ST: Giga Wing

[Randorama]

2025/09/10

I deleted the material in the first post(s) of each ST/GD, as threads cannot be deleted once there are replies. The rest of the thread will remain in place, this being a measure of some sort that prevents people from doing something illegal (e.g. posting links to roms and such) and then deleting proof of their heinous crimes. Since I also want to retain control over my own posts, especially when they do not infringe any rules, I have deleted them now in order to avoid that somebody may quote them and keep them online without my consent. Those who are interested in the original post may contact me via PM, and we can arrange ad hoc solutions regarding the OP for this thread.

[Tar-Palantir]

(deleted for redundancy)

[Randorama]

I suppose this would belong under section 3:

In the CPS-2 version, selecting your craft with either start, button 1 or button 2 gives you a plane of a slightly different colour. I haven't noticed any other difference in the planes so selected.

It's in section 1.4

[BulletMagnet]

Two small things:

1) Maybe it'd be worth noting that, though collisions with other craft kill you, as you said, that (IIRC) using the reflect force makes you invincible to both bullets and collisions.

2) Has it ever been figured out exactly how to activate the 1-Up on stage 4?

[Randorama]

Edited the passage on the reflect force for great justice

The 1p only appears if you've lost 2 lives, from what i've seen so far, i think it's just a question of balance (i.e. giving you one more chance if you've died twice and you do that trick).

[BulletMagnet]

Heh, seems that Takumi has borrowed some of Raizing and Cave's sadistic tendencies towards their players... "Aww, do you really suck THAT much? I thought you were just kidding back there! Well, all right, don't cry now, here you go..."

[Winane]

Randorama, could you please run the first post through a spelling and grammar checker? Lotta missing spaces in there, etc., making it more difficult to read.


Some of your information is incorrect. All of the following is based on the CPS2 US 990222 version of Giga Wing (dunno if any of this was changed for the Dreamcast):

Plane Speed:
Carmine > Widerstand > Porchka > Raijin
Isha's Porchka & Shinnosuke's Raijin are probably the most closely matched in speed, but the Porchka is somewhat faster.


I don't know for certain whether the stage order is always the same for any given character, but if it is, then these are the correct stage orders:

Shinnosuke:
nighttime airbase -> lava -> train/lake

Ruby:
nighttime airbase -> train/lake -> lava

Isha:
lava -> nighttime airbase -> train/lake

Shutock:
lava -> train/lake -> nighttime airbase


Not a correction, but something maybe worth noting:
The game won't let both players use a bomb at the same time, so you don't have to worry about accidentally wasting any screen clears in 2-player mode.
(And if you're playing on an emulator, alone but controlling both planes, you may want to map both planes' bombs to the same button. P1's bombs will be used first, then P2's if P1 is out of stock. Less to think about and keep track of that way.)

[Randorama]

Thanks, I'll edit ASAP.

[moozooh]

Quick question about rank control.

Based on what Randorama said in the first post, I take it dying right at the start of the game will keep the rank lower over the span of the entire game? Or does that only matter for the stage I'm dying on? Or it doesn't matter at all?

Answer appreciated.

[mikwuyma]

Moozooh: The former, you die in the beginning at the game to keep rank lower throughout the rest of the game. However, if you collect the stage 4 1-up, your rank shoots back up.

[third_strike]

What is point-blank?
Cool!

[Elgin McQueen]

Moozooh: The former, you die in the beginning at the game to keep rank lower throughout the rest of the game. However, if you collect the stage 4 1-up, your rank shoots back up.

Would that be suggestable for score though? Or would bullet numbers be too reduced to allow major medal pickup?

[mikwuyma]

Considering Clover-YMN's gets nearly 260 trillion points in his playthrough, I think you'll be ok

[shoe-sama]

lower rank has some advantages for multiplier

Fewer bullets = easier to collect medals.

