ST: Guardian Force

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Ruldra
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ST: Guardian Force

Post by Ruldra »

NOTE: This is NOT a full treatise on Guardian Force, but a small guide on its basics and how to score properly. This should help people until someone decides to make a full fledged ST.

The Basics:

Controls:
A: Rotate turret 45 degrees to the left
B: Fire
C: Rotate turret 45 degrees to the right
A+C: Bomb*

*Bomb effects are different for each weapon you’re using


Extends:
Every 2,000,000 points.


Item List:

Medals

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These are important for scoring. More on the Scoring section.

Pink Crystals

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These will upgrade your current weapon. Each crystal you pick will fill the bar on the lower left a little bit. Once it fills up entirely, your weapon will level up, up to level 10.

M, H and S Items

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M will give you missiles, while H will give you a weaker, homing version of M. S will give you an extra bomb.

Power-ups

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These will change the attack of the main turret and bomb.


Scoring:

Scoring in this game is a mix of medal chaining, black power-up bonuses, destroying mid-bosses quickly, destroying specific boss parts and using the right weapon. We’ll discuss each one in detail.


Medal Chaining

Medal chaining in Guardian Force is similar to Raizing games: when you pick a medal, the next one will be of higher value, and after you pick that, the next one will be of even higher value, and so on. Unlike Raizing games, however, if you lose a medal, even if there are others around, you’ll break the chain and have to start over.

When a medal is generated, it’ll bounce for a while, then stay on the ground for about 10 seconds, then disappear. While it’s bouncing it cannot go off-screen – the edge of the screen will ‘push’ it, so to speak. After it stops bouncing the screen will not push it anymore and it can go off-screen, breaking your chain.

It’s important to max your chain as early as possible, and for that, avoid generating another medal before you pick up the previous one. So, pick a medal, generate the next one, pick it up, then generate the next one, and so on.


The black power-up

The black power-up will give you a nice boost to your score. It’s worth 10,000 points, and on a specific occasion, 50,000 points.

When a power-up appears, it’ll fly in circles around the screen while switching colors every 3 seconds or so. It’ll switch colors in a set pattern and it is as follows:

RED – YELLOW – GREEN – PURPLE – BLUE

The power-up will cycle through all colors and then go back to the one it originally was. After that, it’ll go black.

So, let’s say, a red powerup appears. It’ll switch to yellow, green, purple, blue, red, then black. If a green powerup appears, it’ll switch to purple, blue, red, yellow, green, then black…and so on.

It’s important to memorize that pattern. As soon as it appears, make a mental note of which color it is. When it loops back to its original color, get ready – it’ll turn black next.

Okay, so now there’s a black powerup on the screen. From now on it’ll fly on a straight line and can go off-screen. Picking it up at this point will give you 10,000 points. But, if you wait some more, it’ll slow down and then disappear. Picking it up while it’s disappearing will give you 50,000 points instead.

Here’s a good way to know when it’s about to disappear: If you look closely, the power-up is actually flying – you can clearly see its shadow and notice that it’s above the ground.

Image

When it goes black, it’ll slowly descend, and will disappear as soon as it touches the ground. Keep an eye on its shadow and keep track of how close it is from hitting the ground. As soon as it does, pick it up for 50,000 points.


Destroying mid-bosses quickly

A big timer will appear on the screen when a mid-boss shows up. When you destroy it, the number shown on the timer will be multiplied by 100 and added to your score. It should be obvious that the faster you destroy the mid-boss, the bigger your bonus.

If you can afford it, bombing a mid-boss is a sure way to destroy it quickly and get a big bonus.


Boss parts

Every boss will have a specific part that will be worth 50,000 points if you destroy it. The parts mentioned are as follows:

PRACTICE-STAGE

The cannon in the middle of the ship.

STAGE-A

On the last car, the two cannons that fire horizontal pink lasers. Each one is worth 25,000 points.

For some reason, if you keep firing at the hole where one of the cannons was, it’ll give you an additional 25,000 bonus. So from this battle you can actually score 75,000 points (you could shoot the other hole too, but by now the boss is about to die. Otherwise you could get 100,000 points).

STAGE-B

Destroy the big axe mounted on the right side of the boss.

STAGE-C AND ONWARDS

(Need input on those)


Using the right weapon

Every time you shoot an enemy, you will gain points. But each weapon will give you points at a different rate. Some will give you more points per-shot, while others will give you less points per-shot. So you’ll have to use the weapon that gives you the most points per-shot, if you’re serious about scoring. But which weapon is that?

After some testing, I came to the conclusion that, by far, the best weapon for scoring is the PURPLE one. Just test it yourself; equip the purple weapon and point-blank the first boss, and you’ll see how quickly your score will go up. No other weapon is as effective for milking points from enemies as the purple weapon. So it’s important to use it as much as possible.
Last edited by Ruldra on Wed Jan 21, 2009 2:40 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Ruldra
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Post by Ruldra »

If there's any info you're looking for and it's not on the guide, or if there's any part that's unclear, just say it here and I'll try to help you.
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xorthen wrote:You guys are some hardcore MOFOs and masochists.
This is the biggest compliment you can give to people on this forum.
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Macaw
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Re: ST: Guardian Force

Post by Macaw »

Ruldra wrote:After some testing, I came to the conclusion that, by far, the best weapon for scoring is the PURPLE one. Just test it yourself; equip the purple weapon and point-blank the first boss, and you’ll see how quickly your score will go up. No other weapon is as effective for milking points from enemies as the purple weapon. So it’s important to use it as much as possible.
Purple should only be used for the first 2 stages. As said, the biggest scoring advantage is all the chip points you get for hitting bosses. After stage 2, you should have about 500,000 points more than if you used Red for the first 2 stages.

