Chikyuu Kaihou Gun ZAS
Game Boy
Developer: T&E Soft Publisher: T&E Soft
By: GammaBetaAlpha
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Table of Contents
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How to Play [HELP]
Walkthrough [WALK]
Contact Info [CONT]
Credits [CRED]
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How to Play
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[HELP]
Chikyuu Kaihou Gun ZAS is a vertically-scrolling shoot'em'up game, often
referred to as a shmup. This means that your own plane can fire bullets at
enemies to destroy them while avoiding enemy fire. Chikyuu Kaihou Gun ZAS may
also be the greatest shmup ever released for the Game Boy, but it was never
released outside of Japan.
The game does not really do anything unique gameplay wise, with the only
thing setting it out being the use of two support pods, somewhat like the Power
Pod from the R-Type games. By pressing the A (or B button on a secondary control
scheme), the support pods can be split from or combined to your main ship.
Separately, they fire bullets, spreading your attack range, while combined they
add to your main bullet stream, focusing an intense amount of fire on a single
line of fire.
Chikyuu Kaihou Gun ZAS also has a scoring system, up to 999,999 points,
with 50,000 points coming per extra life you have on hand at the end of the
game.
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CONTROLS
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These are default controls. However, you can change the control scheme
in the set-up menu so A is shoot and B is combine/split up.
A - Combine/Split up your Support Pods
B - Shoot (Hold for auto-fire)
Start - Pause Game
D-Pad - Moves your ship around
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DIFFICULTY
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To the author's best knowledge, the changes in difficulty involve two
things: the amount of damage an enemy ship takes before it is destroyed, and
certain enemy behaviours. For example, in the first stage the odd mine-and-spike
type enemies that are connected by a small chain have only a single link
connecting them in easy mode, but have three in hard mode. Meanwhile, the mid
boss fires off laser attacks at a fairly slow pace in Easy, but the same lasers
move across the screen much quicker in Hard.
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Walkthrough
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[WALK]
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STAGE ONE
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•For the first 45 seconds or so, you will face off against ships that
come in from the top of the screen or side that only spit out regular bullets,
one at a time. Use the time to familiarise yourself with their movement
patterns, as lots of enemies in this game will swoop around.
•After, you will get six ships, three on either side coming from the top
left and top right that will fire lasers straight south and loop around before
leaving off-screen. Following this, you get an armoured ship. Fire at it to
break the shell before going up to collect its remains.
•You will then come into a minefield with mines attached to spiked balls
connected by links. The spiked balls will rotate around, presenting a hazard as
you go through. You can, however, shoot at the spiked balls and force them to
rotate in the opposite direction, though they may do so at a much quicker speed
than they were originally moving at. You can mostly stick to the sides though it
will not get you all the way through.
•MIDBOSS: The game's first midboss only moves left and right across the
top of the screen, but it absolutely adores spamming bullet fire. It has two
attacks: first, it can send out mines like the ones from before, so be aware of
the trick of shooting the spikes to reverse its rotation if you need to dodge
around an attack. Secondly, the midboss ship can fire two lasers straight south,
the speed varying with the game difficulty mode. No real trick to the boss: just
be sure to make use of shooting the spikes as needed to avoid getting caught in
between mines and lasers.
•After defeating the midboss, you will encounter several ships that spit
out missiles that will home in on your ship. However, your own bullets can
destroy the missiles in midair before they reach you, so make use of that.
•Once the missile-firing ships begin to head off-screen, quickly move
up, as for the first time in the game you will have ships coming from below, so
you obviously do not want to be destroyed by contact damage. They do not fire
anything more than pea-shot bullets, however.
•From there on out, it is mostly more enemies coming from the side and
top firing pellet shots. At one point a couple of enemies will come out from the
bottom corners, and you can expect a few more laser-firing enemies from above
shortly before the appearance of the stage's boss.
STAGE ONE BOSS
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•The only way to damage this boss is to shoot it at its center core
area, so you need to be able to fire constantly and not have too many bullets
soaked up by the rest of the boss ship.
•The stage one boss's movement is fairly simple, going through a
constant upside-down parabola, going from the left side of the screen to the top
side of the screen to the right side of the screen and back again. Following
this pattern makes it easy to exploit the movements of the boss to fire at it
repeatedly.
•The boss has only one attack: it will spit out X-shaped orbs from its
claw-like arms that typically do several loops around the bottom of the screen
before either going off-screen or attaching to the outside of the boss's armour.
If you manage to break one either in mid-air or off the boss's armour, it will
instead turn into a smaller bullet that flies towards the bottom of the screen,
so if you break a ball near your ship, quickly move to avoid getting killed by a
bullet.
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STAGE TWO
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•Unlike the first level, Stage Two is an inside level, with walls on
either side of the level as well as several outstretches of the wall, and gun
turrets hanging around in the centre of the screen.
