F/A



F/A (Fighter & Attacker in western releases) is a vertical STG released by Namco in 1992.

Controls
8-way movement & 2 buttons. Button 1 is for your primary ( main) shot, Button 2 is for your secondary (ground) shot.

Characters / Ships / Styles


Next is an introduction of the ship and shot type combinations. There are sixteen ships to select arranged in six categories based on their shot type.

6-WAY This main shot fires a six bullet spread when the player taps the shot button. A high rate of external autofire might cause the number of shots displayed on screen to be limited more often than other shots. IF the player stays close to the enemy, the power of this main shot is the strongest out of the main shots. List of planes that utilize this shot (corresponding secondary shot):
 * F-15J (Bomb)
 * YF-23A (Guided missile)
 * JA-37 (Vulcan) - This plane has a fast movement speed, and is easy to determine where the plane's hitbox is located.

5-WAVE This shot fires a spread of four bullets when the player taps the shot button. It is similar to the "SEMI-AUTO" main shot type, but is more powerful. List of planes that utilize this shot (corresponding secondary shot):
 * F-16AFTI (Bomb) - This plane is easy to use and has fast movement speed. The range of the secondary shot is pretty short.
 * YF-22A (Guided missile)
 * F-14D (Vulcan) - This plane is based on the F-14 Tomcat. The plane's appearance is a bit deceptive, as it has a large hitbox.

STRAIGHT This shot fires a straight firing line of four bullets when the player taps the shot button. The main shot is powerful, but it has limited range coverage because the bullets do not spread out. In addition, this shot allows the player to shoot again when you release the button. This makes it a pretty good main shot choice for people who can’t manually tap the shot button at a fast rate. List of planes that utilize this shot (corresponding secondary shot):
 * F-4EJ (Bomb)
 * A-6E (Guided missile)
 * GR.5 (Vulcan) - This plane has the fastest movement speed and the smallest main shot coverage. Recommended.

SEMI-AUTO This main shot fires four bullets when the player taps the shot button. The 2 shots in the middle fire straight ahead, while the other 2 bullets will spread out to the left and right of the 2 middle shots. The planes with this main shot type are a safe choice. List of planes that utilize this shot ( corresponding secondary shot):
 * F/A-18E (Bomb) - This plane is selected by default when the player presses the start button after inserting a credit. The plane is decent in all categories including bomb range, plane size & speed.
 * MRCA-IDS (Guided missile) - This plane is a good choice for people who what to use a plane with a guided missile secondary shot.
 * ACM (Vulcan) - This plane was said that to be the easiest plane to use for beginners upon the game's release.

AUTO The planes listed below below are for advanced players. This main shot fires 2 straight bullet shots at a semi-automatic firing rate when the player taps the shot button. The plane will continue to fire bullets for a short time if the shot button is pressed and held down. The power of this main shot is fairly low and the shot does not have any width. List of planes that utilize this shot ( corresponding secondary shot):
 * Mir2000 (Bomb)
 * X-29 (Guided missiles) - This plane has a cool design.
 * A-10A (Vulcan) - This plane has a similar appearance to the Wild Snail plane in Battle Garegga.

FULL-AUTO This main shot fires a stream of 2 straight bullets when the player taps the shot button. The plane will continue to fire bullets for a long time if the shot button is pressed and held down. This plane has the lowest main shot power out of any plane choice in the game. List of planes that utilize this shot ( corresponding secondary shot):
 * F-117A (Bomb) - This plane allows the player to fire two consecutive fire bombs buy pressing the secondary shot button, making it the plane with the strongest secondary shot of all planes! However, the secondary shot takes a long time to deal damage on screen and it takes a little bit of time to recharge the bombs. The final boss gives the player no way of using bombs, so it will be very difficult with this plane.

Weapons
The ships in F/A are mainly classified by main shot type, but there are 6 types of main air shots and 3 kinds of ground/secondary shots. Usually, you would think there are 18 shot types, but because there is only one aerial shot "FULL - AUTO", there are 16 shot types in all.

As for the ships, the types of shots, hitboxes, speeds, etc. are finely adjusted, so the general game feel may be significantly different even on ships with similar configurations.

The ground shots are of the following three types.

Vulcan
This secondary shot is launched in a straight line from your ship. Although it has low power, it is the easiest secondary shot to use because of its strong range compared to other secondary shots. You can pointblank tanks using this secondary shot, which will allow the player to hit the tank directly below you and efficiently collect prisoners.

