Chikyuu Kaihou Gun ZAS Game Boy Developer: T&E Soft Publisher: T&E Soft By: GammaBetaAlpha ~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~- Table of Contents -~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~ How to Play [HELP] Walkthrough [WALK] Contact Info [CONT] Credits [CRED] ~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~- How to Play -~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~ [HELP] Chikyuu Kaihou Gun ZAS is a vertically-scrolling shoot'em'up game, often referred to as a shmup. This means that your own plane can fire bullets at enemies to destroy them while avoiding enemy fire. Chikyuu Kaihou Gun ZAS may also be the greatest shmup ever released for the Game Boy, but it was never released outside of Japan. The game does not really do anything unique gameplay wise, with the only thing setting it out being the use of two support pods, somewhat like the Power Pod from the R-Type games. By pressing the A (or B button on a secondary control scheme), the support pods can be split from or combined to your main ship. Separately, they fire bullets, spreading your attack range, while combined they add to your main bullet stream, focusing an intense amount of fire on a single line of fire. Chikyuu Kaihou Gun ZAS also has a scoring system, up to 999,999 points, with 50,000 points coming per extra life you have on hand at the end of the game. -------- CONTROLS -------- These are default controls. However, you can change the control scheme in the set-up menu so A is shoot and B is combine/split up. A - Combine/Split up your Support Pods B - Shoot (Hold for auto-fire) Start - Pause Game D-Pad - Moves your ship around ---------- DIFFICULTY ---------- To the author's best knowledge, the changes in difficulty involve two things: the amount of damage an enemy ship takes before it is destroyed, and certain enemy behaviours. For example, in the first stage the odd mine-and-spike type enemies that are connected by a small chain have only a single link connecting them in easy mode, but have three in hard mode. Meanwhile, the mid boss fires off laser attacks at a fairly slow pace in Easy, but the same lasers move across the screen much quicker in Hard. ~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~- Walkthrough -~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~ [WALK] --------- STAGE ONE --------- •For the first 45 seconds or so, you will face off against ships that come in from the top of the screen or side that only spit out regular bullets, one at a time. Use the time to familiarise yourself with their movement patterns, as lots of enemies in this game will swoop around. •After, you will get six ships, three on either side coming from the top left and top right that will fire lasers straight south and loop around before leaving off-screen. Following this, you get an armoured ship. Fire at it to break the shell before going up to collect its remains. •You will then come into a minefield with mines attached to spiked balls connected by links. The spiked balls will rotate around, presenting a hazard as you go through. You can, however, shoot at the spiked balls and force them to rotate in the opposite direction, though they may do so at a much quicker speed than they were originally moving at. You can mostly stick to the sides though it will not get you all the way through. •MIDBOSS: The game's first midboss only moves left and right across the top of the screen, but it absolutely adores spamming bullet fire. It has two attacks: first, it can send out mines like the ones from before, so be aware of the trick of shooting the spikes to reverse its rotation if you need to dodge around an attack. Secondly, the midboss ship can fire two lasers straight south, the speed varying with the game difficulty mode. No real trick to the boss: just be sure to make use of shooting the spikes as needed to avoid getting caught in between mines and lasers. •After defeating the midboss, you will encounter several ships that spit out missiles that will home in on your ship. However, your own bullets can destroy the missiles in midair before they reach you, so make use of that. •Once the missile-firing ships begin to head off-screen, quickly move up, as for the first time in the game you will have ships coming from below, so you obviously do not want to be destroyed by contact damage. They do not fire anything more than pea-shot bullets, however. •From there on out, it is mostly more enemies coming from the side and top firing pellet shots. At one point a couple of enemies will come out from the bottom corners, and you can expect a few more laser-firing enemies from above shortly before the appearance of the stage's boss. STAGE ONE BOSS -------------- •The only way to damage this boss is to shoot it at its center core area, so you need to be able to fire constantly and not have too many bullets soaked up by the rest of the boss ship. •The stage one boss's movement is fairly simple, going through a constant upside-down parabola, going from the left side of the screen to the top side of the screen to the right side of the screen and back again. Following this pattern makes it easy to exploit the movements of the boss to fire at it repeatedly. •The boss has only one attack: it will spit out X-shaped orbs from its claw-like arms that typically do several loops around the bottom of the screen before either going off-screen or attaching to the outside of the boss's armour. If you manage to break one either in mid-air or off the boss's armour, it will instead turn into a smaller bullet that flies towards the bottom of the screen, so if you break a ball near your ship, quickly move to avoid getting killed by a bullet. --------- STAGE TWO --------- •Unlike the first level, Stage Two is an inside level, with walls on either side of the level as well as several outstretches of the wall, and gun turrets hanging around in the centre of the screen. •At the start, as you scroll