Strikers 1999

Strikers 1999

Start screen

Developer:	Psikyo
Official site:	X-Nauts
Release date:	Arcade: 1999 Android: 2015 Switch: Aug 29th, 2019 (Zerodiv) Jan 21st, 2020 (City Connection, NIS America) PC: Jun 30th, 2020 (City Connection)
Previous game:	Space Bomber
Next game:	Strikers 1945 Plus

Strikers 1999 (ストライカーズ1999), released internationally as Strikers 1945 III, is a vertical shooting game developed and published in 1999 by Psikyo. The game was ported to Android in 2015 and to the Switch in 2018 as part of the Psikyo Shooting Stars Alpha collection.

The game is a direct sequel to Strikers 1945 II, and is set 54 years after it's predecessor. The game deviates from the WWII aesthetic of previous Strikers titles, and incorporates more sci-fi elements. The game introduces the Technical Bonus scoring mechanic, which was later adopted by Dragon Blaze.

For replay videos, visit the Video Index.

Gameplay Overview

Strikers 1999 is a 2 button game and consists of 8 stages. As with previous Psikyo titles, the order of the first 4 stages is randomised with each credit. The difficulty of these stages varies depending on how late they appear in the stage order. After clearing all 8 stages, the player automatically enters a second loop, which features significantly denser bullet patterns.

Controls

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• A Button (Press): Shot
• A Button (Hold): Super Shot (depletes Super Gauge)
• B Button: Bomb (depletes bomb stock)

Weapons

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F-4 Phantom II and AV-8 Harrier in action

Main Shot

Basic attack performed by pressing the shot button. This attack is upgraded by collecting Power-Up items, and reaches max power after three items have been collected. After collecting two Power-Up items the shot is supplemented by a secondary attack, or sub-shot, which offers some additional screen coverage. Colliding with an enemy will reduce the shot power by one level, and losing a life will reduce the shot to its base level.

Super Shot

The super gauge is located at the bottom left of the screen, and is filled by dealing damage to enemies (including bosses). Holding the A button releases a powerful attack which depletes the gauge. The Super Shot will be active for as long as the A button is held down until the gauge is fully depleted. Super Shots are character-specific and there are three different power levels of the Super Shot depending on how much of the gauge is filled when it is activated.

Filling up the gauge is solely tied to damage inflicted. The more damage is dealt, the quicker the gauge is filling up - regardless of enemy destruction. Moreover, filling up single increments of the blue Lv.0 gauge takes less damage than filling up increments of the green Lv.1 gauge. Lastly, the yellow Lv.2 gauge is filled up the slowest.

Bomb

Bombs not only grant invincibility but also clear enemy bullets and deal damage within specific areas of the screen. The precise effects of bombs are ship-specific.

Ships

Strikers 1999 offers five playable ships by default, each with their own playstyle and unique advantages. A sixth ship, the X-36, can be unlocked by entering the code 01999 in Maintenance Mode. After this, the ship becomes selectable by pressing UP on the random ship on the ship select screen.

F/A-18 Super Hornet

F/A-18 Super Hornet
• Shot: An 8-way blue shot, flanked by an additional green shot on each side. • Sub Weapon: Homing Missile. Heat-seeking missiles that home in on enemies. Up to 4 on screen at once. • Super Shot: Rapid Missile. The F/A-18's four options lock into position and fire a barrage of missiles directly forward. • Bomb: Super Tomahawk. Deploys a bomb that clears most of the screen of bullets and deals damage to enemies. After the initial effect, a fiery circle stays on screen for a bit longer but is limited in range. Regardless of the player's position when the bomb is activated, the effect always stays right in the center of the screen. • Movement Speed: Medium [91F]
Super Hornet is a well-balanced ship with good damage when up close. While it deals significantly less damage if they are away from the enemy, due to how projectiles work in this game, it can be made up for with its Super Shot. A solid option overall, that can make good job of enemies with some routing.

F-117 Stealth

F-117 Stealth
• Shot: An 8-way purple shot, flanked by an additional green shot on each side. • Sub Weapon: Heat Mine. Slow moving mines that explode on contact with enemies. Up to 6 on screen at once. • Super Shot: Sonic Wave. Options move forward and deal damage in two small circular aoes directly in from of the craft. • Bomb: Thunderbolt. Fully clears the screen of bullets and deals damage to enemies. The damage output is very weak. • Movement Speed: Slow [96F]
Stealth fires *very* slow projectiles and it's one of the slowest ships, this makes perform poorly when played in a regular way. To really make good use of it, the player must perform very aggressive shotgun strats. Due to how the game handles projectiles, they will repeatedly spawn if your distance between the enemy is small. They can also be used to cover multiple spaces at one due to their low speed, firing them before an enemy spawns in a location while you are covering another section of the screen. It can fall back on its wide shot and Super Shot when you aren't able to move their faces, but the Super Shot itself is very tricky to use, having comparably low range to the other ships. A powerful ship with potential, just not a conventional one.

