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 dragons change but not their speed and weapons.

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

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

3. Ferious (green) / Serene (yellow) : average speed, narrow shot with rockets on the sides, 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 popcorn enemies and refill the banish gauge (especially strong enemies). When you reach a high power level, shot has additional elements depending on the character: homing lasers for Altair/Veqa, additionnal shots for Schwarz/Vais, rockets for Ferious/Serene.

Special weapon "banish"

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

The special weapon is very different from a dragon to another and modifies therefore the gameplay.

Altair / Veqa = flames. DPS seems weak/medium. Hardest dragon to score.

Shwarz / Vais = lightning bolts. Weak DPS but covering a large part of the screen. Useful to quickly reveal medeals but you might struggle against bosses, even if 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. This is the World & Western record dragon because of the precision and power of the laser.

Bomb

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

Bomb : usually dropped by

Powerups and bombs are usually dropped by a certain type of ships, orange for powerups and blue for bombs. Get a big powerup by destroying orange ships fast, otherwise you'll get only 2 small powerups.

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

Rank

Game contains a rank system depending on how many extends, bombs and powerups you got. Managing the rank is crucial for the score: see strategy sections for 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. At very high rank, red boss can have additional attacks ("tentacles").

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 in 6 steps: 50 points, 100, 500, 1 000, 5 000, 10 000.

Destroy a ground enemy (tanks, buildings etc.) with the "banish" to reveal a medal. You must collect at least 5 medals to advance 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 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). There is no way to recover more quickly. Beware: playing area is larger than the screen so a medal can be hidden on one side. It can also be hidden behind a new wave of enemies.

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

The very beginning of stage 1 shows you the way: destroy 5 tanks, collect, then destroy the 5 others.

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, all using "banish".

Stage 5 : at some point, 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: 400 000 points

stage 2 boss: 300 000 points

stage 4 boss: 600 000 points

stage 5 boss: 800 000 points

Destroy 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 can be cancelled (stage 1, 2, 3) or destroyable missiles (stage 2 and mid-boss stage 5: 72 missiles, 10 000 points each).

Strategy

Banish management

Entire score relies on "banish" so you need to know how and when filling and emptying your gauge. Each movement is planned to give the "banish hit" you need at a precise moment. Fill the gauge using the shot on strong enemies and use the banish to give them the last hit and destroy the weak ones all around. One enemy, strong or weak = one medal so you don't want to burn your gauge without reward.

Rank control

Rank control is crucial, especially during first loop. If you want to score, you want your enemies as weak as possible to collect more medals with less "banish". As you win an extend every million, suicide is part of the game. Bombing lowers the rank but losing a life is more efficient because you'll lose all the accumulated powerups. There is no need to have 4 or more extends because rank will be off the charts: you won't make points and probably die anyway. It's better to choose when and how you gonna lose a life to get more points and, in the end, the extends you need to go on. Best players rarely keep more than 3 extends for long.

Choose your boss

On stage 1 (both loops) you will get more points from the green boss. On first loop, just pick all big powerups and bomb during the stage. Destroy the orange ships quickly to get the big powerups, otherwise, you will not be able to raise the rank to the level required to get the green boss. On second loop, it's more difficult to set the rank right but, most of the times, if you have some extends at the beginning of the stage (ideally 3 or 4), suiciding just before the boss appears should set you up. Otherwise, you'll probably get the red one. It's possible to have the brown boss on second loop but that means you are very low on extends/bombs/powerups.

If you no-miss the first 2 stages on first loop, you may meet the red boss 2. And that's no good news. Just suicide to get points on boss 1 and ease your life. On second loop, if you really don't want to meet the red boss 2 and if you have at most 3 extends, suicide just before the fight and you should get the grey boss.

Beware of timeouts

Bosses have no lifebar and time to destroy them is limited. It's particularly important for boss 1 and 3. You want to cancel as many blue bullets as possible. When timeout music starts, you're invincible. Tips for boss 3: doors that launch blue bullets open 8 times before timeout.

Use all your ressources

Success in this game relies on the fact that nothing is useless : shot, bomb, banish, lives. You'll need everything to put yourself in the best possible situation before a big scoring phase.

Adapt yourself

Game has a slight touch of RNG: powerups floating around, random attacks of boss 4, rank variations... Of course, you'll have your routine and consistent moves but you'll need to adapt: each run is different from the other. You won't need to practice a lot on savestates in this game. Playing over and over and creditfeeding is the way to go. It's not a "perfect sheet music" type of game: if you suffer one or even multiple unplanned deaths, or if you used more bombs than usual, don't restart, you might get a good score anyway and extends that go with it.

Video References

Cyvern:_The_Dragon_Weapons/Video_Index

References & Contributors

Page created by RZM

Images taken mostly from spriters-resource.com and screenshots