I was a bit remiss earlier when I was trying to help a reader get the “True Ending” in Triggerheart Exelica.

See, I was under the impression that all it took was to finish the game on one credit, without using a continue, and this was wrong.  I found out for myself that this was wrong when, for the first time EVER, I managed to one-credit the game on the Xbox 360 version.

And I got the bad ending.

And I was mightily vexed.

So, I went searching and found out that, if you want to get the True Ending on the 360, you not only have to finish the game on one credit, you also need to fight Faintear at the end of levels 1 and 3.  Which means that you need to play really well on those levels, and since my winning strategy for completing the game on one credit was to pick up as few of the extra score chits as possible, I didn’t see Faintear until the end of the game.

So getting the True Ending on the Xbox 360 version is a bit beyond me, for now anyway.

On the other hand.. I have the Dreamcast version, and it has “Story Mode” as an option, which the 360 lacks.  In “Story Mode”, you fight Faintear regardless of how you play in each level.

You also get, well, more “Story”.  There’s much more conversation between Exelica and Crueltear, and it’s a lot more involving when you have more of a connection to the characters.  I know that’s a silly thing to say about a bullet hell style shooter, but I’m allowed to say silly things here.

But, even though I played the Dreamcast version quite a bit back when I got it,  I’ve never even come close to one-crediting the Dreamcast version, and it’s a bit harder to do than the 360 version because you can’t pump yourself up to 5 lives and 5 bombs per life through the option menu.  (You can do 5 lives / 3 bombs)

Still, I’d been playing an awful lot on the 360.  It was conceivable that I might have gotten a little better.

So, I hauled a 15″ VGA monitor out of storage, hooked it up to the Dreamcast, turned it firmly onto its left side so I could take advantage of the Vertical (“tate”) mode, and sat down to Do Or Die.

First try.

First bloody try.

I even had one life left over.

Sure, it doesn’t pump up my Gamerscore to beat it on the Dreamcast, but I feel mighty good about it all the same.