F-22 Raptor

F-22 Raptor
• Shot: A narrow green shot aimed directly forward. • Sub Weapon: Baryon Laser. 6 lasers that flank the main shot (3 on either side). Can pierce through multiple enemies. • Super Shot: Twin Stinger. The ship's two options lock into position and each fire a powerful laser directly forward. • Bomb: Cluster Bomb. Drops a bomb that fully clears the screen of bullets and deals damage to enemies. • Movement Speed: Fast [81F]
Raptor's piercing Shots allow it to have a very good stage performance, and with some bosses with multiple parts and/or a myriad of Zako accompanying them, it's also good there. It suffers from a weak main shot however, so making good use of your Super Shot when needed is crucial, otherwise, big HP targets will spell disaster.

AV-8 Harrier

AV-8 Harrier
• Shot: Two columns of purple projectiles aimed directly forward. • Sub Weapon: Straight Missile. Missiles fired directly forward from the ship's two options. • Super Shot: Hunter Fortmation. Options will disengage from the craft and independently seek out targets to attack. • Bomb: B-52 Carpet Bombing. Two large planes will carpet bomb the screen, clearing the screen of bullets and dealing damage to enemies. Extremely high damage output. Unlike the other craft, the Harrier is not locked into an animation for this attack and can move freely. Since bullets do not disappear instantly, panic-bombing can often lead to death. • Movement Speed: Slow [102F]
Harrier has the most consistent main shot damage of any ship, and a very good bomb that let's you reposition very easily. It can use its Super Shot for stage portions with many Zako. Its the slowest ship in the game, even more than Stealth, so it necessitates heavy routing when compared to the other ships, and you will either have to let go of some medals or sacrifice enemy destruction if you want the most amount of points. Due to this, it's amongst the worst ships for scoring, but for survival, its flaws can be worked with for a ship that's really good at doing what it can do. Note that unlike most other crafts, Harrier's two side options directly follow the movements of the main ship, rather than simply flanking on either side (i.e. similar behaviour to those in the Gradius series). This doesn't end up mattering much as you can only ever get two options, so lining all of them up isn't as important as with other trace options.

F-4 Phantom II

F-4 Phantom II
• Shot: 5-way spread shot, flanked by green projectiles on either side. • Sub Weapon: Roll Napalm. Slow moving projectiles aimed directly forward. Up to 4 at once. • Super Shot: Cross Napalm. A single slow-moving, but highly damaging missile. • Bomb: Samurai Sword '99. Performs a loop, while firing a large fiery projectile aimed directly forward. Similar to the bomb animation in Sengoku Ace. The bomb has incredible damage output when used pointblank (perhaps the highest damage in the game) but does almost no damage to targets further away. • Movement Speed: Medium [85F]
Phantom is both fast and very powerful when up front, but has some of the worst stage performance in the game by itself since its sub shot can disappear if it doesn't hit something in its short travel distance. It's not encouraged to shotgun with this ship, it's required, but becomes *the* best boss killer if the player knows what they are doing thanks to its high damage and ability to macro dodge some peculiarly difficult patterns unlike Stealth or Harrier.

X-36

X-36
• Shot: Column of five blue shots aimed directly forward. • Sub Weapon: Variable Laser. Purple lasers that home-in on enemies. • Super Shot: Spiral Laser. Fires a powerful laser directly forward. • Bomb: Mega Smasher. X-36 transforms into a mech and hurls an energy ball across the screen, damaging enemies in a large area. Can move during the transform animation. • Movement Speed: Fast [78F]
The X-36 is considered the strongest ship in the game, thanks to its powerful homing lasers, fastest speed in the game, and devastating super shot attack. It lacks any meaningful weakness aside from dealing less damage when up front compared to other ships, but it's inconsequential when factoring how destructive its damage can be thanks to Super Shot. Recommended for beginners and veterans alike.

Hitboxes

The exact dimensions of each of the hitboxes are as follows.

• F/A-18 Super Hornet: 5x8
• F-117 Stealth: 5x6
• F-22 Raptor: 5x7
• AV-8 Harrier: 3x6
• F-4 Phantom II: 5x6
• X-36: 5x7

The hitbox size is consistent and does not shrink during horizontal movement or when the ship is pushed against the edge of the screen.

Items

	Power Up Increases your shot power (max power after the 3rd item). At max power each item is worth 4000 points.
	Bomb Increases your bomb stock by 1 up to a max of 9. At max bombs each item is worth 10,000 points.
	Medal 200-2000 point score item.   Point reward depends on when the coin is collected during its spin animation. An additional bonus of 200 points is rewarded for each consecutive medal collected at max value.

