genuisgeek said:
so how exactly does this game work?
Concept is easy to explain. How to master it... is harder.
The aim of the game is simply high score. Basically, you try to blow yourself up near an enemy. When you blow yourself up, you lose a life, but you gain lives from getting points (when the game says "extend", you get another life). So, what you want to do is try to take as many enemies out as possible with one explosion. This can be done by chaining. Wait till there are lots of enemies close to each other, then blow yourself up. The enemies you blow up will create another explosion, and if that enemy is near another, they blow up in chain. Higher the chain, higher the point.
You want to blow up
near the enemies, but don't touch them, since you will lose a life, but you get no point and also get a time penalty.
There are different kinds of enemies:
White cubes: Normal enemies. Don't really do much.
Green cubes: Similar to white, but they leave a transparent green cube after dying. Collect them for points. Try to collect as much as you can as this is the only way you can get points without having to blow yourself up.
Purple cubes: Leave purple transparent cubes (Quicken items) after dying. The items will make enemies appear faster. This is desirable as there will be more enemies on the screen to kill.
Sub bosses: They are big ass things that appear at intervals that shoot bullets at you. You can't destroy the bullets so avoid them. When a sub boss die they leave transparent yellow cubes. Collect to gain time rewards.
Boss: Appears when your time reaches a certain limit. He takes several hits to kill and shoot different patterns of bullets at you. Once you kill him the game ends and the score tallies.
(Slightly more) Advanced strategies:
Don't stay too close to the edge of the screen. Enemies may appear without warning and kill you.
Try to chain a bunch of cubes to get to the boss, rather than blowing up right next to him. You'll get more points.
Purple cubes stop appearing after you get 6 quicken items. You can get more than 6 quicken items by, after you get 5, when the next purple cubes appear, rather than killing it straight away, wait till one or two other purple cubes appear on the screen before blowing them up. This way you can get 7, 8 or even 9 quicken items.
The items left behind by enemies float away the opposite direction of the explosion that killed it. Try to plan your explosion so that the items remain on the screen for you to collect.
Normally, sub bosses appear one at a time. If you have more than 6 quicken items, two or three may even appear at the same time. This is desirable as you can get more time-extension cubes.
I'm just covering "light mode" here. There is also a "heavy mode" which is harder but it's not in the DS version so...
Here are some videos of the PC version. They're actually vidoes of the heavy mode, but they should give you a feel of what to do. (Keep in mind the guys playing aren't very good.)
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=lTR0z8n11Jg&...feature=related
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=bWrCwZFro40&...feature=related
And here's a video review that might help:
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=K9vkJeC8IfA&...feature=related
Well, that was a long ass post. I hope someone finds it useful.