RQ: Survival Tips for Gun Frontier?

[EmperorIng]

People -have- 1CC'd the game. Gun Frontier drives me nuts with its manic difficulty increase and constant enemy spam. 4 extends by level 3 don't mean much when they all disappear in one go.

So if anyone has the expertise, share some survival tips in Gun Frontier.

Especially against those blue circling bastards that populate every damn stage.

[trap15]

The rank is controllable in a sense as the majority of it comes from your score. However, I don't think lowering rank really makes the game that much easier, it more just punishes doing dumb checkpoint milking.

For the fucking hovercopters, which are seriously the hardest enemy in the game, I find sticking to the right quarter of the screen and using a 15Hz autofire works quite well, you just need to not let them get away from you. Once you've lost track of one and it's gone off the bottom of the screen or is on your direct right, you're as good as dead.

[Kollision]

I wouldn't worry about controlling the rank with suicides and such.
Enemies will get harder either way, so endure and try to conserve your lives for the last couple of levels.

There are two kinds of hovercopters. Dark blue ones will arrive and close in on your current position, and are easier to get rid of. Light blue ones will develop an arching pattern around you while shooting, and these are the ones to really worry about. Their weakness is that they're best dealt with when you stand on the right half of the screen, as trap15 put it.

When other enemies overlap, such as tanks, sweep left in between the recharge time of enemy fire. Use visual cues to know when to do these left-right sweeps in order to avoid getting trapped or overwhelmed by enemy fire. Those huge bombers coming from the left and moving counter-clockwise around the screen? If there are other enemies around I stay 40% up against the right border and go down as he approaches. It works better than risking my ass by facing him as he arrives from the left.

Other than that it's just about moving a lot, herding wisely and getting more and more comfortable with enemy recharge cycles. And resisting the urge to restart when pricks like the 2nd boss take one or two lives away.
Also don't be greedy, bomb when needed. Yeah, I know it's hard to do this.....

[EmperorIng]

Edited the title and post to reflect a more accurate discussion.

For the fucking hovercopters, which are seriously the hardest enemy in the game, I find sticking to the right quarter of the screen and using a 15Hz autofire works quite well, you just need to not let them get away from you. Once you've lost track of one and it's gone off the bottom of the screen or is on your direct right, you're as good as dead.

This has been some very good advice in particular. Stage 3 is a bitch, but no longer exclusively because of the blue hovercopters. I still end up losing two lives on the stage, during the point where the midboss (ship) attacks the second time, and the planes start circling in.

Is there a good strategy for dealing with the large circles of planes other than "try to have a bomb in stock when they come around?"

Those huge bombers coming from the left and moving counter-clockwise around the screen? If there are other enemies around I stay 40% up against the right border and go down as he approaches. It works better than risking my ass by facing him as he arrives from the left.

This is a safe spot against the larger airplanes? The only other "safe spot" is in the bottom right corner, but it's deceptive because you can't move and are easy pickings for everything else.

I managed to 3CC the game, which is probably the best I've ever been able to do. The real problem spots are, outside of stupid deaths on st1-2:

st.3: Mid Boss phase 2, circle of planes, large tank midboss + enemy spam
st.4: cross bow midboss + enemy spam, large circle of planes
st.5: practically everything lol.

Stage 5 is really bad about overloading the screen imo. The two giant tanks with the large turrets right before that loooong checkpoint stretch are annoying, and the part after the gulch (with all the trains planes and automobiles) gets very hard to maneuver. It's a good thing that the bosses in this game are all easy comparatively speaking.

Gun Frontier is also one of those few games where I seem to bomb an awful lot. I don't play much Yagawa (seriously anyhow) so I don't know if you're doing the same thing to really milk the most out of your bomb chips.

[trap15]

For the path with the crossbow wagon, I find it works very well to play it like an old Toaplan. Make U motions, occasionally deviating for odd dodges. The enemies in the wood houses are random I think, but the others are fixed. If you leave the wagon alive until it runs over the bank, then kill it, it drops a ton of bomb fragments, 4 powerup items, and a MAX powerup item. Not a tough trick with the right setup, and the reward is great.