Has anyone here ever beaten viewpoint without cheating? I’m pretty good at shoot em ups and I can only get to the third level boss so far.
Yes; it just boiled down to having a lot of time 20+ years ago and tons of memorization and dedicated practice. These days, using save states to practice certain stage sections and boss encounters would be faster, but I force myself to learn via single runs. I always start from stage 1 and work on my play-throughs by developing consistency from there while pushing a little further each time.
It’s timely, but it’s a process that I have fun with and helped me run through games like the nes Ninja Gaiden titles, Magician Lord, Last Resort etc when I was younger. Dedicated practice and memorizing levels by forced single run playthroughs to gradually push progress. Your muscle memory will become second nature and you’ll enter the “zone” more often thanks to all the preceding levels becoming second nature.
This also reinforces efficient play to retain your powerups which helps immensely in other shooters (looking at you, Pulstar). Starting some stages with zero powerups after using a continue makes some game’s later levels 10 times harder than they would otherwise be (infamous “frog stage” from Magician Lord) if reached with appropriate power levels.
If you hit a progress wall, take a break and tackle it with a fresh mind in another session. Keep practicing and have fun