Bomb
This is a secondary shot that behaves similarly to a lock-on shot and reticle in Xevious. However, because the player can use the secondary shot multiple times in a row, the bomb's trajectory can clear out the enemies surrounding the reticle target. It may be easier to use than vulcan depending on your playstyle. The range of the bomb is different depending on the player's plane choice, and can be compared on the plane select screen at the beginning of the game.

Guided missile
This secondary shot will automatically target and lock on to the enemies within range of your ship and attack them with guided missiles. Due to the range of the secondary shot, there is no need to directly approach enemies. Although you can fire multiple guided missiles at the same time, there is a slightly time delay after firing multiple guided missiles. The player must wait until the secondary shot can be used again.

In general it is said that the vulcan secondary shot is the easiest to use, while the bomb secondary shot has the greatest amount of power.

Items
Prisoner: When you destroy certain ground enemies, an animated icon of some people will appear on screen. Collection of each icon gives the player 2,000 points.

Scoring
Scoring is pretty simple. Each stage has a number of prisoners to collect which gives you 2,000 points each upon stage completion on 1 credit. When you beat the game, you will receive two bonuses: 1) Mission completed bonus- 10,000 points for each stage (aka destroy the stage boss) 2) Armor remaining bonus- 100,000 points for each segment of armor (life) remaining.

Strategy
In this game there are a total of 8 stages ( denoted as Rounds), two rounds of which there is only aerial warfare with no ground objects ( you get an aerial shot as well as a ground shot). Each Round contains a large boss but since the game does not stop scrolling forward, the ground based bosses ( boss 1-6) are gone in a few seconds (laughs). Also for bosses, the timeouts are fairly short.

Round 1
-After selecting your aircraft at the fighter selection screen, you are deployed into a coastal region in the Middle East - it contains a forest area, a coast city with a harbor, and culminates with a battleship that submerges as you confront the boss. For now, beginners can get acquainted with the small tanks (laughs). Because of the unfamiliar firing pattern, and that they take 2 shots to fully destroy, remembering their locations is necessary. In addition, certain areas of the harbor ( on top of buildings) yield additional prisoners while fired upon with the ground shot. I have not determined if all of them are predetermined locations, as sometimes they fail to appear ( even if the end stage bonus is nearly the same).

-The boss ( Giant Freezer ( a misspelling of Freighter?)) will gradually scroll upwards. Position your ship to direct the 4 small turret fire while destroying popcorns, and then destroy them in return after they stop firing. Afterwards, stay on the right, avoid the fire from the next section ( 4 small turrets + 1 rotating turret) and destroy them all while the rotating turret is firing. Afterwards, the screen will scroll upwards, with 3 ground-based targets that deploy popcorn enemies, periodic heli popcorns, and the main body which has 4 different appearances. For scoring purposes, you can milk the popcorns and scroll up to the top ( with 8 circular turrets and 1 rotating turret) and destroy those while making sure the main body is destroyed. You get 20,000 points for killing the boss, and a prisoner bonus of up to 56,000 points. ( The periodic heli popcorns mentioned will appear from the left & right sides of the screen, usually alternating between 1/2 groups of 2 enemies each.)

Score of my pb at this point: 168k, Koizumi’s replay: 177k

Round 2
-This stage only has aerial combat ( your secondary shot is disabled). It is very important to remember the locations of the medium sized aircraft, as they give the player a large amount of points and some of them fire nasty spread patterns which can be avoided by point blanking their wings before they get a chance to fire off. It’s also important to remain in the middle to easily pick off the sets of 3 zako (popcorn)plane formations that comes from the left & right in the beginning, and later sections of the stage.

The boss ( Killer Boeing), does not take much damage to destroy with autofire, so a scoring route should not hit the body too much in order to milk the missile Zako(popcorn) that come out together. After destroying the boss for 10k points, you will get a prisoner bonus of up to 24k. My pb score: 339k, Koziumi’s replay: 359,900

Round 3
-This is where the first difficulty spike of the game starts, as your plane enters a desert harbor.

-This stage has an intermediate difficulty, due to the appearance of new helicopter enemies that will come dangerously close to you. Avoiding their patterns (especially in tight sections) can be accomplished by maneuvering your plane left or right in a diagonal manner. This is especially important to keep the amount of helicopters coming at you under control.

-The initial section of this stage has you fight a few boats and tank formations as you enter the harbor, and introduces helicopter enemies as you make your way towards the city area, in a number of formations. Near the city entrance, is where you can be easily ambushed by enemy helicopters so take great care. After battling some popcorn helicopters, big tanks, a formation of planes will fire shots and fly away, which begins the turret section on the dunes. This requires you to be aggressive and destroy turrets and tanks by remaining near the top of the screen to remove enemies before they trap your plane. After this section, you will arrive at the airport with a few more smaller formations of the cowardly airplanes.

