Super Spy Hunter (NES) FAQ/Walkthrough
version 1.0.0 by [email protected] (anti spam
spoonerism)

Please do not reproduce this FAQ for profit without my prior
consent. If you write a polite e-mail to me referring to me(and
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you that means no--and I am bad about answering e-mail. Sorry.

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           OUTLINE

 1. INTRODUCTION

 2. CONTROLS

 3. STRATEGIES

 4. WALKTHROUGH

 5. CHEATS

 6. VERSIONS/CREDITS

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 1. INTRODUCTION

Well, I probably wouldn't be writing for this game without the
GameFAQs bounty contests. SSH is an interesting game but not an
especially good one. It's a take-off on the famous arcade game I
never particularly liked. You're in this car and you can shoot
other cars running around. There are helicopters and stuff too.
Eventually you get to a big boss that really should kick your
butt unless you're really careful. So you have a lot of
repetition before a boss fight where you need to swerve around a
lot. But along the way you get a lot of neat power-ups. And you
get to play as a boat and a plane in some parts, too.

Super Spy Hunter has a lot of cool ideas but often takes a while
to get going. While I like the boss fights, the parts to get
there drag on and are repetitive. Nevertheless, since they are
not too bad to address, I did so. However, for maximum fun I
would recommend working with the cheats. They won't save you from
the one-and-done hits, but they'll help you just be able to crash
through the game before it gets too unfunny. If you play with
cheats, it's like being in a pretty cool spy movie, so why not
take a spin?

 2. CONTROLS

Up makes you go faster. Down makes you go slower. It can bring
you to a stop. Going faster leaves you more vulnerable to what's
ahead and less vulnerable to what's behind: slower, vice versa.

You'll probably want to hold down B at all times, which fires.
A turns the turrets. Left/right do what you expect. Start pauses.

You can hold B and A down at the same time, too. This sprays
pretty nicely.

 3. STRATEGIES

First, obey the traffic signs. It's pretty much fatal not to.
They say go left, go right, stop or slow down. Jump means you'll
want to go fast. (!) means there's something really to watch.

It's no crime to slow all the way down in many parts of the game.

If you don't have auto-aim, then guns are tricky to use. Rotating
them is tricky and depends on what is coming next.

It's okay to crash into enemies--just don't hit a wall or you'll
lose life points.

Here is how to handle power ups:

(L) gets you four blocks of life--beyond two power ups this is
useless.
(1UP) gets you an extra car.
(P) is a shot power up
(R) is recharge
(C) is cannon control toggle
(B) lets you use a bomb to destroy all enemies for a while
(G) lets you use a guy who will swing around and lash out to kill
your enemies
(O) puts oil behind you, making enemies swerve.

(P) is the best, and (L) is not necessary. (C) is useful after
level 1. (G) is fun but not really critical. Wait for the vans to
change to the right letter before blasting them. Early on you
will need to direct all your firepower at them. (C) + (P) makes
(O) obsolete.

You lose a fire power-up when you die. The maximum is 4.

There are two types of trucks: PCRL (red) and OTB 1-up (blue).

 4. WALKTHROUGH

I won't always tell you how to adjust your guns. If something
comes from behind, shoot downwards. If something tough is ahead,
fire ahead. If playing on an emulator, save your state frequently
even with cheats, because power-ups are cumulative. This
walkthrough assumes you don't restart on getting killed, which
saps your power-ups at game over.

   4-1. SCENE 1

With all these helicopters, start with guns at 60 degrees to the
top. Go slowly for a tight right turn then a left turn. There'll
be another small left turn and you'll start going over water. An
enemy will come from behind and while you'll ignore him, you'll
want to shoot the truck ahead of you. It gives a power-up
designated by a letter that changes every second. Move up to get
the truck, and then go moderately fast for the power-up, which
will go up off the screen and come back to you.

The bridge curves here. You'll go under a bridge and then face a
blue van. Past that are guns that fire four at a time. Go
moderately slow and after they fire for the fourth time, go
forward. You can pick them off with guns, but you don't get any
points for it, so don't kill yourself. There'll be another
powerup, then two guns as the right half of the bridge is
damaged. Then a gun, then the left half damaged, then a power up
and a gun on each side.

Stay to the right. You need to keep turning right, and it's best
to go at medium speed. Crank it up to full speed when you see the
Jump icon. A 30 degree angle to spray should mow down the boats
ahead.