up, you will encounter multiple guns mounted to the ceiling. Split your ship pods and spam your fire to destroy the guns and prevent them from shooting at you as you continue through. •Multiple bipedal robots will be walking back and forth as you make your way through the level, and they will shoot pea-sized bullets straight at you regardless of their location. Given that several of them are protected by small sections of wall croppings, you can only outlast them as you go by them and avoid fire. •Past the bipedal robots, you will get three sections of roof that are destructable. First you must focus fire on them to get a section of roof to fall, then you need to either dodge the falling section of roof or destroy it, then make your way past the now-open section of the ceiling. •The next little bit involves the previous elements of mounted turrets and bipedal robots. Stay close to the bottom of the screen as you will see two lengths of wall temporarily extend across the screen, but they will retract back in place before the bottom of the screen scrolls up to them. •Following a little bit more action, you should be taken into a chamber where the scrolling stops as you take on the midboss. •MIDBOSS: Stage Two's midboss will rotate around the length of the room counterclockwise, then after it has finished a full rotation, zooms straight down to the bottom-centre of the screen. It will return to the top of the screen, then rotate around once more, this time clockwise, before zooming to the bottom again and back up. While this movement pattern repeats, it will be shooting out very small blocks, two at a time, at diagonals that sometimes go south and sometimes go north, and have wildly variant angles. The blocks stick to the walls, so you have a limited period of time to destroy the boss before you get overwhelmed with a shrinkage in the fighting area. •Stick to the bottom of the screen once finished fighting the midboss. Some of the laser-shooting enemies from the first screen return, and you will get a couple of horizontal wall extensions again followed by more wall-mounted turrets and bipedal robots. •After another section of destructable roofs, you have an awkward section of mines that you need to destroy to carve a path through. Split your pods apart and fire, and your right pod should be able to slightly overlap with the wall to hit some of the mines and blow them up preemptively. Following that and some more ships and turrets, you will encounter the boss of this area. STAGE TWO BOSS -------------- •The boss is only vulnerable to damage for a short period of time at the end of every round of combat, when the 'head' sticks out of the centre of the ceiling, up until it retracts back into place. •At the start of every round, small blocks will come out mostly towards the centre of the screen and some of them towards you rship, flying around for a bit before freezing in place, forming a fairly solid mass of blocks. •Once all the blocks are frozen in place, the boss will come out of its shell and swing two long whiskers or tentacles that touch nearly the entire screen, destroying all on-screen blocks. However, the whiskers do not touch the very bottom left and bottom right corner, so that is a good place to hide out - only AFTER all the blocks have been laid, howeve. If you stay there all the time some of the blocks will go towards the corner. •Once the whiskers make a once-through, quickly move to the centre of the screen and start firing at the boss. You may want to move up close to its head to reduce the flight time of your ammunition spam to damage the boss a little bit more before its head fully retracts. As soon as it has disappeared back into the ceiling, quickly back away lest you get harmed by a block coming out from the top side again. ----------- STAGE THREE ----------- •You will initially be swarmed by several waves of regular filler ships that spam small pea-sized bulletfire at you. Progress through. •After some time, you will get a new type of enemy ship which will drop straight down from the top on the left and right side of the screen and fire laser beams sideways before moving back up to the top of the screen. •Following that new type of ship, you get another new enemy type in the form of slightly larger foes that come one at a time and launch multiple homing missiles at once. As before with homing missiles, you can destroy them in mid- air with your lasers. Since these enemies will continue firing the homing missiles, make sure to pick them off as quickly as they come on-screen. •You will get another swarm of normal enemies and then some more side- laser ships before encountering the midboss. •MIDBOSS: There is no real trick or gimmick to the midboss, who moves left and right throughout the fight but never really goes down or up at all. It has a head and two hands ala Andross, with the hands sending out small pea sized bullets and the occasional vertical laser. The head does not do any attacks, but it is what needs to be attacked in order to damage and ultimately destroy. As stated before, there is no real trick in this fight: you simply must be able to endure the bullet fire and respond with your own bullet shots until the midboss is defeated. •Afterwards, you will run into several rotating mine fields with score bonuses inside. Each rotating mine field has a small opening in the circular shell for you to sneak by in and then exit back out on the other side. The first few you can fly around, but by the end you will need to be able to get through a few fields to successfully get through the level. •Following the fields, you get an assortment of regular enemies, homing missile ships and horizontal-laser ships. It should also be noted that you will get a couple of batches of enemies coming from the bottom of the screen at this point, so beware. STAGE THREE BOSS ---------------- •The boss has three separate body parts, with a small main body vulnerable to damage in