-The Big airplane boss of this stage( Devil Airbus) will try to fly away from the airport. You want to take care of the green tank formation first, then damage the right centerpiece and the center while taking care of two blue tanks. Afterwards, destroy the center part of the airplane, and the engines on the right wing. Go to the left and destroy three engines, while keeping one alive. The plane will drift ahead, allowing you to move back down and destroy the left centerpiece. You can destroy 9 blue tanks and get prisoners, while they come out somewhat randomly. Afterwards, go destroy the last engine before the boss times out and flies away. Prisoner bonus can be up to 96k ( the position of the blue tanks when they appear from the top of the screen is random)

My score: 553k; Koziumi’s score: 589,900

Round 4
-This is the desert stage ( with a forest thrown in). The first half has a nasty combination of enemy helicopters due to the way they will sporadically enter, forcing the player to move very carefully to avoid taking damage. The second half of the stage requires the player to be hasty and to remember the occurrence location of helicopters & other enemies, especially at the part with the turrets on the cliff that fire 3 way patterns.

-The Boss( Power Station),is a base with nine parts lined up in a square.Because the scrolling does not it is necessary to destroy the center of the weakness quickly. Because the part in front of the center is stiff, but the durability of the center itself is strangely low, you should position your aircraft so that the shot goes out diagonally. It might be easier to escape before you get used to it ( Aircraft with a smaller primary shot width will have a harder time squeezing inside the boss to kill the middle part. With planes such as the A-10A & the F-117A, it is strongly advised to not worry about destroying the boss if you are aiming for a survival clear). Prisoner bonus is as high as 52k

My pb: 693k, Koizumi’s score: 751k

Round 5
-This is the desert-valley area, which transitions from late afternoon to evening over the course of the stage.

-The first half is a combination of helicopter and tank forces over a desert area that transitions into, the middle to attack the transport troops located in the desert valley region with overhanging cliffs. Since we also have quite a number of tanks do not shoot, it is more important to focus on the aircraft and gunwall turrets that line the valley. The second half of the stage? You want to destroy the small black aircraft at a position where the spread wont jump into your path, and continue to deal with the large tanks and gunwall turrets aggressively by hugging the top of the screen when possible. After passing a few stations with turrets, move right to left to destroy the wall turrets and the trains. A few ground turrets stand in your path before a Warning alert appears.

-Boss is just a base ( Hyper Cannon) (a clinch since it is simple), is a strong train fort containing two large auto gun turrets on train tracks before you encounter the base ( along with a optional large third that appears on the left next to the base).It will be painful if you do not destroy both turrets as quickly as possible. It is advised that the JA-37 can point blank the right train turret with just the primary shot, hang back down and destroy the left large train turret. Next, you can kill the station small turrets, and hit the right signal while avoiding fire. Move to the left and kill the center turret. This is a Hellish location for the full auto aircraft due to the lack of range and point blank, forcing the player to avoid more fire. (laughs) Prisoner bonus is 62k. My pb: 850k, Koziumi: 928k.

Round 6
-The harbor at night. The song of the stage is one of my favorites (hellharmony!!). Anyway, it is helpful to remember the position of the small-scale fire tanks and not to destroy it too quickly. ( do not be too aggressive and remember the appearance position of the twin firing small tanks since they will continually move as threatening zako (popcorn) helicopters come in from the side at a few key points.)

- You start out at night between the mountain range as 4 groups of zako (popcorn) helicopters come in from left-right-left-right. Afterwards, you have to deal with some little planes from stg 1 coming in from multiple spots; make sure to position yourself on the left afterwards so you can destroy the 4 twin firing blue tanks on the left, along with the gunboats. Another easy zako (popcorn) section follows, and I usually position myself a bit to the left so I can misdirect and kill the 2 zako (popcorn) tanks coming in from the top. Afterwards, you go to the left to kill the spawning zako (popcorn) tank and move to the right to hit the one on the right. There will also be a section in the middle with the small black aircraft from round 5, make sure their spread does not block your path, and to remain towards the right so you don't collide with the ones coming in from the left.

-The Battleship boss(Satan Midway) is trying to depart as you approach it. It can be defeated easily by destroying the two large turrets, then focusing on the main small turret section, and finally the main body. Prisoner total is 54k.

