Solite Spirits

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Solite Spirits

Title screen

Developer:	Team Muhaha
Publisher:	Promat
Director:	Sung Jung Woo
Producer:	Lee Hyung Kee Sung Jung Woo
Music:	Lee Seung Woo
Program:	Sung Jung Woo
Art:	Kim Tae Wook Lee Dong Ik Woo Sang Gyun
Designer:	Sung Jung Woo Kim Tae Wook Lee Dong Ik
Release date:	1999

Solite Spirits is a vertical scrolling shoot em' up developed by Team Muhaha and published by Promat in 1999.

1945k III, a later revision of the game, was published by Oriental Software the following year.

For replay videos, visit the Video Index.

Gameplay Overview

Solite Spirits uses 2 buttons. It has 6 stages with a single loop. Pretty much the entire gameplay is based on Psikyo's Strikers 1945 series (Strikers 1945 II and Psikyo are even mentioned during the credits).

Controls

• A button (Press): Fires the player's weapons.
• A button (Hold): Fires the player's charge shot.
• B button (Press): Activates the player's bomb.

Weapons

Shot

The player's primary weapon. It increases in width and gains a sub-shot by collecting power-ups. It takes 4 power-ups to max out the shot, afterwards every item collected grants 10,000pts.

Charge shot

A higher damaging attack can be performed by holding the A button, determined by the gauge at the bottom of the screen. The charge gauge fills up passively, even when not destroying enemies. It has 3 differents levels: blue, yellow and red. Charge shots can be used as long as the gauge is above blue and become stronger the more it is filled. Higher levels deplete a larger amount, with a maxed out charged shot depleting the entire gauge.

Enemy collision isn't deadly, but drains about 1/4 of the charge gauge.

Bomb

Bombs can be activated as long as the player has bombs in stock. They mostly consist of support planes that block enemy attacks and may fire back.

Ships

Default ships

F-15

F-15
Speed: Slowest. Shot: Narrow. Sub-shot: Missiles that travel forward. Charge shot: Fires a continuous wave beam. Bomb: 2 large planes fire at enemies. Strengths: Above average damage across the board. Fills up the charge gauge quite quickly. At max power the missiles reload instantly, making pointblank exceptionally strong with this ship. Weaknesses: Slowest speed and almost non-existent coverage, horrible combination to have in a game that spawns popcorn enemies as often as this one. Lack of piercing as well. More often than not flying enemies will use other stronger enemies as a shield. Bomb lasts way too little. Generally difficult to do anything other than be bullied by popcorn enemies the entire game.

EF2000

EF2000
Speed: Slow. Shot: Narrow laser. Sub-shot: 2 projectiles that travel forward. Charge shot: Phoenix that pierces through enemies. Bomb: EF2000 is surrounded by a large laser. Speed is drastically reduced while it's active. Strengths: In general, EF2000 is in a similar role as the previous ship. However, it is able to deal with these situations much more easily since all of the weapons can pierce. Main shot barely changes between power-up levels. While this could be seen as a negative, in this case the bulk of EF2000's damage comes from the sub-shot and the most important part of the main shot, piercing, is always there. Very long lasting bomb. Weaknesses: The performance of the charge shot varies wildly depending on the size of the enemy. It will do little to no damage against enemies that are vertically small, or if said enemy simply moves out of the way. The same happens with the sub-shot, but since these are constantly reloading it isn't a problem.

Rafale

Rafale
Speed: Fast. Shot: Narrow. Sub-shot: Homing boomerangs. Charge shot: Fires a missile that explodes into a plasma orb once it touches an enemy. Bomb: Large plane. Strengths: Main shot does pretty good damage and because it's narrow the player doesn't need to pointblank to maximize its usefulness. Fast speed and homing shots allow for a safe, campy approach. Weaknesses: Very finnicky charge shot. The missile is tiny and absolutely has to hit something otherwise the plasma orb won't activate. Extremely slow gauge filling speed. Bomb deals no damage.

SU-37

SU-37
Speed: Fast. Shot: Narrow. Sub-shot: Orbs that move in a zig-zag pattern. At max power, they are a group of rotating orbs. Charge shot: Drone that fires at enemies. When the gauge is full, 5 drones move in a circle around the screen. Bomb: Large plane that fires at enemies. Strengths: Charge shot is as simple as it gets, doesn't require any aiming and deals good damage even at the lowest level. Weaknesses: Charge shot is also the only source of damage. Due to the lack of wide shot, moving all over the screen to get rid of threats is required.

F-14

F-14
Speed: Medium. Shot: Wide. Sub-shot: Bullets fired diagonally in sets of 2. Charge shot: Miniature F-14 stays in place firing. Higher levels increase the mini F-14 up to 3. Maxed gauge results in a single F-14 firing larger bullets. Bomb: 4 planes that fire forward. Strengths: Another one of the easiest charge shots to use. It can be left alone attacking while the player handles other threats. Weaknesses: Sub-shot damage is almost non-existent, it only fullfils a popcorn-killer role. As a whole, damage is quite low. Other ships simply outdo F-14.