the centre, and two larger bodies that are on either side of the main body. Of the three parts, only the centre body will take damage. All three bodies move slightly left and right throughout the course of the fight. •The two larger bodies on either side of the main body will shoot out lasers straight down. As the bodies move left and right a little bit throughout the area, the lasers are spread out enough to effectively cut off a good quarter of the screen on either side, leaving you movement range in only the middle 50%. •The middle body does not itself attack. Instead, it will spit out a small spaceship one at a time that will drift south, and this spaceship lets out a small amount of pea-shooter bullet fire. To win, you basically need to spam bullet fire, stay out of the way of the lasers to your right and left, and dodge both the small spaceship itself as it floats down and the bullet spray of the ship. ---------- STAGE FOUR ---------- •At the start, you will face butterfly-esque enemies that will shoot out orbs of energy that do not quite home in on you but do change directions after being fired out. These enemies will be fairly prolific in the stage. •Right after the initial two butterflies, quickly move to the left or right before a section of wall extends from the bottom of the screen to the top through the centre, reducing your area of movement to either the left or right side for a while. •Along with enemies, you will also have to shoot to destroy rock blockage to carve out a path as you make your way through for the next little bit. Gun turrets shaped like unicorn heads, horns and all, will also start to appear on the wall. These guys are nasty and can fire a couple of homing missiles at a time, so it is in your best interest to destroy them quickly. •Caterpillar enemies will also crawl along the wall once you get past the dividing wall and have more room to move around. They will only fire off a couple of small bullets, but if they are not quickly destroyed, they will soon morph into the butterfly type enemies. Shortly after encountering a few of these, you will run into the midboss of the area. •MIDBOSS: Once you come into the area with several small pellets laying around, quickly shoot at the pellets to ignite them, causing three small bullets from each of them. One of the pellets will contain the bat midboss. The bat midboss moves between left, right, and centre, going up and down between each attack. Every time it comes down, it shoots out an energy orb like what the butterflies does. When it moves back up in order to move left or right, it will leave behind a pellet as well that will explode and shoot out three bullets if you break the pellet. •Following the midboss you will have to deal with a lot more gun turrets and worms/butterflies. You should soon come into an area with lots of cocoons. Stick to the horizontal centre of the screen and the walls will close in from the sides, leaving only a narrow amount of space for you to navigate around in. Quickly move up to avoid getting contact damage from below from the next midboss, a multi-bodied worm that will wriggle around and then past you, where you will get to take it on. •MIDBOSS 2: Quickly smash the gun turret on either wall as soon as you get the chance. The midboss worm will shoot a homing missile from both the head and tail, so split apart your two support pods in order to catch the missile fire before it approaches your ship. The midboss itself moves around a lot between the top and bottom of the screen, and tends to coil and uncoil a lot, so watch out for it whenever it comes to the lower part of the screen. As always, remember both the head and tail fire homing missiles, so staying too close to either end can be fatal. •Carrying on after the midboss battle, focus your support pods to one condensed stream of fire in order to break a cocoon up the stage. A cocoon's destruction will let free an easily-destroyed scorpion, so clear out just enough room for your ship to sneak by before splitting your supports again to deal with multiple worms, butterflies and gun turrets again. •After the onslaught of worms and butterflies and gun turrets, quickly fly up to the top of the screen as the walls will close in from the left and right starting from the bottom up. Right at the top of the screen, the walls will stop just short of completely closing, giving you a narrow amount of room where you need to be basically exact on centre - your ship should be aligned with the 'buckle' where the lower walls lock in place to avoid being destroyed. The boss battle starts right afterwards. Once the screen turns white, quickly move to the left or right side of the screen to avoid being destroyed by contact damage as the boss comes from below. STAGE FOUR BOSS --------------- •The trickiest part of this boss is the fact that both of your support pods will be disabled, reducing your firing range to just your single main ship. You MUST split your support pods from your main ship - if they are all combined, you will not be able to fire from your main ship either. •The core of the boss is only vulnerable part of the time, usually prottected by claws in front of it. At regular intervals, it will clench and open its claws to send out a set of three bullets from each claw that always travel in the exact same direction (they are not aimed specifically at your ship). If you take the time to observe, you should be able to slip through and dodge them smoothly after a couple of rounds. •The boss of this stage's second attack is to send out homing missiles from its shoulders, two at a time from each shoulder. Destroying the missiles can be a little bit tricky due to lack of range with your pods sealed off, so you may need to swerve and avoid some missiles until they lose their homing capabilities and fly off-screen instead. ---------- STAGE FIVE ---------- •Much like Stage Two and Stage Four, this area takes place indoors, severely curbing