My score: 993k, Koziumis score: 1.03 million

Round 7
-The snow-pile enemy stronghold? Attack.

-The enemy also comes out aggressively. If you do not remember the pattern to destroy the turrets, it is hell across the whole stage. Anyway, the first part is tough from the beginning due to the orientation of the ground turrets.

-The only way to do this is to learn how to deal with this is by positioning yourself in a way that misdirects turret fire and allows you to retaliate w/o taking damage.

-The middle firing battery right after the aircraft barrage & two large auto turrets is also an issue. It is usually marked by two twin firing tanks coming in from the top, and 4 small airplanes that take off from the ground. Two more groups of airplanes ( right-left & left right) will appear and you should do a sweep from left right so you can destroy the two twin-firing tanks that pop out and damage one of the four shot turrets in the process, taking care to make sure you don't get trapped by the ground turret patterns in the back. The next section has four shot turrets that fire w/ very little reload time so positioning is extremely important.

-There is a place where it comes in mixed with turrets and helicopters and it is necessary to do considerable training to be able to come out of here with no damage ( which should be the area containing two large four shot turrets, two waves of 4 helicopters coming in from the sides, and two small turrets in the front). A Carpet pattern? It's finally late in the stage when something like that comes out.

If you ignore the missile hatches ( the ones that shoot out the destructible missiles), this last section is a cinch. The Boss is a big helicopter ( the Harrier Family). The main red helicopter only has a monotonous attack that just shoots the bullets down, and its two escort helicopters only shoot out missiles,which makes it important to destroy the small turrets in order and to get rid of the right escort helicopter first, then the right 4 bullet turret, before crossing over and destroying the turret and escort helicopter on the left side, after which the boss becomes very easy. You can milk some points by destroying the respawning zako (popcorn) helicopters, but the boss will time out after a couple of minutes so be careful. Destroying the boss nets 20k; Your prisoner bonus is a max of 72k.

My score: 1.174 million, Kozumi's score: 1.309 million

Round 8
-This is the final stage, but it has only has aerial combat and you can only use your primary shot ( secondary shot is disabled.

-Although the configuration of the stage is similar to Round 2, it is very difficult because the barreling spread attack of the medium-sized machine from the first half (interval of one machine every few seconds) comes continuously. A hit from the aircraft is quite hellish.

Think about moving in between the bullets as much as possible ( instead of worrying too much about killing these medium-sized aircraft) since In the second half, medium-sized aircraft come down from the top at high speed continuously. One of the aircraft in the middle will release a set of 4 falling missiles in the middle of the last medium sized aircraft section. You can move to the left around this and proceed to near the top middle of the screen as ships behind you collide with each other and the final red alert sounds, signaling the appearance of the final boss.

(Another piece of advice- planes with bigger hitboxes will have a more difficult time with this stage, such as the F-14D. In such cases, you may need to squeeze through the gaps slightly more to the left/right than normal ( especially in the first half of the stage). As a result, you may not be able to kill the medium sized planes completely and will need to finish them off after squeezing through the gaps.

-Boss (King Concorde), in a large fighter, by way of example two escorts(handouts medium-sized machine) will stay on top of the left and right two of the aircraft screen. We will ignore the Escort aircraft to concentrate our attack onto the main boss. The main boss will use the attacks in this order is "fire aimed bullet, easily destroyed missiles, & dropping missiles", this is hard due to the overlapping diagonal patterns of the escort’s bullets over the aimed bullets of the boss. When some of the boss parts have broken off to some extent & the boss is flashing red), will be only to "fire aimed bullets". Endurance of the boss is quite stiff compared to the previous bosses,so prepare for a long battle. Let's go by yelling! ( first part of the fight will be explained in *final boss header for section 4.) My PB:1.702 million, Koizumi: 2.078 million

-If you clear, "the number of bosses defeated × 10 "residual life × 100k" is entered as a bonus. By default your ship's life is initially 3, since it is extended by two more, a no mistake run is 500,000 points. This is big.

( The end bonus is calculated after the game calculates your prisoner bonus for Round 8. The end bonus can be a maximum of 80k for completed missions ( destroying the boss), and 500k for each remaining piece of your armor stock (lives), for a total of 580k max end bonus.)

Development History
-First Namco techno soundtrack for an arcade game per the request of the company's president.

Version Differences


F/A was released in the US under the name Fighter & Attacker, also in 1992.

Trivia
-Final boss is based on Tu-160 Russian aircraft. https://twitter.com/kagurayam/status/652082125626191872

Other
F/A Video Index (containing a number of replays with various plane choices) : Link