P-47 Aces

P-47 Aces

Title screen

Developer:	NMK
Planning:	W.W. Miyakawa Saburou Yotsuya (alias)
Music:	Manabu Namiki Hideya Kazunori Akira Hirokami
Program:	Youichi Koyama
Art:	Kenji Yokoyama Eisaku Origami Hiromi Seki Akemi Tsunoda (and others?)
Release date:	1995
Previous game:	P-47

P-47 Aces is a horizontally scrolling shoot'em up arcade game developed by NMK and published by Jaleco in 1995. It is notable for its obtuse "bumping"-based scoring system, highly detailed pixel art, and high degree of difficulty.

It has not been ported as of September 2020.

Controls

P-47 Aces is a 2 button game with a typical 8-way lever movement.

• A: Shot (with internal autofire)
• B: Bomb

It's worthwhile to have an autofire A button at 30Hz, as it's faster than the internal autofire. Keeping the internal autofire button is useful both for handling slowdown more effectively, and to reduce gaps in the firing pattern. For scoring, it is also common to add frame buttons on movement, to make positioning for bumping simpler and more consistent.

Internal Autofire

The autofire rate is different for the 3 parts of the player shot (main shot, anti-air shot, anti-surface shot), and are at the following rates:

• Main Shot: 15 Hz (every 4 frames)
• Anti-Air: 12 Hz (every 5 frames)
• Anti-Surface: ~4.6 Hz (every 13 frames)

Characters

Thunderbolt Sergeant Jody S. Age 21
		Speed: Medium (2.5px / f) Hitbox: 13x5 Anti-Air: 5-way Anti-Surface: Normal Bomb
Strengths: Anti-air is very effective on zako at long range Highest scoring potential
Weaknesses: Non-integer move speed makes bump positioning tricky Anti-air attack does very low damage unless at extremely close range Anti-surface does very little damage Second-largest hitbox
Blackwidow Sergeant Kim Blair Age 28
		Speed: Medium (3px / f) Hitbox: 17x7 Anti-Air: 1-way Anti-Surface: Smart Bomb
Strengths: Good damage at long and medium range, extremely high damage at close range (from anti-surface) Homing anti-air and semi-homing anti-surface make targeting extremely easy Good speed
Weaknesses: Homing makes targeting unreliable Anti-surface is limited in range as it does not "travel" Very large hitbox
Swordfish Captain Uncle Age 52
		Speed: Low (2px / f) Hitbox: 9x5 Anti-Air: Sidewinder Anti-Surface: Dispenser
Strengths: Anti-air is very effective on zako at any range Speed makes bump positioning relatively easy Smallest hitbox
Weaknesses: Slow speed makes many situations dangerous without extensive planning Anti-surface is unreliable as it does not always drop bombs
Spitfire Sergeant Harry B. Age 24
		Speed: High (3.5px / f) Hitbox: 11x5 Anti-Air: 1-way Anti-Surface: Napalm
Strengths: Extremely high damage at nearly any range from both anti-air and anti-surface Very high speed easily makes up for lack of range Second-smallest hitbox
Weaknesses: Anti-air does not spread, so zako can become more dangerous Bump positioning is extremely difficult due to high, non-integer move speed

Tier List

For a 1 credit clear, with S being easiest to clear and D hardest to clear.

S	Spitfire	Extremely high damage at medium range allows for quick and safe dispatch of bosses and large enemies, the hardest parts of the game. High speed makes zako rarely a problem, and combined with its small hitbox, reaction dodging is often not a problem.
A	Blackwidow	Great damage at medium range and homing allows for a lot of simple and safe strategies to be very effective. Large hitbox can make some dodges difficult.
C	Swordfish	Has a hard time dealing with bosses and large enemies without some point-blanking, and does not have reliable tools for dealing with zako easily. Slow movement speed makes reaction dodging difficult, but small hitbox somewhat alleviates this issue.
D	Thunderbolt	Has an extremely hard time dealing with bosses and even medium sized enemies without constant point-blanking, due to very low damage output.