After stage 2 however Purple becomes useless for pretty much the rest of the game. There are simply too much zako and potential medals from stage 3 onwards that require a reliable weapon and Purple is far too slow to cope. Additionally, you can still kill the time bonus mini bosses fast enough with Red, some even quicker than with Purple due to the far better bomb. Point blanking stuff with missiles and Red is incredibly strong.

Japanese guides I've found also say to only use Purple for the first 2 stages, then switch at the beginning of stage 3 to something else.
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Ruldra
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Post by Ruldra »

I don't know, I still think purple is better for scoring. Consider all the chip points you can get from all the enemies throughout the whole game, that's a lot. I'll even say that chip points makes the most part of your final score; hence my commentary to use is as much as possible.

Remember that you're not neglecting the other sources of points as well; you're still medal chaining and killing mid-bosses quickly with purple. Sure, red does the job better, but the chip bonus with purple is so huge it's worth sticking with it.
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xorthen wrote:You guys are some hardcore MOFOs and masochists.
This is the biggest compliment you can give to people on this forum.
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Macaw
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Post by Macaw »

The chip points only come decently for large enemies. On zako you get no real chip points at all. Also, you can kill the 'row of big green tanks' miniboss in stage B and the '2 small ships surrounded by maces' miniboss on stage C fastest with the Red weapon bomb (The purple weapon bomb is terrible for fast kills, purple normal shot is better) and the lack of any large solid enemies for chip points in these stages means you will actually get more points using red.

It could be a decent idea to use red for these stages and then switch to purple just for the boss.

I still don't really think purple should be used after stage A though. I will experiment a bit with Yellow, it could prove better than both Red and Purple in some instances.
mikwuyma
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Re: ST: Guardian Force

Post by mikwuyma »

Macaw wrote:Japanese guides I've found also say to only use Purple for the first 2 stages, then switch at the beginning of stage 3 to something else.
Where are these Japanese guides you speak of? I've been meaning to get into this game.
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Macaw
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Post by Macaw »

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Ruldra
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Post by Ruldra »

I never realized 2P shot and bomb were different from 1P until I read those guides. The yoyo in particular works completely different.

I find them to be way less effective than 1P though.
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mastermx wrote:
xorthen wrote:You guys are some hardcore MOFOs and masochists.
This is the biggest compliment you can give to people on this forum.
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Ruldra
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Re: ST: Guardian Force

Post by Ruldra »

Does anyone knows a MAME version that runs this game well? Most versions I found has either terrible slowdown and/or massive input lag.
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mastermx wrote:
xorthen wrote:You guys are some hardcore MOFOs and masochists.
This is the biggest compliment you can give to people on this forum.
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BulletMagnet
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Re: ST: Guardian Force

Post by BulletMagnet »

This one is an ST-V game, right? Do ANY of those run very well in MAME yet? Your best bet is probably still the Saturn port.
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Jeneki
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Re: ST: Guardian Force

Post by Jeneki »

Hey guys,

What is considered default difficulty for Guardian Force? I recently tried out the ST-V version, and the first time I booted it up it defaulted to level 0 (lowest setting). That seems a bit odd to me, should it be at level 2 (medium)?

*EDIT*

I located some arcade paperwork, which lists the default settings as difficulty 2, lives 3.
Typos caused by cat on keyboard.
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trap15
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Re: ST: Guardian Force

Post by trap15 »

Does anyone know if autofire is effective in this? It seemed to me like I could shoot a tiny bit faster at point-blank with mashing, but that's possibly a placebo effect. I might try actually hooking up my autofire board just to see, but my guess is it doesn't help much.

Re: weapons, I've heard lots of sentiment that Purple is better at level 5 than anything higher, what's the reason? Are any other weapons better at levels lower than 10?
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EmperorIng
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Re: ST: Guardian Force

Post by EmperorIng »

The rate of fire for the blue missiles is significantly higher at the level below full power than it is at full power.

I thought that purple was best at full power, but someone might think that the smaller explosion leads to a quicker fire rate (for lower-powered shots).

I don't use Yellow that much, but Red and Green seem to operate best at full power.
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Re: ST: Guardian Force

Post by Kino »

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Last edited by Kino on Tue Sep 18, 2018 12:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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trap15
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Re: ST: Guardian Force

Post by trap15 »

Autofire seems to be at least marginally stronger than no-auto. Also, I believe P2 purple can get more points than P1 purple due to having more explosions, that may be where the missing million in the WR is.
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<S.Yagawa> I like the challenge of "doing the impossible" with older hardware, and pushing it as far as it can go.
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