Cuphead is famously pretty tough, but what if the team had made its achievement list even harder? In the first of a new series for TA, we think about what could have been if the devs had been even more cruel with the game’s list.
Considering how challenging Cuphead is as a game, it’s remarkable that Studio MDHR was as relatively reserved as it was with the Cuphead achievements. Sure, there are some that are a bit of a pain, but trust us when we say that it could have been way, way worse. How, you ask? Well, you’ve come to the right place to find out… welcome to BS GS.
BS GS is an original editorial series from TA where we ruminate on how rough things might have been if developers had taken their achievement lists to the next level. We’ll try to focus on specific details and possibilities rather than simple grinds — one billion kills, play every day for a year, etc. — to keep things interesting, where possible using other instances of ridiculous achievements as a precedent for what we dream up.
Cuphead: Earn an S rank on every boss
One fairly obvious way to make Cuphead’s achievement list that much scarier would be to require getting a perfect grade on all bosses. For the uninitiated, this involves completing a boss fight on Expert difficulty (A+ is the maximum grade on Normal) within a time limit (typically two minutes, and often quite tight) while landing enough parries and super attacks to meet your quota, and all without taking a hit. Well, in theory, at least — this particular grading system doesn’t look at damage taken, rather what health value you end on, meaning that as long as you have some way to add bonus HP to your total, you can actually afford to take hits and still get the S rank so long as you end on 3HP or more. This actually isn’t overly relevant in the base game, mind, with the two Charms that give you extra health also reducing weapon damage, so that safety net comes at the cost of stricter time limits — since the weapon swap glitch was patched out, this makes for some pretty unreasonable deadlines, even when you can afford to play a little more aggressively.
When you consider that the achievement for getting a single S rank only has a global unlock rate of 3.6%, and the one for completing the game on Expert is the rarest in the base list at just 0.9%, you should start to see why this hypothetical achievement would be such a nightmare. While a few bosses can be S-ranked with relative ease with enough skill and patience, some of those Expert fights are hard enough just to scrape through at all, let alone damageless and against the clock — demanding perfection at every step would catapult this list’s skill floor into the stratosphere and beyond the realms of possibility for most players, so we’re glad the team decided against it. Hell, only 9% of players have the achievement for beating Normal mode so something as extreme as this would feel a bit out of place on Cuphead’s list, especially considering Microsoft’s ongoing push for greater accessibility. Things like this work better as personal goals than system-level achievements. Everyone plays differently so some will struggle with fights others breeze through and vice versa, hence why so many music game lists ask for one perfect play rather than a bunch or (heaven forbid) all — make players demonstrate that level of skill, but allow them to select their battlefield.
It’s worth adding that most of the above only really concerns the base game. With the arrival of the DLC, we got a lot more tools to work with, to the point that I think an achievement like this wouldn’t have been quite as crazy to see pop up on The Delicious Last Course’s achievement list. Instead, though, the DLC list is actually a fair bit easier than the base list as it doesn’t even demand a full Expert completion, even if a couple of the specific ones are a little tricky. Going back to chasing base game S ranks feels much more manageable with the powerful new weapons and a selection of better Charms, not to mention Ms. Chalice herself, who comes with a shopping list of benefits over the boys. An invincible dodge roll, a parry baked into her dash, a double-jump, some straight-up busted Supers, and an extra hit point… she’s the real deal, folks. Only missing out on S grades from taking hits? Slap on Super 2 (a single-hit shield that negates one attack and lasts until used) and you shouldn’t have to worry about ending on 3HP or more. Falling foul of the clock? Her other two Supers put out a lot of damage (1 is vertical so quite situational, while 3 fills most of the screen and even drops an object you can parry to get one stock back) and you’ve still got her natural extra hit point to give you a buffer there.
We’re still glad Chalice didn’t bring an achievement like this with her, though — many of the benefits the DLC brings are lost in the flying stages, and some of those are among the hardest to S-rank (looking at you, robot). Still, depending on the types of achievements that tend to trip you up, one like this might not even be the worst of what would have been possible if Studio MDHR wanted to get proper nasty… let’s have a look at a few other options that would have turned Cuphead from a challenging but rewarding completion into an absolute nightmare.
Complete Expert mode in co-op
Getting just one person who is really good at Cuphead in a room is hard enough, let alone finding a second pro to join them on the couch. Achievements like this always suck, since you’re effectively tying points in a personal progression system to the performance of a third party, and in this case without online multiplayer so you’ve got to find someone local who is up to the task. Unlike a lot of similar classic games, Cuphead actually gets quite a lot harder in two-player. Bosses have stacks more health, attacks can be unpredictable as enemies have two different potential targets, and a second porcelain person running around can be just another distraction in a game already loaded with them… plus if your buddy doesn’t pull their weight, you’re in for a terrible time. Even without the added cruelty of stipulating Expert mode, this would still be a daunting thing to see on the list for a local-only game known for its difficulty. A couple of levels? Sure — that should be doable enough on some of the early fights. Asking for all levels would just be plain vicious, though…
Beat all bosses using only the Peashooter
Speaking of vicious, how about we get rid of the main way to get through boss battles more efficiently? The Peashooter is the default weapon in Cuphead and while it’s not terrible, most of the unlockable levels will let you deal with foes with either more firepower or greater survivability (like using the weaker homing shot to worry entirely about dodging attacks). The problem lies in the fact that the longer a fight takes, the more opportunities there are to mess up, and there are a fair few attack patterns in Cuphead that can get pretty gnarly if you’re not able to burst through them fast enough. Combine that with the fact that you’re limited to basic eight-way fire (which will make it very hard to land safe hits on some boss phases) and this is going to get rough, especially later in the game — early fights are designed around the fact that you likely won’t have visited Porkrind for any upgrades yet, to a degree, but later islands will be a bit nasty in places. If you want to make this even ruder, how about we slap an extra condition in there… no Charms? Sure, that sounds like fun. Enjoy your basic cup life, basic cup.
Complete the game using Vintage mode
Where to even begin with this hypothetical hellscape? I suppose the logical place would be how you actually unlock the ultra-retro filter set in the first place — you need to beat all six run-and-gun stages without killing a single enemy to earn the 0G Pacifist achievement, something less than 2% of players have managed according to achievement data. So that’s the first piece of the puzzle locked behind a pretty steep skill wall, then we come to the filters themselves. Vintage mode consists of two parts: a black-and-white visual filter that makes Cuphead look even more old-timey, and an authentically ear-offending audio mode with tinny music and awkward warping effects. While these are cool to have as bonuses to mess around with a bit, forcing players to use them would be a horrible choice. Cuphead’s levels are so detailed that they can sometimes be hard to read even with the benefit of glorious Technicolor, but drop that for shades of grey and the action can be particularly difficult to follow, especially with the added distraction of intentionally poor quality audio. Worse, you better have memorised every single thing that can be parried, because there’s no visual cue like the pink colouration to guide you here. As a novelty feature? Vintage mode is awesome. As a way to actually play the game, though. Downright horrendous.
How about you? Any specific kinds of achievements you were glad not to see make it onto the Cuphead list? Also, we’d love to hear your thoughts on this article concept and structure as well, since it’s something new — we’d also love to get you lot involved if it’s something we continue with, so feel free to drop suggestions for future games and achievements down in the comments and we can look into featuring them in the future…