F-22

F-22
Speed: Fast. Shot: Wide. Sub-shot: 2 small missiles travel forward. Charge shot: Time stop. Bomb: Several planes carpet bomb the screen. Strengths: Probably the strongest wide shot in the game. Lengthy bomb duration. It also instantly clears all bullets so the player doesn't have to worry about enemy fire slipping through the support ships like it happens with other bombs. Weaknesses: Time stop is simultaneously the best and worst asset it has. It doesn't remove bullets at all when used, and because F-22 is the third fastest ship unintended deaths can happen while maneuvering through frozen bullets. It is important to find moments that allow for pointblank but also a good pathway to back off before the time stop end. Also not useful for sections that spawn several enemies in a row, such as the turrent segment in stage 3.

F-2A

F-2A
Speed: Fast. Shot: Wide. Sub-shot: Homing orbs. Charge shot: Option that stays in place using a flamethrower. Bomb: 6 planes that fire forward. Strengths: Fastest speed in the game. Has an easy time maximizing Bars/7 pickups, which is important due to the reasons below. Another wide shot + homing combination. Weaknesses: Botched scoring potential due to the shot bug. If playing 1945k III, there is a very real chance of not being able to reach the second extend because of it. The charge shot's flamethrower has a rather short range. For some reason, most of the planes called when using a bomb do not attack, even when there are few enemies on the screen.

Hidden ships

There aren't any secret codes to select either of the hidden ships. However, the random selection always highlights in the same order, being possible to develop a timing for it.

Tornado

Tornado
Speed: Slow. Shot: Wide. Sub-shot: Same as Rafale. Charge shot: Fires several missiles forward. Bomb: 5 large planes that fire forward. Strengths: Some of the strongest damage in the game. Maxed charge shot is an instant boss killer. Bomb has lengthy duration and the planes fire consistently. Fills charge gauge extremely fast. The absolute best ship at exploiting the score bug. Weaknesses: It is only really hindered by being the second slowest ship in the game, but having wide shot and homing sub-shot helps with that.

SE-11L

SE-11L
Speed: Same as Rafale. Shot: Narrow. Sub-shot: Same as Rafale. Charge shot: Same as Rafale. Bomb: Same as Rafale. Unlike Tornado, it doesn't offer anything unique and it is a clone of Rafale with a funny looking sprite. Everything described about Rafale applies to SE-11L.

Items

Item	Description
	Power-up Powers up the player's weapons.
	Bomb Adds a bomb.
	Bonus Score item.

Scoring

While there is a major scoring bug, the scoring system revolves around picking up bonus items with the right timing. These are found in spades throughout the game via destructible scenery and defeated enemies. The items go through several slot machine bonuses each awarding a different value, following a cycle of Plum->Bell->Watermelon->Cherry->Bar->7. This cycle then goes in reverse and starts over. Each bonus lasts for 8 frames.

Icon	Points
	100
	200
	500
	1,000
	2,000
	3,000

Strategy

Safespots

Boss 5

Safespot during the first phase of this boss. The correct positioning is excruciatingly precise and doesn't work for the entire phase. The third attack will kill you unless you move up beforehand. Afterwards the boss performs its second and third attacks again before the fourth attack, which doesn't have any safespots. Furthermore, you cannot use any charge shots as you are constantly colliding with the boss. This is a very all-or-nothing strategy for this encounter.

Final boss

Safespot that makes the last phase of the final boss a non-threat. As the boss' only attack begins almost as soon as this phase starts, for most ships you'll need to use a bomb and move along the supporting planes until you get to it (F-22 can alternative use the time stop). Worst case scenario, dying will give you more than enough i-frames to get there as well.

With the faster ships (F-2A, SU-37, F-22, etc), you can reach the safespot without the use of a bomb, but the precise position and short time to get into it could lead to dying. If you have them, as the old saying goes, just bomb.

Stages

• Mission 1 - Save Earth: Fight over a city during nighttime.
• Mission 2 - The Bryce Canyon: Train chase in a valley. Leads to a mid-boss right before the main boss.
• Mission 3 - The Misawa Airbase: Mostly comprised of turret enemies and a lengthy turret segment near the end.
• Mission 4 - The South Pacific: Sky stage with several mid-bosses.
• Mission 5 - The Atmosphere Area: Similar setting to the previous stage. Ends with an asteroid rush.
• Mission 6 - The Mars Attack: Slow paced stage with a mid-boss and other enemies.

Bugs

Scoring bug

This is a scoring bug that can be performed in a few sections. The points granted by it vastly overshadows everything else in the game, with even bad executions of it giving you about 3 millions, by comparison, a regular clear of the game is about 1.6-1.7 millions.

