Cyvern: The Dragon Weapons

Cyvern: The Dragon Weapons

サイヴァーン

Title screen

Developer:	Kaneko
Music:	Katsuya Yoneda
Program:	K.Minegishi Hiyorinn.S Sho-Chan Osapan
Art:	U-Zool Hiroki Narisawa Endo Chang Ryo.Kimura Ishi-Ryu Gomez Marukeni
Release date:	1998

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 5 stages and 2 loops.

Controls

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

Characters

There are three playable dragons. Depending on whether you play as player 1 or 2, name and color of the characters change but not their speed nor weapons.

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

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

3. Ferious (green) / Serene (yellow) : narrow shot with missiles, banish = focused laser beam

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 pop-corn ennemies or to refill the banish gauge. When you reach a high power level, shot get additional elements depending on the character: homing lasers for Altair/Veqa, additionnal shots for Shwarz/Vais, missiles for Ferious/Serene.

Special weapon "banish"

Use it to score and destroy multiple/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, pick up powerups or die (dragon respawns with a full banish gauge and two bombs).

The special weapon is very different depending on the character and changes drastically the gameplay.

Altair/Veqa = flames with medium DPS

Shwarz/Vais = lightning bolts with weak DPS but covering a large part of the screen. You can focus your power by point-blanking enemies.

Ferious/Serene = powerful laser beam that shoots straight forward and slants to the right or to the left depending on the direction you take.

Bomb

Explodes mid-screen in front of you. Use it to destroy ennemies, cancel bullets and get some invicibility 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

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.

Powerups are usually dropped by orange ships. Get a big one by destroying them fast, otherwise you'll get only 2 small powerups.

Bomb : usually dropped by blue ships.

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

Rank

Game contains a rank system depending on how many extends, bombs and powerups you got. Manage the rank is crucial for the score. See strategy sections for more details.

Rank and bosses

Depending on the rank level, you'll fight different versions of bosses. In general, all 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.

Extends

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

Loops

Game has a second loop you enter by just finishing the first one. 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.

Scoring

Scoring is based on two main elements: medals and bosses. "Banish" is the key to get points: using shot or bomb won't give you any bonus points. In general, "banishing" enemies will give you about twice as many points as destroying them with shot or bomb.

Medals

Build the chain

Game has a medal system. You must build a chain of medals composed of 6 values: 50 points, 100, 500, 1 000, 5 000, 10 000.

Destroy ground enemies (tanks, buildings etc.) with the "banish" to reveal the medals. You must pick at least 5 medals to get to the next level. If you reveal more than 5 medals at the same time, they will all have the same value. So, ideally, you'd want to reveal 5 medals, collect them, then reveal 5 more, collect etc.

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). Even if you rebuild ideally the chain 5 by 5, it's a 200 000 points loss at the very least.

Special 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 : At the beginning 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. You must destroy the 4 turrets first then the core with "banish".

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

Stage 5 : 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

Bosses

Last hit

Get a big bonus by giving the last hit to bosses with the "banish" (except stage 3). The difficulty lies in the fact that they do not have a lifebar.

stage 1 boss: 300 000 points

stage 2 boss: 400 000 points

stage 4 boss: 600 000 points

stage 5 boss: 800 000 points

Destroying 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. Boss 4 is accompanied by two flying monsters that are worth 200 000 points each.

Leeching

Some bosses will launch blue bullets that you can cancel (stage 1, 2, 3) or missiles that are destroyable (stage 2: 72 missiles, 10 000 points each).

Story

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