You get less medals to appear from reflecting, but w/e

[BER]

Moozooh: The former, you die in the beginning at the game to keep rank lower throughout the rest of the game. However, if you collect the stage 4 1-up, your rank shoots back up.

Would that be suggestable for score though?

It depends on the score one wants to obtain. Dying in the beginning of the game may be fine for getting a nearly 260-trillion-point score as Clover-YMN did. But for beating the Widerstand score record (which is over 290 trillion) in Arcadia magazine, I wouldn't do it, since the current record holder, EXCHANGER, considers it disadvantageous. And I imagine that not dying intentionally is how he earned that record score. Here's the testimonial:

http://forums.marpirc.net/viewtopic.php?p=29999#29999

[mikwuyma]

BER: I think if you saw this is for a tournament that ends in about 28 hours, you would realize no one is even trying to achieve 200 trillion

[croikle]

Does anyone know if there's some advantage to using the P2 side? The top 3 replays I've seen all use P2 (HDK 217T Ruby, YMN 259T Stuck, and the new 270T Ruby), so it seems like there's something there.

[BER]

Does anyone know if there's some advantage to using the P2 side? The top 3 replays I've seen all use P2 (HDK 217T Ruby, YMN 259T Stuck, and the new 270T Ruby), so it seems like there's something there.

According to TANINI's Giga Wing guide, it's because some enemies are weaker on the 2P side. I don't know why this is a benefit, though. Here's the guide:

http://www.bellcity.ne.jp/~wild7/game/g ... giga0.html

. . .

As a side note, you'll also notice in the guide that on the 2P side, all of the boss's bullet patterns become easier once you lose a life. But the top players, including the Arcadia record holder EXCHANGER, consider it a disadvantage as mentioned here:

http://forums.marpirc.net/viewtopic.php?p=29999#p29999

If you see a replay in which the player loses a life right away, it's probably an old video.

[Battletoad]

I just noticed some more slight differences in the Dreamcast version and thought I´d post them here.

- A "P" icon when already fully powered up adds +10 to your medal count (+50 in the Arcade version). That was in stage 2, don´t know about the following ones.
- Some enemies which take a second between their last hit and dying (e.g. the big planes on Air Carrier and Stage 4 or the midboss in Stage 4 or 5) still seem to give you medals for more reflected shots in the "dying animation". I didn´t have the impression that they did this in the Arcade version. There they just seemed to absorb the shots and not giving any more medals shortly before dying.
- The stage 3 boss (which is the the Pancake for me) shot some different patterns (was definitely not because of rank!). More difficult, yet not really bad. The other bosses seemed just like normal.
- More sniping shots, especially noticeble on stage 4.

[esreveR]

Did anyone notice the stranger's data is still present within the Arcade version? You can use some emulator cheats to get it I think. I prefer Carmine though.

Yeah, I know, rather useless information. c_c

[KiethSomataw99]

I wonder what pilot and fighter is the best choice for beginners.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Carmine does lots of damage both in shot and bomb, but she moves extremely fast, so you might have trouble getting through tight bullets, not to mention her shot is relatively narrow. Normally, character with homing shots would make for a good beginner choice, and Isha's not bad, but her homing missiles appear to be a bit underpowered honestly, not to mention they're rather slow. Sinnosuke feels a bit on the weak side in both his shot and bomb.

Stuck/the Widerstand is a solid choice (I might be biased, since he's the one I learned to use). He's currently got the WR in terms of scoring (I think it might have to do with his and Isha's first stage having a huge multiplier potential, especially if you milk the boss), and he's extremely strong as well as having a spread attack instead of Carmine's narrow shot. His bomb is quite powerful, and his shots do plenty of damage, especially if you get up close and shotgun or move on top of enemies during a Reflect as you can easily get his main gun and both sets of cannonballs hitting a boss. The cannonballs travel pretty far before exploding on their own, so it's pretty easy to hit bosses with them even at the bottom of the screen. His options can also be repositioned when he's not firing.