Items

Power-ups

These items increase the Anti-Air and Anti-Surface weapon power levels by one. These items also serve as a bomb fragment system, and every time 6 of these (combined) are collected, a bomb item is generated.

Bomb

Increases bomb stock by 1. Up to 8 bombs may be stocked, and there is a small bonus (10'000 points) when collecting extra bombs.

Hyper

Increases the Anti-Air and Anti-Surface weapon powers to maximum. This item is only spawned by a player running out of lives, and is provided as a continue service. In a multi-player game, it's possible for the remaining player to pick up this item anyways.

Rank

P-47 Aces features a simple rank system, based entirely on survival time. Rank only affects enemy firing patterns, by removing bullets at lower rank values. It has 4 steps, from 0 to 3. Difficulty settings only adjust the rank minimum, maximum, and increment time. Each stage has a different setting for minimum and maximum rank. When a player dies, the value is subtracted by 3, effectively resetting the rank to 0.

EASY				NORMAL				HARD				VERY HARD
Increase every 45*60 frames				Increase every 30*60 frames				Increase every 15*60 frames				Always maximum
Stage	Minimum	Maximum		Stage	Minimum	Maximum		Stage	Minimum	Maximum		Stage	Minimum	Maximum
1	0	2		1	1	3		1	2	3		1	3	3
2	0	2		2	1	3		2	2	3		2	3	3
3	1	2		3	2	3		3	3	3		3	3	3
4	1	2		4	3	3		4	3	3		4	3	3
5	1	2		5	3	3		5	3	3		5	3	3
6	1	2		6	3	3		6	3	3		6	3	3
7	1	2		7	3	3		7	3	3		7	3	3
8	1	2		8	3	3		8	3	3		8	3	3

Scoring

Score is primarily gained from many individual tricks that are generally unrelated to each other. As such, it's possible to avoid difficult tricks and only lose the points from the trick itself.

Hidden Score Areas

One of the most prominent score sources are the hidden score areas in each stage, which range in value from 100 to 10'000 points (mostly in increments of 1'000 points). These score areas are destructible objects with no graphics, generally placed on the top or bottom of the screen, or next to ground scenery. The higher the value of the area, the more damage is required to uncover it.

Tick Points

There are also significant amounts of points from the mere act of hitting objects with your shots. The object being hit does not need to be destructible, so it is possible to milk points out of scenery by getting close and firing repeatedly.

Enemy Destruction

Enemy destruction points are also not exactly obvious, as some enemies are built out of a multitude of parts. When an enemy is destroyed, it only awards points if the part being destroyed has been hit by the player. As such, some parts will not award their points unless the player has shot the part at least once before destroying the enemy.

Bumping

In addition to the above mechanics, 100 points are awarded every time the player touches a non-bullet, non-item object, which causes the player to bounce away from the center of that object. On its own, this is a rather hard source of points, but due to the design of the system, it's possible to put the player ship in a position where it will rebound between multiple objects quickly, causing a rapid rise of points. There are a few bosses, notably the stage 6 and stage 7 bosses, where it's possible to completely wedge the player ship inside the boss, making the player invincible for the duration, and causing a dramatic point gain.

Strategy

See P-47 Aces/Strategy for stage maps, enemy and boss descriptions, and advanced play strategies.

Version Differences

There are two versions of P-47 Aces, the original release (V1.0) and a relatively rare bug-fix update (V1.1). The differences are:

• V1.1 fixes a bug that can cause severe sound effect cuing lag.
• V1.1 fixes the sound test to actually work.

Trivia

• The working title for this game was P-47 Kai
• The stage 1 layout is a rough recreation of the stage 1 layout from the original P-47
• The stage 7 boss theme is an arrangement of Theme of Bismarck from the original P-47

Gallery

See P-47 Aces/Gallery for our collection of images and scans for the game.