[SS] Cho Aniki: Kyuukyoku Muteki Ginga Saikyou Otoko - Hard Mode Perfect ALL Clear (No-Miss No-Bomb)

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Clear of the game without dying or using any of the special abilities.

One of the best and hardest shmups ever made.
The Sega Saturn version on Hard is also the hardest version and mode of the game ever made.

Loosely translated as "Super Big Brother - The Ultimate, Most Powerful Man in the Milky Way", it first came out on PlayStation in 1995 and was later released for Sega Saturn in 1996.
It's actually the fourth game in the Cho Aniki series, it stood out from the rest because it used digitized sprites instead of traditional pixel art.

The PlayStation and Saturn versions of this game are crazy different from each other.
The PlayStation version kinda feels like an unfinished version of the Saturn game. The Saturn version has longer stages and more enemy patterns, which are all missing in the PlayStation version. The Saturn version also has improved option control and they fixed a bunch of boss safespots that the PlayStation version had.
I like the Saturn version a lot more, the stages are more involved and the options are more fun to use.
Graphically the PlayStation version is undeniably superior though, and I also really don't approve of the added boss rush in the Saturn version that takes over 10 minutes to beat.

Hard mode changes I've noticed:
- Enemies fire more bullets.
- Bosses have more advanced attacks.
- More enemies in stages and they often come from behind.

Main Mechanics:
- You have a main shot and two options. The options will follow you and always stick to your top and bottom, but you can freeze them to make different formations kinda like Gradius V freeze options.
- Hitboxes are shithuge. Your hitbox is basically the entire sprite.
- You power up by collecting protein. The weird part here is that your ship and each option powers up -separately-, so who picks up the powerup is very important.
- Besides shot power, the options also gain special attacks as indicated in the meter in the top-left. Using these special attacks drains their power by a significant amount.
- The options can block bullets, but they lose power from doing this. If they get hit too much, they stop firing entirely and will refuse to fight if you enter a boss fight in that state. Not everything can be blocked though, lasers and farts are the most deadly things in the game because they go straight through your options.
- You can freely switch between eight different movement speeds (indicated by the 足 counter). But you don't ever really need more or less than the default of 4.

With default settings you start the game with 2 lives, indicated by the 男 counter (or 女 if you're using the girl). There are no extends period.
Part of the difficulty is also endurance, the game is really long and you only get 2 lives to beat it.

It's pretty hard to tell what your current power level is because there isn't a lot of feedback for it.
An option is at full power when the special ability meter is fully filled.
Both options are at full power when the icons in that meter are all red.
Only way to tell your main shot is by looking at the pattern you're shooting. You know you're at full power when you're shooting the Darius-like wave beam that pierces.

Ideally you want to stay at max power for as long as possible. The problem is your options losing power from getting hit. Option control therefore is very important in this game.
If you hug the sides of the screen you can make your options overlap with your own ship so they don't get in the way of bullets.
The options losing power kinda discourages more fancy usage though, which is kinda a shame. Can't do any fancy Gradius tricks here.

Dying makes you lose a bunch of power.
You get continues in this game but continuing makes you start the current level with zero power. Which is kinda a cruel joke because you can't kill anything at low power.

In this run I make heavy use of an advanced technique called holding the fast-forward button.

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