, but one that does not should not be slandered either.

※     Information warfare is also a valid form of competition, and  to  completely refuse to acknowledge this is to reject diversity.”

He closes with the following statement:

“Japan  and the western communities both have good and bad parts.  You can’t  say that only one side is totally in the right. In the current   situation it comes across as if Japan and the west are both on the   extreme opposite ends of the spectrum, the important part is finding a   balance between the two communities. Here in Japan in recent years   people, with the newer generation of players at its base, have started   to make videos of their WR’s public. I believe that with the passage of   time the situation will gradually change. Myself have also started to   ease up on this and have started to gradually make my uploads public (my   recent streams of Raiden and Tatsujin Ou are a direct result of  this).”

Mark MSX’s thoughts and reply:

Again,  I would like to emphasize that this bounty was not born out of   hostility towards WTN or any of the DDP players involved, but instead   to promote a healthy competitive spirit for the genre moving forward   where players begin to interact more on a global, rather than local,   platform.

I will start with the  points that I agree with. I agree that both  communities have their own  issues and growing pains we both need to work  through, there is no  doubt about that. Both sides have many common  goals and share similar  challenges. Each side has its own unique  challenges as well. I  definitely agree that slandering each other is  absolutely uncalled for  and counter-productive to what we need to be  working towards (which is  unity).

However, the divide  between our two outlooks is absolutely going to  be this issue of  strategy hiding and whether players have ownership of  the strategies  and routes they come up with. Just to be clear, I don’t  feel this is an  all or nothing sort of issue, but I do think there need  to be limits  as to how much ownership a player can claim on a strategy  and how long  they can hold that ownership.

In  the world of Super Metroid speedrunning, there is a perfect  example we  can look towards as a parallel to this discussion. There is a   well-accomplished Super Metroid player by the name of Behemoth.    Behemoth has achieved world records in one of the most heavily played   and optimized speedrunning games in the world. Super Metroid   speedrunning and Dodonpachi have comparable competitive histories. What   makes Behemoth an interesting figure is that he would achieve his world   records (mostly) by devising new strategies and routes in secret and   then using them to claim the world record. Something I think WTN can   identify with and appreciate.

However,  the difference is that, once Behemoth had achieved his world  record,  his strategies then became public and part of the pool of  knowledge  about the game. From there, if he wanted to improve he would  have to  continue to innovate and push the game. So I do agree that he  does have  ownership over his new strategies for a limited time and can  use them  to cash in on a new world record, but I do not think a player  is within  a fair competitive spirit to hide these strategies from his  fellow  competitors for years and incorporate a social dynamic into their   sharing and usage.

In the case of  DDP, what has happened is that a small selection of  players have  innovated and helped each other, but kept their work secret  so that  there has now become this massive gap between themselves and  the rest  of the world, especially with the usage of the glitch.

So, in summary, while I don’t think WTN or the other DDP record-holders have  to share their strategies, continuing to conceal them is damaging the   overall health of the game, especially now when shmups are at a low in   popularity. Back in the heyday of arcades and competitive playing,   strategy hiding had no negative impact on the health of the genre and   scoring communities, but given enough time and a starved player base   (there really are not that many serious DDP players in the world) then   these actions take on a new context and meaning. I am hoping that this   article is helping to express this context more clearly and that the   competitive health of the game overall is more important than the   individual achievements of the players.

Also … there is one last thing I want to mention.

WE HAVE A LEAD ALREADY! THE GLITCH IS NOT FAR FROM BEING DISCOVERED!

During  our time of re-organizing, we were presented with extremely  useful  confirmation that aligned with many theories that the Western  shmup  scene had gathered regarding the nature of the glitch. We will now  be  presenting this information to the public right here, right now.   This info greatly narrows down the search and honestly, if you want  the  bounty, I do not recommend waiting too long before coming forward.

What We Know:

• The glitch can be triggered with the re-spawning turrets in stage 6.
• We  particularly advise you look closely at the second spot in stage 6   where 3 small groups of turrets re-spawn while the bees fire green   walls of bullets.

• At this point in the chain, normally (without the glitch), the chain value is around 14 million.
• It  is believed that at this point, but maybe also elsewhere, doing  some  inconsistent trick (like a frame perfect double kill) can mess with  the  gp value of an enemy in the same fashion that Blackisto describes  in  this POST

• This error then snowballs as the chain continues throughout stage 6, due to how the chain is calculated.
• A  regular stage 6 full chain for an experienced player (like  Blackisto)  gives 53 million. The best players in the world push the  stage 6 full  chain to 57-58 million.
• To  see if you triggered the glitch, you may carefully record the  normal  gp values of the turrets and other enemies in this section as you  play  the section. The gp values are the numbers just above your life  icons  and below your max counter.

• As  you play,  do some turret kills and monitor if the chain value  evolves  normally or if there are some sudden unexplained points.
• An  alternative idea is to play this section in a full stage run,  record  your gameplay, and repeat the section many times with save  states. This  method requires that the person is a DDP player with stage 6  chain  knowledge, however.

How Can You Help? How to Collect the Bounty

Obviously, if you are reading this and do have information about how to trigger the glitch, PLEASE come   forward and reveal the information. Continuing to hide this glitch is   harming everyone and prolonging a much-needed update to how shmups are   played competitively. To collect the bounty, feel free to message me or   anyone on the committee. I will leave contact info for everyone at the   bottom of the post.

To collect the money, you will be invited to the committee’s server where you will deliver the information.

Take  note! Due to the information we have already received, we are  prioritizing those who come forward with complete information and video  evidence.  Before you tell us any of your information, please indicate  if you have  full knowledge and evidence, or incomplete knowledge and  evidence.  Until the day of April 1st, 2020, we will only be accepting  an informant  who has complete knowledge and video evidence. This video  evidence will  include a glitch that the committee can then use to  create a 860  million or higher score TAS. If no one has collected the  bounty by April  1st, 2020, we will update with smaller focused bounties  for further  information. Until that time, do not come forward with  incomplete  information unless you want to contribute your information  without  payment (which is cool, but just to make the money situation  clear).

If you just start  messaging us information without establishing the  money situation with  us, you will not be paid for your information  because otherwise, this  could get out of hand with multiple people  making claims at once.

If  a group of players wants to claim the bounty together as a group  that  is also acceptable, just be sure to make clear to us how the group  of  players would like the money distributed between the group.

A  member of the server can also communicate in Japanese if that is   needed. The goal is for us to be able to understand the glitch well   enough to trigger it based on your information and then share the   strategy with the rest of the world. The more thorough your information,   like a video and a guide, the faster we will be able to replicate the   glitch and pay you. Again, until April 1st 2020, only complete info and   video evidence will be accepted.

Also,  if the person revealing the glitch so desires, we can keep  your  identity completely anonymous! In this case, please contact us with  an  alternate identity for extra protection. Being double-blind is the  most  effective way to maintain anonymity.

If  you want to reveal the glitch to us (which is the right thing to  do),  but do not want to receive the bounty, we will then donate the  bounty  to a charity of your choosing. If we find the bounty on our own  before a  claim is made, the bounty will be dissolved and the money  raised from  crowdfunding will be donated to charity.

The Bounty Donation Drive!

Thanks to the generous contribution of Rodarmor ($250) and Anthony A. ($10), the bounty donation drive now has met it’s goal and added an extra $260 to the bounty!

Contact Info (These are Hyperlinks)

Mark MSX

Twitter:

Reddit:

Discord:

Gusto

Twitter:

Discord:

Jaimers

Twitter:

Discord:

KZ

Twitter:

Discord:

Blackisto

Twitter:

Discord: