Cyvern: The Dragon Weapons

General
Cyvern: The Dragon Weapons サイヴァーン is a vertically scrolling shoot'em up game developed by Kaneko and released in 1998 on Kaneko Super Nova System. It has not been released on any other hardwares.

Game has 5 stages and 2 loops.

Controls

 * A (Tap): Shot
 * A (Hold): Special Weapon ("banish")
 * B: Bomb.


 * C: You will not find a C button on service menu but, we quote TOS (check video index), there is a possibility of C button for PCB players : "No special settings, C button is by default of JAMMA. It's just not written in the manual. The C button fires only one shot. Add synchronous rapid fire to this C button, it will fire faster than the A button rapid fire. According to the developer at the time, the buttons used for debugging remained in the product".

Characters
There are three playable dragons. Depending on whether you play as player 1 or 2, name and color of the dragons change but not their speed and weapons.

1. Altair (red) / Veqa (purple) : fast speed, shot with homing lasers, banish = flames

2. Schwarz (blue) / Vais (orange) : slow speed, wide shot, banish = lightning bolts

3. Ferious (green) / Serene (yellow) : average speed, narrow shot with rockets on the sides, banish = focused laser beam



Hitbox
The dragon's hitbox is very small but difficult to determine precisely. It seems thin and rather elongated, running along the spine but not reaching the head or tail. It seems to vary with movement, and bullets sometimes clip through it. You also need to take into account the various hitboxes of enemy bullets. Killing yourself on a small round bullet can be very tedious.

Weapons
Each dragon has three weapons: a shot, the special weapon "banish" and a bomb. The bomb is identical for all three dragons.

Shot
Use it to destroy popcorn enemies and refill the banish gauge (especially on strong enemies). When you reach a high power level, shot has additional elements depending on the character: homing lasers for Altair/Veqa, additionnal shots for Schwarz/Vais, rockets for Ferious/Serene.

Special weapon "banish"
Use it to score and destroy multiple or strong enemies. The use of the special weapons empties the "banish" gauge. When it is empty, the special weapon is completely inoperative. To fill up the gauge you must shoot enemies with the shot, pick up powerups or die (dragon respawns with a full banish gauge and two bombs).



The special weapon is very different from a dragon to another and modifies therefore the gameplay.

Altair / Veqa = flames. Banish DPS feels quite low. Shot has homing elements that will cost you a lot of medals. Hardest dragon to master.

Shwarz / Vais = lightning bolts. Low DPS but covering a large part of the screen. Useful to quickly reveal medals but you might struggle against bosses, even if you can focus your power by point-blanking enemies. Funniest dragon to play though.

Ferious / Serene = high DPS laser beam that shoots straight forward and slants to the right or to the left depending on the direction you take. This is the World & Western record dragon because of the precision and power of the laser.

Bomb
Explodes mid-screen in front of you. Use it to destroy enemies, cancel bullets, lower the rank and get some invincibility frames.

"Death explosion"
When you die, a bomb-like explosion occurs. Seems less powerful than an actual bomb but it can be use as a weapon.

Items
Items have pretty big hitboxes, larger than the sprite itself: it can be useful (or not, if you want to keep them for later). After a while, items leave the screen.



Big powerup : equivalent to 4 small powerups. It strongly fills the banish gauge and increases firepower by one full level.

Small powerup : equivalent to a quarter of a big powerup. It slightly fills the banish gauge and increases the firepower.

Bomb: bomb is a bomb, no fragment or weird stuff.

Powerups and bombs are usually dropped by a certain type of ships, orange for powerups and blue for bombs. Get a big powerup by quickly destroying orange ships, otherwise you'll get only 2 small powerups.



You can also get those items by destroying parts of bosses or dying.

Rank
Game has a rank system depending on how many extends, bombs and powerups you got. Other factors may also come into play here, since rank can sometimes rise for no visible reason (obvious on e.g. boss 2-1). Managing the rank is crucial for the score: see strategy sections for details.

Rank and bosses
Depending on the rank level, you'll fight different versions of bosses on stage 1 and 2. In general, every bosses are harder when rank level is high. See strategy section for details.

boss 1
Boss 1 can be brown, green or red. Brown is easy but won't give a lot of points. Green is moderately difficult but is the one that gives the most points. Red is the hardest, it gives more points than the brown but less than the green. You can't meet Red on first loop.

boss 2
Boss 2 can be grey or red. Red one is harder but won't give you more points than the grey. You will meet him especially in the second loop. At very high rank, red boss can have additional attacks ("tentacles").