Worse comes to worse try each one out. Be warned though that you'll probably want to pick one and stick with it as it can be hard swapping characters and getting used to the different/tougher boss attacks depending on the order of each character's first 3 stages.

[davyK]

Any development on the above discussion? Have made a start on Gigawing and am using the default character. Any advice re character selection for low skilled (I can make mid boss of l.4 on Futari 1.5 original on 1credit) players starting out and thinking about a survival run?

(I am enjoying the scoring though)

Have watched some playthroughs and it looks like this one is manageable to lower skilled players if you can use good use of the reflect as there doesn't seem to be as many hi-skill dodges used?

[TransatlanticFoe]

Giga Wing was my first exposure to bullet hell, made it to Stage 6 on just reflect/bomb alone (with a fair bit of practice to work out optimal timing for reflect). The entire of Stage 6 (one big boss really) and the TLB require a lot more skill on top. I've only cleared the game with the hidden Stranger plane, it has pretty insane damage output.

I found Ruby or Isha easiest to start with - Isha is slow enough for dodging and the homing missiles helpful for thinning out enemy ranks (not so helpful for scoring as you'll drop medals), so might be the better bet. Stuck's options can take a bit of getting used to but are powerful, might be worth sticking with it - first 4 stages, excluding bosses, are managable with well timed reflects so there's plenty of room for experimentation.

Sinnosuke's wide shot ends up being too weak overall to be of much use, and he's slow with it.

[davyK]

After reading through the high score threads here and with some experimentation I have opted for Stuck (green). His level 1 is the lava level and that has the advantage of encountering its boss at the lowest level (it is considered the toughest of the 1st 3 levels).

I like his combination of frontal attack and spread too and his movement speed is manageable. Ruby seems to be the favourite in the high score threads and I can see why but her movement is too hot for me to handle when it comes to pattern weaving.

Isha looks good too with the homing missiles (and stage 1 lava level) but for now I'm going to persevere with Stuck. I'm getting to mid way through stage 2 on 1 credit and making slow but steady progress (which I am used to - as I've got older my skills have only got worse!) I can only manage 30-60mins a day with my lifestyle - which is why STGs are a perfect fit for me.

[davyK]

The lava level (1 with Stuck) generates more planes to shoot if you dispose of the stranger ship quickly. If you can dispose of him using two reflect shields it seems to do the trick.

There's a large medal generated occasionally from the large structure on the left just after the two large tanks that appear at the same time in the latter half of the level. Haven't figured out what's causing that. (edit: guessing it's the note in the guide about shooting purple cannons first).

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Since I've been playing the game a lot lately without using Reflect Force (including 1cc'd it a few times), I've become a lot more familiar with some nuanced differences between the characters. Gonna post some info here, hopefully it's of use to someone.

• Sinnosuke piloting the Raijin: He's a lot better than I gave him credit for when I first started playing. His main disadvantage is he's the slowest, which works against him for reflecting, for medal collecting to score, and in general for survival where extra speed is generally better in Giga Wing. His spread shot's more reliable than Isha's homing missles though, and his main shot is actually very strong despite how it looks (firing in spurts as opposed to a continuous stream). In fact, his main shot is stronger than Stuck's continuous beam when both are at long range and aren't hitting with their gunpods. Stuck's still a much better beginner character though; not only is Stuck much faster and has far better killing power in the stages, Sinnosuke also has a harder stage 1-3 order than Stuck or Isha due to having the lava stage second (which has the hardest boss fight at higher rank due to its speeds when it's stage 2 or stage 3).

• Isha piloting the Porchka: Second slowest character. Her missiles are a bit unreliable at times, and she doesn't benefit much from pointblanking unless you're able to get on top of the enemy with her gunpods (which is usually impractical due to how they're behind her). Her concentrated damage is pretty decent, though technically she's the weakest character in the game under optimal conditions. Without using reflect, the other 3 characters will kill the stage 4 black plane miniboss much faster. Reflecting does massive damage and her offensive issues with the homing missiles are covered thanks to the sheer multidirectional damage and versatility offers. A bit unusual in that she's a slower than average straight shot type that happens to have homing missles, but a solid character. She is roughly tied with Stuck for having the easiest stage order, as both she and Stuck have the lava stage appear first.

