ST: Blazing Lazers / Gunhed

For posting and requesting strategic gameplay tips on shmups!
Post Reply
User avatar
Zach Keene
Posts: 1054
Joined: Tue Jan 25, 2005 10:38 pm
Location: Flenceburg
Contact:

ST: Blazing Lazers / Gunhed

Post by Zach Keene »

BLAZING LAZERS / GUNHED

At the moment this is going to focus more on documenting the weapon system and various other secrets than a full-blown walkthrough or boss strategy. Let's face it, this really isn't a terribly difficult game at the default setting.

- GAMEPLAY -

Pretty basic stuff. You've got your shot button, your bomb button, and four selectable speeds (press Select to cycle through them.) As your main weapon powers up, a shield will form around the sides of your ship. These will allow you to take a few hits from the sides without dying, but at the cost of a few weapon levels. Also note you're still vulnerable from the front and back.

By default you'll be sent back to a checkpoint upon death, but you can earn (and stockpile) instant respawns by collecting Flashing Gels. Anytime you have at least one respawn in stock, your "ships remaining" indicator at the bottom right of the screen will turn gold. However there's no way to tell how many respawns you have in total. (Well, short of seeing how many times you can die without being sent back. :P)

As you'll play you'll encounter several different kinds of powerups to fuel your reign of destruction:
  • Weapon Orb - labelled with a Roman numeral. Collect to switch weapons or power up your current one.
  • Subweapon - labelled with an "F", "H", "M", or "S". Collect for various effects which will be detailed further down, and also to increase your bomb stock by one.
  • Purple Gel - Collecting these will power up your main weapon, though as your weapon power increases the number of Gels you'll need to collect for the next level also increases.
  • Flashing Gel - Eliminates all enemies onscreen, and increases your respawn counter by one.
  • 8-Way - Appears if certain conditions are met and gives your craft 8-way firing ability (essentially a souped up Weapon I.) This technically isn't either a main weapon or subweapon, and can be combined with Weapon IV.
Occasionally green powerup carriers appear that leave behind "cycling" Weapon or Subweapon power-ups. You can either wait for them to change into the powerup you want and grab it, or change it into a Flashing Gel for respawning goodness. This can be accomplished in two ways:
  • Shoot it. A lot. (They have 180 HP.)
  • Wait for it to drift to the bottom of the screen, at which point it will automatically change into the Flashing Gel and drift back up the screen.
Extra lives are awarded at 20000, 50000, 100000, 200000, and then every 200000 thereafter.

- WEAPON LEVELS / PURPLE GELS -
Your main weapons have seven different power levels, though it seems sometimes that two levels may differ only in the strength of your side shields. In order to increase your weapon's power, do one of the following:
  • Collect a Weapon Orb of the same type as your current weapon.
  • Accumulate a sufficient number of Purple Gels as per the following chart.

Code: Select all

Current Level                Gels Needed
0                            1
1                            2  
2                            4 
3                            8
4                            12
5                            16
6                            -
Collecting a Weapon Orb does not reset the number of Gels you have gathered. For example, assume you have a level 2 Weapon I, then collect 3 Gels, then a Weapon I Orb. You're now at level 3, but you only need 5 more Gels to increase to level 4.

Upon reaching level 6, the game continues counting how many Gels you've collected, but resets the count every 4 gels. The importance of this will be explained further on in the Carriers section.

- WEAPONS - <section under construction>
It seems level 0 for all weapons is a weak single shot forward, with a limit of 3 onscreen rounds. This sucks, so grab something immediately.
  • Weapon I - Photon Blaster
    Your basic Star Soldier style vulcan cannon. It may not have the screen coverage of some of the other weapons, but don't underestimate it when you've got a single tough target that needs killing, and quickly. When reinforced by the F subweapon, all forward-aimed shots are replaced by fireballs that explode into several smaller shots upon hitting a target.
    • Level 1 - Double shot forward, limit 3 rounds
    • Level 2 - Double shot forward, limit 4 rounds.
    • Level 3 - Double shot forward (limit 4), single shot directly behind (limit 2.) Side shields appear at this level.
    • Level 4 - 3-way shot forward (limit 4 front, 2 sides) with a single shot directly backwards (limit 2.)
    • Level 5 - 3-way forward identical to Level 4, 2-way diagonal shot behind (limit 2).
    • Level 6 - Same as level 5, but all diagonal shots now have a 3 round limit.
  • Weapon II - Power Wave
    A bit on the weaker side, but makes up for it by having penetration abilities and covering much of the screen at higher levels.
  • Weapon III - Field Thunder
    Starts out as your basic laser weapon but acquires some interesting firing patterns as you progress through the ranks. The F boost turns it into a green homing laser.
  • Weapon IV - Ring Blaster
    The obligatory Compile rotater weapon. Invincible orbs rotate around your ship, damaging any enemy that gets too close and even blocking bullets. You're also given a forward shot so that you're not completely lacking in long range offense.
- SUBWEAPONS -
Subweapon icons add an extra bomb to your stock (up to a max of 16) and give your ship additional abilites, as follows:
  • F - Reinforces your main weapon. See the Weapons section for details (as soon as it's written).
  • H - Homing missiles. Continuing to collect "H" icons will increase the speed of the missiles (speed maxes out after two additional pickups.)
  • M - Your basic option. You can have up to two. Collecting "M" icons after you have two option causes them to become to turn green for a limited time; in this state they can block bullets and damage enemies.
  • S - Full shields. This shield renders you completely invincible without losing weapon power for about 100 seconds... or it would, except you incur a one second penalty for every hit you take.
- CARRIERS -
Periodically you'll notice carriers appear on either side of the screen that are worth no points but leave behind power-ups when destroyed. The appearance of the silver ones that contain Weapon Orbs or Subweapon Icons seems to be fixed, but the Purple and Green ones are influenced by your actions.