•At the start, as you scroll up, you will encounter multiple guns
mounted to the ceiling. Split your ship pods and spam your fire to destroy the
guns and prevent them from shooting at you as you continue through.
•Multiple bipedal robots will be walking back and forth as you make your
way through the level, and they will shoot pea-sized bullets straight at you
regardless of their location. Given that several of them are protected by small
sections of wall croppings, you can only outlast them as you go by them and
avoid fire.
•Past the bipedal robots, you will get three sections of roof that are
destructable. First you must focus fire on them to get a section of roof to
fall, then you need to either dodge the falling section of roof or destroy it,
then make your way past the now-open section of the ceiling.
•The next little bit involves the previous elements of mounted turrets
and bipedal robots. Stay close to the bottom of the screen as you will see two
lengths of wall temporarily extend across the screen, but they will retract back
in place before the bottom of the screen scrolls up to them.
•Following a little bit more action, you should be taken into a chamber
where the scrolling stops as you take on the midboss.
•MIDBOSS: Stage Two's midboss will rotate around the length of the room
counterclockwise, then after it has finished a full rotation, zooms straight
down to the bottom-centre of the screen. It will return to the top of the
screen, then rotate around once more, this time clockwise, before zooming to the
bottom again and back up. While this movement pattern repeats, it will be
shooting out very small blocks, two at a time, at diagonals that sometimes go
south and sometimes go north, and have wildly variant angles. The blocks stick
to the walls, so you have a limited period of time to destroy the boss before
you get overwhelmed with a shrinkage in the fighting area.
•Stick to the bottom of the screen once finished fighting the midboss.
Some of the laser-shooting enemies from the first screen return, and you will
get a couple of horizontal wall extensions again followed by more wall-mounted
turrets and bipedal robots.
•After another section of destructable roofs, you have an awkward
section of mines that you need to destroy to carve a path through. Split your
pods apart and fire, and your right pod should be able to slightly overlap with
the wall to hit some of the mines and blow them up preemptively. Following that
and some more ships and turrets, you will encounter the boss of this area.
STAGE TWO BOSS
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•The boss is only vulnerable to damage for a short period of time at the
end of every round of combat, when the 'head' sticks out of the centre of the
ceiling, up until it retracts back into place.
•At the start of every round, small blocks will come out mostly towards
the centre of the screen and some of them towards you rship, flying around for a
bit before freezing in place, forming a fairly solid mass of blocks.
•Once all the blocks are frozen in place, the boss will come out of its
shell and swing two long whiskers or tentacles that touch nearly the entire
screen, destroying all on-screen blocks. However, the whiskers do not touch the
very bottom left and bottom right corner, so that is a good place to hide out -
only AFTER all the blocks have been laid, howeve. If you stay there all the time
some of the blocks will go towards the corner.
•Once the whiskers make a once-through, quickly move to the centre of
the screen and start firing at the boss. You may want to move up close to its
head to reduce the flight time of your ammunition spam to damage the boss a
little bit more before its head fully retracts. As soon as it has disappeared
back into the ceiling, quickly back away lest you get harmed by a block coming
out from the top side again.
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STAGE THREE
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•You will initially be swarmed by several waves of regular filler ships
that spam small pea-sized bulletfire at you. Progress through.
•After some time, you will get a new type of enemy ship which will drop
straight down from the top on the left and right side of the screen and fire
laser beams sideways before moving back up to the top of the screen.
•Following that new type of ship, you get another new enemy type in the
form of slightly larger foes that come one at a time and launch multiple homing
missiles at once. As before with homing missiles, you can destroy them in mid-
air with your lasers. Since these enemies will continue firing the homing
missiles, make sure to pick them off as quickly as they come on-screen.
•You will get another swarm of normal enemies and then some more side-
laser ships before encountering the midboss.
•MIDBOSS: There is no real trick or gimmick to the midboss, who moves
left and right throughout the fight but never really goes down or up at all. It
has a head and two hands ala Andross, with the hands sending out small pea sized
bullets and the occasional vertical laser. The head does not do any attacks, but
it is what needs to be attacked in order to damage and ultimately destroy. As
stated before, there is no real trick in this fight: you simply must be able to
endure the bullet fire and respond with your own bullet shots until the midboss
is defeated.
•Afterwards, you will run into several rotating mine fields with score
bonuses inside. Each rotating mine field has a small opening in the circular
shell for you to sneak by in and then exit back out on the other side. The first
few you can fly around, but by the end you will need to be able to get through a
few fields to successfully get through the level.
•Following the fields, you get an assortment of regular enemies, homing
missile ships and horizontal-laser ships. It should also be noted that you will
get a couple of batches of enemies coming from the bottom of the screen at this
point, so beware.