You'll fight it again as a mid-boss in stage 5, in "grey" version but with "red" attacks. Its lifebar is shorter though. Same score expected (ca. 1,300,000).

Extends
You earn an extend every million points. There is no other hidden extend.

Loops
Game has a second loop you enter by just finishing the first one, even with continues. No requirement needed and no TLB. Second loop is quite identical to the first one but with a very high rank: more and faster bullets, more resistant enemies. No revenge bullets though.

Stage 4, boss included, is clearly the hardest one but you will get a lot of extends during stage 5 (which is easier) to recover and get ready for second loop.

Scoring
Scoring is based on two main elements: bosses (ca. 60%) and medals (ca. 30%). "Banish" is the key to get points: using shot or bomb won't give you any bonus points. In general, "banishing" enemies and bosses parts will give you about twice as many points as destroying them with shot or bomb. A few large enemies are worth thousands of points (buildings, big tanks...).

Build the chain
Game has a medal system. You must build a chain of medals in 6 steps: 50 points, 100, 500, 1 000, 5 000, 10 000.

Destroy a ground enemy (tanks, buildings etc.) with the "banish" to reveal a medal. You must collect at least 5 medals to advance to the next value. If you reveal more than 5 medals at the same time, they will all have the same value. So, ideally, you want to reveal 5 medals, collect them, then reveal 5 more, collect etc.

The very beginning of stage 1 shows you the way: destroy 5 tanks, collect, then destroy the 5 others.



If at least one medal goes off screen, even when you're dying/respawning, chain is broken and you restart from the very bottom (50 points medal). There is no way to recover more quickly. Beware: playing area is larger than the screen so a medal can be hidden on one side. It can also be hidden behind a new wave of enemies.

Even if you rebuild perfectly the chain 5 by 5, it's a 216 750 points loss at the very least.

Hitbox
Medal's hitbox is quite large so pay attention to the notification sound, you may have caught that medal that seemed off-screen



Medal count
It's almost impossible to collect all the medals, but the theoretical points total is 4,710,000

100 000 points medals
Five 100 000 points medals are hidden throughout the stages. To get these, it is necessary to destroy (with the "banish" as always) some enemies in a particular order and collect the medal. A special sound will notify you of the collection.



Stage 2 : In the first section of the stage, two big planes are rolling. Destroy the one on the left first, then the one on the right.

Stage 3 : After the cloud of flying insects, two big bio-mechanical tanks appear. Destroy the one on the right first, then the one on the left.

Stage 4 : you'll fight a mid-boss composed of a core and 4 turrets. Destroy the 4 turrets first (60k pts each) then the core (100k pts), all using "banish".

Stage 5 : just before the mid-boss, three big tanks appear side by side, destroy first the ones on the sides, in any order, then the middle one last.

Stage 5 : right after the mid-boss, you'll meet again the two bio-mechanical tanks from stage 3. Same strategy: destroy the one on the right first, then the one on the left.

Last hit
Get a big bonus by giving the last hit to bosses with the "banish" (except stage 3). If you shot or bomb, you'll get half the points. The difficulty lies in the fact that they do not have a lifebar.

Destroy piece by piece
Bosses are composed of many parts that must be destroyed one by one with the banish in order to obtain bonuses that can range from a few thousand to several hundred thousand points. As for the last hit, you will only get half the points if you don't use the banish. Boss 4 is accompanied by two flying monsters that are worth 200 000 points each.

Leeching
Some bosses launch blue bullets that can be cancelled (especially "green" boss on stage 1 but also stages 2 & 3) or destructible missiles (stage 2 : 72 missiles, 10,000 points each). Mid-boss 4 can be leeched but it's not that profitable, given the risk (around 50,000 pts).

Estimated score per boss
The total for a run including the green boss is around 8,2 million points.

Don't be fooled by the difficulty curve
The game's difficulty curve is not progressive but sinusoidal. The difficulty represented by boss 2 may lead to discouragement and the belief that the following stages will get harder and harder. Actually, stage 4 and its boss, whose attacks are partly random, are the only major difficulty. So don't let yourself be intimidated by boss 2, which can be easily destroyed with a little method and learning.

