shmups.system11.org

For those who don't know, Tumiki Fighters is a doujin shmup by Kenta Cho. Available here.

Anyhow, it's been described as "KATAMARI + SHOOTER LOL". I dunno what all that's about, but basically you can stick fallen enemies to your ship by catching them. These ships provide additional firepower and shielding. There's no limit to the number that can be attached, but factors such as bullets hitting them or other completely outrageous (yeah right) occurences serve as obstacles towards this. It can be played for scoring or survival, and quite expectedly, I’ll be focusing heavily on the scoring aspect.

SECRET HAXX CODE ZOMG
stage select
Just switch the files around to put whatever stage you want to practice as stage 1.

Video Demos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5FR4sHf0rw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RotdI6kaDVs
^ super old crappy 2.9M run
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHXLj8O0hvE
^stage 4 920k

Anyhow, omgwtf table of contents
I. Controls
II. Mechanics
III. General Strategy
IV. Level Breakdown

I. Controls
z- shot
x- slow
arrows- move

II. Mechanics
Collision Detection- Hit box located at the orange box cockpit thing. Only collisions with enemy bullets (not ships) are lethal, so go nuts and start pointblanking everything.

Catching- Fallen enemies that come into contact with your ship or one of your stuck pieces stick to your ship, provided you don't have slowkey held. Stuck enemies provide additional firepower and armor unless slowkey is held. Large ships (2k+ point) fire straight, small and medium ones fire in the direction they're facing. For scoring, you want to pointblank as many enemies as possible. Stuck pieces fall off when hit or when a stage is completed.

Shot- Direction temporarily changes as you move up and down. Attached pieces fire automatically, main shot fires only when shot is held.

Slowkey- Attached enemies are sucked in and can't be hit when slowkey is held. Ship direction for main shot is fixed during this time.

Stuck Bonus- Gain 1/2 attached enemy value per second, drops to 1/10 with slowkey. Offscreen pieces don't leech any points. The values have a funny way of rounding sometimes (ie 1200 point stage 1 roof things giving 500 bonus).

Rank- Little or no effect on stage enemies. Midbosses and bosses increase in difficulty (rate of fire, number of bullets etc.) somewhat proportionally to the number of pieces you have attached. Large and medium pieces will have much greater rank increase effects than small pieces. High rank bosses (actually, only the first and fourth boss, more on this later) must be survived on scoring runs.

Death- Standard temp invincibility upon death. Currently attached pieces are spewed all over the screen to pick up. Generally speaking, death bad. Possible exception with a suicide tactic at the beginning of Stage 4, but we'll get into that later. Picking up all your pieces again will spread them out like crazy, which you don't want.

Extends- First 200k, every other at multiples of 500k (200k, 500k, 1M etc.)

Destroy Bonus- 30k + 500 * remaining timer. Maxes out at 60k. You don't want to speedkill bosses though, more on that in general strategy section.

Remain Bonus- 30k * extra lives when you clear the game.

III. General Strategy
-Attach as many pieces as possible without losing many, while keeping the attached pieces in a relatively compact area. Just pointblank as many things as you can. Kill kill kill. Attach everything. Holy shit points. Small and medium pieces should be attached asap so they shoot backwards and won’t shoot down a boss when you’re milking it.
-Milk bosses. Every boss has at least 1 completely pathetic form that takes no effort to survive. Have attached pieces out and gain massive amounts of points while letting the boss timer run out.
-Speedkilling midbosses spawns bonus enemies, as in many other shmups.
-3 piece enemies (seen in stages 1, 4, and 5) at most quickly taken out by killing one side, then core. The core is damaged when a side piece explodes. The 3 piece enemies in stage 3 don’t count though, even though they do have 3 pieces.
-Move up and down to provide sweeping fire with main shot for small enemies that spawn from the right.

IV. Level Breakdown
Note that this is for a scoring run, obviously. You’ll need to face high rank bosses for milking opportunities, so this describes strategies for dealing with those, and not wimpy low rank ones.

Suggested scores for 4M run.

Stages 1-3 700k each
Stage 4 1M, 1 suicide at beginning
Stage 5 400k
End of game bonus 270k

Stage 1
0:05 Heli M x1 (300,500)
0:07 Fighter S x7 (100)
0:15 Dive Bomber S x8 (100)
0:20 House M x1 (400,400,1000)
House Midboss (2000,1000,1000,5000) + Bonus
Bonus Fighter S x? (100) + Heli M x? (300,500)
0:60 Roof L x4 (1200) + Dive Bomber S x20 (100)
1:20 House M x1 (300,500) + Fighter S x13 (100)

Midboss can be killed fast enough for first medium helicopter to spawn at bottom. However, this might or might not be a good idea since the side houses have base values of 1k. Hard to tell which is better atm.
Before Boss Suggested Score: 360k (when warning appears)
Additional Note: Stage one medium helicopters should not be pointblanked too close. Must concentrate fire on front piece to kill faster. Point blanking will cause your shot to hit back piece.

