DrBunsen, that was an awesome read. Thanks.
It was fun to write. Most non-gamers aren't interested in my Stargate adventures so it's kinda cool to recount to fellow gamers. A couple of additional details to the story that are kinda interesting (at least to me...):
1) Before I started playing that 8 million point game I'd gotten a big (like 32 oz) Dr Pepper to drink during the game. I made it a habit to go to the bathroom before starting a game, but after a few hours I REALLY had to pee again. I could tell that I was playing better than usual and didn't want to blow the game, but when you have to pee you have to pee. It was late but fortunately some guy wandered into the room. He was watching me so I asked him if he played, and he said "yeah, but not like that". I asked him if he'd take over while I went to the bathroom - I had to practically beg him to do it (he didn't want to blow my game either). I got it down to a single non-lander on a level (either a Dynamo or a Bomber) so that he didn't have to do too much other than avoid the Baiters, Phreds and Big Reds that would come out, and told him to just avoid stuff as best he could (and don't blow up the people!) and let him take over. I got back 3 or so minutes later and he was in the next level, dying like crazy and apologizing like crazy, and I was saying "no no - it's OK - THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU". All I know is that I was SO thankful that he was there. And it really was OK - I had a bunch of ships piled up and when I took back over it was still overflowing with ships. If I recall correctly the ships piled up until there are nine, then it switched to a single, big ship with a "10" in it, and then additional small single ships. So the most it would show is 17 ships (or was it 18?? The large-sized "10" ship, and 7 or 8 more single ships), but more would still pile up in memory.
2) When I was closing in on 8 million and I was wanting to close out the game I started blowing up ships, and counting as I went. I knew I was doing well, but was shocked that I had 43 ships in reserve, which was at least twice as many as I thought I had. Even if I knew how many ships I had I still would've stopped at 8 million. My hands and wrists were hurting like crazy, I was tired as hell, and it was after 4am and I needed to be in class the next morning. Going to 9 million sounded... unpleasant.
3) After that game I never really played Stargate in a serious way again. I'd still play, but it would just be a (relatively) quick, less-than-an-hour game. It wasn't like I felt that I'd "beaten" it, because I could've felt that way the first time I rolled it over to wave 1. But I realized that the only thing I could do was just play longer and longer games just to prove I could, and that suddenly didn't seem interesting. Remember that other guy on campus that I said was awesome too? If he had continued to leap-frog me I probably would've kept going just to stay on top. But since he stopped I kinda lost the fire inside of me as well, and I could never get up the enthusiasm to play a several-hour game. I never saw that other guy play, so I never met him. As far as I know he may have seen me play, but if he did he never introduced himself to me. I kinda wish he had.
Stargate is funny to me. I think the initial levels are a bit easier than Defender, but then it ramps up the difficulty really fast. I guess since they wanted you to exploit the Stargate play mechanic to be successful, the landers start moving the humanoids to the top of the screen really fast.
Back in the day I read somewhere that the Williams folks thought that the maximum difficulty in Defender (at standard settings) was too low and that they wanted to correct that in Stargate by not having a true maximum difficulty. I don't know if that really is true, but I never really noticed a plateau of difficulty. What I mean is that getting to 1 million didn't mean that you were automatically good enough to play to 2 million (so long as you didn't break concentration). But then again, it didn't ramp up in difficulty by a HUGE amount. 3 million wasn't twice as fast as 1 million, but I think it was indeed harder. Then again, that could've been psychology at work - someone who knows the code would have to say for sure. (I'll give more on that subject when I post my hints on Defender/Stargate.)
The warp was also a weakness for me. I always do it because it's easy points and couple of free guys, but it actually shortens my game. I also think Stargate contains my most hated video game enemy, those frigging spinning things that go up and down to avoid you. They shoot super fast projectiles after a couple of levels. Killing those is where I usually burn up the Inviso, just hitting it and ramming into them.
I hear you about those Firebombers. I think that, like most people, I initially used to warp in order to pile up ships/smartbombs/inviso, but then later I'd do it in order to get to that first Firebomber level quicker. Once you get good you should be able to almost never die in that level, which means that it's a bunch of cheap points. To get to a million you're going to have to kill a lot of those Firebombers, so you'd better be proficient at it. On a Firebomber level I'd usually use one Smartbomb for the pods and then use two Smartbombs to get as many Firebombers as I could fit onto a screen (and I could save one of those Smartbombs if the pods converged inside a mess of Firebombers). Then I'd clean up the rest by shooting at teams of 2 to 4 Firebombers by shooting at the extra Firebombers (more on that later as well), and kill off the single Firebombers by getting underneath them and hitting Inviso just before slamming into them from below.
Eh... I know that that tip won't translate into helping you in Defender, but hopefully I'll be able to pass along some other tips that will help.
Wanna know something? After writing about this, I kinda want to play. Badly. Gotta rebuild that sucker...