shmups.system11.org

ZED BLADE/OPERATION RAGNAROK




Format: Neo Geo MVS only (no official homecart or Neo Geo CD release.)
MAME: Yes
Orientation: Horizontal
Number of Stages: 8
Music: Needs lots of volume and bass
Loop: 1 loop only (TBC)
Hitbox: Laughably large for a laughably large craft - but surprisingly maneuverable.


Let's play Zed Blade and bob our heads to some hardcore Namiki choons.

This guide needs input, so please get playing this unappreciated MVS classic and PM some hints and I'll compile what ya got.

- ZED BLADE SCORING TACTICS -

1 - Basic scoring:

Zed Blade consists of a few scoring techniques. The first thing to be aware of is that shooting anything (absolutely anything) that presents a physical onscreen object results in score. For instance, the first stage has a ground section throughout, and a few rock shaped obstacles, all of which can be shot to rack up points.
The closer you are to a part of the scenery, the faster you rack up points. Point blanking the rock pillars on the first stage, the pylons on the second, the boulders on the fourth (dangerous) is a good way to fill in any gaps between onscreen enemies.
Scoring also depends on which character you choose, more on that below.

2 - Scoring by character:

Zed Blade is pretty unorthodox in its approach to scoring, and shooting the scenery isn't the end of it.
There are three characters to choose from, each of which has varying ship speeds:

Uncle Beard - slow ship speed
Ms Charlotte - medium ship speed
Swift Arnold - fast ship speed

In an odd twist, the slower your character, the more points are available to them, meaning people playing for serious scores have no choice but to play as the relatively slow Uncle Beard (what a name!)
The slower the character, the more points they receive for each scenery hit. The breakdown of point values is as follows:

Uncle Beard - 50 points per scenery hit
Ms Charlotte - 20 points per scenery hit
Swift Arnold - 10 points per scenery hit

This makes Uncle Beard a clear favourite as far as score goes, as he can reap the rewards of boss milking etc far more than the other characters. If it's survival you're after, Ms charlotte presents the best dodging speed in the game.

Thanks to LFO for contributing this important information!

3 - Stage Scoring Tricks:

Suiciding: There are extra points to be had from suiciding immediately when you start the game (crash into the floor) which releases two power ups. These are normally pretty random, as some times you get a weapon and a bomb, as opposed to two weapons (which is preferable). Either way, make sure you power up either the front main shot, rear shot or missiles - and if you're lucky enough not to get given a bomb, any of those two. Then get back to hugging the floor to build points faster.
A double suicide is done by experts at the beginning of the stage to immediately bring four power ups onto the screen (the larger your guns the faster they milk the scenery for points.)
Experiment.

Here's a video demonstrating stage one being milked to it's utmost. Note the double suicide to power up the weapons (thanks to BER for this!)

http://dic.nicovideo.jp/v/sm549412


Stage one: Shoot the ground at any free moment! This means getting pretty close sometimes, but is easier when either the wave or 3-way shot is powered up. When you see a rock pillar, point blank it for as long as possible and tap fast on the button. It's an arm killer.

Stage two: Less scenery on this one. The main things to point blank are the green pylons sticking out the ground (can't miss em.)

Stage three: Pretty much scenery free, just enjoy the amazing music. The fire breathing dragons at the end of the stage can be milked if you don't destroy them immediately. The dragons appearing from the back of the screen can be tricky when they get close, so it's easier to pummel the main body of the ones that appear from the top and bottom of the screen instead, then blow them up as they come around for a second turn.

Stage four: Boulders appear at the top and bottom of the screen, but they're fast and you can't utilise them much except for at the very beginning of the stage. The rest is too busy to stop doing anything except surviving.

Stage five to sevenNo real scenery to milk up. Your arm can have a little rest through to the end of the game (bar some boss milking tactics - see below).


(MORE INPUT REQUIRED!)

