Baluba-louk no Densetsu

[favouredson]

After several near misses at the KNHHD high score I thought I would try Baluba-louk instead.
I dug out my PCB, beat my personal best by 200K or so and just scraped past 2M.
2,000,130

 

[_Matt_]

Wow great score. This is an amazing game and probably my favourite of it's type. I remember we played it for a high score challenge on the Jamma+ forum years ago. I think I briefly had the high score and thought I was doing well then it got smashed to pieces several times 🤣

 

[big10p]

Wow great score. This is an amazing game and probably my favourite of it's type. I remember we played it for a high score challenge on the Jamma+ forum years ago. I think I briefly had the high score and thought I was doing well then it got smashed to pieces several times 🤣

I remember that. Not sure if I managed to scrape past 1M or not. Either way, I didn't win. 😆

 

[_Matt_]

I remember that. Not sure if I managed to scrape past 1M or not. Either way, I didn't win. 😆

Yeah you got higher than me, I don't think I got more than 500,000.

 

[favouredson]

Forgot to post this yesterday.
A huge leap forward!
2,061,590
If I can train myself to stop throwing lives away, I might get a better score.

 

[Fantazia2]

We played this years ago on the 10p arcade podcast high score challenge, sadly the old sites gone now so I think the scores might be gone as well.

@shaunholley do you still have the old score spreadsheets online?

 

[Pinge]

Forgot to post this yesterday.
A huge leap forward!
2,061,590
If I can train myself to stop throwing lives away, I might get a better score.

Nice to see Baluba-Louk get some love!
One of my favorite games since I got my hands on a PCB last year.

Interesting to see you had 2mill at R24, I clearly do something wrong since my LOD was 35 for 2,19!
Is your PCB an original or a bootleg @favouredson ? (might be some differences)

Here is the Ten Pence Arcade club on the phoneapp "Arcade Sidekick"!
(My score was set long after it was a competition for the podcast)

 

[favouredson]

Interesting to see you had 2mill at R24, I clearly do something wrong since my LOD was 35 for 2,19!
Is your PCB an original or a bootleg @favouredson? (might be some differences)

Greed is the key to getting higher scores earlier but, unlike myself, you need to couple it with a sense of self-preservation.

My PCB is an original which I have had for a number of years now.
I previously had a bootleg Star Force which I converted to Baluba-Louk using the original code as I have never seen bootleg ROMs for this game.

I only started playing regularly in the past few months so I might be able to beat your score soon...

 

[Pinge]

Greed is the key to getting higher scores earlier but, unlike myself, you need to couple it with a sense of self-preservation.

My PCB is an original which I have had for a number of years now.
I previously had a bootleg Star Force which I converted to Baluba-Louk using the original code as I have never seen bootleg ROMs for this game.

I only started playing regularly in the past few months so I might be able to beat your score soon...

Im counting on you to beat it so I get an excuse to play it again! Levels loop after 32 (but not speed).

 

[favouredson]

It also helps if you can get lots of Ks early on so that your bonus points are multiplied enabling a higher score.
I have had 1Million as early as round 9 and as late as round 16 so it makes a huge difference.
It's also nice to get several Es in a game so that you can then play longer as you only get 6 lives without them.

 

[favouredson]

Anyway, I had another game earlier...
2,329,370
Don't try too hard, Pinge as that took a lot of effort.

 

[Eddhorse]

Great scores, be interested to hear what your dips are set to, 1 million by round 9 seems amazing

 

[Hitesh]

Thanks for this thread.

I never knew anything about this game and never would have as "jap" would have been a dead end when searching for new games to try.

Played a couple of times yesterday and liked it a lot. Will get a place in my "Arcade Favourites" listing on my front end.

 

[favouredson]

Great scores, be interested to hear what your dips are set to, 1 million by round 9 seems amazing

I won't say that it happens a lot, but it has certainly happened at least once.
You can generally get an extra P on most of the early rounds and if you get enough Ks then you potentially have multiples of 16,200 twice per round. Those points soon add up.

Twin Galaxies has these settings but no mention of which switches do what:
ROMSet: Baluba
Lives: 3
Bonus lives = 30K, 100K and 200K
Difficulty = 0
Unknown 1 = ON
Unknown 2 = OFF
Unknown 3 = OFF
Special Rules: None

All my dips are off except sw1:2 and sw2:8 and as you can see my extra lives are set higher than TG which makes no difference when you are scoring over 500K.
The dip settings I have seen online do not match my board as they have 1c-1cr as on-on and the TG extra lives setting is on-on-on whereas off-off-off gives no extras. Help!

 

[favouredson]

It turns out someone has been playing about with my board!
I have not altered the dips since I got the board and so had not taken any notice but now...



There is a sticker on each dip with the numbers on but after removing the stickers I saw the real numbers...



As can now be seen, the switches which are on are 1:7 and 2:1. After a bit of testing I found that 1:7 is the cab type; on=upright and 2:1 is extra lives; on-off-off=50K-200K-500K. That clears that up but the online settings I linked to are still wrong as they have all the settings listed as ON when they are most definitely OFF.
P.S.

 

[favouredson]

Back to playing the game...
2,591,820

 

[favouredson]

Edging towards 3M.
2,746,930

 

[favouredson]

1 million by round 9 seems amazing

Nearly amazing...
I missed a few 10K (xX) enemies otherwise it would have been about close to 100K more.



Had to act quickly to get a photo and managed to cut off the bottom of the screen showing the round so I've posted a MAME screenshot to show that it was round 9 as only round 10 has an entrance surrounded by windmills.
Annoyingly, I managed to get to round 32 and fell short of my high score by a measly 60K.

 

[favouredson]

So close!
2,932,580



I almost quit this game about round 15 as I lost a couple of lives stupidly and also missed loads of points on a few rounds.
Good job I stuck with it...

 

[favouredson]

I've finally managed to crack 3 Million.
3,253,610


I think that's it for a while as I can't see me scoring much more than this.