Banish management
Entire score relies on "banish" so you need to know how and when filling and emptying your gauge. Each movement is planned to give the "banish hit" you need at a precise moment. Fill the gauge using the shot on strong enemies and use the banish to give them the last hit and destroy the weak ones all around. One ground enemy, strong or weak = one medal so you don't want to burn your gauge without reward.

Rank control
Rank control is crucial, especially during first loop. To score, you want your enemies as weak as possible to collect more medals with less "banish". As you win an extend every million, suicide is part of the game. Bombing lowers the rank but losing a life is more efficient because you'll lose all the accumulated powerups. In first loop, there is no need to have 4 or more extends because rank will be off the charts : you won't make points and probably die anyway. It's better to choose when and how you gonna lose a life to get more points and, in the end, the extends you need to go on. Best players rarely keep more than 3 extends for long.

Choose your boss
On stage 1 (both loops) you will get more points from the green boss. On first loop, just pick all big powerups and bomb during the stage. Destroy the orange ships quickly to get the big powerups, otherwise, you will not be able to raise the rank to the level required to get the green boss.

On second loop, it's more difficult to set the rank right but if you have 3, 4 or 5 extends and suicide right before the boss, you'll meet "green", but the ideal setup for scoring is 3 extends then suicide. Basically, the game force you to come back to 2 extends, i.e. the initial resources of the game. With 5 extends, boss will be shooting a lot more pink arrows which makes the leeching almost impossible. 4 can be a good compromise, as you can leech the boss for a long time before the rank rises again (when you'll get the extend). If you have more extends or if you don't suicide, you'll probably get the red boss. It's possible to face the brown boss on second loop but that means you are very low on extends/bombs/powerups. It's very hard to beat the second loop with so few resources, especially as you won't earn many points with this boss.

If you no-miss the first 2 stages on first loop, you may meet the red boss 2. And that's no good news. Just suicide to get points on boss 1 and ease your life. On second loop, if you really don't want to meet the red boss 2 and if you have at most 3 extends, suicide just before the fight and you should get the grey boss.

Beware of timeouts
Bosses have no lifebar and time to destroy them is limited. It's particularly important for boss 1 and 3 because you want to cancel as many blue bullets as possible. When timeout music starts, you're invincible. Tips for boss 3: doors that launch blue bullets open 8 times before timeout.

Watch your back
Enemies can shoot you at very close range. You have to be upon them to be safe. And they can shoot you from all directions, even from the bottom of the screen, behind your back.

Use all your resources
Nothing is useless : shot, bomb, banish, lives. You'll need everything to put yourself in the best possible situation before a big scoring phase. Sometimes, you want to keep powerups floating around and pick them up later to fill your banish gauge. Beware: after a while, items leave the screen.

Adapt yourself
Game has a slight touch of randomness: powerups floating around, random attacks of boss 4, rank variations... Of course, you'll have your routine and consistent moves but you'll need to adapt: each run is different from the other. You won't need to practice a lot on savestates in this game. Playing over and over and creditfeeding is the way to go. It's not a "perfect sheet music" type of game: if you suffer one or even multiple unplanned deaths, or if you used more bombs than usual, don't restart, the rank will be lower so you might get a good score anyway and extends that go with it.

Tips for second loop
You can follow, more or less, the same route as in the first loop, but you're gonna be late at some points because of resistance of the enemies. Let some enemies go and use your shot and bombs to stay on track. Play stage 1-5 carefully to stack up extends and absorb the difficulty which increases a lot from boss 2-2.

Cyvern Plus
Mysterious hacked version of the game with major differences. No way to play it nowadays until further notice :


 * 2nd loop contains only stage 4 and 5
 * New TLB
 * Dragons were re-balanced:
 * Red - reduced hitbox, banish strengthened, sub-weapon reduced
 * Blue - banish strengthened
 * Green - drift reduced, sub-weapon strengthened
 * C Autofire changed to 30hz
 * Boss life bars
 * Score/point and bullet/rank tweaks
 * Top score (only) is saved by battery backup
 * Ending Credits "Special Thanks" section added 8 additional names including CFK-NRK

Video References
Cyvern:_The_Dragon_Weapons/Video_Index

References & Contributors
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