Loops

After clearing all 8 regular stages, the player automatically enters a second loop. The second loop features significantly denser bullet patterns, and bosses have all-new patterns.

Scoring

Medals

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Certain enemies, when destroyed, will leave behind gold medals that rotate on the spot. These medals will reward the player with 200, 500, 1000 or 2000 points, depending on when they are collected during their spin animation. To achieve the max score of 2000 points, medals must be collected specifically when they flash brightly. Each of the animation states lasts for 7 frames.

If two 2000pt medals are collected consecutively, the player is awarded a chain bonus of 200 points. A yellow chain counter appears at the top of the screen that keeps track of the number of medals chained together in succession. This counter resets every time a lower scoring medal is picked up. The chain counter itself has no effect on scoring whatsoever, as the chain bonus stays consistently at 200 points for every chained medal.

One loop contains 101 medals. If all of them were to be picked up when they are at their highest value, they are worth 222,000 points for loop 1 and 222,200 points for loop 2, as the chain bonus carries over from loop 1. Additionally, the final form of the boss in stage 2-8 can spawn up to four medal rings consisting of 16 medals each before the timeout. As these cannot all be picked up at their highest value, scores can significantly vary here.

Technical Bonus

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Boss enemy exposing its weak point

This mechanic made its debut in Strikers 1999, and was later featured in Psikyo's 2000 title Dragon Blaze. At specific points during the second phase of each boss fight, bosses will temporarily expose a blue weak point for you to destroy. By default these weak points are invulnerable, but moving within close proximity will cause them to turn red, and dealing any damage to the red core will instantly kill the boss, and award you a Technical Bonus of 40,000 pts (bosses 1 to 4), 50,000 pts (bosses 5 and 7), or 36,000 pts (both of the stage 6 bosses). The final boss in stage 8 does not have a Technical Bonus.

Bosses will only expose their weak point once per fight, and will usually release a barrage of bullets at the same time, so careful positioning is needed to take advantage of this opportunity. Note that the stage 8 boss does not have a weak point, so a Technical Bonus is not possible on this stage.

Double Kill

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In some situations, it is possible to destroy the core of a boss and get the reward for the Technical Bonus as well as destroy the regular body of the boss for a Double Kill. This trick is sometimes referred to as a "double Technical Bonus". This designation is a misnomer, as the Technical Bonus is only rewarded once.

Generally speaking, there are two types of Double Kills depending on the nature of the boss fight:

Geo Bite (stage 6) and Shadow Blinder (stage 7)

When the core for the Technical Bonus is destroyed the last moment before the boss covers it up again and would start its final attack, the bonus for the Technical Bonus is rewarded and the boss enters a zombie state. In this bugged state, the boss will not shoot bullets, collisions are turned off and the player cannot use the Super Shot or bomb.

The boss can then be destroyed regularly for the boss kill. The total score gain from Geo Bite is 36,000+20,000 for this trick and 50,000+30,000 for Shadow Blinder.

All other bosses

Theoretically a double kill can also be achieved on all of the other bosses. As none of them can reach the bugged state, the core and the main body of the boss have to be destroyed simultaneously within a very small frame window. For some ships this might require a bomb to make it more consistent, while others can rely on their Super Shot alone.

Endgame Bonus

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Clearing both loops rewards the player with an endgame bonus as follows:

• Lives Remaining x 100,000 (for a maximum of 300,000)
• Bomb Stock x 50,000 (for a maximum of 450,000)
• Power Level x 10,000 (for a maximum of 30,000)

Strategy

See Strikers 1999/Strategy for secrets and advanced play strategies.

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Choosing the boss in stage 6

Depending on the position of the player ship when the boss is launched toward the end of stage 6, one of two different bosses will be chosen. If the player ship is positioned on either side (marked in green), Geo Bite will appear. If the player ship is positioned in the center (marked in red), Cross Blade will appear.

This principle is the same for both loops.

• 

  Cross Blade

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• 

  Geo Bite

Ports

Following its original arcade release in 1999, Strikers 1999 received an Android port in 2015. The game was ported to the Nintendo Switch in 2018 by Zerodiv. After initially only being available on the Nintendo eShop, the game was later released physically as part of the Psikyo Shooting Stars Alpha compilation.

On June 30th 2020, the game was released on Steam by Zerodiv and City Connection.

Maintenance Codes

In the Service Menu, the player can access different features by entering the following Maintenance Codes.

81650-Maintenance Mode: Makes more options in the main Operator Test Menu available, including a stage select option, rank select, and different levels of powerup.

81630-Secret Random Enabled: The X-36 is available in the "?" Random Selector.

81620-Secret All Disabled:

12345-Reset Scores:

81610-All Data Erased: Includes bookkeeping records and extended play information.

01999-Secret Command Enabled: Press Up on the Joystick after selecting the "?" Random Selector to select the X-36.