Tatsujin Ou

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Tatsujin Ou

Title screen

Developer:	Toaplan
Music:	Masahiro Yuge
Art:	Naoki Ogiwara Tomonobu Kagawa
Release date:	Arcade: June 1992 FM Towns: April 1993
Previous game:	Dogyuun
Next game:	V-V

Tatsujin Ou (達人王 "Master King", 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 is the sequel to Tatsujin.

For replay videos, visit the Video Index.

Gameplay Overview

Tatsujin Ou primarily uses an eight-way joystick and two buttons (with a third debug button that typically goes unused). It also includes an autofire DIP switch that's enabled by default.

Controls

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• 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)

Weapons

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Tatsujin Ou features a main weapon, three sub-weapons indicated by color, and a bomb weapon.

Main Shot: The HyperFighter's primary shot. It's made up of four pink shots split into two hitboxes, and travels straight up the screen. Each increase in power causes the shot to become wider and longer. Five of these shots can be fired at once.

Napalm Bomb (Red): Fires red bombs on either side of the player, which leave behind lingering explosions that can damage enemies. 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 and damage them.

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

Bomb: Releases a large orange bomb that slowly travels up the screen from where the player deployed it and deals major damage to enemies and bosses.

Items

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Tatsujin Ou features four unique item types.

Item	Description
	Power Ups: Indicated by the flashing circle in the center. These periodically alternate between the colors red, blue, and green (in that order, changing every 180 frames) and grabbing one when it's a certain color will equip the player with the corresponding sub-weapon. Grabbing a power up of the same type already equipped will increase the power of both the main shot and the sub-weapon, with max power being achieved after five Power Ups of the same color have been collected. At this point collecting power ups of the same weapon currently equipped will award 5000 points. The initial color of each item is determined by RNG with red being twice as likely as the other two colors.
	Speed Ups: Indicated by the flashing S. These will increase the player's movement speed, with max speed being achieved after five have been collected.
	Bombs: Indicated by the B in the center. Grabbing one will add a bomb to the player's stock. Up to five bombs can be held in stock at once.
	1up: These are located in specially-colored containers in certain stages, requiring a bomb use and the corresponding sub-weapon to access. Grants the player an extra life. These will only appear if the player has five or fewer extra lives, and if these are on screen while the player has six or more extra lives, these will instead award 5,000 points.

All excess items award 5,000 points when collected.

Rank

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Rank in Tatsujin Ou is tied to the player's power level - the more powered up the player is, the harder the game gets. In the Japanese version each power level gained adds 4 to the base level rank while in the international version each power level adds 2. Rank exclusively determines the frequency of enemy attacks and represents the amount to be added to the enemy attack timer.

Loops

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The game contains six stages and loops infinitely. From the second loop onwards many enemies have more difficult attacks. Exactly how the difficulty progresses depends on the region and difficulty dipswitch settings. There are four preset difficulty levels for each version of the game, with level 0 being the easiest and 3 being the hardest. The same numeric level is not equivalent across different versions and represents an easier difficulty in the international version compared to the Japanese version. These difficulty levels are assigned to the first four loops of the game (loop 5 is treated the same as loop 4) and contain preset values for the base rank level, the base amount of damage each weapon inflicts and how much additional damage each weapon gains at each power level.

• Japan
  DIP	Loop
  	1	2	3	4
  Easy	0	1	2	3
  Normal	1	3	3	3
  Hard	2	3	3	3
  Very Hard	3	3	3	3

• International
  DIP	Loop
  	1	2	3	4
  Easy	0	1	2	3
  Normal	1	2	3	3
  Hard	2	3	3	3
  Very Hard	3	3	3	3

It can be seen that on normal settings the international version reaches maximum difficulty at the third loop, while the Japanese version reaches it at the second.

Enemy changes after the first loop

• The green zako enemies in stage 1 fire a constant stream of aimed bullets instead of not firing at all.
• The opening and closing turrets in the purple area of stage 1 shoot more bullets in their attacks.
• The enemies at the end of stage 1 shoot an aimed 3-way attack in addition to their vertical shots.
• The stage 1 boss's homing fireballs increase in number by twice as many or greater for each part destroyed and home in on the player for much longer.
• The enemies that come from behind at the start of stage 2 shoot longer arcs of bullets in each attack.
• The large yellow enemies near the end of stage 2 shoot six destructible homing bullets instead of four
• The stage 2 boss's side parts both attack at the same time instead of taking turns between sides.
• The large buildings at the beginning of stage 3 shoot solid walls of bullets instead of simple 3-way spreads.
• The homing missiles fired by the purple enemies in the middle of stage 4 home in on the player for slightly longer
• The enemies at the end of stage 4 shoot single aimed shots in addition to the bullets shot by the large missiles they release.
• The lasers of the stage 4 boss fire simultaneously instead of firing the left laser shortly after the right.
• The yellow enemies near the end of stage 5 shoot a fast 4-way spread on top of the slower 5-way spread they fired in loop 1.
• The stage 5 boss's homing projectiles home in on the player for far longer.
• The green zako enemies in stages 5 and 6 fire double aimed shots.
• The stage 6 boss's bullet speed increases twice as quickly, while retaining the same maximum speed.

Scoring

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Because Tatsujin Ou loops infinitely, the primary method of scoring is by simply playing through the game and clearing multiple loops. There are no stage end score bonuses like in some previous Toaplan shmups, so the best way of scoring more quickly is by collecting as many excess Power Ups as possible, since each one gives 5,000 points. The third and final way of scoring is milking tick points. Unlike most other shmups, tick points in Tatsujin Ou are not earned from the damage dealt to an enemy. They are instead earned from how long an enemy is being damaged. In order to score more points sooner, the player can use a sub-weapon (most commonly, the napalm bombs) to slowly damage and milk as many tick points off of enemies as they can before destroying them.

Strategy

See (Tatsujin Ou)/Strategy for stage maps, enemy and boss descriptions, walkthroughs, and advanced play strategies.

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WIP

Story

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.

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Development History

WIP

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Version Differences

International

Truxton II title screen

Outside of Asian territories, Tatsujin Ou was released under the name Truxton II. In this international release, the player's weapons deal more damage, and the enemies shoot less frequently than in Tatsujin Ou. The difficulty increase from loop 1 to loop 2 is also not as high.

New Version

A romhack of Tatsujin Ou was released by shmups community member mycophobia, in an effort to adjust overall game balance and improve playability. This romhack is available for download via romhacking.net. Although there were no bug fixes made to the game, the following changes are applied:

• More bomb drops.
• Higher bomb capacity.
• 1up items will spawn and will award actual 1ups no matter how many lives you have.
• The order of item drops is reset after each death, continue or new game.
• Weapon power levels are at least at Truxton 2 Normal first loop levels across all regions, difficulty settings and loops.
• The main shot and Red weapon are buffed at low levels.
• Green and Blue weapons receive overall strength buffs.
• High score screen copyright text now includes “NEW VERSION”

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Bugs

• The player's speed is reset to minimum when respawning at the start of each loop. This is presumably only supposed to happen when the player respawns on the next life after dying, but the speed is always reset on any respawn regardless of the cause.

• While the player is in the right-most region of the screen, enemies that are on the left will try to attack the player from the wrong side, shooting or travelling to the left instead. This can be used to despawn certain enemies by having them throw themselves off the screen in an attempt to reach the player.

• The explosion effect of certain bosses' death animations is bugged. A bullet fired by the boss may be mistakenly treated as a graphical element of the explosion effect, appearing in various positions before finally being released at its original angle from one of these positions when the animation is over, potentially hitting the unsuspecting player.

• Destroying a side part of the stage 2 boss just before it descends will permanently prevent the main part from attacking, rendering the boss completely harmless once both side parts are destroyed. When a side part descends in order to perform its own attack, it is flagged as such to prevent the boss itself from attacking at the same time. The flag is then removed when the part is raised again after its attack, allowing the boss's main attack to resume. The 'descended' flag is also removed when the part is destroyed, but this is done at the beginning of the part's destruction animation instead of the end. If the part starts to descend again before the destruction sequence ends, the flag will be set again, leaving it permanently set after the part has been fully removed and leaving the boss unable to resume its attacks.

• Some of the bosses can cause bugs with the game's scrolling speed. This bug is caused by the two bosses that appear against a looping background in stage 1 and stage 3. The background will loop a set number of times, using a counter value to count down the number of remaining loops. When the counter reaches 0, the game will continue normally past the loop point while the boss begins to escape. Destroying the boss will set the counter to 1, indicating the final repeat of the looping section, before the game continues to progress as normal. This effectively ends the stage when the boss is destroyed at any point during its time limit, without the player having to complete the full set of background loops. Regardless of where the boss is destroyed, the loop counter will be set to 1. These bosses can also be destroyed just before they escape, after already going through the full set of background loops and reaching the next non-looping section. This will also set the background loop counter to 1, but as this is after the looping section has ended, this 1 will never be counted down. This is unnoticeable until the next change in scrolling speed, when the game either speeds up at the midpoint of stage 3, or slows back down after the stage 3 boss. For some reason the background loop counter is required to be 0 for the speed change to take effect, and the value of 1 left in the counter by the boss will prevent any speed change from occuring. Losing a life will also empty the counter, allowing the speed changes to occur again. Destroying the stage 1 boss just before it escapes will therefore cause the high speed section in stage 3 to scroll extremely slowly, and destroying the stage 3 boss after the final background loop but before the speed returns to normal will cause the high scrolling speed to be maintained into the next stage until the player loses a life. As the speed decreases in several discrete stages at the end of stage 3, the amount of speed preserved can vary with the timing of the boss' destruction.

• There are some enemies that may attack more frequently at lower rank than at higher rank. This is because at higher rank the attack rate may be sufficiently high that the next attack occurs before the animation of the previous attack has completed. The effect of this is that original time of the second attack is cancelled and the second attack will actually come at the time of what would have been the third attack. At lower rank the attack animation has had time to complete so the second attack is able to come at the original time.

• The attack frequency of the left spread gun of the stage 4 boss is undefined. This results in the right gun attacking at a rate consistent with the rank level, while the left gun will always attack at the fastest possible rate allowed by the opening and closing animation of the cover. The spread patterns of both sides will therefore align differently depending on the current rank level.

• Destroying the stage 4 boss while either of its lasers are firing will cause the laser's hitbox to remain activated throughout its destruction animation, until the boss has fully been removed from the screen. This persisent laser hitbox is not visible but still very much a hazard to the player. It is therefore good practice to stay away from the areas in which a laser was last seen to fire throughout this period.

• Under certain circumstances the homing projectiles of the stage 5 boss may perform a 'screen wrap', reappearing on the opposite side of the screen after exiting and hitting the player from the other side.

• After destroying the stage 6 boss, one of its hitboxes still remains activated and an invisible collision hazard until the stage has fully ended.

Trivia

• There is an unused item left inside the game that gives either 1000 or 5000 points when collected.

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Gallery

See (Tatsujin Ou)/Gallery for our collection of images and scans for the game.

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Other

WIP

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References & Contributors

1. Primary info provided by Flobeamer1922