Found the Hyper Duel backstory!!!

[Skyknight]

https://w.atwiki.jp/gcmatome/pages/3171.amp

(Searching by the title’s katakana always helps.)

In short, a moon base discovered in the rocks beneath remains of an alien civilization’s machinery. This base belonging to the Joint Space Force, one of the things it was adapted to was a new, incredibly powerful type of weapon, known as the Buster Gear. However, just as the final tests were about to commence, one of the scientists involved and several terrorists absconded with Unit 0 “Black Angel”. The other three Gears are soon after commissioned to break through the terrorist forces and deprive them of Black Angel, one way or another…

[BIL]

Always good to get a little backstory! Clothes the austere bones of arcade runtimes nicely. I guess the plot goes:

st1: Break through the enemy fleet (CYBER FLEET/BOILED KRAAKEN)
st2: Use the warp gate aka 1337 GRAFX to reach the moonbase. (FULL BURNER/W.A.O.)
st3: Touchdown. Black Angel's not here, but a shit-ton of enemies are. (HIDDEN MOON/CRY BRINGER)
st4: Maybe BA's on this colony? oh hang on, he just blasted it out of the sky. (COSMO BABYLON/BLACK ANGEL)
st5: Holy fuck, that's a lot of lost luggage! (COUNT DOWN)
st6: Approach the enemy capital via the coast (BLACK RAIN/NIGHTMARE)
st7: Invade the capital (NIGHT SWEEPER/BAKED ARACHNE)
st8: Final showdown with the enemy's final weapon, which BA wants a piece of too (BLOODY GOVERNMENT/HYPER DUEL)

Maybe BA attacks your team as part of an overall mission to eradicate Gear tech and those who'd exploit it, an anti-hero in his killbot way. He sure blasted the shit out of that colony. Would fit well with TFV's Guardian, which went similarly apeshit when exposed to off-Earth technology.

I wonder if that's a subtle link to TF, much like Blast Wind's GORN. Which would make Blast Wind TF Zero, and Hyper Duel TF Gaiden.

[Skyknight]

Bah, didn't notice the pilot profiles the first time...

KEITH SPADER (Sturm Vogel)
24 years old, born on February 14 ED15 (ED...?) Little battle experience, but has a calm judgement and an "eccentric" fighting style. He seems to have some sort of hidden potential, but given that it's hidden, there's no way to extrapolate what it is at all.

LISA ROWLAND (High Mustang)
21 years old, born on August 17 ED18. She's not certain of her or her fellow soldiers' standing, so she volunteered for the operation to make a place for herself as a Buster Gear pilot.

DR. BRODIN LLOYD (Phalanx Smasher)
45 years old, born on April 26, 2071 CE. (So if ED began 39 years before the events of the game, that probably means ED1 maps to 2077 CE. Game's CE year is 2116.) Despite his age, he's still a very resilient fighter. (Wait, since when is 45 old?!) While his fellow soldiers admire his ferocity, it's possible he's expressly looking to ultimately die in battle...

[Skyknight]

st8: Final showdown with the enemy's final weapon, which BA wants a piece of too (BLOODY GOVERNMENT/HYPER DUEL)

The animation of Black Angel being grappled by the main terrorist vessel tells me that the villains aren't happy with its potentially rebellious attitude, and so are forcing it to go back to attacking you. Or maybe the rogue scientist had a change of heart, overrode Black Angel, and the terrorists overrode it right back...

EDIT: Found this synopsis of Black Angel's nature on another page (I used the raw Japanese of Keith's birthdate line to poke around for possible expanded transcripts):

テロ組織に強奪された0号機で、プレイヤーは使用不可能。
いわゆるライバル的な位置づけの機体である。
プレイヤーが使用可能な上記の3機に比べて大型で、ファイター・アーマー形態への変形機構も有している。
パイロットは人間ではなくAIであり、プレイヤーを「自分の手で仕留める」事を元に動いているらしい。

Raw Google Translate:

Unit 0 has been stolen by a terrorist organization and cannot be used by players.
It is a so-called rival-positioned aircraft.
It is larger than the above three machines that the player can use, and it also has a mechanism to transform into fighter armor mode.
The pilot is an AI, not a human, and it seems that it moves based on "killing the player with your own hands".

So maybe Black Angel's rebellion at the very end is an attitude of "Only I get to destroy the Buster Gears. Back off, buddy!".

[BIL]

Despite his age, he's still a very resilient fighter. (Wait, since when is 45 old?!)

Haha, that manga/anime aging. Add exponentially more years once the character's past 21. I'd always put him in his 60s, with his weathered features and steel-grey hair.

While his fellow soldiers admire his ferocity, it's possible he's expressly looking to ultimately die in battle...

He does have a rather ferocious/fatalistic look! Going off the Saturn portraits here. I seem to recall the other two pilots being a bit goofier in the AC original, while Bro-Din was more or less the same.

