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Figured we should have a discussion thread for Varth...

To get started, I'd like to know what affects rank in this game. The way I'm playing, at stage 2 the bullets are already very fast, and nothing seems to stop the rank increase (keeping powered down, not picking up pod or items doesn't seems to affect rank).

Also, how do I use smart pods effectively? They give you good protection, but every now and then, they let a bullet slip in and I die. It's annoying because you can't predict when it's going to happen.

"smart pods suck, fixed pods rule, hey why are the bullets so fast??"

fixed pods: bullet speed increased the longer you have them
smart pods: number of bullets increased the longer you have them
no pods: no rank increase

Okay, now that I'm back at this, I did some testing to see rank differences.

Fixed pods = fast rank increase. That explains the fast bullets early in the game.
Smart pods = slow rank increase. Didn't really noticed more bullets on-screen. Bullet speed increases with time too, although more slowly than fixed pods.
No pods = same rank increase as smart pods.

Also, this should give an idea of hitbox size:

Here's the 300k bonus from the ST4 Boss method:-
a la Icarus -
"I have a nice little two bomb technique. The key factor is definitely the giant fan charging the big attack, but to get the bonus, it should NOT be charging when it self-destructs. I find that if you cancel the charge with a bomb as you quickly destroy the two gun batteries, you'll more often than not get the 300k bonus.

EDIT4: Here's a quick videoclip of my technique in action.

http://www.thestudio-uk.com/namako_ftp/ ... s_300k.avi

The key here is to not damage the other gun battery at all - you want to leave it completely intact. Concentrate all your fire on the left side one and destroy it. The giant fan will start to charge, but if you release a bomb, it'll cancel the attack - as the bomb is working, concentrate your fire on the remaining gun battery, and it should be destroyed before the giant fan can do anything else. Then leave the giant fan to self-destruct.

Instant 300k bonus, via exploitable "bug". ^_-"

It's impressive what you guys can find out, seriously. Pretty interesting bug.

I suppose it's possible to replicate that on the stage 21 boss?

Okay, I did my own research on the stage 4 boss, and came up with my own conclusions:

- The bonus you get from the boss depends on how fast you kill it. It starts at 30.000 and decreases with time.

- According to the japanese wikipedia on Varth, this bug happens if the bonus you get is either 27.000 or 29.000 points, which will instead give you 270.000 or 290.000 points, respectively.

- Here's a video of myself killing it as fast as possible and getting the 290.000 bonus: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=UDK1R0M8

- If you don't kill it fast enough, you might get the 28.000 bonus, which won't trigger the bug. If you aren't confident enough to go for the 290.000 bonus, you can try the technique shown in DEL's video to get the 270.000 bonus, but that's 20.000 points you're missing there.

I did try try killing the boss in many different ways, but how you do it doesn't really matter. As long as you kill the boss on the right time, you'll trigger the bug.

I'm not all that good at Varth (read: I can only get to Stage 8 on 1 credit), but it seems to me that the easiest way for me to get at least that far is using Smart Pods plus never changing weapons to the wide shot or laser, just keeping the machine gun weapon and powering it up to max as fast as possible.

Smart pods do tend to fail more on side attacks than front attacks, I've noticed, so I tend to try to avoid the edges and the very bottom part of the screen. In particular, enemy tank shots from the bottom/side of the screen seem to be the easiest ones to slip past the smart pods, and the smart pods also seem to be unable to react to all the faster boss shots.

I also tend to use an alternating two finger button press technique on the fire button (very similar to the Joust Double-flap technique for rapid flying). Small planes and ground tanks usually don't need this technique, but larger planes and bosses seem to definitely need this technique. This technique actually fires faster than the standard firing rate vs. when the fire button is just pulsed (held down, released just before the firing stops, repeat) to keep a continuous fire going.

Finally, if it hasn't been mentioned before, shaking the joystick left and right at a rather quick speed will make the bomb regeneration progress bar increase a lot more quickly than just letting it gradually fill up on its own. This is often more convenient at the end of a stage, when the bonus points are awarded, but can also be done in small gaps in between enemy attacks.

Anyone know how to access the "secret stage" zones ?

This game is an amazing piece of work with what's quoted around the net at 30 stages to completion,
but I have seen with my own eyes the words "secret stage" and "bonus stage" on screen.

I'm not sure of the trigger to access the secret stages it was years ago.
But I'll have a hap-hazard guess it has to do with either, score being even or odd, hitting a secret object
or completing a certain boss without using bombs.

I know if you wiggle/waggle that joystick from side to side rapidly you're bombs will recharge a lot faster.
You do get high bonus for having max bombs when completing a round, so that could be the key.
Had a 30 min search online for anything regarding unlocking the secret stages on Varth.
Anyone know the exact technique please post here below.

Also key in getting far in this game is to use fixed pods. Ignore smart pods like the plague.

If you lose your last life somewhere on stages 20 to 25 and continue, you'll go back to stage 20 and it'll show as "bonus stage", that's probably what you've seen. I have no idea about a secret stage, what's it like?



Fixed pods makes the rank go insane pretty fast. I'd suggest playing with smart pods.