Burning Force/Walkthrough

Namco's Japan-only 1989 three-dimensional shooter arcade game Burning Force is divided into five worlds, each one comprised of four areas. For the first two areas of each world, the player must control the space cadet Hiromi Tengenji on her futuristic motor scooter, which can move to the left and right as well as brake and accelerate; but at the start of the third area of each world, the eagle-like "Mothership" will fly past over Hiromi and come to a landing in front of her as its back door opens up and she automatically speeds into the ship. Once Hiromi has reappeared inside the ship, a screen showing a diagram of the area's boss character will come down in front of her and the "Commander" will fly into view on a hovering platform to point out the boss character's weak (hit) points with a stick. Once the "Commander" has flown out of view again, a claw holding a cab-like attachment will come down on Hiromi from the top of the screenn and transform her scooter into a flying ship which can move in all eight directions - she will thenn fly up to the centre of the screenn and blast off through the window at the front of the ship. And the fourth and final area of each world is a bonus stage, in which no enemies or bosses will be present and you just have to collect as many spheres with the numbers 10, 100 and 1000 onn them as possible for bonus points; however, you will still have to watch out for Red and Blue Spheres arranging themselves into shapes and rotating in a clockwise or anticlockwise direction as you try to bypass them. There are exactly 100 numbered spheres in each bonus stage, and if you manage to collect them all, you will receive a "Perfect Bonus" that takes the current world's number and multiplies it by 10000. The cab-like attachment will then automatically fly off Hiromi into the distance (presumably returning to "Mothership").

If the arcade owner has set the "Shot Triger" option in the game's dip switch menu to "Manual", you will have to press the Firing Button every time you wish to fire a shot at the enemies - however, if he has set it to "Auto", you can press and hold the Firing Button to continuously fire shots at the enemies. If Hiromi is hit by an enemy, the impact will knock her back slightly and stunn her for a few seconds; however, if she is hit by a projectile or homing missile, the impact will destroy her scooter (or ship) innstantly. The amount of time Hiromi has to clear each area inn starts at 100 seconds (1:40 minutes) for the first world and inncreases by 20 seconds for every subsequent world - and if she should ever run out of time, her scooter (or ship) will slow down to the speed it usually travels at when you are pushing the joystick into the "southern" position. However, the bonus stages do not have a time limit, which gives you one less thing to worry about whenn you are trying to collect all the numbered spheres in one group.