Shadow Blasters v 1.1 9-4-01 author: Dimetric Houston e-mail: dhousto6@bellsouth.net CONTENTS: Introduction Updates Story Controls Main Screen Description Sub-Screen Description Character Evaluation Power-Level Attacks PowerUps Walkthrough Tips, Tricks and Secrets Credits ------------------------------------------------------------------------- INTRODUCTION: Hello all. This FAQ covers the game Shadow Blasters for the Sega Genesis system. It's an old-school action platform game. I am not going to bother with the copyright stuff. If you are low enough to try to bank a profit off of this, or you decide to plagiarize it, that's your wretched morality. The latest version of this FAQ can be found at: GameFAQs (www.gamefaqs.com) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- UPDATES: v 1.0 9-2-01 -First edition. All info present. v 1.1 9-4-01 -Power-Level Attacks section added -minor editing done -------------------------------------------------------------------------- STORY Ashura, the King of the Evil World, is slowly conquering the human world due to humanity's depravity. The greatest of the good gods, Hyperion, selects four human warriors upon whom he will bestow his power to help defeat Ashura and his minions. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTROLS D-pad: Moves character; Down is crouch; Up lets you aim up. A button: attack B button: jump C button: special attack (useable once per stage) Start: change between sub-screen and main screen. Shadow Blasters has two difficulty levels, Normal and Hard. This FAQ was written using Normal Mode. I believe you have infinite continues. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MAIN SCREEN DESCRIPTION A description of the main screen items follows. This is the screen where you control your character. Life meter--the meter at the upper left. Player 2's meter appears under Player 1's meter in a two-player game. As you take hits, this drops. When it is empty, the character you were using dies. Replenish with crimson and explosive emblems. Power meter--the meter next to your life meter. This determines the power of your attack. If you hold the attack button, this meter fills. The more it is filled when you release the button, the stronger your attack. Certain powerups partially fill the meter, allowing you to charge a full power attack in less time. It fills to a max of 9 units. Your attack changes graphically when the power meter fills to 3, 6, or 9 units. At each of these increments, your attack will change form, as well as become more powerful. Score--at the far right. As you kill enemies, you get points. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SUB-SCREEN DESCRIPTION This screen is accessed by pressing Start. Here you can see more of the status of all four characters as well as choose who you wish to play. Each characters Life(L) and Power(P) meters are shown, as well as their name and facial picture. The other stats to see here are J (jump) and S(speed). Jump affects how high your character will jump. Can be increased to a max of 4. Speed affects how fast your character walks. Can be increased to a max of 4. The character you currently are using has their status box highlighted and has the player name listed in the box (Player 1, Player 2). Use the directional pad to highlight a different box, then press Start to play that character. Note: When a new character is selected, they are invincible for a few seconds when you go back to the main screen. When a character is dead, DEATH appears in place of their name on the sub-screen. They can not be used again until all characters are dead. Once you continue, all characters are resurrected. All powerups gained before death are lost. Once a character dies, you are brought immediately to the sub-screen to choose another character. When they appear, they will be invincible and floating in the air for a few seconds. Then they will fully materialize and drop to the ground. Be sure they are over solid ground when they drop! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHARACTER EVALUATION Here I am giving an evaluation and description of the four playable characters. They have different attacks which make them useful in different situations. Exploiting these traits is the fun and strategic element in Shadow Blasters. Horatio ======= A ninja studying Ninjutsu. Has the power of fire. Pros ---- -strong attack. His Fire Dragon really blasts through the opposition. -Good balance of speed and power in the area of attack. Cons ---- -Not a lot of spread range. Takes more manuevering to get in line with foes. Tiffany ======= A ninja also studying Ninjutsu. Has the power of wind. Pros ---- -her bomb attack arcs, which provides some good coverage in front of her. -at lv.6 power, she fires two wind blasts which go straight ahead and up at an angle, providing nice spread fire. Cons ---- -her lv.1-2 attack does not go full screen, which allows foes to get close to you. -her lv.3 attacks goes up at an angle which makes it really hard to hit foes directly in front of you. -her full power attack doesn't offer much in offense or defense. Leo === A Japanese fencer. Being politically correct, I would say he is a samurai, and a ronin (wanderer). Pros ---- -highly versatile. His boomerangs make him the most useful character in the game Cons ---- -attack strength is not high Marco ===== A monk with a high sense of justice. Wishes to destroy evil wherever it appears. Oldest of the quartet. Pros ---- -very strong attack, even at low level power Cons ---- -attack doesn't really spread out (until at lv.9 power), so you still must get in line with foes. Aside: For the naturally curious, Tiffany and Horatio are not related, nor are they from the same village. They just happen to both study Ninjutsu. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- POWER-LEVEL ATTACKS This section describes the different attacks your characters do as they charge up the Power Attack gauge. The levels that are shown are the number of units filled on the power gauge when you do the attack. Therefore, level 1 means one unit on the power gauge is filled when you attack. Level 3 means three units on the gauge are filled when you attack. Tapping the A button lets your character attack. If you hold the button, the Power Attack gauge starts filling. When you release the button, your character will attack at the power level that the gauge was at when you released the button. Afterward, the Power Attack gauge goes back to its original state. By gaining White emblems, a unit of the power attack gauge will be filled. Therefore, this is one unit that you don't have to charge up. For example, if you gain three white emblems, three units on your power gauge will be permanently filled (until you die)--therefore you will do your lv.3 attack with just a button tap (no charging needed). You can still charge your power meter, but you will start charging at lv.4 instead of 1. If you manage to fill the entire power gauge by using white emblems, your character will only do their maximum power attack when you hit the A button --no charging required! This is an excellent goal to achieve for everyone except Tiffany. Horatio ======= Level 1-2: shuriken Level 3-5: small fireball Level 6-8: large fireball Level 9 : Fire Dragon Comments: Nothing much to say for Horatio. He is a well-balanced character whose attacks are more powerful than Tiffany and Leo, but faster than Marco. You can pull off two Fire Dragons for one Tri-thunder shot of Marco. So if you want balance, Horatio is for you. Tiffany ======= Level 1-2: bomb shot Level 3-5: single tornado Level 6-8: double tornado Level 9 : Large Tornado Comments: The single tornado (lv.3-5) goes up at an angle. This is good for foes in the air, but terrible for foes directly in front of you. Therefore, while at lv.3-5, do not use Tiffany if you are mainly dealing with foes in the same horizontal line as you. Tiffany's lv.6-8 attacks are her best. One tornado goes directly in front of her, while the other goes up at an angle (like her lv. 3 shot). You get great area coverage with this power. I would not bother getting her lv.9 attack, as you lose the spread coverage of her lv.6-8 attacks, plus you can't attack as fast. Leo === Level 1-2: knife Level 3-5: single boomerang Level 6-8: double boomerangs Level 9 : Large Boomerang Comments: Do your utmost to get Leo at lv.3 and higher! Once he gets the boomerangs, he will become your most useful character as his boomerangs allow him to basically attack in two directions nearly simultaneously. Throw a boomerang in one direction, then turn around and fire in the opposite direction. If you don't move too far, the boomerangs will return and go past you. You will cover both your front and rear. Marco ===== Level 1-2: ball shot Level 3-5: energy shot Level 6-8: thunder shot Level 9 : Tri-thunder shot Comments: Marco is straight power. The ball shot goes up at an angle as it nears the end of the screen. You can really blow through the opposition when you power-up Marco, but you will have to be more precise with lining up with foes to hit them--at least until you get his lv.9 attack, which covers a good portion of his front. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- POWERUPS Shadow Blasters offers a few powerups to aid our heroes. These powerups are gained by destroying enemies, which may drop the powerups when killed. Powerups show themselves as emblems, small flame-shaped objects. I am using their colors to describe their functions. Red--increases speed (S) by one unit. Blue--increase jump (J) by one unit. White--very important! Increases power meter by one unit (thus you have one less unit to have to charge). Be sure to get these! Crimson (orange)--restores one unit to Life meter. Explosive (grey)--completely restores Life meter. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- WALKTHROUGH Here is the walkthrough for the game. Here I will give strategies for each stage and the bosses you face. I will also recommend characters to use and the power level you should optimally be when using them. So if you see Horatio (lv.3), it means you should have Horatio with three units already filled on his power meter, thus you get his level 3 power attack. If no level is mentioned, then you can use that character even at lv.1 attack power and do fine. There are 9 stages in Shadow Blasters. You can tackle the first six in any order you choose. Stage and boss names are from the manual. Mountain ======== Recommended character: Horatio, Tiffany (lv.3 or 6), Leo (lv.3+) Straight stage here. Your first opposition is blue samurais. You will also come across walls that you must destroy to go further. After the second jump, flying foes will come at you. After this, you will come across ground where parts of it sink into the water. Two parts of the ground will sink, as shown below: solid --- solid --- solid --- indicates ground that sinks Once you get to the destroyed building, four segments of the ground will sink here, so jump carefully. As you go right, you will encounter flying rock heads that shoot a single shot at you. Later you encounter jumping plant foes that come from the front and rear. Leo's boomerang technique is good here. Once these foes start appearing, inch forward slowly, as you will come across small foes on the ground (with white faces) that jump a long distance and tend to land on you. Continue on to the boss. BOSS: Skeltar ============== Here we have a skull and hands. Skeltar floats across the top of the screen, occasionally dropping his hands to get you or shooting three shots out of his mouth in spread fashion. He indicates that he is about to drop his hand when the respective hands starts shaking. Your target is the skull. A way to avoid the hands is to stay under the head, but this puts you in the path of the shots. I believe that the shots are at a speed where you can dodge them with not much effort, so this can be the most effective battle tactic. If that does not work, staying on the outside of Skeltar will put you out of harm's way completely, but you must have a good judgement of position here so that you won't get cornered. One effective rule of them is to go the opposite way that Skeltar is flying. Street ====== Recommended characters: Leo (lv.3+), Tiffany (lv.3-6) There are more flying foes in this stage, so Tiffany's lv.3 shots will be useful. Leo is always on call with his boomerangs. When you come to some gray blocks that look like they have a space under them, inch toward them and prepare for a flying foe that flies in a loop. These foes will be constant throughout this stage, so be ready for them, as they appear at critical times during your jumping. The gray blocks fall from under you as you walk, so walk over them without stopping. Later in the stage you will encounter manholes that do the same thing. Blue samurais will appear also. The flying demons appear occasionally with the samurais. As you near the steps, a flying blue foe will appear. They zip into the screen, hover over you and strike downward at you. Aim up to hit them. Tiffany at lv.3+ power will get them good before they cause you trouble. At the steps, you have a choice of going straight past them, or going up the steps. Going past them will bring you across more gray falling blocks as well as foes, so go up the steps. Now you just have to deal with the blue samurais and flying demons. Bat foes appear after this. Inch slowly if you only have straight firing characters. Lv.3 or 6 Tiffany is good here, and you can go through without stopping. BOSS: Brutus ============= Brutus uses knives. From a distance he throws them at you. Up close he will stab you with his knife. However, you main concern is his constant jumping. If you get close to him and attack, he will jump a distance away. If you don't attack, he will stab you. This fight can be annoying. Unless your speed is 4, you won't be able to avoid Brutus if he is about to land on you. If your speed is four, get out of the way and attack him to get him away from you. If your speed is not four, attack constantly so that all he can do is land on you by jumping. Leo is the person of choice here IF you have him powered up. Keep boomerangs flowing constantly around the screen, so that Brutus is always getting hit. If you don't have Leo, or he doesn't have his boomerangs, still keep attacking Brutus. Ducking a thrown knife usually sets you up to get jumped on, so it's your choice of which hit you want to take. Castle Garden ============= Recommended characters: any Ok, first foe to appear here are red flowers that are pointed at you. They will shoot green stuff at you if you are close to them and don't kill them. As you near the flowers, jumping plant foes will appear from the rear. You have a choice of going right or going up the ladder. If you go up the ladder, you can jump on the ledges to the left and right of it (look for green coloring on the gray wall). Don't go up the left ledges as this will put you in the path of a lightning strike. At the top of the ladder, you will notice lightning striking the ground. Going to the left, there are two more such strikes, so inch forward to see where they will hit. Also, if you go left, a multitude of jumping plants will assault you from front and behind (power-up opportunity), so keep that trigger finger going. You will have to go right regardless of what path you choose. If you went up the ladder and are at the top land area, you will come across a bridge. This bridge falls out from under you as you walk, so walk non-stop. Now, naturally the game won't let you do precarious bridge-walking alone, so near the end of the bridge, flying blue centipedes appear. Try to get to the land area