IKARUGA FAQ version 2.1: 9/19/2002 By Chris Murdock IKARUGA is copyright Treasure/ESP 2001, 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS: 1. VERSION HISTORY 2. INTRODUCTION 3. GAME INFORMATION 4. MENU SCREEN 5. BASIC GAMEPLAY 6. ADVANCED GAMEPLAY 7. IKARUGA WALKTHROUGH ("SHOOT-THROUGH") 8. CODES AND SECRETS 9. IKARUGA MISCELLANEOUS 10. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 11. SPECIAL THANKS ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [1. VERSION HISTORY] 1.0: Started this whole mess. 1.1: Added points for chain combos, and finished codes and secrets section. 1.2: Added clarification on a lot of things and also added the story to the game (under the "Ikaruga Miscellaneous" section). 1.3: Added two player mode strategy and cleared up some embarrassing grammatical errors. Added some extra translation notes as well. 2.0: Added more advanced strategy, a basic walkthrough (or in the case of a shooter, a "shoot-through"), and a frequently asked questions section. 2.1: Fixed a buttload of errors and added stage four and five in the walkthrough. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [2. INTRODUCTION] Ikaruga is another in a long line of fantastic games from our good friends over at Treasure. This FAQ will go over the strategy of the game as well as other aspects of the game. Please note that this FAQ is ONLY for GAMEFAQS.COM. Do NOT ask me if you can post this FAQ anywhere else. The answer will be NO. If you have any questions or would like to submit something for the FAQ, please e-mail me at murdockl@hotmail.com Please put "IKARUGA" in the subject line, as I get a lot of SPAM at that address. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [3. GAME INFORMATION] IKARUGA is a 1 or 2 player game. It uses 34 blocks on a Dreamcast memory card. It is compatible with the following: Standard Dreamcast memory card Memory Card 4X Purupuru Pack/Vibration pack Arcade Stick VGA Box ASCII Pad FT ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [4. MENU SCREEN] The menu screen is accessed when you press the "START" button on the title screen. Here are the menu screen options from top to bottom: GAME START: Start a game. PRACTICE: Hone your skills. NOTE: The way this works is that you can practice stages as long as you made it to the stage in question before having to continue. For example, if you play the game and you get to stage four and your game ends on stage four (without continuing), you will be able to practice stages one through four. RANKING: Check out the high scores. There are three options here: You can VIEW RANKING, CLEAR RANKING (delete the rankings from the memory card), or EXIT. CONFIG: Configuration There are eight options here. MONITOR TYPE: You can change from HORIZONTAL 1 (screen is 75% of normal size), HORIZONTAL 2 (screen is 80% of normal size), VERTICAL 1 (screen is vertical, and controller is set up normally), and VERTICAL 2 (screen is vertical and controller is set up so the game can be played like a side scrolling shooter). HORIZONAL mode will have black borders on both sides. Ikaruga in the arcades was a vertical shooter, so the original arcade cabinet had a screen that was taller than it was wide. VERTICAL mode is also referred to as "TATE" (pronounced "tah-teh") mode. ***WARNING!*** DO NOT turn your television vertically to play this game as you may cause serious or permanent damage to your television. There are specialized monitors you can get that have special rotating screens that you can adjust, but do NOT rotate your television! SOUND: Choose between STEREO or MONO. There is (unfortunately) no option for surround sound. DIFFICULTY: There are four settings. EASY, NORMAL, HARD and USER SELECT. If you have the game set at USER SELECT, when you start the game, you choose what level you want to play. TRIAL GAME: If this is on, the option to play a TRIAL GAME is available after you have selected a difficulty (if you have the difficulty set at USER SELECT), or when you start a game. A trial game consists of the first TWO game levels ONLY. You also have UNLIMITED LIVES in TRIAL MODE until the second stage. EXTEND: This sets the frequency of when the game awards extra lives. The settings are: TYPE 1: Extra ship every 2,000,000 points. TYPE 2: First extra at 3,000,000 points, and then every 5,000,000 points thereafter. TYPE 3: First extra at 6,000,000 points, and then the second extra at 15,000,000 points. NONE: No extend. PLAYER STOCK: This sets the amount of ships you start with. You can choose between one to five ships. CONTROLLER SETTING: By default the settings are: A BUTTON = SHOT B BUTTON = CHANGE R TRIGGER or C