Stage 2:

• First and foremost, this is exclusive to F-22, no other ship can do it. At the end of the stage, use the charge shot against the mid-boss and pointblank it until the time stop ends. When done perfectly this is 2 millions points added to your score, but popcorn formations and HP management of the mid-boss make it quite difficult to achieve this consistently, usually leaving you 100k-200k below that threshold. Popcorn formations are random and often prevent you from getting close to the mid-boss, on top of it already having a short timer before it self-destructs. Colliding against an enemy will reduce the time stop's duration from 7 to 4 seconds, which makes the bug grant about 1 million points at best. Bombing nets you an extra 200k, but it may be a better idea to save that bomb for later.

Stage 3:

• The bug happens in the boss itself. For whatever reason, the phase transition during this boss can only happen after it performs the laser attack. The bug occurs when the player has dealt enough damage to defeat the boss before this forced transition. Since this basically acts as a time limit, the general setup is to use a maxed charge shot and bombs to do as much damage as possible. Because the boss can be damaged as soon as it appears, maximizing the bug here means burning through your entire bomb counter for the vast majority of ships. For ships with poor crowd control and/or weak shot, it may not be realisitic to consistently survive the turret section right before this without using a bomb, on top of already being unable to use a charge shot, since the maxed charge shot is crucial to triggering the bug here unless your name is Tornado. Playing as Tornado is the most likely way a player would accidentally find this bug because with its high DPS, one bomb + using your charge shot just barely triggers it and gives you about 5 millions.

A demonstration of this bug can be seen here (timestamp 5:40):

Stage 4:

• After the second mid-boss, 3 "pillars" appear, simply keep shooting the left one and that's it. F-22 has an absolutely massive advantage during this section compared to all the other ships due to the time stop. The approach is the same as before where a maxed charge shot will increase how many points you earn here. As for bombs, because there is not a damage treshold to be reached and it's a much shorter time window before the pillar goes offscreen, you may not consider this section not worth using finite resources.

The pillars in question.

Other bugs

• Sometimes, the B button stops activating bombs, even if the player still has bombs in stock. This disappears after the player either loses a life or finishes a stage.
• When playing as F-14, crashing into an enemy will make the ship's sprite change to Tornado. This bug also happens with F-22, F-2A and Tornado.
• There is a similar bug with the lives counter in the HUD. F-22, F-2A, Tornado all have the wrong ship icon, while SE-11L doesn't even display one.
• Enemies destroyed by the main shot of F-2A don't grant any points. Does not apply to the ship's sub-shot.
  • The same bug happens with the missiles fired by Tornado's charge shot.
• Slight graphical glitch in the cutscene after selecting a ship when playing as SE-11L.
• Mashing the B button immediately after bombing will activate more than one bomb. Happens with F-15, F-14, F-2A and Tornado

Version Differences

1945k III

This is a later revision published by Oriental Software somewhere around 1999-2000 named 1945k III. Odd title considering there was never a 1945k or 1945k II released, and references to Solite Spirits remain in the screen between each stage. There are 3 versions currently dumped according to MAME: 1945k III (older, OPCX1 PCB), 1945k III (newer, OPCX1 PCB) and 1945k III (newer, OPCX2 PCB).

OPCX1 (older)

Gameplay differences

• Two score-based extends have been added at 800k and 1400k points.
• The plane summoned by Rafale's bomb now fires.
• There is an entirely new stage placed after stage 4 called The Fortress.
• SE-11L's weapons are different. The sub-shot, charge shot and bomb behave like those of F-2A, F-14, and SU-37, respectively.

Other differences

• Stage 1 has a completely different background and its name has been changed to A.D 2000 Beijing City. The enemy placement of the stage remains identical.
• The name of Stage 4 has been changed to The South Pacific ocean over 3.000m.
• The charge gauge has a slightly different appearance.
• All the aforementioned bugs in Solite Spirits related to ships changing sprites and incorrect HUD icons have been fixed.
• The stage names now appear at the start of each stage instead of on a separate screen.
• In the ship select screen, the second player is now properly labelled as 2P instead of 1P.

OPCX1 (newer)

Includes the same changes as the OPCX1 older version.

Gameplay differences

• There is a new playable ship.

F-117A
Speed: Fast. Shot: Narrow. Sub-shot: Same as F-22 Charge shot: Option stays in place firing. Initially it is a 3-Way shot, then becomes a 4-Way and at max gauge it is 5-Way lasers. Bomb: Large plane that fires at enemies. Overall, it plays like a mix of SU-37 and F-22.

• Tornado is available by default in the ship select screen, making SE-11L the only hidden ship.

Other differences

• The copyright year in the title screen has been changed from the year 1999 to 2000.
• EF2000's sub-shot sprite has been changed to spinning sawblades.
• The cutscene graphic issue when selecting SE-11L has been fixed.
• The charge gauge looks slightly different, again.

OPCX2

Seemingly no differences compared to the OPCX1 newer version.