Hmmmm do I really want to be known as the guy who wrote the shmups forum system guide for Burunyanman...? Meh whatever, call it completionism. There's no info on it here, and after a questionable purchase to have something new to play on my Vita TV I discovered that actually, this is a surprisingly good STG.
Despite appearing to be an eroge taped to a halfassed STG, the reality is that a surprising amount of care went into the actual gameplay of Burunyanman. But someone in marketing realized panties sold better in Japan than shmups do so it was never really made clear just what kind of game this was. Predictably it went ignored (mostly) by the community.
So Imagine my surprise when I discovered that this is actually a game with fun mechanics and a well executed scoring system. I played this pretty much all day yesterday and figured out how everything works. I would like to share my findings for anyone willing to give this game a shot, because it actually is quite fun. Whoever was in charge of creating the gameplay systems clearly had respect for the genre, even if marketing did not.
Word of warning though, this is probably one of the most sexualized shmups ever made. Things like Caladrius, Deathsmiles, and Otomedius don't even come remotely close. So if you can't look past that to the good game underneath you may want to just move along. I'll make sure to fill this guide with tons of pictures and bright pink text as a moe endurance test
(Protip: Don't google image search this game)---
System Guide
Basics
After booting up the game you will see quite a few options written in katakana, the bottom one is for settings and the top one is story mode. Story mode will first ask you to select a data slot, and then input your name. This game has a bit of a weird setup since it clearly wasn't marketed towards actual STG players. Whenever you clear a stage it will save, and if you gameover it will start you at that stage upon continuing, with your remaining bombs and lives as they were when you got there. There are no continues. In a way this is set up quite well for learning the game, and forces the casuals to actually halfway learn it too. However it's also inconvenient, as the only way to start a new run from stage one is to delete your save and create a fresh one. Once you have selected your name, slot, and difficulty you will move to character select.
Characters
Burunyan-man
Damage: Low
Speed: Molasses
Rapid Shot: 3 line spread vulcan
Rapid Shot Options: Two cats trailing behind in a horizontal formation. They fire a single line of shots.
Rapid Shot Graze: 5 line spread vulcan
Rapid Shot Graze Options: Same as non grazing
Hold Shot: Concentrated fire
Hold Shot Options: Shot remains unchanged but the formation locks (not useful)
Hold Shot Graze: Wider, more damaging concentrated fire
Hold Shot Graze Options: Same as the standard hold shot options
Sukunyan-man
Damage: Decent
Speed: Fast
Rapid Shot: 1 horizontal line of bullets, and 2 firing at 45 degree angles up and down
Rapid Shot Options: Two cats trailing behind in a horizontal formation. They fire a single line of shots.
Rapid Shot Graze: Adds two more 45 degree shots firing behind
Rapid Shot Graze Options: Same as non grazing
Hold Shot: Concentrated fire
Hold Shot Options: Shot remains unchanged but the formation locks (not useful)
Hold Shot Graze: Wider, more damaging concentrated fire
Hold Shot Graze Options: Same as the standard hold shot options
Meinyan-man
Damage: High
Speed: Fucking stupid slow
Rapid Shot: Green laser
Rapid Shot Options: Two cats trailing behind in a vertical formation. They fire the same green laser as you do. Bullets that hit them will be cancelled
Rapid Shot Graze: Green laser plus a homing laser
Rapid Shot Graze Options: Homing laser
Hold Shot: Concentrated fire
Hold Shot Options: The two cats rotate around you while firing the standard green laser. Bullets that hit them will be cancelled
Hold Shot Graze: Wider, more damaging concentrated fire
Hold Shot Graze Options: Same as the standard hold shot options
Gameplay
- You shoot things that are shooting back at you in a horizontally scrolling environment.
- Some bullets are cancellable with your hold shot, namely the big blue shots you will see right at the beginning of the game and the missiles shot at you by certain enemies. Everything else cannot be cancelled.
- If you graze a bullet your shot will be powered up like in Shikigami no Shiro. Occasionally this changes the shot properties entirely. Grazing also causes the game to go into slow motion, allowing for the navigation of otherwise extremely thick patterns. Your hit box becomes visible only while grazing.
- Level one features destructable environmental hazards that will kill you if touched, however all other stages do not.
- The hold shot slows you down as in most modern games, and point blanking will increase your damage output quite a bit.
- Some large midboss type enemies will drop items after being defeated. These are options (cats), bombs (bells), and extends (your character's face).
- Press bomb to bomb.
- The maximum bomb stock is unlimited, but if you die you lose all of them and respawn with 3 bombs. Bombing will flash a sexy image on the screen, and subsequent bombs within the same life will produce progressively raunchier images. The final image is obtained by burning through 6 bombs within one life. I am not sure if this has any impact on the gameplay (I doubt it does).
- From Kollision: bombing creates coin showers out of nowhere. This is useful for scoring whenever you max out medal value, and from my observations the bonus you get from this exceeds the end-of-stage bonus for bomb stock. Bombing is definitely good for the ending (when you're able to destroy the credits for more points). Bomb away, suicide, keep bombing, etc. Just remember to not die with uncollected medals on screen.
- Options are lost at death, and are not particularly common drops, so recovery takes quite a bit of time. It isn't usually too difficult to survive without options though.
- All enemies drop medals. (More on this in the scoring section)
- There are no score based extends that I am aware of.
- Certain large enemies and all of the bosses drop tuna cans when defeated, that grant 3000 points each.
Scoring
Ah yes, the part that saves this game from mediocrity. The meat of your score comes from maintaining a medal chain throughout the stages. When you kill an enemy they drop one or more medals, which will fly directly towards your ship. They don't follow you though so if you make a large movement they will fall off of the screen. There's a sort of vacuum effect when you are within a certain range of the medals, so you don't have to worry about perfectly lining up to them. The base value of a medal is 200, and each subsequent medal adds one to the value until you miss one and it falls of screen. So if you pick up 100 medals without missing any, the first will be worth 200 and the 100th will be worth 300. It maxes out at 2000 and will not reset until you either miss a medal, die, or clear the stage. Bombing has no effect on the chain.
One important point is that failing to kill an enemy entirely will not break your medal chain. At times, it is more advantageous to your score to avoid killing certain enemies if it would cause you to break your chain.
The thing that will separate a particularly high scoring run from a more standard scoring run is milking the bosses. Certain enemies explode into hundreds of medals when killed, and at max chain the payouts are massive. Most bosses have attacks where they will spawn enemies or destroyable bits that give large payouts, and these points can be milked for exceptionally high scores. For example, a survival run of stage one with Meinyan-man will yield around 1.5-2 million points total, and a fully chained basic scoring run will yield 3.5 million. But if you milk the grenades spawned by the boss' second form you can get over 5 million from the stage. However, especially in the case of later bosses, milking will lead you to facing some particularly nasty attacks that could otherwise be avoided by speed killing. Classic risk versus reward.
Other things with a more negligible impact on score include:
- 100 points for each bullet grazed
- Bonus points for grabbing additional Option icons
- 3000 points for each tuna can you pick up
...and there you have it. Now that you know the fine details, go forth and get dem digits. You might be pleasantly surprised by the game that awaits you.