BUTTON (arcade stick/ASCII PAD FT) = RELEASE POWER (HOMING LASER) SHOT AND CHANGE = ON VIBRATION = ON DEFAULT: By pressing this, you will reset everything to the default settings. TUTORIAL: This opens up the very useful tutorial. Highly recommended if you're just starting the game for the first time. APPENDIX: This has all the hidden goodies of the game. Check out the CODES and SECRETS section to see how to open them. BACKUP: This screen has four options: AUTO SAVE: By default this is OFF. Turn it ON to automatically save any game settings, and to record the PLAY TIME clock. LOAD will load data, and SAVE will save current data. Also on the BACKUP screen is the PLAY TIME clock. When this reaches certain times, new options will open up. NOTE: This will not go up if you are in the OPTIONS screen, or the game is in DEMO MODE, this is allotted GAME TIME! PAUSE SCREEN: When the game is paused, you can continue the game, or ADJUST CONSOLE. ADJUST CONSOLE will adjust where the score meter, energy bars and remaining lives indicators are on the screen. NOTE: The play time will NOT go up if the game is on pause. There is also a built in "screen saver" for Ikaruga. The screen will go dim after several minutes. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [5. BASIC GAMEPLAY] The premise of Ikaruga is that your ship has two sides that can be changed at any time. This is key to survival in the game. Let's go over the basics: There are two sides of your ship. A WHITE SIDE and a BLACK SIDE. By default, you can switch sides with the "B" button on your controller. Your WHITE side will fire a WHITE shot, and your BLACK side will fire a BLACK shot. The default shot button is the "A" button on your controller. If you tap the "A" button you will fire a single shot, if you hold down the "A" button, you will get an automatic double shot. There are two different colored enemies in the game as well, WHITE enemies and BLACK enemies. White enemies shoot WHITE projectiles and BLACK enemies shoot BLACK projectiles. Now that we have the basics under control, let's go over the way the sides of your ship work: In the game, if your ship is on the WHITE side, and a WHITE enemy shoots WHITE bullets or fires a WHITE laser at you, your ship's WHITE shield will absorb the shots and put it in your POWER GAUGE (the meter on the lower left-hand side of the screen). Conversely, if your ship is on the BLACK side, and a BLACK enemy shoots BLACK bullets or fires a BLACK laser at you, your ship's BLACK shield will absorb the shots and put it in your POWER GAUGE. As long as there is at least one box filled in the POWER GAUGE, you can fire a powerful HOMING LASER. The homing laser can be anywhere from one to twelve lasers that will lock on to enemies. For every box on the POWER GAUGE that is filled with absorbed energy, you can fire one homing laser. Note that the gauge is universal, there is no WHITE gauge or BLACK gauge, it's all the same gauge. However, when you fire the homing laser (set up as either A+B buttons together, the "R" trigger, or the "C" button on some controllers), the side of your ship will determine the color of your homing laser. The bar below your score (usually has a small orange/red bar on it) is the enemy strength gauge. This shows how much damage the enemy will take. The bar starts out at a specific color (with bosses having multiple colored gauges). When the bar is all RED, the enemy or boss is defeated. YOU WILL LOSE A LIFE WHEN: A BLACK projectile hits your WHITE ship. A WHITE projectile hits your BLACK ship. You run into any object, including enemies. A WORD ABOUT TWO-PLAYER MODE: There are a couple of things to know about two-player mode. First, bosses (end of level enemies) take more hits to kill than in one-player mode. Second, your ships can "bump" into each other. In two-player mode you can actually move the other person's ship by merely bumping into it. Since your ships cannot occupy the same space, you can accidentally bump the other player's ship into a wall or enemy fire. A useful strategy for two-player mode is to have one ship block shots of a specific color while the other ship shoots in the opposite color of the enemy. This is very useful when fighting bosses. For example, on the stage one boss, one player can block the white shots from the boss, and cover the other player that can fire its black shots at the boss. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [6. ADVANCED GAMEPLAY] The color of your shot is incredibly important. BLACK SHOT + BLACK ENEMY = NORMAL DAMAGE WHITE SHOT + WHITE ENEMY = NORMAL DAMAGE If you fire a BLACK shot at a BLACK enemy the strength of the shot is normal. Same with if you hit a WHITE enemy with a WHITE shot. BLACK SHOT + WHITE ENEMY = x2 DAMAGE WHITE SHOT + BLACK ENEMY = x2 DAMAGE In Ikaruga, enemies are weak against their opposite colors. So, if you fire a WHITE shot at a BLACK enemy, you will do twice the amount of damage you would normally do. So if an enemy is WHITE, you can fire a BLACK shot at them to do double damage. CHAIN COMBOS: This point award is given based on chains of enemies hit. The chain will start when you hit three enemies in a row of the same color. In the upper left hand corner, there is a chain display. The chain will continue ONLY if all three colors are the same. For example, you can hit three white enemies to start the chain, and then three black enemies to continue the chain. You could chain three white enemies, then another three white enemies, then three black ones to continue the chain. A successful chain is like this: (B = BLACK, W=WHITE) B, B, B, W, W, W, B, B, B, B, B, B, W, W, W; W, W, W, B, B, B, B, B, B, W, W, W. In the example there is always a chain of three, three black, three white. As long at the chain display has three of the same color, you will get credit for the chain. The chain is broken once the string of three is broken: B, B, B, W, W, W, B, B, W (chain broken) CHAIN POINTS: For every chain, you will rack up extra points for the chain. Here is the point value: 1 CHAIN: 100 points 2 CHAIN: 200 points 3 CHAIN: 400 points 4 CHAIN: 800 points 5 CHAIN: 1600 points 6 CHAIN: 3200 points 7 CHAIN: 6400 points 8 CHAIN: 12800 points MAX CHAIN: 25600 points Every chain after MAX CHAIN will be 25,600 points each. BOSS POINTS: When you reach a boss (a large, end-of-stage enemy), there is a timer on the upper-right part of the screen. When the timer reaches zero, the boss will leave, and you get no bonus. The point value for the boss is determined by the amount of time left on the timer multiplied by 10,000. The faster you destroy the boss, the more points you get. STAGE RANKING: At the end of every stage, you are awarded a "grade" on your performance. There are many factors determining your grade. The most important factors however are: Your maximum chain for the stage. Your boss repulse time (how quickly you defeated the boss). How many bullets you absorbed. If you got through the stage without dying. Whether or not you used your homing laser. The rankings range from "C" to "A++". I have not seen a rank below "C" yet. If you go through a stage without firing a single shot and only absorbing enemy shots, you will be awarded the rank of "DOT EATER!" HIT AREA: Your ship is actually a lot smaller than it appears to be. This section will go over "hit area", a big factor in this, and many other shooters. What is hit area? "Hit area" in a nutshell is the area of your ship that a bullet or any other projectile must penetrate for your ship to be destroyed. Here's how it works (and please excuse my poor excuse for ASCII diagrams): Let's say for simplicity's sake that this box is your ship: +----------+ | | | | | | | | | | +----------+ Now, let's say that the smaller box in the center is your "hit area". +----------+ | | | +--+ | | | | | | +--+ | | | +----------+ Bullets and other enemies can graze the outside of the hit area. It is when a bullet, enemy, or object penetrates the "hit area" that the game registers the "hit", and your ship is destroyed. For example, let's use the "O" to represent a bullet: In the below example, a bullet looks like it hit your ship, but in reality, you will not lose a life as long as the bullet does not penetrate the "hit area": +----------+ | O | | +--+ | | | | | | +--+ | | | +----------+ (NO HIT REGISTERED) +----------+ | | | +--+ | | | O| | | +--+ | | | +----------+ (HIT REGISTERED) In Ikaruga, the hit area is the small area in the exact center of your ship. SHIELD TIMING: The amount of time it takes to change sides (say from the white to black side of your ship) is approximately 1/8th of 1 second OR about 7.5 frames. ("FRAMES" is referring to the number of frames the game runs in one second. In Ikaruga, the game runs 60 frames per second, so the time it takes you to switch sides is approximately 7.5 frames.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [7. IKARUGA WALKTHROUGH ("SHOOT-THROUGH")] *****POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD!!!