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A fairly unknown game, G-Stream G2020 was developed by most of the people who would eventually form Triangle Service, known particularly for XIIStag and Trizeal.
Toshiaki Fujino, the lead programmer, was not paid his salary for most (all?) of this game's development, hence his splitting off to form Triangle Service.
NAOTO, the musician, had to deal with a shitty OKI MSM6295, and probably also was not paid much if at all. He also joined Fujino at Triangle Service.
Oriental Soft Japan is (proud?) to present:
G-Stream G2020
Buttons
- A - Fire
Tap - Shot
Hold - Cancel-bomb - B - Bomb
Pressing B drops the bomb directly in front of you. The longer you hold B, the further the bomb will deploy. The timing feels pretty natural, so it shouldn't be too difficult to figure out the timings you want.
- Powerups
- Powerup bar is located at the bottom corner of the screen.
- There are 10 slots for powerups.
- Acquiring a powerup will put it on the center-most slot, and shift all of the other powerups outwards.
- The outside-most powerup will be lost.
- Red powerup is a spread shot.
- Blue powerup is a laser.
- Green powerup is homing missiles.
- If you fill up the powerup bar with a single color, picking up that powerup again will give a 10000 point bonus.
- Medals
- Medals increase in value for each medal acquired.
- Medals are always worth the value that they appear to be.
- Every medal you acquire increases the chain by 1, even if you've already acquired that medal value in the chain.
- Medal values are in this order: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100, 500, 1000.
- Whenever you drop a medal, the chain is reset to 0.
- The medals accelerate fast. You have to know where and when they are dropping.
- Cancel-bomb
- The bomb will cancel all enemy bullets that hit it and turn them into medals.
- The generated medals do not affect the medal chain.
- The generated medals will always be the value of the medal chain when the bomb was dropped.
- Cancel-level
- The cancel level is displayed above the powerup bar.
- If there is a blinking "OK!" next to the level, you are able to fire the cancel-bomb.
- The higher your cancel level, the longer the bomb will be active.
- The cancel level must be at least 56 to fire the cancel-bomb.
- The cancel level is increased by absorbing the small colorized particles released from destroying an enemy.
- The cancel level increases in increments of 8.
- The cancel level is capped at 999.
- The cancel level is displayed above the powerup bar.
- Extends
- No known extends
- 1P/2P Difference
- 1P is slower than 2P
- 1P is stronger than 2P (?)
- 2P has some bugs on the high-score screen.
Scoring Breakdown
- The main scoring mechanics are the medals (which is fairly simple), the cancel-bomb (which takes intricate planning and is complex), and quick-kill bonuses.
- For the medals, the easiest way to keep the chain up is to have a fair balance of Red and Blue powerups, and you should avoid Green powerups like the plague.
- You will want primarily Blue because Red is a spread shot. Green is a bad choice because it's homing. The goal is to always have your shots in front of you so that you can collect the falling medals.
- Cancel-bomb scoring isn't as easy to describe. It requires knowing the stages and enemies. The most optimal solution is to find enemies that fire large streams of bullets, make sure you have 1k value medals, and then drop a cancel-bomb on top of the enemy and gather the medals.
- You can earn extra points from killing multiple enemies in quick succession, much like Raiden Fighters. Whenever you kill enemies within a few frames of each other, a "5000" text will pop up where they were, and you will earn 5000 points.
- Another complex mechanic in this game is what I call the special segments. These parts of the stage seem to be unlocked depending on when you kill a certain enemy/set of enemies. I haven't figured out most of these, but I am in the process of doing so. If you know any, please let me know!
- Special Segments
- Segment 0
- Description: Large plane that fires 8 shots in a "burst" pattern.
- Requirements: (None)
- Segment 1
- Description: 5 planes that shoot streams of bullets
- Requirements: Unknown (involves killing Segment 0 at a certain time?)
- Segment 2
- Description: 2 "cannon" planes
- Requirements: Unknown (involves killing Segment 1 at a certain time?)
- Segment 3
- Description: 2 large "burst" planes
- Requirements: Unknown (involves killing Segment 2 at a certain time?)
- Segment 3.5
- Description: 2 more large "burst" planes
- Requirements: Unknown (involves killing Segment 3 at a certain time?)
- Segment 4
- Description: Large "rush" planes
- Requirements: Unknown (involves killing Segment 3 (or 3.5) at a certain time?)
- Segment 0
- Recommended Cancel-bomb Targets
- The red/blue "fat" planes in the beginning fire a pretty significant stream of bullets that can probably be cancel-bombed for profit. You probably won't have enough cancel level to use it on the earlier ones, so the last one that appears should be your best bet.
- The 5 planes in Segment 1 can probably be cancel-bombed for significant profit, given you maintained your medal chain.
- Boss Tactics
- Destroying individual pieces of the boss drops medals.
- The laser quickly kills this boss, but you can't get all of the medals due to it.
- Special Segments
- Segment 1
- Description: WARNING text, and a screen full of tanks.
- Requirements: Kill most of the tanks during the sideways scroll. The two on the very left that zip by and don't stay on screen don't need to be killed, but you must kill the others in time.
- Segment 1 - Alternate
- Description: A small dense forest with tanks coming out in random directions.
- Requirements: Do not encounter the normal segment 1.
- Segment 2
- Description: Three large blue tanks
- Requirements: None
- Segment 3
- Description: Twin railway with one train coming from bottom-left and one from top-right
- Requirements: Kill off the three large blue tanks before any hit the bottom 40ish pixels of the screen. If the scrolling speeds up while one of these is present you'll know you've failed, and will go straight to the boss segment.
- Segment 1
- Recommended Cancel-bomb Targets
- I would recommend NOT using the cancel bomb during the stage, as the boss has many long streams that can be canceled for more medals (provided your medal chain is still alive).
- Boss Tactics
- I recommend destroying all of the parts of the boss, and collecting their medals. That should leave the boss with just the main turret, and you with a full medal chain.
- After that, get your cancel-bomb ready, and fire it as soon as the main turret starts firing. Depending on how many particles you collected, this can be worth quite a significant amount of points.
- Special Segments
- Recommended Cancel-bomb Targets
- Boss Tactics
- Special Segments
- Recommended Cancel-bomb Targets
- Boss Tactics