• Stuck piloting the Widerstand: A good deal faster than Sinnosuke or Isha, with a powerful piercing wideshot that fires explosive cannonballs. Stuck's main gun alone is weaker than Sinnosuke's, but you easily get pointblank damage opportunities any time you reflect, and his ability to rip through multisegmented bosses with his cannonball gunpods makes him the best boss killer of the game for all bosses except for the last section of stage 6, and the true last boss in stage 7, where Ruby is the damage queen. His cannonballs look short ranged but they travel up so far that Stuck actually hits many enemies with them even at the bottom of the screen, and damage only goes up as he gets closer where they can fire faster. He's a fantastic beginner character as well as a high scoring character as his stage order is both the easiest, as well as the optimal one for scoring if I'm not mistaken (the lava stage is the best scoring stage of the first 3 where you can get a huge multiplier early on).

Note that Stuck's gunpods move around when not tapping or holding the shot button. It can be helpful in some spots for boss milking to move up and position the gunpods behind him, but generally speaking for raw damage you always want them facing directly in front of you as forward as possible.

• Ruby piloting the Carmine: The high speed straight shot character of the game. Her speed makes her slightly tricky to control for beginners but it plays to the reflect mechanic's strengths, as well as maker her a great scoring character for medal collection. Damage output is also exceptional regardless of how far away she is from the enemy, and reflect gives her the ability to hit enemies that aren't directly in front of her when need be, so she's way more powerful than your average straight shot character in a shmup. Her center line of bullets accounts for most of the damage, so it's important to hit with those when damaging enemies and not just one of the outer fire waves, but her raw focused damage makes her optimal for taking down smaller targets such as when the medallion is exposed on bosses.

Ruby's benefits are offset by the fact that she has the hardest stage order out of any character. Her lava stage shows up as stage 3, both the black plane as well as the stage boss are significantly harder than any of the possible stage 3 bosses. The black plane's second attack is extremely difficult to deal with without reflecting or bombing, and the boat/submarine thing fires incredibly fast when it's the stage 3 boss, being far more difficult than even the stage 4 boss is in my opinion due to the bullet speeds. A fantastic character, but beginners will have to be prepared for a fairly difficult stage 3 if they play her.

• Bombs are all pretty comparable in damage. They may have slightly different damage values, and some do more damage based on positioning such as Sinnosuke's which does slightly more at close range than at full-screen away from the enemy, but for the most part all the bombs are pretty close damage-wise and do roughly the same damage as if the character were pointblanking with their main shot for the same amount of time. None of the bombs have any major advantage worth using a character specifically for the sake of the bomb.

Stuck's is the oddball bomb. It does fullscreen damage boosted based on your position which determines where the swords appear, but it also sucks in non-boss flying enemies into the center of the screen as it damages them, where it then inflicts an instant kill if they touch the gateway at the center of the screen. Note that it can reposition enemies and leave them there if it starts to suck them but leaves them alive as the bomb end. Also, it's a bit dangerous to use in 2 player mode as the second player is NOT invulnerable when the first player bombs (or vice versa) and planes dragged towards the middle can collide with the non-Stuck player.