before fighting them, as fighting them on the bridge will surely net you a fall to the lower area (which is ok too). Continue to the right until you eventually reach the boss. On the way there, you will face more blue centipedes if you stay high up. On the low path are more red plants and jumping plant enemies. BOSS: Kallus ============= Rock golem here. Your target is its head. When the head disattaches from the body, rock chunks will fly out from the neck. The head makes a loop from the body to the screen edge and back. What you want to do is stay at the far left edge of the screen. When the head first leaves the body, jump straight up to avoid the rock chunks that will reach you. Attack the head, and duck under it when it comes too close. Now the timing here will make it where when you duck under the head, rock chunks may hit you. This is unavoidable, but with this method, you don't have to move (all you do is jump and duck) and can get more hits on the head. The other method is to gauge the area the rock chunks are falling in and try to avoid that area. Then attack the head when you get the chance. The body releases three or more volleys of rocks during the head's trip back to the body, so this will make for serious movement and position judgement to avoid getting hit. Harbor ====== Recommended characters: Leo (lv.3+), Horatio This can be a super-short stage or a regular stage depending on a choice you make. Near the start here is a flying looping foe mingled in with blue samurais. When you get to the block steps and jump up them, you will have a choice of going left or right. If you go right, you will encounter a few bat foes and then the boss. If you go left, first switch to Tiffany (lv.6), Leo (lv.3+), or Marco (lv.9). You will encounter flying loop foes coming from the right. Using the above characters at these levels will make eliminating these foes easier. Go up the steps and go right. A green spider appears. It will shoot a small web at you if leave it alone. Three flying loop foes will come from the right as you continue right. At the end of this stretch, you will have to drop down a hole until you hit the ground. Now go right (if you look to the left, you will see the step blocks you used early in this stage). Bat foes will appear here. Bat foes means Tiffany (lv.3) or Leo (lv.3+). Continue right to reach the boss. BOSS: Tarman ============= Blob of slime that becomes a tall figure that fires fireballs at you. The only problem with this boss is really figuring out where to hit it. The manual says to hit its waist. Now if you can figure out where that is, you should be writing this guide instead of me. ^_^ Ok, the slime blob first will come at you. Jump over it. Fire over it continuously. This way when it eventually does rise into the air, some of your shots may hit it in its weak point. Definitely use specials here to weaken this boss, as you may have the dickens of a time trying to figure out exactly where to hit it (I still can't get the exact spot). So the pattern basically is to constantly fire over the blob, jumping over it when it comes at you. You will want to maintain a good distance from the boss so you can dodge the fireballs that it shoots at you. Forest ====== Recommended characters: any except Marco This is one annoying stage. You will be doing a bunch of tree-hopping here, and the bane of your existence is not knowing exactly where the huge holes are located since you are high up. Fall the wrong way and it's adios to ya. Ok, at the start you will see a rock. On the right side of this rock is a hole. Large, isn't it? Too large for you to jump over, so up the trees you go. Jump on the branches of the tree near the rock. Then blast the concave-shaped foes that appear on the left tree. You will be jumping to this left tree, so keep the opposition clear. You may notice a bat appear on the far right tree. Blast it if you see it (one less foe to deal with). Continue going up the left tree. Near the top (about two branches near the top), a bat will jump out of the greenery and float to you. Kill it. Now jump to the right. You should be on the tree near the rock at the start of this stage. The third branch (from the top) on the left side of this tree breaks, so try not to get on it. On the far right tree, the second branch on the right side breaks. At this point it became nearly impossible to give a good walkthrough for this area. So my quick suggestions are to stay high while you attack. Leo (lv.3+) is who you need to keep the opposition away while you concentrate on jumping. Keep right to reach the boss. BOSS: Vallevo ============== Then an annoying boss to complement an annoying stage. Vallevo is a big purple rat (I think) that curls into a ball and bounces across the ground. You can not hurt it when it is a ball. Here your focus is to find the opportunity to get on the side of Vallevo furthest from the screen edge so you don't get cornered. Vallevo bounces high and low in ball form. The low bounces are hard to get past without getting hit, but it is possible. Keep a watchful eye to see when you can get past the boss so you can get away from the corner. At times Vallevo becomes his full rat self and sits in place for a moment. Attack! Get all the hits in