The boats aren't terribly tough. They come in groups of four, and
you can shoot their missiles. Go slowly to stay within the light
blue lines.  Then after getting back on land, you need to go
quickly for two jumps.

After this you have a go at the suspension bridge. It's a bit
tougher not to hit the edges but you should soon get the rhythm
of how it swerves back and forth. Watch for blue cars behind.
They are much more dangerous than the missile firing helicopters.
The helicopters' missiles will go off the bridge, but the cars
will drill you.

Soon you'll get to a curve in the road with a "stop" sign. For
this, you will not necessarily need to stop, but go slowly as
you'll need to steer onto a small ramp to the left. Then you must
steer over trucks that move a bit, but if you go slowly, you can
hit the next small ramp to the left.

This leads to the first boss. It is not too hard. You'll have
time to focus your guns forward. Basically you'll have a truck
with copters on the side. I disagree with the boss FAQ on
GameFAQs as I was able to stay at the very bottom and fire away
for starters, and that gave me a big jump.

You can kill the copters, but if you take out the truck, the
copters will go down, too. Just auto-fire at the truck until it
starts to go down. Then loop around to the top. You could, if you
wanted, fire down at the truck, but you don't need to. You just
need to loop to the bottom to fire away again. If you can move up
a little, then that will help a lot when you loop around. Just
remember that the truck can crush you into a wall, so it's best
to loop around it.

The truck will get destroyed, and you'll have to shoot it some
more after it spawns more helicopters, but that is really the
same thing. The final incarnation is probably the toughest. You
must shoot this gun that slowly follows you around the
battlefield. His bullets go on a diagonal and you want to go left
when at the bottom, right when at the top to avoid its bullets.

Here swiveling your guns to fire down at the top is really useful
as you can get in several extra hits, and he cannot fire missiles
above him. He can fire them down when when you are below him. You
want to stay in the center at the top so you can sneak right to
avoid the bullets--they are going up/right so that you can avoid
them. You will probably take a few hits by accident, but you
should be able to trash the gun.

Okay, that's scene 1 complete. Things get stickier in scene 2.

   4-2. SCENE 2

Here's an early chance to pick up the lock-on cannon and some
power-ups. You'll have a few drill cars coming behind you, but
they should not be a challenge. The guns on the side are for
decoration, too. By now you may be fully powered-up, so if the
trucks don't show a "P," don't worry about them.

There are some force fields pushing you left and right through
the mountains, but stay in the center and you should be okay.
After two waves of this, you're back on the road. Go off to the
right--don't worry about the power truck, as left takes you back
to the fork in a bit--then go right at the next branch too. Be
prepared to tilt back left after each fork, so don't go too fast.

Ahead you have sinkholes. You should go medium-fast through them.
Steer away from the center of every big sinkhole you find,
accelerating forward and to the side if you look like you might
get really stuck. You can curve around and accelerate forward,
but the big risk is running into the center--which will kill you.
You may have to sacrifice some power ups from trucks.

The boss is up next. You can fire away at the center for all it's
worth. Without auto-fire, tilt things at 30 degrees. Fire away
and slowly move up and down. You may have to move left and right
below the H-vehicle. Then blow the enemy away. You may take some
damage, but you can also go to the side when the H comes down to
the bottom. Then it is easier to avoid all the shots. Then go to
the other side. You can basically goad the H-vehicle to one side
then escape to the other--then shoot it there and when it starts
to come down, go to the other side. You can continue this until
you knock out the two front guns, then you can fire at them in
the middle of the H. Then you need to blast the center of the H,
not touching the sides, then blast the light and stay close. Back
up and fire at the missiles when they start to hone in on you.

   4-3. SCENE 3

Shoot the two cars nearby, then wait for the truck to come so you
can shoot it for what you want. Then start firing away--planes
behind mean you may have to steer left or right to start. Two
more cars, then planes behind, then a powerup truck. More cars
and planes--keep guns trained behind and go slowly--and
eventually after a power truck you have a red vehicle behind,
which you should gun down with your firepower. You can block it
out so it does not get ahead of you to shoot.

Take your time following the signs but the merges should not
affect you, so don't worry about them. Just keep positioning
yourself ahead of the planes whe possible so the missiles miss.
Take the right passage when both arrows pop up. There'll be two
tanks leaving fire behind, and you should hit the one in your
lane. The other can be killed, but it's easy to avoid.

Take the right branch again and you'll get two power trucks.
There'll be trucks with cargo that falls off. Hit the cargo and
it bursts into flames. So you have to see where the cargo falls
off. Shooting it makes no difference in the speed stuff falls
off, but it's one more distraction. So stop shooting for a
moment.

