USAAF Mustang
Title screen
| Developer: | NMK |
|---|---|
| Planning: | Saburou Yotsuya (alias) (and others?) |
| Music: | Kazunori Hideya |
| Program: | Youichi Koyama |
| Art: | Kenji Yokoyama (and others?) |
| Release date: | Arcade: 1990 |
| Previous game: | Task Force Harrier |
| Next game: | Black Heart |
USAAF Mustang is a shmup developed NMK and published by UPL in 1990. It is a spiritual sequel to the earlier P-47, and was called P-51 during development to reflect this.
There is a port released for the Sega Mega Drive and Genesis called Fire Mustang.
For replay videos, visit the Video Index.
Contents
Gameplay Overview
Controls
USAAF Mustang is a two-button game.
.png)
- A: Shot (with internal autofire). Used for firing the main gun and the bombs, both weapons can be upgraded up to two times with the same power-up. At the basic power level the main gun only fires up front, with one power-up it shoots in the upper front diagonal, and with two power-ups it shoots a 3-way shot. The power level determines how many bombs can be on-screen at once : the basic power level allows for a maximum of 2 bombs, one power-up allows for 4, and two power-ups allow for 8 at once. Upon hitting the ground or the sea the bombs create an impact that will dammage ennemies nearby. It is not possible to influence the bombs’ trajectory with the ship’s movement.
- B: Strike Forcer. Acts as a screen-clearing smart bomb that gives invulnerability frames. The Strike Forcer does much more dammage to the ennemies if the front blast hits directly, but the screen clearing effect is enough to get rid of zakos. The further one is to the left side of the screen when firing the Strike Forcer, the more invulnerability frames one will get. The number of Strike Forcers is indicated on the bottom of the screen, and is not related to the number of lives. The maximum amount of Strike Forcers you can hold is 8.
It's worthwhile to have an autofire A button at 15,20 and/or 30Hz, as it is much faster than the internal autofire. Note that higher frequencies will create shot gaps that can make them unreliable to use at medium or long distance.
Death
When getting hit the player will lose all power-ups, and the control of the ship which will slowly start to fall until it hits the ground/sea and explodes, or falls of-screen (Saipan stage only). The closer the player is to the bottom of the screen when getting hit, the faster the death will occur, and the sooner the player will respawn. It can thus be strategic to hug the top of the screen during the stages since it grands more invulnerability frames from your death, the counterpart of doing that is it can easy to miss power-ups. Dying can dammage the ennemies with the debris of the ship exploding when it hits the ground or the sea, the dammage is enough to destroy the zakos.
Rank
Rank in USAAF Mustang is affected only by clearing stages and dying, and only affects the number of enemy bullets, such that at ranks lower than maximum, some enemies do not fire, or fire simpler attacks. At the end of the stage clear display, rank is increased by +1 up to a maximum of 3. Dying reduces rank by -1, down to a minimum of 0. After the 1st loop, rank is fixed at 3 (maximum rank) and cannot be lowered again.
Scoring
The game doesn’t have a complex scoring system : extra Strike Forcers or power-ups give a 10k bonus, some ennemies and bosses can be milked, Berlin stage is a caravan stage, but most points essentially come from the ennemies’ destruction and the loops.
Loops
USAAF Mustang loops infinitely. There are no more extra lives during the loop and rank is always maxed out, any loop after the first one is a simple repetition of the second loop.
References & Contributors
- Page created and written by trap15 with the help of Prickly Angler.