4 - Point values:

Shooting scenery rather than shooting enemies can be advantageous, especially in stage one. You should point blank the scenery when the opportunity arises, unless (as in the later levels) you've got a lot of enemy flak and not much scenery.
[Please feel free to contribute to this]

5 - Boss milking:

Boss milking is quite obvious on Zed Blade. Once you figure out that simply shooting something increases the score, it becomes obvious how to milk the bosses. Stay away from the weak points and find ways to keep them alive as long as possible.

Boss One - Roc Carrier: Moves up and down after releasing three waves of choppers from both the top and bottom. Start by getting in close to the bottom section, beneath the main chamber and shoot down the helicoptors as the appear, all the time pummeling bullets into the back section of the boss. It's possible to stay huddled low to take advantage of the floor the entire time, almost directly underneath the boss in a position where you're avoiding the weak point at the front. Watch out for bullets being released by the third helicoptor that appears, that's really the only dodging you'll need to do.
After the first form times out, the second form is the trickiest, as there are more bullets coming from the ships he releases, and faster. No real safe spot, just use some ad hoc tactics until the third form, which (if using the wave as the main shot and it's powered up enough) you can get back to the bottom of the boss again, hugging the floor. The jet planes he releases will shoot over you, and then fly straight down and get blown up by your weapon - simple.

Boss Two - Lunar Walker: Simple, this one. Just stay near the back leg (watch it doesn't kick you) toward the bottom of the screen. You can sit stationary for a second to herd both sets of bullets toward you, then back off slightly to shoot them down (powered up wave gun is good for wiping them out quickly), and then return just behind the back leg after each volley. Watch out though, keep him alive long enough and his homing bullets multiply by one and he even shoots secondary bullets too - this happens faster with a higher rank. You'll need to be quick not too get caught out.

Boss Three - Cosmic Slime: This just requires a lot of circling. Point blanking is okay at the beginning, but not once it gets moving. Best thing to do is keep circling, but avoid the core. Can get tough this one, especially on the higher rank. Bomb if it gets too tight.

Boss Four - Constrictor: Fun to play but an asshole of a boss at first, but not so tough once you get used to his repeating movement around the screen. Keep it alive and you can pummel it's body for points - just watch out when he forces you to stay low as scenery boulders rush on at the foot of the screen and can catch you by surprise when you're stuck down there.

Boss Five - Loki:

The first and third forms haven't got any real milking opportunities as they're quite fast and require you to concentrate on dodging.
The second form, after you've blown off the laser cannons on the end of his tentacles, can be milked for a good while. Once the cannons have gone, just stay low. He'll shoot bullets over you and keep sending out his tentacles (which you can milk) and then retract them. As long as you stay low (and avoid scenery boulders appearing at the foot of the screen) you can milk the second form for a while.
When it gets to the third form, its back to dodging - go for the gaps in the lasers first, and avoid the bullet sprays second.

(PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTRIBUTE TO THIS)

6 - RANK

Zed Blade's rank appears to be governed entirely by the number of lives in stock. If you have three in stock, you can expect a lot more fire from stage two popcorn enemies. It doesn't make the game tremendously more difficult, but certain enemies can catch you with unexpected bullets. There's not any real reason to suicide to decrease rank, just use all those pretty bombs you got to stay alive.
Lose a life and it gets a little easier, and get down to your last and it'll slow the pace right down. Stage 5 onwards can get very tough on the highest rank, stage six being really bullet heavy. Stage seven is tough no matter what.
There does appear to be some exception to the life = rank rule, in that large scores or possibly extended boss milking produce some odd additional bullets. This is evident on Stage Two boss, Lunar Walker. Milk him for long enough and the large bullets he fires will start producing suicide bullets, which can make things very tight.

Anything else, feel free to contribute to this thread with your discoveries. Let's get playing Zed Blade!

Nice work Skykid. Thanks for your effort. I did spent some time playing with the weapon combinations last night. If I have time on the train tomorrow, I might write up my thoughts. Perhaps we could add a little weapons section?