STAGE THREE BOSS
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•The boss has three separate body parts, with a small main body
vulnerable to damage in the centre, and two larger bodies that are on either
side of the main body. Of the three parts, only the centre body will take
damage. All three bodies move slightly left and right throughout the course of
the fight.
•The two larger bodies on either side of the main body will shoot out
lasers straight down. As the bodies move left and right a little bit throughout
the area, the lasers are spread out enough to effectively cut off a good quarter
of the screen on either side, leaving you movement range in only the middle 50%.
•The middle body does not itself attack. Instead, it will spit out a
small spaceship one at a time that will drift south, and this spaceship lets out
a small amount of pea-shooter bullet fire. To win, you basically need to spam
bullet fire, stay out of the way of the lasers to your right and left, and dodge
both the small spaceship itself as it floats down and the bullet spray of the
ship.
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STAGE FOUR
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•At the start, you will face butterfly-esque enemies that will shoot out
orbs of energy that do not quite home in on you but do change directions after
being fired out. These enemies will be fairly prolific in the stage.
•Right after the initial two butterflies, quickly move to the left or
right before a section of wall extends from the bottom of the screen to the top
through the centre, reducing your area of movement to either the left or right
side for a while.
•Along with enemies, you will also have to shoot to destroy rock
blockage to carve out a path as you make your way through for the next little
bit. Gun turrets shaped like unicorn heads, horns and all, will also start to
appear on the wall. These guys are nasty and can fire a couple of homing
missiles at a time, so it is in your best interest to destroy them quickly.
•Caterpillar enemies will also crawl along the wall once you get past
the dividing wall and have more room to move around. They will only fire off a
couple of small bullets, but if they are not quickly destroyed, they will soon
morph into the butterfly type enemies. Shortly after encountering a few of
these, you will run into the midboss of the area.
•MIDBOSS: Once you come into the area with several small pellets laying
around, quickly shoot at the pellets to ignite them, causing three small bullets
from each of them. One of the pellets will contain the bat midboss. The bat
midboss moves between left, right, and centre, going up and down between each
attack. Every time it comes down, it shoots out an energy orb like what the
butterflies does. When it moves back up in order to move left or right, it will
leave behind a pellet as well that will explode and shoot out three bullets if
you break the pellet.
•Following the midboss you will have to deal with a lot more gun turrets
and worms/butterflies. You should soon come into an area with lots of cocoons.
Stick to the horizontal centre of the screen and the walls will close in from
the sides, leaving only a narrow amount of space for you to navigate around in.
Quickly move up to avoid getting contact damage from below from the next
midboss, a multi-bodied worm that will wriggle around and then past you, where
you will get to take it on.
•MIDBOSS 2: Quickly smash the gun turret on either wall as soon as you
get the chance. The midboss worm will shoot a homing missile from both the head
and tail, so split apart your two support pods in order to catch the missile
fire before it approaches your ship. The midboss itself moves around a lot
between the top and bottom of the screen, and tends to coil and uncoil a lot, so
watch out for it whenever it comes to the lower part of the screen. As always,
remember both the head and tail fire homing missiles, so staying too close to
either end can be fatal.
•Carrying on after the midboss battle, focus your support pods to one
condensed stream of fire in order to break a cocoon up the stage. A cocoon's
destruction will let free an easily-destroyed scorpion, so clear out just enough
room for your ship to sneak by before splitting your supports again to deal with
multiple worms, butterflies and gun turrets again.
•After the onslaught of worms and butterflies and gun turrets, quickly
fly up to the top of the screen as the walls will close in from the left and
right starting from the bottom up. Right at the top of the screen, the walls
will stop just short of completely closing, giving you a narrow amount of room
where you need to be basically exact on centre - your ship should be aligned
with the 'buckle' where the lower walls lock in place to avoid being destroyed.
The boss battle starts right afterwards. Once the screen turns white, quickly
move to the left or right side of the screen to avoid being destroyed by contact
damage as the boss comes from below.
STAGE FOUR BOSS
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•The trickiest part of this boss is the fact that both of your support
pods will be disabled, reducing your firing range to just your single main ship.
You MUST split your support pods from your main ship - if they are all combined,
you will not be able to fire from your main ship either.
•The core of the boss is only vulnerable part of the time, usually
prottected by claws in front of it. At regular intervals, it will clench and
open its claws to send out a set of three bullets from each claw that always
travel in the exact same direction (they are not aimed specifically at your
ship). If you take the time to observe, you should be able to slip through and
dodge them smoothly after a couple of rounds.
•The boss of this stage's second attack is to send out homing missiles
from its shoulders, two at a time from each shoulder. Destroying the missiles
can be a little bit tricky due to lack of range with your pods sealed off, so
you may need to swerve and avoid some missiles until they lose their homing
capabilities and fly off-screen instead.
