Cosmo Dreamer: Trial 1cc+ (Maniac / No Miss), DAAC, 244 Billion

Cosmo Dreamer is one of the most fun and most satisfying shmups I have ever played in my life. There are 4 difficulties and Maniac is the 3rd hardest, below Expert and finally Nightmare at the top. This is an improvement over my precious Maniac difficulty 1cc, successfully completing the run without losing a life (no-miss). You have significant leeway here between both the automatic shield mechanic and the ability to react and use a bomb instead ("Counter-Magic") in order to prevent losing lives when you do technically get hit. In order to see Stage 9 and the TLB, you must defeat the Stage 8 boss with 6+ lives remaining: this is considered a 1cc+.

As for scoring, there's several systems at play. Speedkilling enemies and especially bosses increases the score bonus when they die. Additionally, point-blanking increases damage as well as score and meter gain for bombs. But this game ALSO has graze bonuses and bombs grant massive score by converting on-screen bullets into red orbs. So you have half of the system encouraging you to delete enemies up close instantly, and the other half encouraging you to hang back and let bullets and enemies stack up... in order to cash it out with a bomb. It's very fun to route and optimize.

Played on PC on an 8bitdo M30.

0:00 Weapon Select
0:15 Stage 1
2:41 Stage 2
5:34 Stage 3
8:43 Stage 4
12:50 Stage 5
17:35 Stage 6
22:28 Stage 7
29:19 Stage 8
34:11 Final Boss "Mu"
37:45 Stage 9 - Bonus Stage
43:02 TLB "Deep Mu"