A turn right and helicopters signal the end of this. Helicopters
on each side may be nasty to your autopilot, so be sure to move
up and down a lot to avoid their bullets. A (G) powerup is useful
here. You'll blast airplanes from behind while swerving left and
right for a bit, but it's not hard. When you're almost used to
it, a power up truck will appear. Take the right passage at the
turn. After a bit more swerving, the next boss.

This boss is not too bad. Just shoot at the center, and when a
light appears, move to the side. Then shoot that until something
appears--and go back to the center. Eventually you'll kill all
five guns firing down. Then you must shoot the panels behind
them. You shouldn't have much of a problem avoiding the bullets.
Once the red eye in the center turns blue because you shot it a
lot, you need to avoid the side lasers. So move up and down based
on where they are. Once a laser appears, jump to the top/bottom
til they reach the top/bottom and repeat til the blue eye gets
destroyed.

   4-4. SCENE 4

This is a speed wave. You will want to train your guns behind you
til you get a C powerup. Then the enemies behind will go down.
Choppers from the side may present a problem until then, too.
After that you can pretty much stay in the middle and blast away.
You have a few enemies to avoid, and you'll want to stop firing
when the trucks with cargo come by. Once you're by them, fire
away again.

For the jumping, you don't need to go fast at all. Just shoot the
enemies down and eventually a long vertical line will appear in
the middle of the screen. You can wait for it to get bigger, and
when it stops, just land somewhere in the middle. You can just
sweep left and right and fire away, and when 3 small helicopters
and a big one appear, work away at them and try to land near the
center. It's hard to miss. Be willing to take a hit, because if
you miss, you die.

After a few rounds of this the screen goes grey and you have your
boss fight. You should try to cross up the boss so you are to its
left when it is going right and vice versa. You should also
figure out how it bounces up and down--there's some anticipation
here but it should not be hard to figure out. Just fire away and
you can do so safely from long range, though straight horizontal
shots are useless. It's also useful to cross the enemy vertically
if/when you can. You need to gun down the top and bottom defenses
and then there'll be a break. The eyeball in the center will
start shooting, and you will need to walk around slowly to kill
it. Your best bet is to get a big distance vertically between it
and you so you can slowly tap right/left to gun it down. However,
if you have more than 4 health, you can just sit in the center
and blast away from below and you should win. Given that avoiding
the enemy is not too bad for the first bit, and you should have
more than 4 health, this is not unreasonable. If you wish to get
fancy, you have to shoot dead center and avoid a lot of missiles.

   4-5. SCENE 5

A boat wave to start. The nasty little gunner boats can shoot
you, so you need to mix up speeds and swerve well away from them,
and the bombs are absolutely deadly, so take a hit instead of
running into them. After this you have some boats where it's best
to move diagonally to avoid the missiles. While you can shoot the
boats down, try to stay away from the latest boat to arrive, then
swerve diagonally to avoid the missiles--you can't shoot them--
and the bomb buoys. A bit more of this and you get to a cove
where you disembark from your boat.

On land, you get a power-up then a few helicopters then a bunch
of cars coming from behind you can mow down. There'll be trucks
that just drop their cargo whether you shoot them or not. Pairs
of drill cars may come from behind, so don't go too fast and be
prepared to swerve left/right so they don't pinch you. You'll get
onto a ratty bridge and turn into a plane.

This part plays like Raiden for Dummies if you have full power-
ups. Here the (C) powerup changes between big missiles and small
guided ones. You want the small guided ones. Watch out for
enemies coming from behind and don't stay at the very back.
Missiles are slow enough to avoid with quick diagonal maneuver,
and you have smart missiles of your own. When in doubt, go
forward a bit to lure enemies from behind forward, then get
behind them. You can also take enemies out of the picture by
scrolling far left or right. The playfield is more than a screen
wide, but enemies disappear once they're not in sight. Stay in
the center of this horizontal continuum, roughly, to maximize the
possibilities here.

Boss planes are not bad as you should always be able to sneak
through the bullets if you stay all the way back after killing
some initial boat-gunners from below. You'll face two quick ones
in a row. A third is after several helicopters. Then after a long
stretch of gunners and choppers, you get another boss plane, a
power-up and a boss plane in quick order.

