Tatsujin Ou

Tatsujin Ou (達人王, also known as Truxton II) is a vertical shooting game developed and published by Toaplan in 1992. It was ported to the FM Towns computer by Ving Co., Ltd. exclusively in Japan in 1993. It was programmed by Lee Ohta, who had previously also programmed Daisenpuu and Vimana, with music composed by Masahiro Yuge. It is the sequel to Tatsujin. The plot involves Dogurava and his evil Gidan army, who were originally defeated in Tatsujin, being resurrected and invading the galaxy once more. It is up to the player, aboard the HyperFighter spacecraft, to put a stop to them and restore peace to outer space.

Gameplay Overview

Tatsujin Ou primarily uses two buttons (with a third debug button that typically goes unused).

The game has six stages, and loops infinitely, with the difficulty capping on the second loop.

A: Fires the main weapon, and whichever sub-weapon the player has equipped

B: Uses a bomb

C (Debug): Greatly increases the scrolling speed (unused)

Tatsujin Ou has three sub-weapons that can be equipped on the HyperFighter. One is equipped when the player collects a weapon item. These items alternate between the colors red, blue, and green (in that order), and grabbing one when it's a certain color will equip the ship with the corresponding sub-weapon. Collecting multiple items of the same color will upgrade the ship's main shot, as well as the sub-weapon, with max power being reached after five are collected. Afterwards, excess weapon items of the same color as the equipped sub-weapon will award the player 5,000 points. Tatsujin Ou also has speedup items, which will increase the speed of the HyperFighter when picked up, with the speed maxing out after five items have been collected. Unlike with weapon items, speedup items are no longer dropped once the player has reached max speed.

Weapons & Items

Napalm Bomb (Red): Fires red bombs on either side of the player. At power levels 1 and 2, they shoot diagonally up, with the bombs traveling further at level 2. At power levels 3 and 4, they also shoot to the left and right, with the bombs traveling further at level 4. At max power, they also shoot diagonally down.

Search Laser (Blue): Fires two blue lasers up the entire length of the screen which lock onto enemies.

Normal Shot (Green): Fires green pellets in an arch that increases in width with each increase in power level, up to a maximum of five pellets on either side of the player.

Speedup: Increases the player's movement speed, maxing out at five speedups.

Bomb: Releases a bomb that slowly travels up the screen from where the player deployed it and deals major damage to enemies and bosses. Up to five bombs can be held in the player's stock at once.

1up: Grants the player an extra life. If the player has six or more extra lives, these will instead award 5,000 points.

All excess items award 5,000 points when collected.

References

1. Primary info provided by Flobeamer1922