Now, in Power Strike, if you die, you lose EVERYTHING. Any power-ups for the main shot are GONE! And you're reduced to the lowest level weapon 1, which CANNOT cancel bullets (only maxed out). So as you can imagine, if you die in the later levels, you're finished. You WILL NOT find enough level 1 power-ups to bring yourself back up to par. And your main weapon powers up so slowly you'll probably never get that to the double shot either (it goes up to triple shot, I think it takes 10 or so power-up icons to level it up, maybe more).
So I cruise through level 1. I devastate level 2. Level 3 is no problem. I breeze through level 4. Well, I didn't breeze through level 4. During level 4 my roomate comes in and just starts talking to me... while my eyes are GLUED to the TV. But despite the distraction I continue on, wiping out wave after wave of enemies, canceling bullets left and right.
So I'm playing through level 5 and everything is going fine. And then it happens. A ship flies from off the screen and smashes into me. My little ship explodes into flames and crashes to the ground... and with it, my hopes of a 1CC.
In the split second it takes for the ship to respawn I decide to push on and see how far I can get with my pea shooter since I have racked up 15 lives by this point. If my eyes were glued to the screen before... now they've merged with it!!!!! So I'm dodging like a mad man, weaving between enemy waves and bullets doing all sorts of crazy shit like spiraling at me. Every time I see a weapon, as long as it isn't weapon 2, I snag it. With every base I kill in level 5 I'm PRAYING for the level to end and allow me access to level 6. Finally, I take down a crazy hard base, and the level is over.
Level 6 begins...
Mid-bosses from all the previous levels start fighting me one after another. Only this time, the screen is filling up with enemies AT THE SAME TIME!!! So I'm fighting fairly hard midbosses AND a screen full of enemies at the same time. So I'm weaving in and out of enemy formations and trying to align shots on the midbosses QUICKLY so I can get out of the way of their bullets that I CANNOT cancel out. The Master System is crawling now with the number of bullets and enemies on the screen...
Every chance I get I snag a secondary weapon. And it helps. But one of the midbosses (the one that chases you around the screen and shoots at you) kills me a couple of times. But I persist!!! I take one base out. Level continues. I take another base out. Level continues. I fight another base, it kills me once. I destroy it HOPING its the last one... the level continues.
I manage to snag weapon 8. I wind up against what I'm PRAYING is the final boss, for I suddenly find myself face to face with 25 turrets. Each turret spits out a fountain of bullets at me, but thankfully weapon 8 is canceling the shots! But then it happens... a stray bullet misses the weapon 8 shot and crashes into my ship. I have something like, 4-5 lives left and a pea shooter. And these damn turrets aren't going to let up! Its just a waterfall of red bullets falling towards me.
So I dive in. I weave through the bullets, get up close to a turret, unload, and run away before it fires, all while dodging the shots of the 17 remaining turrets. All the while anytime I can I try my damndest to snag a main shot power up. Eventually, I'm face to face with the last turret, and by now I finally have a twin shot at least. I show it no mercy and finish it off.
Then the floor starts falling apart. I'm like, "YAY! Victory!!!"
And then a mass of eyes pop out of the ground.
Suddenly the screen is filled with blue bullets and these weird round shots that spiral towards you. Before things get too bad I manage to snag a weapon 3. I tear through the center three eyes in no time, leaving a pair of eyes on each side of their remains.
I fly to the left and start working on those eyes, all while trying to shoot down the wave of bullets flying at me from the right. But my level 3 shot is running out of time! I manage to take out the two eyes I'm facing and I snag a weapon 5... which is a horrible horrible homing weapon.
...
I fly over to the last pair of eyes. My main shot is a bit weak, so it isn't doing much for me as far as tearing through the bullets flying at me (as they are destructible). And the homing shot is worthless as I can only fire one slow shot at a time. But somehow I take out one of the eyes (already weak I guess?) and I proceed to unload on the final eye (which is now going NUTS)... praying that my shots can cut through the column of bullets flying out of it... and suddenly...
Its over. My hands hurt like hell. But it was finally over. I fought back the evil plant forces with a pea shooter. Fought my way through level 5 and, for the first time ever, faced level 6, and still came out on top.
Now I just await Power Strike 2.
Favorite quote uttered while playing:
"WHY THE FUCK WILL YOU NOT END?!?!?!?!?"
Heh, definitely not too shabby for my second evening owning the game though. *Well, I had it as a kid, but it had been... over a decade since I had played it*
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