The next part, a meteor scene, is very trivial if you hold down
the fire button. It's good for powering up, recharging etc., so
target your power-ups for that. Get two life boosts, a recharge,
and you are ready for the final boss, where you just have to
avoid enemies firing at you. Or at least shoot their missiles
down. You will want to avoid the swinging chains at the front of
the ship, too, though you might always want to see them.

   4-6. SCENE 6

You don't get any auto-aim here for the first bit. So just avoid
the enemy trucks where stuff falls off automatically. Go to the
center when you see the Atari sign and slow down.

Move across when the platform slides into place so you can get
by. Keep aim focused behind and shoot the power up truck a couple
times, then blast it when it turns to C. It's worth a few hits
from the drillers to get started right. Planes will come from
behind you.

When the jump appears, go almost but not fully at full speed.
Stay in the center horizontally when possible--the jump lanes
will just barely work if you do. They alternate from left to
right. When you get the (!) ahead, slow down and avoid the eyes.
If you hit one, slow down immediately and the laser beams ahead
take 3 seconds on, .75 off...so you need to be careful to either
avoid the eye or creepup to the edge--then blast through. Wait
and learn the timing before you do. Sometimes eyes appear in the
center, and sometimes you'll have two at the sides.

The best way to go through all this is slowly, though a car
length off-center allows you to swerve to the left or right
depending where the eye is. Eventually you'll get to a jump area.

Restock life and such with the next few power-up cars. Then you
can just stand in the center and blast away, avoiding the
bullets. Just pick off the guns as before. Auto-locking is
disabled so you want to have guns at 30 degrees.

The next guy you get is the eyeball on the wire. Get the control
power-up so you don't have to rotate your guns. You will also
have to deal with the eyeball going very fast once you breach the
initial defenses--which are as before. Loop around a lot. Time it
with how the screen shakes, and the bullets will always be behind
you. Then get the regeneration power-up for the final boss.

Be patient here and keep to the spacey side and shoot at an
angle. You can also shoot at the enemy from above, but don't
shoot from right below--the energy beam will take you out. He has
500 or so hit points but is not tricky, so even if you're pushed
against the side once, he shouldn't take long. When you get to
the edge and he is closing in on you, the ray down will stop long
enough for you to sneak through.

Then this guy blows up and leaves a rocket shuttle with a blue
eye. You can stand a bit left and a ship length below him and
fire away, and you'll start to damage him. If he moves too far
down, go to the top. The key is avoiding the blue circles around
him. You can shoot the little blue circles, too, so there's
little risk here.

Until he turns red. Then the red discs are missiles and you need
to duck. Then you still need to stay on the long side of the
rocket, which fires down a lot, but you can often go over the
top. It's a bit trickier with all those missiles, but you just
need to realize that you can't shoot the rocket all the time and
it'll take a bit longer than you think.

Now enjoy the final bit and the credits.

 5. CHEATS

GameFAQs has three cool cheats for extra lives, maximum power,
and even a Pong mini-game. I refer you there for them. Here is
more nuts and bolts stuff for the hex editor types out there.

0x40 = horizontal
0x65 = power up (up to 4)
0x68 = power up in reserve
 00 = none
 01 = oil
 02 = roving destroyer
 03 =
 04 = bomb
 05 = spiked wheels
 06 =
 08 =
0x74 = # of lives
0x7a = # of health bars(1 = 1 hit)
0x7b = life bar(10 = 1 hit)
0x93 = what you have
 20 =
 40 = auto aim
0x40f = boss HP
0x41f, 42f, etc = HP for other parts of boss

End of FAQ Proper

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 6. VERSIONS/CREDITS

0.2.0: sent to GameFAQs 8/24/2009, through scene 1.
0.5.0: sent to GameFAQs 8/24/2009, through scene 3. Hooray for
lunch breaks!
1.0.0: sent to GameFAQs 8/25/2009, complete. Hooray for save
states, emulator speed ups, etc.!

Thanks to the usual GameFAQs gang, current and emeritus. They
know who they are, and you should, too, because they get/got some
SERIOUS writing done. Good people too--bloomer, falsehead,
Sashanan, Masters, Retro, Snow Dragon/Brui5ed Ego, ZoopSoul, War
Doc, Brian Sulpher, AdamL, odino, JDog, Lagoona, Da Hui,
StarFighters76 and others I forgot. OK, even Hydrophant in his
current not-yet-banned message board incarnation. I am not part
of his gang, but I want him to be part of mine.
Thanks to SaintKnight for his original FAQ. I did the writing
without looking at his guide, but I am sure his ideas seeped into
this guide.

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