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STAGE FIVE
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•Much like Stage Two and Stage Four, this area takes place indoors,
severely curbing your maneuveurability at times. At the start, you will run into
several tiny worm-like enemies floating in the air that seem to do nothing but
cause contact damage, so quickly take them out.
•Stick to the lower-centre of the stage for the beginning, as wall
extensions will quickly form before you might have a chance to react and get out
of the way, though a couple will go down the centre as well if there is a wall
on either side as well. Bipedal 'bots will float in from above before switching
from hovering to walking. Many of them can be destroyed before they have a
chance to land, though.
•After a quick, hard wave of bipedal robots floating and landing, you
will come into a room where several makeshift walls will land in place, starting
the first midboss battle of the stage.
•MIDBOSS: This midboss is a little bit unique compared to the others in
that it is not a single unit. Instead, four separate ships will pop out from the
top, each firing a single laser straight down over and over. Where the trick
comes in is that they will each go separately through the maze, so in addition
to avoiding fire and shooting back at them, you have to be careful not to get
boxed into the maze. Generally, once you get to the top, you will always end up
going down the right side. As you obliterate some of the ships, the remaining
ones will also start to speed up.
•As you move through and take on some more bipedal robots, you will
eventually come across another environment full of destructable objects with
small eyeballs buried inside the goo. There will be a dividing wall splitting
the centre, so you need only destroy the eyes and goo on one side as the bullet
fire from the eyes on the other side is incapable of crossing the dividing wall.
After some time, you will come to the second midboss.
•MIDBOSS 2: The second midboss of the stage is a small spherical head
that stays put in the exact centre of the screen. It has two separate attacks.
The first of these is two sets of hands that is always rotating around the head,
which does not block fire but can cause contact damage. The second is to spit
out five smaller bullets at a time. Fortunately, you can sit close to the lower
left corner of the screen, just slightly right of it, in such a way that your
ship sits snug between the trajectory of the centre and second-from-the-right
bullet the midboss fires out at fixed trajectory, while the hands are just
slightly out of contact range. Split your support pods apart so the one can hit
the midboss. Beware, however, as once it is destroyed it lets off a full circle
of bullets.
•After the midboss's destruction, you will get several more wall lines
coming down, so stay back towards the bottom of the screen for the most part,
moving ahead only when a section of wall has been laid down. You will have to
deal with an assortment of wall turrets, bipedal robots and other ships before
finally coming to the last boss of the game in an open area.
STAGE FIVE BOSS
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•The last boss of the game is a multi-form boss, as is tradition for a
lot of video games. In its initial form, it only has a single attack, where it
sends its triangular shield flying to the bottom of the screen, before the
shield returns. This is fairly easy to dodge, as the shield does not home in on
you, and you have lots of time to move once the shield is shot out towards you.
•Once the boss soaks up enough damage, it transforms into two separate
space aliens. This is where it gets fairly tricky, as you should split your
support pods away from you. This is because you want to send as even an amount
of damage to each alien as is possible: if one alien is killed but the other
survives, the surviving alien will revive the dead body (you are given a few
seconds of time, but you will want to use as little leeway as possible).
•Each alien has two sets of attacks, both of which they constantly fire.
The first is a bullet spray of five pea-sized bullets which they fire towards
the centre of the screen, so there will be a lot of overlap between the two
sprays. The lower on the screen you stay the further apart the bullets become,
giving you some more room to slip through them.
•The second attack the aliens give off is an arrow-shaped projectile.
These function with a semi-homing capability. They will go straight in one
direction, aimed at the general direction of your own ship. If you move your
ship more than a ninety degree angle away from the arrows, however, they will
turn around to face where your ship is at next. If you move again out of range,
however, an individual arrow will not turn around a second time.
•Once you defeat both bosses, the game will end and you get your ending.
Enjoy.
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Contact Info
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[CONT]
Although I believe I have found everything there is to find in this
game, there is occasionally the possibility of some super secret level in an
obscure game that was never found because it was too obscure, or the like. If
you have anything that you feel needs to be includes, feel free to email me at
gammabetaalphafaqs AT gmail DOT com
If you have any other information to contribute or notice any errors,
again, shoot me a notice at gammabetaalphafaqs AT gmail DOT com
If you wish to host this guide, or use information from it, consider the
FAQ semi-public domain: you can host it without asking and derive information
from it word-for-word if you wish, but keep the document unchanged if hosting it
and give credit where due if using information
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Credits
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[CRED]
Thanks to Blame the Control Pad for information on this game (and
other Game Boy shooters):
http://www.blamethecontrolpad.com/gbshooters/gbshooters5.htm
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©2014 GammaBetaAlpha FAQs