your maneuveurability at times. At the start, you will run into several tiny worm-like enemies floating in the air that seem to do nothing but cause contact damage, so quickly take them out. •Stick to the lower-centre of the stage for the beginning, as wall extensions will quickly form before you might have a chance to react and get out of the way, though a couple will go down the centre as well if there is a wall on either side as well. Bipedal 'bots will float in from above before switching from hovering to walking. Many of them can be destroyed before they have a chance to land, though. •After a quick, hard wave of bipedal robots floating and landing, you will come into a room where several makeshift walls will land in place, starting the first midboss battle of the stage. •MIDBOSS: This midboss is a little bit unique compared to the others in that it is not a single unit. Instead, four separate ships will pop out from the top, each firing a single laser straight down over and over. Where the trick comes in is that they will each go separately through the maze, so in addition to avoiding fire and shooting back at them, you have to be careful not to get boxed into the maze. Generally, once you get to the top, you will always end up going down the right side. As you obliterate some of the ships, the remaining ones will also start to speed up. •As you move through and take on some more bipedal robots, you will eventually come across another environment full of destructable objects with small eyeballs buried inside the goo. There will be a dividing wall splitting the centre, so you need only destroy the eyes and goo on one side as the bullet fire from the eyes on the other side is incapable of crossing the dividing wall. After some time, you will come to the second midboss. •MIDBOSS 2: The second midboss of the stage is a small spherical head that stays put in the exact centre of the screen. It has two separate attacks. The first of these is two sets of hands that is always rotating around the head, which does not block fire but can cause contact damage. The second is to spit out five smaller bullets at a time. Fortunately, you can sit close to the lower left corner of the screen, just slightly right of it, in such a way that your ship sits snug between the trajectory of the centre and second-from-the-right bullet the midboss fires out at fixed trajectory, while the hands are just slightly out of contact range. Split your support pods apart so the one can hit the midboss. Beware, however, as once it is destroyed it lets off a full circle of bullets. •After the midboss's destruction, you will get several more wall lines coming down, so stay back towards the bottom of the screen for the most part, moving ahead only when a section of wall has been laid down. You will have to deal with an assortment of wall turrets, bipedal robots and other ships before finally coming to the last boss of the game in an open area. STAGE FIVE BOSS --------------- •The last boss of the game is a multi-form boss, as is tradition for a lot of video games. In its initial form, it only has a single attack, where it sends its triangular shield flying to the bottom of the screen, before the shield returns. This is fairly easy to dodge, as the shield does not home in on you, and you have lots of time to move once the shield is shot out towards you. •Once the boss soaks up enough damage, it transforms into two separate space aliens. This is where it gets fairly tricky, as you should split your support pods away from you. This is because you want to send as even an amount of damage to each alien as is possible: if one alien is killed but the other survives, the surviving alien will revive the dead body (you are given a few seconds of time, but you will want to use as little leeway as possible). •Each alien has two sets of attacks, both of which they constantly fire. The first is a bullet spray of five pea-sized bullets which they fire towards the centre of the screen, so there will be a lot of overlap between the two sprays. The lower on the screen you stay the further apart the bullets become, giving you some more room to slip through them. •The second attack the aliens give off is an arrow-shaped projectile. These function with a semi-homing capability. They will go straight in one direction, aimed at the general direction of your own ship. If you move your ship more than a ninety degree angle away from the arrows, however, they will turn around to face where your ship is at next. If you move again out of range, however, an individual arrow will not turn around a second time. •Once you defeat both bosses, the game will end and you get your ending. Enjoy. ~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~- Contact Info -~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~ [CONT] Although I believe I have found everything there is to find in this game, there is occasionally the possibility of some super secret level in an obscure game that was never found because it was too obscure, or the like. If you have anything that you feel needs to be includes, feel free to email me at gammabetaalphafaqs AT gmail DOT com If you have any other information to contribute or notice any errors, again, shoot me a notice at gammabetaalphafaqs AT gmail DOT com If you wish to host this guide, or use information from it, consider the FAQ semi-public domain: you can host it without asking and derive information from it word-for-word if you wish, but keep the document unchanged if hosting it and give credit where due if using information ~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~- Credits -~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~ [CRED] Thanks to Blame the Control Pad for information on this game (and other Game Boy shooters): http://www.blamethecontrolpad.com/gbshooters/gbshooters5.htm ________________________________________________________________________________ ©2014 GammaBetaAlpha FAQs