***** This will go over basic strategy and boss strategy of each stage. If you are the type of person who would rather go through the game and figure things out on your own, please skip down to the next section. Remember that you will need to alter your strategy accordingly based on the level of difficulty you are playing the game on. In NORMAL mode, bullets come out of destroyed enemies, as opposed to EASY mode where that does not happen. The big difference between the difficulty levels is how fast the ships move and the amount of bullets they fire at you. The higher the difficulty level, the faster the enemy ships move and the firepower they throw at you increases dramatically. STAGE 1: "Ideal" This stage starts you off from your "mothership" and will take you to the first enemy base. As you fire through the first wave of enemies, you will see the stage name and description (in Japanese). You will quickly notice that the enemies are organized in patterns. For example six white enemies from the right, then six on the left. Only by memorizing the colors and locations of the enemies will you be able to create successful chains. Charge your Power Gauge when you can. It's good to keep it max whenever possible, as it is handy for getting out of tight situations, or dealing out a powerful attack at a large enemy (like a boss). (strategy point: "X" pattern) You'll notice that a white enemy will be on the right and a black enemy will be on the left (or visa-versa), and they will both be firing at you. Remember that the enemy will be dealt double damage if you hit them with their opposite color. Use this to your advantage by using the opposite color against them while the other ship in the other corner charges your power gauge. You'll see this pattern in STAGE 2 as well. DIAGRAM OF "X" PATTERN: (B=BLACK W=WHITE) +--+ +--+ | B| |W | <-enemies +--+ +--+ || / / || / / <-white enemy fires laser/bullets || / / black enemy will fire at angle bypassing your ship || / / while you deal out double damage +-+ |W| <- your ship fires white +-+ STAGE 1 BOSS: This boss looks like a swordman. It has a white sword and a black shield. Boss Phase 1 - Sword Dodge the white shots while shooting with black. If you have a max gauge you can shoot your black homing laser now, and take it out with one shot if you desire. Boss Phase 2 - Shield Dodge the black shots and fire with white. There is a larger break (like a path) between the thin lines of the bullets, so you'll want to stay in that area. Boss Phase 3 - Bits The boss has small satellites (which I call "bits" because they remind me of the "bits" from Mobile Suit Gundam, but I'm rambling now) that will explode in a circle of bullets. After the second explosion of black bits, the swordman mech will fire circular seeking lasers. Keep in mind it may fire from three seeking lasers to five depending on the difficulty level you play. You can switch with the bits (be on white for the white bits, and then switch) as well. STAGE 2: "Trial" Stage two starts off over a city. As you progress over the city you will reach an underground base. (strategy point: pinpoint accuracy) Remember that you can tap the fire button (as opposed to holding it down) to fire a lone single shot. Use this to accurately pinpoint specific colored enemies to rack up the chain bonuses. When you get through the first section of the base, you will need to fire through black and white "blocks" (they appear to have grating on the top) to make your way through. Remember to switch your ships color whenever necessary. You will need to switch colors a lot to get to the boss of the stage. STAGE 2 BOSS: This boss has two cores. A black core and a white core. Both cores are covered by a shield. The cores are the weak points of the boss. The shield will move when the same color is fired on it. So for the shield with white markings on it, the white shot will move the shield down exposing the weak point. Once you have moved the shield exposing the weak point(s), you must maneuver between the shield covering and the core and shoot at the core. Be warned that the shield will slowly creep up behind you to cover back up the core. Use homing lasers on the cores to quickly defeat the boss. As usual the white core side will fire white bullets, and the black core side will fire black bullets. You can play it safe and use black bullets on the black core (and conversely, white bullets on the white core), but the boss will take twice as long to defeat. A good strategy is to absorb bullets of one color, open up the core of the opposite color, and launch your homing lasers at the core. STAGE 3: "Faith" Oy, this level is tough. The biggest challenge in this stage is learning the timing of the enemies and the patterns of the enemies. One thing that I will warn you about the stage is that lasers can push your ship. Say you are on your white side, and a thick white laser shoots at you. The white laser's energy will