Life Force/Stage 5

Outer section

 * Stage 5 is the second of the two original stages exclusive to the NES version. It is a long and diverse stage broken into two parts; outside the temple, and inside.  You begin outside by fighting squadrons of three gold Beruberumus each for ten power up capsules.  Midway through, a set of cannons will be mounted on the floor and ceiling, but your Missiles should take care of them.


 * [[Image:Life_Force_stage5_screen2.gif|right]] After the Beruberumus, a small hill on the ceiling will release enemies. You can shoot the hill and cause it to explode, stopping the appearance of the enemies.  Beyond that, you will encounter a series of floating blue rocks.  A majority of the rocks are completely indestructible.  However, two or three of them (chosen at random) may be destroyed and turned into power up capsules.  Fire your weapons as you dodge them just to see which ones can be destroyed.


 * After the blue floating rocks, you must fly over a tall hill. More gold Beruberumus will fly toward you.  Then you will encounter a series of blue spiked balls that bounce along the floor.  They take a few hits to destroy, but they can be shot down if you are persistent.  Fly at the altitude equal to the height of their bounce for the easiest time shooting at them.  After the bouncing balls, another small enemy releasing mound will appear on the bottom of the screen.  Destroy it to stop the enemies from appearing.


 * [[Image:Life_Force_stage5_screen4.gif|right]] Fly under and over the next two mountains, and use your Missiles to destroy the cannons position immediately beyond the second mountain. A series of ships will begin to appear.  They will follow you around the screen, but they are weak enemies and can easily be destroyed.  As you continue forward, you will eventually encounter the source of the ships: a large rock in the middle of the screen with four hatches on all sides of the rock.  The left, top, and bottom hatches are easy to hit with your weapons, but the right hatch is almost impossible to get unless you have enough speed and can spread your Options out far enough.  It's not worth attempting, just get rid of the ships that escape from the hatch.


 * After you pass the large rock, enemies will continue to pour onto the screen, this time from the left side of the screen. Position your ship somewhere in the middle of the screen to remain safe, and let the enemies advance a bit to the right before attempting to destroy them.  By this time, you will begin to see spikes raining down from the ceiling.  In order to survive this section, you should drop low to the ground.  Attempting to keep your Options high and above you will help substantially.  Fire continuously, and watch for openings between the spikes where you can fly safely.


 * [[Image:Life_Force_stage5_screen6.gif|right]] After the spikes, you will get another chance to collect power up capsules from Beruberumus. Then you will face a new challenge.  In the arcade game, you had to fight three Big Cores, one at a time, in the sixth stage.  The NES version does not contain that, but you will fight three similar ships simultaneously.  They are not quite Big Cores, but they look similar, and the familiar Gradius boss music will be played.  These ships shoot orbs out at you.  On rare occasions, the orbs might be gold, and shooting them will result in a power up.  Ultimately, you must avoid the orbs and shoot at each ship until all three are destroyed.  Each destroyed ship will also yield a power up.  When all three ships are destroyed, the level will continue, with one more small mound on the ceiling releasing enemies before the temple.

Inner section

 * The entrance to the temple proper is low to the ground. It is guarded by two types of objects.  One is a pair of pots in which a ball bounces back and forth.  The bottom pots are easy to destroy, but a ball will continue to drop unless the top is destroyed with Missiles.  The other object is a three pointed craft which starts on one surface, and flies in a straight direction to another surface.  As you get further in and have more space to maneuver, these objects become easier to destroy.


 * [[Image:Life_Force_stage5_screen8.gif|right]] Further in, you will encounter a series of pillars. The first few are stationary.  After that, the pillars will begin to move up and down, from both the floor and the ceiling.  Part of the way through, one stationary pillar will hang from the ceiling, making the passage from the moving pillar before it extremely difficult.  You must time your approach when the moving pillar is down to its lowest position, and then slide under the stationary pillar.  Beyond that, pairs of pillars open and close.  Timing your passage through them should not be difficult.


 * Past the pillars, you will begin to encounter series of passageways that are occupied with many small blocks. The blocks can be shot away, creating a safe path for you to travel through.  In fact, many of the blocks are actually hiding power ups.  It is important, however, to remain focused on staying alive and to not get greedy.  Some passages lead to dead ends.  Early on, there are also some guns mounted on the right sides of certain walls that are difficult to destroy without the help of Options or Missiles.  The three-pointed objects and more cannons follow before you reach the heart of the block passages.


 * [[Image:Life_Force_stage5_screen10.gif|right]] After you navigate a safe path through the passages, you will only encounter a few more enemies before you reach the boss. Most of these enemies are dispatched early on with Missiles.  As you approach the boss, you will see an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh's mask in the wall.  Then the room will begin to tremble.  From left to right, the blocks in the room will tumble to the bottom of the screen.  You must survive the entire break down of the room.  Stay in the middle until enough blocks on the left have fallen.  Then, as the blocks fall over your head, slide back to the left and wait for the remainder to finish.

Boss: Tankamu
Once all the blocks have tumbled away, the Pharaoh's mask will come to life. A set of eight golden orbs will orbit around the mask. These orbs are indestructible, and serve as a fairly effective shield for the mask. Additionally, each orb will fire steady moving projectiles at your ship which you must avoid. The mask itself will bob up and down along the right side of the screen. After doing this for a period of time, it will begin to move across to the left side of the screen where it will resume bobbing up and down. While it is here, there is little you can do to safely attack it, so you must simply wait for it to return to the opposite side of the screen. The only weak point on the entire mask is the glowing eyes. You must concentrate as much fire as possible on those eyes in order to defeat the boss.