Definitely! You can PM it or post it and I'll add it in

good topic, for i also rediscovered this little gem a few weeks ago.

addenum to basic scoring:
dependant on your character the point value of scenery-hits varies. if you use Uncle Beard, you`ll be awarded 50pts for each scenery hit. Ms Charlotte will - for the same hits - get only 20pts, and the poor Swift Arnold will only get 10.

imo, this is quite a radical scoring system, and i can't really see the benefit of using a different character than uncle beard.


ps: i only checked japanese region version and only one weapon configuration.

I get it, and that's related to their speed.

Holy crap, that explains so much - thanks for this. I was wondering why I was pulling off near perfect scoring techniques with Ms Charlotte but not beating Spadgy's score.
Back to the drawing board!

(I'll update this in the main post now! )

A few more scoring tricks:

• In addition to selecting the slow ship, you should select the following weapon combination: SHOT: WAVE; MISSILE: AS; and REAR: WAVE. These weapons will allow you to hit the scenery more often than any of the other weapons.
• You should also suicide twice right away. If you're lucky, you'll have four weapon upgrades onscreen, and you can collect them all so you can rack up points from scenery hits more often.

Here's a video demonstrating these tricks: http://dic.nicovideo.jp/v/sm549412. This player collects three REAR upgrades and one SHOT upgrade from his suicides, but I don't know whether you can get away with collecting different upgrade types and still have the same scenery hit rate.

Now if you're unlucky, you should ask the arcade operator to make the game cost fifty yen for two credits. :)

Watching CHI play the other night I learned some great stuff.

One thing that should be obvious that I hadn't considered is that releasing a bomb lets you pass through scenery for a few seconds. Particularly useful for areas where you'd otherwise loose a milking opportunity (for example the highest tower of rocks on stage one followed immediately by a ground enemy and and item character.



Watching Chi this doesn't seem the case. Following the 'prioritise enemies' rule, I score about 350k by the end of stage one. CHI pays little regard to enemies in stage one, and hugs the ground like a maniac, and at least doubles my score (maybe more?). Admittedly some of the AS missiles pound the enemies above, but prioritising the ground certainly seems to reap more points.

You can even largely ignore the popcorn on the stage one boss, and just hug the ground very close to the screen's bottom right corner so you span both the ground, the bak end of the boss, some of the waves of popcorn in the lower screen.

Thanks for this Will, I was starting to wonder about that recently. Will amend. And thanks for the tips!

@BER - amazing vid! Been looking everywhere for something like that. That's some serious milking there, and an interesting suicide tactic. His end of level score is insane.
What I can't do is hug the ground that close without dying accidentally. There's a special point where you can get the guns to basically point blank it and I can get there on the off chance - but because my mame is slightly sped up, I regularly end up tapping down minutely and it's a pixel too far.

Need a cart.

Wow, I didn't know you could milk the floor that much.. I was happy with getting just over 1 million on the first stage.

I also struggle to get to the ground too without crashing, but you can still score quite a lot without even trying to get that close.

The video Bernard linked to is pretty standard from what I've seen. It's Uncle Beard or bust. Personally, I don't see much point in playing this game for score after I learned about hugging the ground, although there is a good reason to play for the simply kick-ass soundtrack.

I understand where you're coming from, but that only massively effects the first level (I'm yet to see level eight - perhaps it does there too). Playing for score on level one does seem to undermine the game's very being, but perhaps it was designed to be played like that.

Nah, level eight is all about survival - and it's tough. I got to stg 7 and credit fed just to see if there was a new tune to the soundtrack... there is!

i hope these runs will help you on your ST guide (well stage 1 to 6 anyways...) enjoy...

stage1-2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E3vWPfdDK8
stage3-4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOHc1MUAQJ8
stage5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=difk4P2vc8s
stage6-7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAREvMDDbHQ