GD: 1941 Counter Attack

[Imhotep]

This is a short and somewhat random introduction to the game.

1941 Counter Attack

General
The game has a live meter instead of lives. It's being refilled after every stage and there's quite a few items to regenerate. You start out with three slots (four lifes) and will upgrade to six.
Using a bomb costs a life, so use it only before a sure hit or to trigger the life-ups from the red planes.
Crashing into enemies costs a life, but scenery will make you spin instead, this can be used to shoot enemies behind you.

Items
Weapons: see below.
Sidekicks: sideplanes and shadow-plane (20'000 if you have it already). The sideplanes are destroyed after a few hits, not sure about the shadow-plane
Life-ups: Yashichi (full life back or 100'000) and POW (1 Life back or 50'000)
Score-items: golden flower (20'000), strawberry (?), cow (50'000), dragonfly (100'000). They are secret and appear when being shot.
Items that move in circles will change, fixed items are fixed.

Planes
Player 1 and Player 2 planes differ from each other, as explained in the intro. Player 2 is stated to be bigger, slower, more powerful. I haven't noticed any differences personally, but Japanese scores suggest a big difference (see below under score).

Shooting
Normal shot or charge shot. There's no autofire, you have to mash yourself or use a circuit. However, you can do without by using short bursts of charged shots, they can be released as soon as you hear the beeping noise.
For bigger enemies, these early released charge shots are the way to go.

Weapons
There's Normal, Machine Gun, Laser and Rockets. After a fixed amount of time, you are powered down to normal. Laser can deal the most damage, but the weapon of choice for most of the game is Rockets. Their spread is somewhat wide, they home in and will move along walls, which is very handy i.e. in Stage 4 and 6.
Laser has a special charge shot, two bombs instead of the many rockets.
Rockets also have the advantage to continue firing while charging.

Rank
The game has very apparent rank, there's extra enemies and bullets fired. I still haven't figured out what triggers it, but getting used to high rank is a good idea (and it's not that harsh).

Shooting percentage
It's presented to you in the end of stage tableau and determines your advancement in military rank (1, 2 or 3 rank advancements for 100%, up to Major General).
I guess this affects rank, but not sure. I don't know what it does.
I only get 100% in the first level.

Score
Apart from destroying enemies, you get points by collecting score items or Life-ups when you're already maxed out. Also, crashing side-planes into enemies multiplies their value by x10 (not sure), so it's lucrative to crash the sideplanes into bigger enemies.
I can get around 300'000 out of Stage 1.
Destroying the last boss is worth 3'000'000.

Here are the highscores from Japanese players: http://stormoid.com/gamest/1.html
they might be dated, but they give you an idea.
K.N (DO) -- 1P AUTOFIRE ON -- 14.947.800 -- ALL PERFECT
PIA-FIGHTING SPIRIT-HYT -- 1P AUTOFIRE NO -- 14.703.400
3 KAGATSU BURI NO SAIKAI -- 2P AUTOFIRE ON -- 17.525.000 -- ALL
HYT & CNT -- 2P AUTOFIRE NO -- 16.753.300

Score items
Stage 1:
golden flower in the cloud
Stage 2:
strawberry in the second part of the stage, behind the turret on the left, right before the enemies that attack from behind appear. It's not always there, in fact I've only gotten it once in a normal run. If you ramp up the difficulty in the game settings, it's always there, so I guess it's affected by rank.
cow on the left of the dam.
Stage 3:
strawberry right at the beginning of the scene with the flame tanks on rails, at the bottom.
Stage 4:
cow, in a gap at the bottom of the screen, in a left-scrolling scene with no enemies.
Stage 5:
dragonfly at the end of the stage, lots of formations with small green planes, on the left
Stage 6:
strawberry, before or after the second midboss (not sure)

Short guide

Weapon guide:
Level 2: rockets
Level 3: don't take the machine gun at the beginning, keep rockets for the whole stage, change to laser for the boss.
Level 4: rockets
Level 5: take the machine gun, then change to rockets.
Level 6: rockets all the way, laser for the final battle.

Level 3:
Early in the stage, there's two bigger tanks. To play safe, stay left or right of the main gun so that your charge shot will still hit. The rockets will take out the side turrets.
Boss 3:
After the capsule is released, you can play it safe if you want and stay top left of the screen and wait till all the turrets on the right side move by.

Level 4:
There's three or four moments when tanks move in from both sides of the screen. Stay very left or very right and hover above the tanks as they move in.
Boss 4:
Try not to get cornered as long as the Boss still has turrets and helicopters.
After the sides are destroyed, use the safespot above the lower end of the screen, a little towards the side, so the flame won't hit you.

Boss 5:
This one can mess you up. Most importantly, don't destroy the tail wing! Do it only after the sides are destroyed. Otherwise it will start to shoot hard-to-dogde five-bullet patterns.
When the fight starts, be ready on the right side of the screen and take out that part first. Each wing can be destroyed three times. After that, move to the left, don't shoot along the way!

Level 6:
Midboss 1: don't try to dogde the 5-bullet-salvos, dodge them as a whole by moving to the side.
At the scene with the many flamethrowers, stay at the top of the screen to be ready to trigger the life-up.
Midboss 2: still a bit messy, but move in through the central gap at the first chance and start pulverizing the right side, then the left, then the middle.
Boss 6: Start attacking the right side and then move in circles counter-clockwise. It might be best to take out the rocket-turrets first that are located just below the main wings.


please share your knowlegde about the game!