Boss 1: Doppleganger
1:00 timer
Phase 1
A) Aimed Rotating Vulcans
B) bottom Aimed 3 Way + top Aimed Rotating Fan beam
cycle
Just watch where A is going and dodge. Not worth it to try to guide it imo.
B self explanatory.

Phase 2
A) Aimed Spam x 2 x 2
B) Aimed x 3 x 2
cycle

Phase 3 (Milking time)
A) aimed bullet
B) 2 Way Trail (half health)
C) 2 Way Trail Rapid
Destroy the seed bullets before they generate other bullets for B.
Retreat during C to avoid killing boss early. Kill boss after timer runs out for extra 30k.

Stage 2
0:00 Fighter L x1 (500,1500) + Bonus
Bonus UFO S x? (150) + Heli2 M x? (400)
0:30 Fighter L x1 (500,1500)
Helicopter Midboss (4000,7000) + Bonus
Bonus Fighter S x? (100) + Fighter M x? (500,500)
1:10 UFO S x4 (150)
1:20 UFO L x1 (400,1500) + UFO S x5 (150)

2nd piece on large UFO should not be attached under any circumstance, intereferes with milking due to its damage output.
The front guns on the large fighters are optional, same reason. Do whatever works for you.
The first large fighter's body is also optional, since it may screw up early piece attachments with its large size.
Watch out for the small UFOs.

Boss 2: Giant Helicopter
1:00 timer
Phase 1
A) Forward Exploding Bombs
Pointblank 2nd piece. Easy.

Phase 2
skipped

Phase 3 (milking time)
X) nothing
A) needle spam
B) rapid needle spam (low health)
It should start at X if you followed instructions for phase 1. Just milk, and try not to damage the boss.

Stage 3
0:00 UFO2 M x4 (400,800)
0:10 UFO2 S x3 (150)
0:14 Fighter3 M (500,1000,500) + UFO2 S x8 (150)
0:24 Fighter3 M (500,1000,500) + UFO2 S x10 (150)
0:30 Windmill L (soon lol) + UFO2 S x8 (150)
Midboss (soon lol) + Bonus
bonus UFO2 M x? (400,800) + UFO2 S x? (150)
1:10 Windmill L (soon lol) + UFO2 S x7 (150)

Midboss 2nd phase should be pointblanked for a few seconds, then taken down from a distance. Do not angle the shot.
I have not figured out a way to pointblank the 2nd set of medium UFOs without losing pieces. So just get both pieces off the ones after the midboss. I doubt the method for stage 1 medium helicopters will work here.

Boss 3: Giant UFO
i dunno, it looks like some cross or mine or eye or something with a ufo or upside down boat stuck onto it
1:00 timer
Phase 1
A) Rotating Lasers + Aimed Needle
B) Rotating Shit + Aimed 3 Way
Angle up and guide the bullets downward for A. Just let your pieces out in bursts to block B.

Phase 2 (milking time)
A) Gravity Bombs
B) not activated (half health)
Just stay in the top left and milk lol. Make sure your pieces are onscreen or else you won't score points. Time the sucker out.

Thanks a lot. A proper strategy guide for this gem! Hope I´ll find some time to read and watch all this and give this cute game another go.

Heh, glad that someone apprectiates this guide.

Anyhoo, minor change on aiming mechanism of stage 1 boss's rotating vulcans. Apparently all of it's aimed. Down up motion followed by a pause will work fine for dealing with it.

old crap post ignore
[size=0]Level 5 scoring strategy demonstration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKwzr9O9bpc

Lots of revisions in midboss tactics.

The first midboss in the vid wasn't handled optimally. Didn't realize the second part of their attack pattern could be avoided completely by flying behind them.

And I didn't blindspot the final boss because the blindspot isn't completely safe. It requires periodic flying towards the right whenever the 3 way swerves down. Sounds simple, but the blue lasers target the extreme right of the screen, so this requires quite a bit of precision. I think blind spot for 1 attack cycle then running to left side of screen would be the safest method.

And I snuck my 2.7M score in for an ego boost. I have no idea how the heck I got a game over though, especially after getting 6 extends. Gotta stop sniffing all that coke. >_>[/size]

i update this guide because it is lame

Almost done, but I doubt I'll meet the deadline I set for myself cuz I lazy ZOMG

Finally got around to play this game a bit more seriously (maybe because it´s the only scoring system I can stand right now).



I thought that wouldn´t work on the Mac version until I figured out you can "open" the program icons and mess with the contents. Thanks for the tip.

since I'm too lazy to do stages 4 and 5 right now...

stage 4 boss phase 3
pointblank left piece

stage 5
fighters midboss
leader fighter shoots aimed
other 2 fixed
pointblank leader fighter first, try to suck in pieces right after attaching it to avoid losing piece (it should die after firing 2nd burst)
other 2 fighters die in 1 burst each

ufos midboss
A) aimed spread + aimed laser X2
B) aimed explosions X2
pointblank bottom for first A volley, pull back and suck in pieces to avoid aimed lasers
then dodge A normally with pieces sucked in (or shield yourself if you're a wuss)
Pointblank so that B doesn't have a chance to explode
Try to distribute damage evenly so that they die at roughly same time (I lost one of the midbosses because the other one killed a while after it got attached)