push your ship in that direction. If you're not careful, your ship will collide with a wall. STAGE 3 BOSS: A ring made up of gun turrets circle your ship. You must destroy all the turrets to defeat the boss. Use the circling platforms that are circling around the middle of the boss to block the incoming bullets. Your homing laser is invaluable here, as it will allow you to hit turrets behind your ship. When about 75% of the turrets are destroyed, the center circle will shoot out lasers. The easiest way to do this is switch with the laser color and fire your homing shots when full. STAGE 4: "Reality" This is arguably the hardest stage in the game. You will come across a large base (it looks like a satellite of some kind), and you must fight your way to the core of this large satellite. I will break down this stage into sections: SECTION 1 - Getting to the satellite You must survive getting to the actual satellite first. The only real strategy is to quickly learn the patterns of the enemies and attack accordingly. Unfortunately, you only get better on this stage by replaying it lots of times. SECTION 2 - Satellite The white satellite core will shoot out two lines of bullets while protective walls and enemies circle it. To dodge the lines of bullets, stay as one color (black or white) and maneuver in between the opposite shot color. Like I've said about this stage, you will only get better by practicing this stage (or playing this stage lots of times). Eventually the white core will open up. It will shoot lasers out of it, and you can absorb the laser shot and fire your homing laser at it to kill it quickly. SECTION 3 - Gun Turrets You will fight your way through waves of enemies until you get to the gun turrets. After you defeat a line of small turrets coming out of "turret generators" off the left and the right side, you will see the main turrets. You can go to the bottom of the screen and shoot the guns that are behind you. Once done with this section you will go through yet another wave of enemies, on the way to the boss. STAGE 4 BOSS: Before you can hit the boss, you must open up at least one of the passages to the core (the large white circle in the middle of the boss). The passages are covered with white gates. There are four gates in the order of white, black, white, black, and they must be opened before you can even hit the core. Note that only ONE of the gates needs to be fully opened before you can shoot the core. There is no easy workaround for this boss. You must remember to shoot your homing laser when you can, as you will not get too many chances to hit the center core before the boss rotates again and the core is unreachable. STAGE 5: BOSS STAGE! The final stage has several waves of enemies before you have to fight three bosses in a row. This is where you want to be the same color as the enemies as the amount of bullets they spray out are almost impossible to dodge. STAGE 5 - BOSS 1: This red monstrosity has four alien heads, two white, two black. The first boss pattern will fire a criss-cross pattern of lasers. Stay in the black or white part and absorb the shots. Once full, fire your homing laser. You must defeat two of the heads to go to the next boss phase. The next boss phase will be to defeat the remaining heads. The boss will fire guided lasers that follow your ship. You can absorb the trails behind these lasers, but unfortunately, this battle will take lots of patience. STAGE 5 - BOSS 2: HARD BOSS AHEAD! Okay, here is the pattern. The boss sphere in the center will fire black seeking lasers on the black side, and white seeking lasers on the white side. Pattern: White side shoots, your ship on white side, absorb white shots, which puts you at energy max for your homing laser, fire homing laser, switch to black side, repeat pattern. You must match the boss shot for shot, and if your timing is off, you will die. This boss takes lots of concentration and patience! STAGE 5 - FINAL BOSS: You cannot fire. You must dodge the bullets from the final boss for 60 seconds. You can also use your shield to avoid any fire, but the bullets will come faster than you can change sides on your shield. If you don't know how to dodge bullets, you'll be in a lot of trouble on this stage. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [8. CODES AND SECRETS] EXTRA CREDITS: When you play Ikaruga for the first time, you will only have 3 credits to start. For every HOUR of play time you put in, you will get another credit. Once you reach 9 credits (6 hours of play time), the next hour you play, the game will be on free play. APPENDIX: Special options will open once certain requirements are met. Here are the requirements for the four hidden options (from top to bottom): HIDDEN OPTION 1: Beat trial mode without continuing OR play time is over 5 hours. This will open up Gallery 1. There are 17 pictures in this gallery. HIDDEN OPTION 2: Clear the game on any level (you can use continues) OR play time is over 10 hours. This will open up Gallery 2. There are 6 character profiles in this gallery. HIDDEN OPTION 3: Beat EASY MODE without continuing OR play time is over 15 hours. This will open up the Sound Test. HIDDEN OPTION 4: Beat NORMAL MODE without continuing OR play time is over 20 hours. This will open up GAME MODE where you can choose between NAOMI or PROTOTYPE. NAOMI (the Dreamcast arcade board) will be the Arcade version of Ikaruga. PROTOTYPE is nearly the same game, but you don't have as much firepower, and you can not store up bullets to release a homing laser. IKARUGA WALLPAPER: Pop in your Ikaruga disk into the CD-ROM drive on your PC. There are five wallpapers for you. All in BMP format, at a resolution of 1024x768. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [9. IKARUGA MISCELLANEOUS] There is a town in Japan named "Ikaruga" in Nara. Nara is east of Heian and south of Mt. Hiei near the Yamato Plain. The kanji for Ikaruga means "mottled dove". Mottled as in shades of black and white. Sounds like a direct reference to the ship in the game. Thanks to Jason Newton for clearing that up for me! IKARUGA STORY: Numbers in parenthesis are footnotes. The footnotes are near the bottom of the page. This is as close to English I can get with the translation. If you have any issues with the translation, please let me know: "HOURAI"(1) was once small nation at the end of the mainland. But now, this nation calls itself "Shintsusha"(2). They have gotten "the power of God" and begin to conquer other nations by military power. This incident was caused by the "Ubusubagami Oukinokai" which Hourai Tenrou(3) dug from the ground several years ago. Hourai was able to perform miracles after he discovered the "Ubusubagami Oukinokai". An organization(4) called "Tenkaku", which is a force of freedom(5), went to battle with Hourai. The Tenkaku used a fighter called the "Hitekkai". The "Tenkaku" where quickly annihilated. However, a young man named Shinra survived. He went to fight against Hourai again, and was shot down. He landed in the village of Ikaruga, where an elderly man named "Kazemori" helped him. Shinra recovered from his injuries and vowed to fight against Hourai again. Kazemori entrusted the fighter "Ikaruga" to Shinra to fight against Hourai. FOOTNOTES: (1) Hourai is in Honshu, the main island of Japan. There are four islands of Japan, Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku. Honshu also has Tokyo and Kyoto on it. (2) Shintsusha is a person can talk to God. (3) Hourai Tenrou is obviously named after the area the Ubusubagami Oukinokai was found. "Hourai" is the family name. (4) "Organization" in the military sense. (5) "Force of freedom" is basically the Tenkaku fighting against their oppressor, Hourai. The feeling is that no man should have the power of God. Of course, with the power of God, you become very difficult to defeat. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [10. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS] Q: Is Ikaruga the sequel to Radiant Silvergun? A: Maybe. There are a couple of things in Ikaruga to suggest it might be. One clue is when you start up the game. On the screen it reads: TREASURE -------- project RS2 RS2 cold be "Radiant Silvergun 2". **SPOILER WARNING!** . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The other clue is that the final boss of Ikaruga is a yellow diamond. It looks exactly like the diamond from the end of Radiant Silvergun. In fact, when you reach the diamond, the battle against the diamond is exactly the same as the battle against the diamond in Radiant Silvergun. Basically dodge bullets for 60 seconds (you cannot fire). Also, in the ending of Radiant Sivergun, the diamond crash-lands on Earth, and it appears to be inactive. Based on the story of Ikaruga, could that diamond be the "Ubusubagami Oukinokai" that Hourai Tenrou dug from the ground? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [11. SPECIAL THANKS] To CJayC for hosting my FAQs over on GameFAQs. To Jason Newton for the translation of "Ikaruga". To Treasure for making such a great game. You guys rock. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Warning! The big enemy is approaching at full throttle. According to the data, it is identified as "Butsutekkai" There is no refuge. Unable to avoid firing.