you can before it becomes a ball again. Also, sometimes when in rat form, Vallevo jumps into the air, then becomes the ball. You can still hit him when in the air as long as he is not the ball. Use all four character's special attacks whenever you see Vallevo in rat form. Now use Leo (lv.3+) and keep the boomerangs flowing constantly. Eventually when the boss becomes its rat self, some of those stray boomerangs may hit it. If that is too passive for you, use Horatio or Marco (speed 4 is a must!) at full power (lv.9). With this method, you must watch extremely carefully and have sharp reflexes. Avoid the ball form of Vallevo and keep watch for when it becomes its rat form. Now blast it with the full power attack. If you manage to hit, you can take Vallevo down fast. Future ====== Recommended characters: any Time oximoron here. A futuristic space station, but we are dealing with ninjas, monks, and samurais? Maybe the game creators got their time periods mixed up. Near the start, you will face small foes that are green and silver. They can be hard to see. They are on the walls and move up and down. They fire a single green shot at you. Further on you will face flying brown craft. No trouble here. Just blast them. Some hard-to-see step platforms are here. They are thin and rod-like with a circle in the middle. If you jump on one, it will rotate in a circle after a second. If you are still on it at this time, you will fall through it, so you must jump on and off quickly. At the flipping steps, you have a choice of going up them or to the right. Going to the right will run you into more brown craft and some electrical beam shooters on the ceiling. Along with the beam shooters are foes that look like an X. They fly onto the screen and sit over you. I don't know what they do as I blast them as soon as I can. If you go up the flipping steps, head to the right (a dead end is at the left). X foes appear here. Continue to the right constantly. Those silver/green foes are on the long horizontal stretch on the lower path, so keep an eye out for them. Also, bat foes appear as well. You know what that means, right? You don't? Tiffany (lv.3 or 6). Go right until you can not go any further. Jump up the platforms and go left. Go up to the top, then go right to reach the boss. BOSS: Gyrrina ============== Here you want to attack the purple blob in the machine. However, you can not hurt the boss when the electrical barrier is around it. You can only hurt it when the barrier is down. The thing here is that Gyrrina throws the barrier at you when it does drop the barrier. Ok, stay half-way between the boss and the left screen edge. When you see the barrier flash white, jump and shoot. Gyrrina will throw the barrier at you. By this time, you should be coming down from your jump. Duck to the ground and the barrier will pass over you. This is your attack pattern. What you must do is time the point where you shoot and your jumping area, as Gyrrina throws the barrier at your most recent position. You want to get the boss to throw the barrier high up so that you can duck under it. If you get close to the boss, it will throw the barrier low at you, where you can't avoid it in any way except by backing up (in which case you will miss an attack chance). This is why you want to keep a distance way. Use your special attack when the barrier is down. A far-off technique is to use Tiffany (lv.3 or 6), stay at the left screen edge, and attack. The angle should allow your attack to hit the boss without jumping. The problem here is that the barrier will have spread out by the time it gets to you, so you won't be able to avoid it. I haven't tried this method, so it's just speculation. Stage 7--Wicked World ===================== Recommended characters: Horatio (lv.3+) Leo (lv.3+), Marco (lv.9) First up is bat foes. Once you are over the floating platform, grim reaper foes will appear from the left. They just float around the screen, but can get in your way. Once you go down the steps, you will see a floating platform in the water. The land next to it sinks once you get on it, so jump to the next land mass quickly. You will see a blue foe with fire around it. If you shoot it, the blue head disappears and the fire wheel will roll down the steps to you. Powerup before shooting this foe so you kill the head and firewheel together. It takes a lv.6 shot to completely destroy it. Continue to the right. You will come to a part where you can either go up to a platform or go across platforms in the water. I went up. If you do so, you will encounter more grim reapers. At the platform edge, you must drop down. Drop off the edge and fall straight down. You will land on one of the platforms in the water. Jump across them to the right to get to more land. Continue right and take to higher ground if you come to choices of pathways. This will eventually lead you to the boss. Oh, the spiked platform bottoms don't hurt you, so don't worry about them. It's just decoration. BOSS: Hawkus ============= If you have Leo at lv.3+, this is simple. Otherwise, it will require some well-timed jumping. The boss drops fireballs from his hands while flying back and forth across the top of the screen. When it stops flying, it will swoop down slowly and rise back up. If it touches you, you will be damaged. You want to stay outside of the boss area of fire (the area the fireballs surround when they drop). Keep a distance from the boss so you won't get hit when it comes down. This is similar to the Skeltar fight. Going the opposite way the boss is flying will give you reaction time to see what you must do. If the boss is close to you, ducking down can avoid being hit when it comes down. Ok, when the boss swoops down is your opportunity to hit him. The weak point is the head. So stay away from the boss until it swoops down, then jump and fire at the head. This is your attack if you are anyone but Leo at lv.3+. If you have Leo at lv.3 or higher, you can fire up while being near the boss. Fire such that your boomerangs will come down over the body when they return to you. Doing this will allows them to hit the head as they come down. You can do the other attack (jumping to hit the head when the boss comes down) as well, but with Leo and his boomerangs, you can get more hits in by doing the former method. Stage 8--Heavenly Sky ===================== Recommended characters: any First up here are the flying flaming foes seen in the Mountain stage. After the first jump, parts of the ground here will sink. There are five or so such parts up to the second column you will see. The parts that sink are usually located after one of the higher mounds of sand. You will notice this after a few parts sink. One falling ground piece is after the first column you come to. Near the second column you see, a new foe appears. It is a green foe dressed in white. It fires its arms at you and swoops to the other side of the screen. Your main worry is being in the place that it comes to after its screen travel, as you may be ducking under the arms and thus sitting still. There is no problem here though, just fire when you see it to destroy the arms, or move toward the arms and duck under them. After this are blue samurais and flaming blue heads. Powerup to blast the foes home easily. Continue right until you come to the pyramid structure. Jump up this structure until you reach the top. Now go left. On this strech are nothing but blue samurais coming from front and behind. If your power is low, inch forward and fight your enemies one or two at a time. Otherwise, blast away home. Any character at lv.3+ is good here except for Tiffany. Do not use her on this stretch. At the end, jump up the steps and go right. You will come across that green foe in white again, this time appearing on the left side of the screen. If you approach it, a weird thing may happen where two of them appear and fly up out of the screen--apparently into oblivion as they never appear again. Weird, but much appreciated. ^_^ Further on this strech are the blue flaming heads and more blue samurai. Later on you will encounter the green foe in white and flying flame foes. After this, continue right and fall down the drop. Now, go right. If you go left, you will end up at the pyramid structure you used earlier. Keep going right until you reach the boss. BOSS: Wortan ============= This battle is a bit tedious. Wortan can only be harmed if you hit its chest or back side. Its legs are not a weak point. Wortan fires fireballs out of its swords, as well as jumps around the screen. Ok, if you are a good distance from the boss, jump and fire at its chest, avoiding the fireballs from its sword. The safe point in this battle is right next to Wortan. It only fires from the raised sword if you are far away. The lower sword fires directly in front of the boss, but all of your characters are too short to be hit ^_^ (Marco may be an exception to this) Like Vallevo, Wortan does small and large jumps. If you need a breather, get right next to Wortan. Now all you need to do is move under the boss when it jumps. A large jump gives you plenty of time to move. A small jump requires you to move quickly and without delay to avoid the boss landing on you. If you have Leo (lv.3+), keep the boomerangs flowing horizontally and vertically. Vertical shots can hit the boss when it jumps. Horizontal shots can nail the boss on its vulnerable back. With other characters, you will have to get a distance you can jump and fire at the boss chest. Again, if things get to hot, get next to the boss so he can't shoot you. All you need to worry about here is being landed on from a jump. Stage 9--Space ============== Final battle here. Instead of using your warriors, you are now Hyperion himself, and will battle Ashura one-on-one. The buttons have a different function in this battle: A--short range spread attack B--long range single attack C--nothing Note: You only have a life meter here (and a long one at that). You don't have a power meter. The A button attack is five fireballs which spread out and go about a character length from Hyperion. It is also a fast attack as you can do it rather rapidly. The B button attack is a single fireball which travels all the way to the screen end. You can do a max of two fireballs if you hit the button rapidly. There is one and only one method to fight Ashura. Circling. You must circle him and get attacks in when you are directly in line with him. With that said, let's look at how you can accomplish your circling attack. First is the specifics of your movement. When the fight starts, back away from Ashura and head to the upper left corner of the screen. Ashura will trail you from the lower right. Now go to upper right screen corner (just push RIGHT on your controller). Now Ashura will go to the lower left screen corner. Push DOWN to get to the lower right corner; Ashura will go to the upper left corner. Push LEFT to get to the lower left corner; Ashura will go to the upper right corner. Repeat this infinitely--this is your movement pattern. The gist of this is to always keep away from Ashura. You should always be opposite the side of the screen he is on. The fighting styles are below. There are two ways you can fight Ashura--the hard and short way, or long and easy way. Both are described below: WARNING: Absolutely DO NOT touch Ashura with your body!!! This will drain your life meter at a super fast rate. A mere brushing up against Ashura takes about 10 units. Hard and Short Way ----------------- This method requires tremendous finger dexterity and excellent judgement of position. This method uses the A button. Because the A button attack is so short range, you will have to close in on Ashura in order for your attack to hit him. The only good part about this method is if you can get more than one of your fireballs to hit him. Each fireball drains part of Ashura's life. So if you can get all five to hit him (dang impossible), you'll take off life much faster than by using the second method. Now the bad news. Trying to get in on Ashura and hit him. Ashura fires a single fireball, but he can fire it quite rapidly and successively. Hyperion is not the fastest god in the universe, and if you are improperly positioned, Ashura will get a good number of free hits while you try to get back in the groove. In order to actually hit Ashura, when you go from the top of the screen to the bottom (or vice versa), you must come toward Ashura instead of straight up or down. So instead of doing a square around him, you need to do a rhombus. So, for example, instead of going from the lower left to the upper left, you will go from the lower left to the upper right corners of the screen. Don't go directly there, but that is your general direction. You need to time it so that when you come within Ashura's firing range, it is only your lower or upper body that will be hit--not all of your body. This way Ashura will get less hits. Fire as you pass Ashura. If your timing is beyond perfect, more than one of your fireballs will hit Ashura. Long and Easy Way ----------------- The road to take if you want an easy fight. This uses the B button. Just keep your distance from Ashura while circling him. When you are moving to the top or bottom of the screen, fire when your head or feet are horizontally parallel with Ashura. If you draw a line from the top or bottom of Ashura to the horizontal screen edge, your head or foot should be on that line--this is your firing time. You must time the shot so that as you are moving, your arm will be directly in line with Ashura's head (so that your fireball will hit him). If done right, Ashura won't even get a shot in, as you will be outside of his firing range. Beat him and you win. Sit back and enjoy the ending! Aside: Call that an ending? Not exactly fulfilling, especially if you chose the first method to beat Ashura. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- TIPS, TRICKS, AND SECRETS Save your special attacks for bosses. This will help in killing the boss and reducing the amount of time you must fight it. A helpful boss strategy: When you enter a boss fight, use the special attack of all four characters right away. Do a special, switch to someone else, do their special, switch, and so on. Do this for all four characters, then switch to whoever you want to fight the boss with. This will aid in weakening the bosses. For bosses with invincibility defenses (Vallevo, Gyrrina), do the special when they are vulnerable. For Tarman, wait until it rises out of the ground before doing your special When powered up to lv.3 or higher, Leo becomes the most useful character in the game. Just keep shooting boomerangs as you travel. The boomerangs will return and go past you. Fire in both directions (left and right) to provide full coverage for yourself. However, Leo can only shoot three boomerangs volleys at a time rapidly, so space them out so you always have a boomerang to fire. Doing this, you will kill many foes before they even appear or get close to you. Suggested Team-ups (for a two-player game) ========================================= Leo(lv.3+) and Horatio -balanced team--power and spread-fire Horatio and Tiffany(lv.3-8) -same as above Horatio and Marco -power team--good for doing lots of damage Leo(lv.3+) and Tiffany(lv.3-8) -spread-fire team, good for any stage Check for other tips at Gamesages (ign.sages.com) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- CREDITS God--for the strength, life, and intellect to do this FAQ I hope you have enjoyed this FAQ. If there are any corrections, additions, etc. that you see that need to be put here, please e-mail me and let me know. Thanks for reading. dhousto6@bellsouth.net Dimetric Houston The End