In addition to their normal score value, enemies have a hidden value I'll refer to as "Carrier Points," and the game keeps track of how many Carrier Points you accumulate. (This total is, of course, kept hidden from the player.) There isn't any particular way to predict how much CP a given enemy is worth. For example, in Area 1 those little green weenies are worth 4 CP while the small turrets are worth 12, despite both being worth 100 normal points.

Every 256 CP accumulated spawns a carrier. This will usually be a Purple Gel Carrier, but every so often you'll get a green one instead. Specifically, the 8th, 16th, and 24th carriers will have the cycling Weapon Orbs, and the 32nd will leave a cycling Subweapon Icon. Then the cycle repeats.

Independently of this, another hidden counter increases each time you either collect a Weapon Orb, or for every fourth Purple Gel you collect when your weapon is already at maximum level. Every time this counter reaches a mulitple of 32 a Green Carrier with a cycling Subweapon Icon is spawned.

And there's yet another special case of Green Carrier spawing, which is:

- OBTAINING THE 8-WAY -
First, get rid of all of your bombs. Then collect 30 Purple Gels without dying, or collecting Weapon or Subweapon orbs. (Flashing Gels and non-fatal hits are okay.) At this point a green carrier will appear, and when destroyed leaves behind a strange powerup that looks like a flashing version of your ship. Grab this to obtain 8-way firing power.

The 8-Way can be combined with Weapon I or Weapon IV, though combining it with I doesn't really accomplish anything. You may also grab your choice of Subweapons again once you have the 8-Way. Switching to II or III disables the 8-Way; assuming this won't put you over your powerup limit (see below), switching back to I or IV will reactivate it.

Each 8-Way icon collected increases a hidden counter by 10. Collecting Weapon Orbs, Subweapon icons, or triggering a level-up via Purple Gels will decrease this counter by 1. If it hits 0, the 8-Way will be lost. So choose your post 8-Way powerups wisely (or use Area 3 to stockpile 8-Way Icons.)

- SECRETS, CODES, CHEATS, ETC. - <section under construction>
To help avoid confusion among the various versions (i.e., the PCE's II is mapped to the Wiimote's 1 and vice versa), I'll be referring to the buttons as Bomb and Shoot.
  • Soft Reset - At any time hold Run and press Select to reset the game.
  • 30 Credits - After pressing Run at the title screen, hold Select until the game begins.
  • Difficulty Select - At the title or intro screens, hold Select then press (Bomb, Shoot) 10 times. This takes you to a screen where you can choose between "Hard Human" and the default "Normal Dog". Repeat the code once more to add "Super Mania" to the possible selections. Then, do the code still once more to unlock "God of the Game". Once you have your preferred difficulty selected, perform a soft reset to exit this screen.
  • Sound Test - At the title or intro screens, press (Left, Right) 8 times. This doesn't need to be done particularly quickly, but it must be done accurately. (Holding Select is not necessary.)
  • Debug Mode - While in Sound Test mode, press Bomb, Shoot, then Select 21 times. If you entered the Sound Test code during the intro, a ship or laser blast may appear at the bottom of the screen. Otherwise there's no indication that you're in debug mode other than you can now select "sounds" higher than 4C.
  • Stage Select - While in Debug Mode, select a number from 00 to 09. Simply press Run to start normally, or hold Bomb+Shoot and press Run to start with 10 lives, bombs, and respawns.
User avatar
DJ Incompetent
Posts: 2373
Joined: Tue Jun 13, 2006 10:28 pm
Location: Murda Mitten, USA

Post by DJ Incompetent »

Ah yes. The Homing. Some tricks nobody realizes..
1. If you pick up Homing a 4th time in a row, the explosions turn blue with a lot more damage, finally making the weapon useful.
2. When you have H and II, III, or IV, you can only keep 4 missiles on-screen. However, switch to I at anytime and you can have 8.

5-way max homing is my combination of choice.

Never tested that with 8-way. I wager 8-shot * 8-way-H is possible. But it's not worth obtaining on higher difficulties anyway.
User avatar
Turrican
Posts: 4690
Joined: Wed Jan 26, 2005 5:28 am
Location: Landorin
Contact:

Re: ST: Blazing Lazers / Gunhed

Post by Turrican »

Zach Keene wrote:Difficulty Select - At the title or intro screens, hold Select then press (Bomb, Shoot) 10 times. This takes you to a screen where you can choose between "Hard Human" and the default "Normal Dog". Repeat the code once more to add "Super Mania" to the possible selections. Then, do the code still once more to unlock "God of the Game". Once you have your preferred difficulty selected, perform a soft reset to exit this screen.
I hate this. To hide difficulties like that is the most idiotic thing they could do.
Image
X - P - B
User avatar
Codiene
Posts: 29
Joined: Mon Sep 28, 2020 10:30 am

Re: ST: Blazing Lazers / Gunhed

Post by Codiene »

I remember there being a Japanese Gunhed strategy guide. Was this book ever scanned and posted anywhere?
WelshMegalodon wrote:Both of those run just fine in MAME 0.222, pal. Maybe the problem is your shit-tier hardware.
Post Reply