Zanac/Weapons

At the beginning of the game, or when you start from scratch with a new Zanac, you have the Single Missile. Picking up POWER CHIPS dropped by BOXes or shooting a HAPPY FACE will upgrade your Conventional Weapon.


 * Single Missile: the default Conventional Weapon. A single missile fires from the center of the Zanac. This weapon fires very slowly.


 * Twin Missile: two missiles fire from your Zanac. The rate of fire is a little better.


 * Triple Missile: A missile fires from the center of your Zanac and one fires from each wing. The rate of fire is much better.


 * Super Missile: Width of fire increases greatly: one missile shoots from the center of the Zanac, but the other two missiles fire from a short distance to the left and right of your ship entirely. This also gives you some added protection from enemies that attack you from the side. Rate of fire is greatly improved. In general, this really holds its own against the Special Weapon but you can only get the Super Missile under special conditions, not by collecting POWER CHIPs (see "Playing BOX Roulette" below).

The Conventional Weapon can hit targets on the ground and in the air, but cannot destroy CHIPs.

Playing BOX Roulette (upgrading the Conventional Weapon)
The easiest and safest way to upgrade the Conventional Weapon is to shoot open BOXes that appear periodically throughout the game's levels. Sometimes, the BOX will contain destructive CHIPs but other times it will contain POWER CHIPS that upgrade your Conventional Weapon.

When you shoot a BOX a couple times it will begin flashing. If it just flashes, you know it contains destructive CHIPs. If you shoot it more the CHIPs will be released, and if you run into it you will die. If the BOX becomes partially translucent and reveals a larger, glowing POWER CHIP you can either safely run into the BOX or shoot it more to release the POWER CHIP and run into that. Either way, it takes several POWER CHIPs to obtain the Twin Missile, and then several more to reach Triple Missile. After that, you can collect POWER CHIPs to your heart's content and although you will gain valuable points you will never obtain the Super Missile.

To go directly to the Triple Missile, you have to play BOX Roulette. If you run into a BOX without shooting it even once and it contains a POWER CHIP then you go directly to Triple Missiles. If you run into it without shooting it and it contains regular CHIPs your Zanac will be destroyed. How sad. If you have the Triple Missile and successfully play BOX Roulette twice (running into boxes without shooting them) you will be upgraded to the Super Missile.

BOXes sometimes appear alone, but most often they will appear in sets of three. Early in the game, and when the Aggression Level is low, there will usually be two boxes that contain CHIPs and one with a POWER CHIP. If you shoot two out of three to reveal that they contain CHIPs, it is probably safe to run into the remaining box to get your upgrade. As the aggression level increases this will no longer be the case -- BOXes will begin appearing in sets of three CHIPs or sometimes even two BOXes of POWER CHIPs with one BOX of CHIPs.

Whenever you pick up a weapon upgrade, your ship will flash for a few seconds to indicate it is invulnerable. When you pick up a POWER CHIP, it makes sense to use the period of invulnerability to run into any other nearby BOXes. If they also contain POWER CHIPs you may end up upgrading to Triple or Super Missiles and will also restart the short period of invulnerability. Once in a while (like Level 3), the System will flood the screen with nothing but BOXes, and you can use this domino effect to quickly obtain the Super Missile.

On some levels you will encounter a Ground Target I have called a HAPPY FACE. Shooting the HAPPY FACE with your Conventional Weapon will automatically upgrade it to the Super Missile and also net you some points. However, if you do this when you previously only had the Single or Twin Missile then make sure you don't pick up any more POWER CHIPs - doing so will make you drop back down to your previous weapon level. It is only safe to pick up POWER CHIPs if you upgrade when you already had the Triple Missile.