• I haven't played the Dreamcast version much yet so I can't personally speak to any changes or how its difficulty compares, but I've played both the US and JP version of Giga Wing extensively and as far as I can tell there is no difference between them in terms of difficulty. The CPS-2 hardware appears to have a quirk in the bios where Japan region games have their difficulty set to 4 whereas US region games have their difficulty set to 2, but unlike a game like ProGear where the difficulty slider has a significant impact on the bullet speeds (which I discovered when I tried this in Fightcade and discovered it unusually has the default difficulty MAXED OUT for some reason instead of set to the true default), the difficulty slider appears to do absolutely nothing in Giga Wing. I've played it cranked up to 8 (again, Fightcade for some reason defaults to maxed out difficulty) and noticed absolutely no changes in bullet patterns, speeds, or density. If there are any difficulty differences between the two regions they appear to be trivial.

• Apparently 2P side does slightly more damage than when playing on 1P side. I haven't tried the 2P side enough to confirm this myself, and when I've used 2P instead of 1P the damage seems pretty comparable. May just have been a rumor, will have to confirm for sure at some point, but note that 1P side is perfectly capable of getting some aggressive speedkills on bosses and doesn't feel underpowered at all. As far as I can tell, the planes have identical movement speeds regardless if you're playing 1P or 2P side.

Each plane has 3 selectable colours in the arcade version depending on what button is used to select the character (possibly 4 in the Dreamcast version):

Isha: Shot - Blue (default), Start - Dark Blue/Purple, Bomb - Teal Blue
Ruby: Shot - Red (default), Start - Slightly darker shade of red, Bomb - Yellow
Sinnosuke: Shot - Pink (default), Start - pale/Mountbatten pink, Bomb - Dark Purple
Stuck: Shot - Green (default), Start - Yellow green, Bomb - Teal green

[Plasmo]

• Apparently 2P side does slightly more damage than when playing on 1P side. I haven't tried the 2P side enough to confirm this myself, and when I've used 2P instead of 1P the damage seems pretty comparable. May just have been a rumor, will have to confirm for sure at some point, but note that 1P side is perfectly capable of getting some aggressive speedkills on bosses and doesn't feel underpowered at all. As far as I can tell, the planes have identical movement speeds regardless if you're playing 1P or 2P side.

This could right as well be a long-standing rumor indeed.

But if it's not a difference in damage, the question becomes: What is the difference then?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I keep meaning to check this more thoroughly - I have a good idea of expected boss kill times on stuff that you can pretty much stay up close and personal for an extended period of time on without reflecting. Without health bars it's obviously harder to tell, but the stage 4 midboss and the stage 4 boss are both ideal for straight up damage comparisons so I'll play around with 2P side and see if I notice anything. Someone with more experience reading game memory could probably figure out the raw per-hit damage values for each character or the health value of a boss and work it out that way.

It's entirely possible there IS a difference be it intentional or not, but it could be subtle enough that I have trouble noticing it even when I'm looking for it, or I've just not played 2P side enough to realize I've been missing out on extra damage?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Tested with savestates on the JP version of Giga Wing, default settings, on the Stage 4 appearance of The Stranger (the black plane). Without reflecting and just firing away so no shots miss, Ruby 2P kills it while it's at the middle of the screen as it moves slowly left, 1P Ruby kills it just as it touches the left side of the screen to start a new attack. Isha 2P also kills about a half second or so faster than 1P. It appears it's confirmed that 2P does more damage, but with the caveat that the damage increase is very, very slight, and doesn't appear to affect reflect damage. I popped in a credit with Stuck on 2P side and I didn't notice particularly fast kill times over 1P side so while there does appear to be a difference in damage on 2P over 1P, it's negligible and 1P for all intents and purposes is just as capable of killing things in a timely fashion.

Plane colour you select doesn't appear to change anything (unlike Armed Police Batrider for instance) but again, it could be there's a difference, just one that's so slight it's hard to notice.

Just tried the Dreamcast version. Up to stage 5 it's pretty accurate and the same strats work well. There seems to be a few adjustments to bullet speeds perhaps in Stage 5 where the green turrets (such as the one that has the Bomb item) are slowed down a bit, and some pyramids have shots sped up? The Stage 6 boss is the major challenge of the game in the Dreamcast version as it had a lot more slowdown in the arcade version.