The pilot is an AI, not a human, and it seems that it moves based on "killing the player with your own hands".

So maybe Black Angel's rebellion at the very end is an attitude of "Only I get to destroy the Buster Gears. Back off, buddy!".

Ha, that does work nicely. Kind of like Deadeye Joe busting you out of jail in Hard Corps. "Don't misunderstand. I'll be the one to see you take your last breath!"

I was wondering if the reference to "movement" was talking about the infamously brutal difficulty spike, if you reach the titular Hyper Duel at max Rank.

[Skyknight]

O-ho, found even more expansion on Black Angel... (http://www3.tok2.com/home/phrozes/game/game07r.html)

いわゆる強奪された０号機である。終盤で一時だけ味方になるが、基本的には敵。
　４面ボス、最終ボスとして登場。まぁ俗に言うライバルキャラである。
　ガンナー型の援護兵器を多数従えているが、こいつがプレイヤー機のそれ（推定記憶容量１００Ｂ）とは大違いであり、ある時はじわりじわりと自機を追い詰め、ある時は本体を護る為に弾幕を張ったりと非常に賢い。
　また、本体の戦闘力も１号機から３号機までのそれを遥かに凌駕しており、未完成体ながら十分過ぎるほどの強敵としてプレイヤーの前に立ちふさがる。（最終決戦では完成体となって襲い掛かってくる）


　パイロットはどうやらＤｒ．ロイドの実弟らしい。
　小細工を嫌う性格のようで、罠にはまって必勝の体制を築かれている敵に対しても、わざわざ対等の立場で対決しようとする。
　戦闘の終盤において、味方になってテロリスト達の巨大機動兵器に挑みかかる事から察するに、テロリスト達に示嗾されて今回の戦いを引き起こしたのだろう。

　０号機は暴走する上に強いのがお約束です。

Raw Google Translate:

It is the so-called stolen Unit 0. It becomes an ally for a while in the final stage, but basically it is an enemy.
Appears as the 4th stage boss and the final boss. Well, it is a rival character that is commonly called.
It has many Gunner-type support weapons, but this one is very different from the player's machine (estimated memory capacity is 100B). It is very clever, such as putting up
In addition, the combat power of the main unit far surpasses that of Units 1 to 3, and although it is an incomplete body, it stands in the way of the player as a powerful enemy that is more than sufficient. (In the final battle, it becomes a complete body and attacks.)


The pilot seems to be Dr. He seems to be Lloyd's younger brother.
He seems to have a personality that dislikes small tricks, and will go out of his way to face off against enemies who have been trapped and built up for victory on an equal footing.
At the end of the battle, he became an ally and challenged the terrorists' gigantic mobile weapons, so it can be inferred that the terrorists had provoked him into this battle.

As promised, Unit 0 is strong in addition to going out of control.

Okay, is this thing AI-controlled or not? Or maybe the possession sequence is completing the AI so Lloyd the Younger can't do anything anymore. Oof, trapped inside the complete Black Angel unable to do anything but wait to either die or see your elder brother get killed...

That said, this might be fan theorization.

[BIL]

If I remember right, TFV had absolutely reams of lore confined more or less entirely to the manual - makes me wonder if Hyper Duel's a similar case. See also the Metal Slugs - tons and tons of backstory and character details you'd be totally in the dark about, sans papers (and MS, of course, had the benefit of English localisations).

[BulletMagnet]

(Wait, since when is 45 old?!)

As someone approaching that general vicinity I can certainly attest to feeling like I'm already on borrowed time.

In any event, thanks for sharing the info.

[xxx1993]

So wait, the main villains are terrorists? I thought it was aliens we were fighting. And I still don't understand why the Black Angel is an enemy most of the time, and then in the final battle, seemingly helps you, only to become the final boss again.

[BIL]

I always had the impression it was an inter-human conflict, judging by the particularly narrative tracknames. "Cosmo Babylon" and "Bloody Government" are both pretty earthy titles. Most of all "Black Rain," arguably a direct reference to WWII/nuclear warfare; the IRL unfathomly destructive "Gear" technology, you might say. Now that I think about it, BR kicks in right after the colony's destruction, in a biblical explosion with a presumable bodycount (and quite feasibly ecological devastation) to match.

Tecno Soft's soundtracks were always an integral part of their STGs, tracklists included, with HyperDuel, Blast Wind and TFV especially so. The last's "Fatherless Baby" is a particularly awesome bit of synergy, the infant in question being a hellacious final boss birthed from The Guardian scanning your (canonically female-piloted) ship's data into its CPU. Cracking tunes too obv.

The "brother fight / bro got in too deep with EVIL POWWA" thing recalls Elemental Master, though obviously there's no such ambiguity in that game.

[Skyknight]

Note that I've started a TVTropes page at https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ ... /HyperDuel for this, in case anyone has anything to add.

[xxx1993]

Thank you!